Strategic Brand Management REPORT on Dove in the UK Essay

Strategic Brand Management REPORT on Dove in the UK - Essay Example The Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) framework has been intended to assist management during the process of brand-building. According to this model, building strong brands entails four steps, including: (1) ascertaining the proper brand identity, in terms of depth and breadth brand awareness, (2) crafting suitable brand meaning through unique, favorable, and strong brand associations, (3) obtaining positive and accessible brand reactions, and (4) fashioning brand relationships with clients which are characterized by passionate and active loyalty. Achieving the four steps, further involves the establishment of six brand-structuring blocks— brand salience, imagery, judgments, feelings, and resonance. The CBBE model offers a yardstick through which brands can evaluate their progress in their brand-crafting efforts plus acting as a steer for marketing research programs. This report seeks to expound the concept of strategic brand management with special reference to the personal nurturing brand â€Å"Dove† and the â€Å"Real Beauty Campaign† (Keller 2007). Corporate entity Dove is owned by a conglomerate company known as Unilever – one of the world’s largest corporations dealing with FMCG. ... The most well-known brands in terms of earnings include thirteen â‚ ¬1billion brands: Knorr, Axe/Lynx, Becel/ Flora, Lipton, Hellmann's, Omo, Lux, Surf, Dove, Blue Sunsilk, Band/Rama, Rexona as well as Heartbrand ice creams (Jakobsen 2010). The brands are marketed under the corporation vision of bringing vitality to peoples’ lives. Unilever aims at improving the lives of people in a sustainable manner by investing in worldwide community initiatives including, carbon dioxide gas reduction, lessening water pollution, and promoting sustainable practices throughout Unilever’s supply chain. In regard to this, Unilever spend about â‚ ¬91 million on society projects globally in the year 2008. The company also boasts of approximately 270 manufacturing plants across the six continents in the world. All these strive to register better performance with regards to issues of safety, efficiency, quality as well as environmental impacts (Simon 2000, pp. 79). Dove and the Campaig n for Real Beauty This report focuses on the Dove brand and the Real Beauty campaign which was at first unveiled in 2004 and still subsists today. Even though the Dove brand has been present in the market since 1950s, it was not until the already mentioned campaign got launched that the brand achieved a strong standing in the minds of customers (Aaker & Keller 1990). The study for the campaign was founded upon quantitative data that had been collected from a global survey of about 3,200 women picked from ten countries including: Argentina, Canada, Brazil, France, Japan, Italy, Netherlands, the UK, Portugal, and the US. The findings validated Dove’s hypothesis which stated that the definition of the term beauty was both limiting and unattainable, by putting more

Safe Haven Essay Example for Free

Safe Haven Essay A young woman flees her house after being shown in possession of a bloody knife. She is shown moments later buying a bus ticket, her hair now cropped and bleached, and stops at a small North Carolina town called Southport. At the general store, she introduces herself as Katie. After acquiring a job as a waitress and buying a small house on the edge of town, Katie becomes friends with her neighbor, Jo and meets handsome Alex Wheatley,the manager of a local convenience store, and his two children, Lexie and Josh. Alexs wife tragically died of cancer a few years prior. Alex immediately takes a liking to Katie, doing small helpful things, such as leaving an old bike at her house. They go on a family trip to the beach, and Alex asks her to go canoeing with him, after which, they fall in love. Lexie immediately accepts Katie, while Josh is initially resistant, believing Katie to be his late mothers replacement, but eventually accepts her as well. Meanwhile, Kevin, a husky Boston police officer, searches for Katie and, using his authority as a police officer, sends out reports saying that she is a wanted murderer. Upon seeing her picture in the police station, Alex confronts Katie and becomes angry that she didnt trust him enough to even tell him her real name, Erin. The picture flashes to Kevins boss confronting him at work, pointing out he always carries a water bottle that turns out to be filled with vodka, and reveals that Erin was Kevins wife. Directly afterward, Katie is shown packing while talking angrily with Jo. Alex drives over to Katies house to talk to her, only to discover that she left. He drives to the nearest ferry and admits hes fallen in love with her and promises to protect her no matter what. Initially, Katie wants to flee but then she decides to stay in Southport and she and Alex help prepare the town for the upcoming Fourth of July celebration. Later, Katie tells Alex that Kevin is her husband, whom she stabbed with a kitchen knife in order to protect herself from his drunken assault. Meanwhile, Kevin breaks into Katies grandmothers home and finds the phone number to the Southport restaurant that employs Katie. He finds the location and makes his way there, very noticeably drunk. Arriving just on time for the Fourth of July parade, Kevin begins his search for Katie through the crowd, belligerent. He finally finds Katie dancing with Josh and watches as Alex leans over to kiss her, which makes him angry. Later, Katie has a dream that she is standing on the docks watching the fireworks when Jo comes up and tells Katie that he is here. Katie wakes up in the convenience store next to a fast asleep Lexie. While she is walking around in the store, Kevin makes his appearance and confronts her, drunk and sobbing and asking her to talk. He asks her to go back home with him, but she refuses and tells him to leave. He pulls out a revolver while Katie asks Lexie to stay up in the second floor of the store, scared that she might see Kevin and become frightened. Meanwhile, Kevin is pouring gasoline all over the store, with the intent to burn it down. He sits down on the steps with a lighter, deep in thought, and Katie fakes sympathy for him and agrees to return home with him, only to push him into the water by surprise. However, a firework spark lands on the gasoline, igniting a fire that spreads all over the store. Alex, busy shooting off fireworks, sees the burning store and quickly makes his way across the lake by boat. He manages to make his way up to the second floor and rescue Lexie from the burning building. Meanwhile, Katie is wrestling with a soaked Kevin who is attempting to shoot her. After a long struggle, she grabs a hold of the gun and kills him. Soon after, Alex finds Katie and they embrace. In the aftermath, Alex riffles through a desk belonging to his late wife, where he finds multiple letters she prepared ahead of time for memorable events such as Joshs eighteenth birthday and Lexies wedding day. Alex gives Katie a letter with the words For Her on the envelope. The letter talks about how if someone is receiving this letter, then Alex loves her without a shadow of a doubt. She says she is thankful for whomever is now reading the letter and thanks the reader for making Alex feel young and in love again. The movie ends by revealing that Jo was actually Alexs dead wife who left town moments before.

The Strategic Priorities Of Glaxosmithkline Plc Economics Essay

The Strategic Priorities Of Glaxosmithkline Plc Economics Essay Part I Pharmaceutical Business Model The business model of companies in pharmaceutical industry for almost two decades is blockbuster model. The blockbusters (drugs that have sales over $ 1 billion per year) have turned out to be a significant factor that driven the pharmaceutical industry from 1990s. There were 65 blockbusters in 2002 increased from only 7 blockbusters in 1990 (Deutsche Bank, 2003 cited in Froud et al, 2006: 169) but, by 2006, the number was raised to 114 (La Merie Business Intelligence, 2007). Exhibit 1 shown that the sales of top ten blockbuster companies from blockbuster drugs alone were accounted larger than one-fourth of world pharmaceutical market in 2006. This blockbuster model was adopted in order to maximize revenue because it was seemed to be possible approach to satisfy high growth expectation of financial community (Business Insight 2003: 10). To conclude, the blockbuster business model was underpinned big pharmaceutical companies success over the past decade. This model is embedded in phar maceutical industry. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 1 Top 10 Blockbuster companies, 2006 Company Sales of Blockbuster US$ billion Number of Blockbuster As % of World Pharmaceutical Market Pfizer 28.8 9 4.48 GlaxoSmithKline 24.3 12 3.78 AstraZeneca 21.1 11 3.28 Sanofi-Aventis 19.9 9 3.09 Johnson Johnson 17.5 8 2.72 Roche 16.1 7 2.50 Amgen 13.4 5 2.08 Merck Co. 12.7 4 1.98 Wyeth 10.0 5 1.56 Eli Lilly 9.4 5 1.46 Total 173.2 75 26.94 Source: La Merie Business Intelligence, 2007 Challenges of Big Pharmaceutical model To begin with, the big pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and GSK are over-reliance on the sales of blockbuster drugs. In other words, the companies are generated their main revenue from small number of drugs from their product lines. For example, in 2006, Pfizer had 9 blockbuster drugs which generated almost 60 % of total sales. GSK had 12 blockbuster drugs that contributed 56 % of total sales. Another example, in 2007, we can see that 12 blockbuster drugs of GSK accounted for almost 60 percent of companys total drug sales (see Exhibit 2). Therefore, companies are exposed to high insecurity if they cannot find replacement of products which have equivalent financial size. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 2 GSKs contribution of blockbuster to total drugs sales, 2007 Products Sales US$ million As % of total drugs sales Seretide/Advair 7,001 18.26 Flixotide/Flovent 1,243 3.24 Valtrex 1,869 4.87 Lamictal 2,195 5.72 Imigran/Imitrex 1,371 3.57 Seroxat/Paxil 1,107 2.89 Wellbutrin 1,059 2.76 Coreg 1,175 3.06 Avandia products 2,439 6.36 Augmentin 1,061 2.77 Hepatitis 1,059 2.76 Infanrix/Pediarix 1,087 2.83 Total 22,663 59.1 Source: Company annual report, 2008 Next, the less productive of RD pipeline and increasing cost of RD. There is a downward trend of the number of New Molecular Entities (NMEs) and Biologics License Applications (BLAs). In 1996, there are almost 40 approvals of NMEs and BLAs but, by 2007, the figure was decreased to 18 (Riley 2008). In addition, the cost to develop a drug is ten-fold increase from $138 million in 1975 to $ 1.318 billion in 2006 (PhRMA 2009) (see Exhibit 3). Hence, from the opposite direction of RD cost and RD productivity, we can conclude that the overall efficiency of RD in industry is lower than in the past. Finally, the expiry of patent and the impact of generics. For example, the best selling drug of GSK Seretide/Advair which generated US$ 7,653 million or 17 % of total turnover in 2008 will be expired in 2010 in the US and in 2013 in the EU. In this case, there is a possibility that GSKs turnover might drop sharply after the expiry of Seretide if the company cannot develop product or new source of income to make up for the loss of Seretide/Advair sales. In addition, the increasing in number of patent expiries of blockbusters has a positive impact to the growth in generic market. As exhibit 4 shows, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the global generic market was 16.4% during 2004 to 2007. In contrast, growth rate of overall pharmaceutical industry was at a CAGR of 8.3% in the same span. Another factor driven the growth of generic drugs is the greater attentiveness of payors as a result of current economic recession such as tightened healthcare budget of governments or private p ayors. It is likely that the price of drugs will be pushed down by the greater bargaining power. For instance, Japan had cut the price of drugs on the National Health Insurance (NHI) in 2008 by average 5.2% (Business Insight 2008). All in all, economic and stakeholders in the demanding side of the industry are now shaping the new form of the pharmaceutical market. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 3 Cost of developing new drug, 1975 2006 Source: PhRMA, 2009 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 4 Global Generics Market, 2004 2007 Source: Business Insight, 2008 The Strategic priorities of GlaxoSmithKline PLC In 2008, Andrew Witty was selected to be a CEO of GSK. After two months of being a CEO, he announced new strategy to steer GSK in global pharmaceutical market. There are three new strategic priorities; grow a diversified global business, deliver more products of value and simplify the operating model. This section will discuss how these new strategic a response to problem pharmaceutical business model problem. Grow a Diversified Global Business In this strategic, the company is trying to lessen its risk by widening and balancing its products across all geographic boundaries. In other words, company tries to reduce reliance on blockbuster drugs for companys growth as Witty said The biggest thing Im trying to change is to go from saying its okay to have a blockbuster once every five years to a situation where we are delivering several new products every year (Goodman 2008). As a recession in the USA, it had a huge impact in the US sales which is a main market for company that accounted for 40% of total revenue in 2008. The sales in the US decreased by 4.2% in 2008 compare to 2007 while Europe market and rest of the world market sales were increased by 16.3% and 16.6% respectively (GlaxoSmithKline 2009). Therefore, at this moment, the US market is saturated; company is now focusing on the market which has high growth such as Africa, China and India but also not ignore the US market. It shows that company is adapted to the curr ent market situation. There are many actions that have been taken by the company that response to the business model problems. First, company is focusing on vaccine, biopharma and consumer healthcare which have high potential growth which in turn might create revenue to make up the loss of sales from expired patent blockbusters. Second, fulfill the potential of emerging markets and Japan market. Japan, alone, accounted for 10% of global pharmaceutical market (Medicines Australia 2009) which is the second largest from the US. It is a big market and a high growth market with market value of US$ 68.6 billion in 2008 and sales growth of 17.2% over 2007 (Business Insight 2009). In emerging markets, particularly, the seven pharmerging market including China, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, India, Turkey and Russia seem to be the major driven of growth in the global pharmaceutical industry (see Exhibit 5). Better approach to generic is driven this growth. It is likely that GSK is now more con centrated on generic drugs, for example, company acquired branded generics from both Bristol-Myers Squibb and UCB as well as formed alliance with South Africas Aspen Pharmacare and Dr Reddys of India (Hirsler, 2009). To conclude, this strategic priority seems to be positive reaction of the company regarding the over-reliance on blockbusters, market decline in the US and the impact of generics as Johnson et al. (2008) suggested that diversification is suitable when current markets saturated while need for more rapid growth. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 5 Sales in 7MM and pharmerging markets ($m), 2003 2007 Markets 2007 CAGR 2003-07 7MM 466,145 5.62% Pharmerging markets 58,652 15.79% 7MM = USA, Japan, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, UK Pharmerging markets = China, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, India, Turkey and Russia Source: Riley, 2008 Deliver More Products of Value GSK is lack of therapy area diversification and technology concentration. We can see that there are only 6% of biopharma in GSKs pipeline. Moreover, oncology area represented only 1% of GSKs Sales in 2007 while this area had global market growth of 3%. In order to maintain growth in the long term, GSK need to adjust its RD issues (Riley 2008). Therefore, company announced plan as follow. First, company will focused on eight areas of therapy. Second, externalize RD as its take a long time to create and develop by in-house. Third, GSK will create new biopharma and oncology RD unit in China that have lower cost than established in developed countries which in turn help company to control RD budget. Finally, divided RD units into small group and financed dependent upon its performance which in turn will stimulate innovation. To conclude, GSK redefined its RD pipeline and structure is reacted directly to the problems of RD as mentioned previously as well as problem of over-reliance on blo ckbusters. Simplify the Operating Model GSK is trying to reduce cost in running business. First, develop commercial model; for example, integrate the back office finance system into one system across organization. Second, reduce cost in manufacturing. Company has a plan to cut two-third waste in production by 2015 (Jack, 2009a). As a result, company will be able to redeploy the money from cost reduction into investment. Overall, this strategy is not related directly to the problems of business model, however, the amount of reduction in working capital can be put to RD or other investments which might turn to be in form of company growth (Bender and Ward 2009). In conclusion, it is obvious that new strategy of Andrew Witty is reflected directly to the problems of business model which are heavily reliant on blockbusters, RD problem and impact of generic drugs. However, company is likely to put their focus on small molecules which is the core heritage of the company and the existing products as well as diversify its portfolios and adapted itself into recent market environment. Part II Will new strategy succeed? The new strategy of GSK is likely to lead the company to succeed in the future as it is reflected straightforwardly to the problems of business model. Additionally, it is not simple to point out or evaluate the firms performance as Rosenzweig (2007) argued that the success or performance is not totally forced by internal factors; in contrast, it is relative to a company itself and environment as a whole. Therefore, successful of strategy in this paper will be defined as if company can increase its shareholder values in the long term. In addition, how will company succeed will evaluate by if the new strategy will increase value of its shareholder. Rappaport (1998) pointed out that shareholder value can be driven by seven factors; raise sales growth, boost operating profit margin, lessen cash tax rate, reduce incremental investment in capital spending, reduce investment in working capital, increase time period of competitive advantage, and reduce cost of capital. Regarding companys diversified global business strategy; there are many significant improvements as a result of applying this strategy. First, there is sales growth compared with quarter in previous year in every quarter from third quarter of 2008, after announcement of new strategy, in British pound term. Furthermore, GSK had an increasing in third quarter 2009 of sales 19% in Japan, 25% in emerging market, and 8% in consumer products (Jack, 2009b). In first quarter of 2009, company experienced decline in US market by 22% company Overall, this strategy reflects directly with sales volume which leads to growth in sales. Therefore, company increases its shareholder value as it can raise its sales growth. Deliver more products of value; from this strategy, company should be able to create more revenue from its value added activities. From the company financial data comparing nine month of 2008 and 2009, we can see that GSK had an increasing in gross profit and operating profit 16% and 8% respectively (see Exhibit 6). However, gross margin and operating margin were decreased slightly by 0.4% and 2.39% to 74.05% and 29.48% respectively. Therefore, company unable to raise its shareholder value by this strategy as it was failed to increase operating margin. Moreover, company has less efficiency as its return on capital employed (ROCE) was dropped (see Exhibit 6 and 7) from 22.18% in three quarter of 2008 to 19.71% in three quarter of 2009. There is a probability that company is unable to deliver more values from money that put it investment. However, value added activities of this industry is more likely as RD process. It takes long time to get outcome from money that invested today. For example, to evaluate the RD performance, we should not consider only the approval of new drugs only, as it takes 10 15 years to develop a new drug which mentioned in part I but also we need to take in account the drug development in the early phase, this drugs which are in process cannot generate profit for company today. Overall, we can see that in this strategy. The company is unable to enhance in shareholder value as it cannot increase it operating margin. This is mean that at this period of time a company is inefficiency to control their selling, administration and RD expense. The third strategy, simplify the operating model. There is one mission in this strategy that related directly to increase shareholder value which is reducing working capital. As in September 2008, company was able to reduce its working capital by 500 Million GBP, therefore, shareholder value is increasing as money from working capital can be return to shareholder in form of dividend or can reinvest in company at low cost of capital. This strategy should able a company to lower cost of operation, in contrast, exhibit 6 shows that selling and administration expense was increasing by 24% while turnover increased only 16%. It seems that company cannot succeed its goal by this strategy. If we take a look at stock price of company, we can see that price is hit the highest in 52 weeks in December 2009 (see exhibit 8). This can indicate that market gains confidence about the company performance. However, P/E ratio 13.79% of the company as 14 December 2009 is still lower than competitors; Pfizer at 15.19% and Novartis at 16.1%. This can be interpreted that price low of GSK is low than competitors. All in all, despite the confidence of the market about GSK, in my opinion, up to the present moment the new strategy is not successful in term of maximizing its shareholder value. As we can see from the numbers such as ROCE and operating margin that company cannot build up or even maintain these ratios. However, it needs to be seen it long run whether strategy will succeed since only internal factors cannot make company to succeed. (2420 Words) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 6 GSK; Nine Month ended Income Statement, 2008 and 2009 Source: GSK Press Release, 28 October 2009 Available at : www.gsk.com [accessed 13 December 2009] à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 7 GSK; Nine Month ended Balance Sheet, 2008 and 2009 Source: GSK Press Release, 28 October 2009 Available at : www.gsk.com [accessed 13 December 2009] à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 8 Stock Price of GSK, London Stock Exchange, 2years ended 14 December 2009 Source: http://uk.finance.yahoo.com

Questions and Answers About Luxury Products Essay -- customers, brand

Questions and Answers: (2) How does a brand name or country of origin work as a heuristic? (3) Do ratings change as a function of the country of origin? (4) Are there any significant differences or similarities between domestic versus foreign brands for EACH fashion product (eg. A Chinese luxury brand versus an Australian luxury brand)? (5) What are the implications for companies and businesses that use country of origin as a way of advertising / promoting their product and brands? a) Based on the results in question 4a, (2) How does a brand name or country of origin work as a heuristic(2 marks)? Heuristic or rules of thumb are general decision making strategies people use that are based on little information, yet very often correct; heuristics are mental shortcuts that reduce the cognitive burden associated with decision making (Shah & Oppenheimer, 2008). In this case, consumers always see an Italian product with the exemplar of luxury brand. Thus, they may assume all Italian based product is always expensive, exclusive, unique, high price and comfortable. Meanwhile, consumer may also assume that all products from China were all low quality, cheap and not long lasting based on what they heard and see on the television or friends. (3) Do ratings change as a function of the country of origin? Explain why or why not. (4 marks) Yes. It is because the perceived theoretical relationship between the cue of country of origin and the attributes of a product is largely conducted by product-country images, among which quality as a representative of a country’s production has an important effect on consumers’ evaluations of products (Broniarczyk & Alba, 1994). For example, Korean music has been famous worldw... ... Decision Outcomes†. Student Pulse.http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/180/2/decision-making-factors-that-influence-decision-making-heuristics-used-and-decision-outcomes Klein, Jill Gabrielle, Richard Ettenson and Marlene D. Morris (1998). "The Animosity Model of Foreign Product Purchase: An Empirical Test in the People's Republic of China", Journal of Marketing, 62(1), 89-100 Shah, A.K., & Oppenheimer, D.M. (2008).Heuristics made easy: An effort-reduction framework. Psychological Bulletin, 134(2), 207-222. DOI: 1.1037/0033-2909.134.2.207. Shimp, Terence A. and Subhash Sharma (1987), "Consumer Ethnocentrism: Construction and Validation of the CETSCALE", Journal of Marketing Research 24(3), 280-289 Tversky, Amos and David Kahneman. 1974. â€Å"Judgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases†. Science 185: 1124-1131. http://turtletrader.com/heuristics.pdf Questions and Answers About Luxury Products Essay -- customers, brand Questions and Answers: (2) How does a brand name or country of origin work as a heuristic? (3) Do ratings change as a function of the country of origin? (4) Are there any significant differences or similarities between domestic versus foreign brands for EACH fashion product (eg. A Chinese luxury brand versus an Australian luxury brand)? (5) What are the implications for companies and businesses that use country of origin as a way of advertising / promoting their product and brands? a) Based on the results in question 4a, (2) How does a brand name or country of origin work as a heuristic(2 marks)? Heuristic or rules of thumb are general decision making strategies people use that are based on little information, yet very often correct; heuristics are mental shortcuts that reduce the cognitive burden associated with decision making (Shah & Oppenheimer, 2008). In this case, consumers always see an Italian product with the exemplar of luxury brand. Thus, they may assume all Italian based product is always expensive, exclusive, unique, high price and comfortable. Meanwhile, consumer may also assume that all products from China were all low quality, cheap and not long lasting based on what they heard and see on the television or friends. (3) Do ratings change as a function of the country of origin? Explain why or why not. (4 marks) Yes. It is because the perceived theoretical relationship between the cue of country of origin and the attributes of a product is largely conducted by product-country images, among which quality as a representative of a country’s production has an important effect on consumers’ evaluations of products (Broniarczyk & Alba, 1994). For example, Korean music has been famous worldw... ... Decision Outcomes†. Student Pulse.http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/180/2/decision-making-factors-that-influence-decision-making-heuristics-used-and-decision-outcomes Klein, Jill Gabrielle, Richard Ettenson and Marlene D. Morris (1998). "The Animosity Model of Foreign Product Purchase: An Empirical Test in the People's Republic of China", Journal of Marketing, 62(1), 89-100 Shah, A.K., & Oppenheimer, D.M. (2008).Heuristics made easy: An effort-reduction framework. Psychological Bulletin, 134(2), 207-222. DOI: 1.1037/0033-2909.134.2.207. Shimp, Terence A. and Subhash Sharma (1987), "Consumer Ethnocentrism: Construction and Validation of the CETSCALE", Journal of Marketing Research 24(3), 280-289 Tversky, Amos and David Kahneman. 1974. â€Å"Judgement under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases†. Science 185: 1124-1131. http://turtletrader.com/heuristics.pdf

Concluding Case †Custom Coffee & Chocolate Essay

Billions of people across the globe choose to have a cup of coffee each morning to start the day or as a morning work break but coffee has become more than just a drink. Coffee has become an ingrained part of various cultures and coffee shops can be found in most every city around the world. It is little wonder that coffee ranks among the world’s largest commodity markets second only to oil (â€Å"Dangerous Grounds: About the Show†, 2013). Given diversity and competition in the market, the small startup company of Custom Coffee & Chocolate will require a clear mission statement, detailed business analysis, and tactical plans that will help it to increase market share within the Seattle community. A mission statement describes a company’s fundamental purpose and how that company is unique within its product and services offerings. In writing of the company’s mission, each word must be carefully selected for consistency and there must be a commitment from the stakeholders to focus resources in the accomplishment of this mission (Ireland & Hitt, 1992). Bonnie Brewer and Stacy Kim have passed a milestone having developed regular customers within the five months of opening the first coffee house. As a statement for moving forward, â€Å"Custom Coffee & Chocolate’s mission into the community is to provide the highest quality, socially ethical coffee and chocolates while serving to keep the Seattle community connected and invigorated. † The next step towards developing a tactical business plan is to identify internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats. A common challenge among small startup companies is finance. Within the first six months, Brewer and Kim have exhausted both their savings and initial small-business loan placing the company in a precarious position. For further development of the business, these proprietors will need to seek further investment capital through another partner, reduction in salary, or incur more debt with another small-business loan. Being located near a university is a strength that entails a surrounding population that is educated and can appreciate socially and environmentally sustainable coffee and chocolate. Coffeehouses for this type of customers are not only a place to purchase caffeine but also a social gathering place for study and recreation. Many coffeehouses are able to differentiate themselves from larger chains such as Starbucks by creating a more inviting environment that encourages guests to stay longer and experience the ambiance (Grant, 2005). Custom Coffee provides currently provides quality product but needs to improve the service it provides to the area. Companies such as Starbucks, Tully’s, and Seattle’s Best have made their starts in the Seattle community and in some cases grown to be national and multi-national organizations. In some cases such as Tully’s coffee, the competition was too much and have gone into bankruptcy (â€Å"McDreamy’ saves Seattle coffee chain,† 2013). The tactical plan for Custom Coffee & Chocolates will comprise of two milestone events. Within the first year, the company will take out another small-business loan to improve its utilization of technology. The store will install high-speed wireless for its guests as well as invest in improving its website and web search analytics. Brewer and Kim will implement an in-dorm delivery service while also standardizing hiring and training practices for the new, part-time staff that will be required. The hours of operation will be lengthened to better serve students’ late night study habits as well as an increase in marketing to the university clubs and organizations. This will lead into an event schedule that may include coffee and chocolate tastings as well as an open mike night. The goal of these changes will result in the company being financially stable within the first year and better positioned for expanding into a few other locations within the second or third year. In conclusion, a company must identify its reason for existence, analyze the market, and then make a plan based on both that mission and market analysis. The Custom Coffee & Chocolate store has many challenges that lay ahead but with clear vision and planning, it is positioned to become an ingrained part of Seattle’s university communities having successfully passed the first six months of operation. A key to this success will be for the company to focus into a niche where many of the nationally franchised coffee shops lack (Grant, 2005). Custom Coffee will exceed with socially and environmentally responsible products as well as providing a friendly, social gathering point for the local community.

Pandora Internet Radio Essay

One of my favorite radio medians is Pandora Internet Radio. I enjoy Pandora for the simple fact of variety there over a 700,000 songs in the database. There are many great radio stations out there. However, after awhile they continue to cycle through the same songs over and over. With Pandora the listeners can suggest specific artists, or genres of music, or a comedian and Pandora not only plays that artist, but artist that are similar to them through that station. Through the Music Genome Project, a team of musician-analysts listens to songs. They study the details of the song to compile a list of artist with similar sounds to create the different playlists. As a member of Pandora you are allowed to create up to a 100 unique â€Å"stations.† (Pandora, 2013) Pandora’s mission statement: â€Å"We believe in the value of music and have a profound respect for those who create it. We like all kinds of music, from the most obtuse bebop, to the most tripped-out drum n bass, to the simplest catchy pop tune. Our mission is to help you connect with the music YOU love† (Pandora, 2013). Pandora has a single mission and that is to play music the listeners will love. They have added comedy to target listeners who enjoy standup comedy and lighten their day with a laugh (Pandora, 2013). I have an app on my phone and can listen to Pandora wherever I am. I plug my phone into speakers and listen to Pandora everyday. I did further research on the about Pandora page on Thursday March 28th. When entering the Pandora site, the first thing you will notice is the blue screen with Pandora written across it in white. That screen then brings you to their home page. The logo is the name Pandora that can be found in the upper left hand corner of the screen. According to the 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, blue is the color of leadership and is used to communicate stability (Ries, 2002). Under the law of shapes the rectangle is the most preferred shape is more of an eye catcher than the other shapes. The logo in the app store is a white square with a blue uppercase P and Pandora written underneath it in blue as well. Pandora means â€Å"all gifted† in Greek, Pandora received many gifts from the God’s including the gift of music (Pandora, 2013). Tim Westergren, a long time musician started Savage Beast Technologies in 1999, later on launching Pandora in 2005. One of the main competitors is iHeart Radio; iHeart offers there listeners to not only find artists, but also allows them to look up radio stations from around the United States. The iHeart logo is a lower case I with a satellite around it shaped as a heart in white and the background color is red (iHeart, 2013). Slacker Radio is another competitor of Pandora. Slacker is an interactive radio that also allows the listener to chose an artists, or specific genre of music and creates a playlist according to music choice. The logo for Slacker is an orange circle with white wings with a white uppercase S that looks like a tilted music note in the middle of the circle (Slacker, 2013). Pandora uses a Wordmark logo; iHeart and Slacker both use a Pictorial Mark to display their different brands. As a customer of DirecTv I received a newsletter in the mail informing me that there was a Pandora app on DirecTv. Although I already have an account that I can listen to on my phone or computer, I was unaware that there was an app through DirecTv. This advertisement strategy was a great idea and I immediately followed the steps to get Pandora on my television. Pandora can be located on over 200 consumer electronic devices varying from smart-phones to TV’s to set-top boxes to Blu-ray players and is able to stream visual audio, and interactive advertising to computers. There interactive advertising extends from computers, smart-phones, iPads, in-home connected devices and even cars. While a song is playing there are artist biographies and discographies. They also offer lyrics to many of the songs. There is an email sign up to receive alerts whenever Pandora Media, Inc. post new information and updates. There is a thumb’s up and down button at the bottom of the page for listeners to like or dislike the songs they are listening to. Pandora offers a sense of community through users profile pages. Under the profile page listeners can follow other Pandora members similar to a Twitter page. The music feed allows listeners to see what others are creating or listening to for stations. This is a great place for listeners to broaden the music they listen to by seeing what others like. There are many underground bands and artists that have not reached the mainstream that have their music through Pandora. The target market of Pandora is everyone who enjoys music no matter age, gender, or preferred genre. The target customer listens to music at home, gym, or while in the car. With such a large variety of music, everyone can enjoy listening to Pandora. There is music for children all the way up to the elderly. Pandora wants to satisfy everyone. The iPhone 5 users have a few more features through Pandora there are more sharing options located on the screen, to allow users to share their music with Facebook and Twitter. The original Pandora is a free app they however do have options to upgrade for $3.99 to listen without commercials. Pandora recently partnered up with Chrysler’s Uconnect Access, this allows Pandora users to sync their favorite radio stations and listen through the radio in the car. This partnership brings Pandora up to 20 US automotive brands (Yeung, 2013). Pandora has Facebook and Twitter accounts to interact and keep listeners updated on new information and the latest apps they offer. There is also the updated email alerts. The Pandora app is available through all apps stores, and in 2008 Pandora became one of the most consistently downloaded apps in the Apple store (Pandora, 2013). Today Pandora offers many different apps many are free and others do need to paid for.

blackholes essays

blackholes essays Stars are affected by two main forces: Nuclear fusion, and gravitation Black Holes are the result of an imbalance of these two forces. Nuclear fusion- the outward force from the star's centre and gravitation- the force pulling inwards. These two processes balance one another until all the star's hydrogen is exhausted, allowing gravitation to take over. Once gravitation dominates, the star becomes unstable and starts to collapse. As the core compresses, it heats up and results in a supernova explosion in which the material and radiation blasts out into space. If what remains of the star is greater than 3 times the mass of our sun, it will continue to collapse and form a black hole. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity suggests that the most densest and massive objects conceivable, such as black holes, have gravity that is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape their grasp. I do not fully understand Einsteins general theory of relativity but Im going to try and give everyone a very basic understanding of why Einstein thought space and time are not separate but closely connected known as space-time. When we describe the position of a flying plane we can use length, width and height these make up the three dimensions of space. But another dimension can be used time, these four dimensions make up space-time. The fundamental aspect of general relativity is effect that matter, with a gravitational field, has on the curvature of space, rather on the four dimensional space-time. One way to visualise Einsteins view of gravity was to think of the rubber sheet analogy described in many texts. In order to understand this, consider a sheet of rubber, with a weight placed on it, to represent a star. The weight will form a depression in the rubber, causing the sheet near the star to be curved, rather than flat. If one now rolls marbles on the ...