Women’s Resource Center Essay Example for Free

Women’s Resource Center Essay Communication plays an important role in many areas of all fields of employment. I have recently come back to school to earn my MBA. Prior to entering school again I worked in the social work field as a support person, working for an organization called Women’s Resource Center through the United Way. While working for Women’s Resource Center I attended various trainings. Some of the trainings were effective and offered a lot of information which could be used on a regular basis in my position, while others offered little useful information. Effective communication is one of the most important roles for a presenter to have when offering trainings, trainings that I have attended have had both good and poor communication and therefore the outcome of the trainings is greatly affected by the presenter’s ability to communicate. One of the most effective trainings that I attended while working for the Women’s Resource Center was a training called â€Å"Suicide Prevention and Assessment. † The training was very successful in my opinion as it offered information and the practical used of this information in the field. This training used a variety of resources and ways to communicate the needs of the clients and the ways that suicide could be affectively prevented. The training also offered various communication strategies and principals. The trainers were able to present clinical documentation in a way that all could understand and they also were able to relate the clinical studies to real life situations that we as employees could be facing on a regular basis. This training included a wide range of communication strategies when effectively communicating the needs of the information. I learned through an oral presentation, video, power point presentation, and handouts. I was able to follow along both visually and audibly which helped as I could see and hear what was being said. Also the trainers talked on a real world level relating issues and terminology to situations that present themselves to the staff on a regular basis. Through this training I learned some great resources for affective communication. I also learned the importance of effective communication in trainings first hand as the information seemed so much more personal and needed then it would have had the communication occurred in another way. If I were to lead this training I would not change a thing. It was by far the most effective work training that I have ever attended and I was able to learn more during this training and I feel that the main reason for my ability to learn was that the presenters utilized such effective communication practices. I was fortunate to be a part of such a great suicide prevention training however I have also had training experiences where the communication was poor and I was unable to gain information that was valuable from them. One training that I attended where the communication skills were lacking was training on the skill of Motivational Interviewing. This training was presented in a clinical manner. It was presented in a lecture style, without any visualizations and without apparent relevance to the population with which I was working. This training offered some great information but the information was lost to the students as it came across in a manner that was not interesting or practical for the environment for which it was to be applied. I felt that this training used such poor overall communication skills that it was ineffective based on communication alone. There were many things that could have been done differently to make this training more effective and for this training to have better overall communication skills. The training would have first been improved by offering various styles of communication, some lecture, some visual, some hand outs and things that could be used later. The training also would have been more effective if it were applied to the situations that are faced on a daily basis by the staff. I felt that I would have learned a lot more if I had been told ways that this training would help and if I had been given real world examples to the ability of these trainings. This training taught me firsthand that useful information can be lost if not communicated in an affective manner and the importance of being effective in my communication when leading or planning trainings on any topic. I would change the format first, then the communication style and possibly the trainer’s ability to communicate the information affectively to those who are working in the field. I would have worked to develop training that was effective for those who were supposed to use it. Effective communication is important in all areas of business. One area where business can be drastically affected by communication is training. There are always going to be trainings that are needed in any field of employment however the effectiveness of this training can be improved and the staff can learn more if effective communication takes place. I learned through training in my past position that communication plays a much more important role in the possibility of teaching new information than I would have formerly thought. I would not have imagined that the communication of the presenter could determine how much of the information was absorbed and how much of the training information was determined to be useful if I had not previously taken these two trainings and experienced first hand the difference in communication and how it affects those whom you are training.

Application of Non-ionising Radiation Based Enzyme

Application of Non-ionising Radiation Based Enzyme APPLICATION OF NON-IONISING RADIATION BASED ENZYME INACTIVATION OF BITTER GOURD (Mordica charania L.): A COMPARATIVE STUDY Nalawade S. A, Akanksha, H.Umesh Hebbar Introduction Although many processing technologies could be used to extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables, the commonly used ones in current food industry are blanching and dehydration. Blanching is a pre-processing operation carried out before drying of fruits and vegetables. The main purpose of blanching is to inactivate enzymes such as peroxidase, polyphenoloxidases and phenolase which cause many adverse changes of a product (Fellows, 1990; Hiranvarachat, Devahastin, Chiewchan, 2011; Vishwanathan, Giwari, Hebbar, 2013). Conventional blanching involves processing with hotwater, steamand acid. The conventional blanching has many drawbacks such as loss of water soluble nutrients (Lavelli, Zanoni, Zaniboni, 2007), quality deterioration (Gornicki Kaleta, 2007) and environmental problems (Bomben, 1977). Bitter gourd is known for its medicinal properties and has been used in various Asian and African herbal medicine systems from a long time Grover and Yadav (2004), Beloin et al., (2005), Ananya Paul and Sarmistha Sen Raychaudhuri (2010). It has antidiabetic, antitumorous, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and cholesterol lowering capacity Ahmed et al., (2001), Grover and Yadav (2004) and Taylor (2002).The compound responsible for anti-diabetic property in bitter gourd is Charantin, a hypoglycemic compound which is a mixture of two compounds (1:1) sitosteryl glucoside (C35H60O6) and stigmasteryl glucoside (C35H58O6) that has been isolated from the seeds, leaves and fruit of Momordica charantia (Raman and Lau, 1996). Storage of raw bitter gourd is difficult because of presence of some enzymes which deteriorate the product quality. Hence, Blanching is carried out before drying operation. Primary purpose of blanching is to inactivate enzymes such as Peroxidase (POD), Polyphenol oxidase (PPO) allowing stabilization and minimize the degradation of other quality attributes (Canet, 1989). Peroxide (POD) is considered as enzymatic indicator for blanching (Gunes and Bayindirli, 1993, Sheu and Chen, 1991 and Zhu and Pan, 2009) which is one of the most heat resistant enzymes, therefore when POD is inactivated most of other enzymes present might not survive (Halpin Lee, 1987). 90% reduction in POD activity was considered as the end point, since persistence of 3-10% is considered sufficient for drying purpose (Gunes and Bayindirli, 1993). Conventional blanching method includes processing the sample with hot water and steam. The advantages of electromagnetic radiation (MW and IR) employed blanching over conventional blanching methods (water or steam) are rapid inactivation of enzyme complexes that cause quality degradation and minimal/no leaching of vitamins, flavor, pigments, carbohydrates and other water soluble components (De Ancos et al. 1999).These methods have drawbacks such as quality deterioration (Gornicki Kaleta, 2007) and loss of water soluble nutrients (Lavelli, Zanoni, Zaniboni, 2007). The application of microwave radiation for blanc hing or enzyme inactivation (Ramaswamy and Fakhouri, 1998; Ponne, Baysal, Yuksel, 1994; Begum and Brewer, 2001; Brewer and Begum, 2003; Roberts et al., 2004; Lin and Brewer, 2005; Zhu Pan, 2009; Lin and Ramaswamy, 2011; G.C. Jeevitha et.al ,2013 ;Vishwanathan et al., 2013 ) showing its effectiveness and suitability. From the results of Ramaswamy and Fakhouri (1998), Ramesh et al. (2002), G.C. Jeevitha et.al ,2013 and Bengang Wu et al.,2014 it is possible to observe that vegetable tissue blanched with microwave and infrared radiation retained better nutritional value. G.C. Jeevitha et.al,2013 reported better retention of water-soluble nutrients during dry blanching of red bell pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) slices using infrared (IR) and microwave (MW) radiations and its performance compared with conventional methods. There are a few reports on MW blanching (Chung et al. 1981; Ramesh et al. 2002; Brewer and Begum 2003) and IR blanching (Ponne et al. 1994) indicating their benefits in terms of nutrient retention over steam or water blanching. The objectives of present study were to: evaluate kinetics of Bitter gourd peroxidase (POD) polyphenol oxidase (PPO) inactivation and determine adequacy of both conventional (water and steam) and Dry blanching (IR and MW); to evaluate effect on product quality in terms of moisture, ascorbic acid, chlorophyll and charantin. Materials and Methods Bitter gourd dark green (moisture content 92  ± 1.2%w.b) were purchased from a local market. All the fruits were washed with running water under tap to remove adhering dust and reduce the surface micro-flora and stored at 4  ± 1 °C until further use. The bitter gourd fruits were procured from a single source and almost the same degree of maturity was maintained in order to minimize variation in raw material quality. Sample preparation Bitter gourd fruits were washed thoroughly with tap water and sliced using Robot coupe slicer of dimension 5 mm. seeds were removed manually and used for the study. Blanching Systems Water Blanching Bitter gourd slices (100 g) were immersed in hot water (1:3) maintained at 90  ± 2 °C for 2 min. The blanched samples were immediately cooled to room temperature (25 °C) by dipping in water for 5 min. Surface excess moisture of slices was removed using filter paper and subjected for analysis. Steam Blanching Bitter gourd slices (30 g) were subjected to steam blanching by exposing the slices to steam in an autoclave (100C and 1atm) for 3 min. The steam blanched Bitter gourd slices were immediately cooled to room temperature by dipping in water for 5 min. Samples was subjected for analysis after removing the surface moisture. IR Blanching. About 100 g of bitter gourd slices spread uniformly on the stainless steel (AISI 304) conveyor of IR heater developed (Hebbar and Ramesh 2006) at the authors institute and exposed to IR radiation at a chamber air temperature 200 °C for 8 min. The IR heater, fitted with near IR heat sources (1.1 THz; 0.26 kW/m2) on top and bottom sides of the wire mesh conveyor, was used for the study. IR heat was applied intermittently to control blanching temperature. The chamber was preheated to the required temperature before blanching. The blanched slices were cooled rapidly to room temperature by blowing air. MW Blanching MW blanching was carried out in a domestic microwave oven (BPL, 2,450 MHz) at an intensity of 5.57, 7.36 and 8.8 W/g. For all the runs, the position of the bitter gourd slices were maintained the same on the turntable to minimize variation. Crude extract preparation Slices were homogenized with 0.1 M sodium phosphate buffer of pH 7 in the ratio of 1:3. Homogenate was filtered through muslin cloth and centrifuged at 5,100 g for 20 min at 4 ° C. Supernatant was collected and used for the assay. Enzyme analysis. POD Assay The substrate solution was composed of 1.0 mL of phosphate buffer of pH 6, 1.0 mL of 15 mM guaiacol and 1 mL of 3 mM H2O2. To the substrate solution, 50  µL of enzymatic extract were added and the increase in OD was recorded at 470 nm for 5 min using ultraviolet (UV) visible spectrophotometer (UV- 160A, Shimadzu, Japan). Enzyme activity was determined from the slope of the linear portion of the graph relating absorbance with time and expressed as ΔAbs470/min.g sample (Fujita et al. 1997). PPO Assay A spectrophotometric assay at 411 nm using 0.1 M catechol as substrate was used to quantify PPO activity (Weemaes et al. 1997). Moisture content Moisture content of raw and blanched bitter gourd was analyzed using the AOAC method. Values reported are the average of triplicate determinations Estimation of Ascorbic acid The ascorbic acid was determined by 2,6-dichlorophenol- indophenol visual titration methods,(Ranganna 1986) given as follows: Standardization of dye Ascorbic acid (100 mg of l-ascorbic acid) was dissolved in 3% HPO3 and volume made up to 100mL. Further, 10 ml of this solution was diluted to 100mL with HPO3. From this, 5mL was transferred to Erlenmeyer flasks containing 5mL of metaphosphoric acid (3%). A burette was filled with the dye, prepared from dissolution of 50 mg of the sodium salt of 2, 6-dichlorophenol in hot distilled water (150 mL) containing 42 mg of NaHCO3, which was made up to 200mL with distilled water. Then, the ascorbic acid solution was titrated against the standard indophenol solution to a rose pink color, which persisted for around 15 s. The dye factor was determined as milligram of ascorbic acid per milliliter of the dye, using the formula: Sample preparation and assay, the sample (10 g) was macerated with metaphosphoric acid (3%) in a pestle and mortar, filtered, and made up to 100 ml. The filtrate (5 mL) was taken and titrated against the standard dye to a pink end point, which persisted for at least 15 s. The vitamin C content was calculated as: Percentage retention of ascorbic acid was calculated by, Where A= amount of ascorbic acid present after processing A0= amount of ascorbic acid present in fresh bitter gourd Both values taken dry basis Estimation of Chlorophyll Estimation of chlorophyll was carried out according to the procedure of Ranganna.[25] bitter gourd slices (1 g) were macerated with 80% acetone in a pestle and mortar. The supernatant layer was decanted and the extraction was repeated until the residue was colorless. Then the extracts were pooled, filtered, and made up to 100mL in a volumetric flask. The absorbance measured at 645nm and 663nm using spectrophotometer (Schemadzu UV-1800) The amount of chlorophyll present in the extract mg chlorophyll per g tissue was calculated using the following equation Where, A=absorbance at specific wavelength V= final volume of chlorophyll extracted in 80% acetone W= weight of tissue extracted The results were expressed as % on dry basis. Percentage retention of ascorbic acid was calculated by, Where A= amount of chlorophyll present after processing A0= amount of chlorophyll present in fresh bitter gourd Both values taken dry basis Estimation of Charantin Soxhlet extraction About 1.0 g of bitter melon fruit powder was extracted with 200 ml of ethanol for 150 min. Charantin remained in the sample residue was extracted repeatedly in 30 ml volumes of methanol using ultrasonication. The extract was filtered and evaporated to obtain viscous crude extract and purified prior to the analysis with HPLC. Sample purification To purify the crude extract, the protocol as described in Chanchai (2002) was carried out. Briefly, 5 ml of 50:50 (v/v) methanol–water was added to the crude extract. The mixture was then sonicated for 15 min and centrifuged at 3500 rpm for 15 min to separate the supernatant from the precipitate. The precipitate was then added with 5 ml of 70:30 (v/v) methanol–water, and the mixture was again sonicated and centrifuged. The precipitate from this step was added with 3 ml of hexane, and the step was repeated. The precipitate from this step was re-dissolved in 200  µl of 1:1 (v/v) chloroform–methanol mixture, and then adjusted to volume with methanol to 2 ml volume for that obtained with Soxhlet extraction. The purified solution was filtered through a 0.45 µm nylon membrane filter (Millipore, USA) before being analyzed by an HPLC. Analysis HPLC analysis was carried out for the quantification of Charantin present in the sample with C-18 Ascentis column (5 µm particle, 4.6 mm Ãâ€" 250mm ID). The mobile phase used was 100:2 (v/v) methanol-water and flow rate was maintained at 1mL/min. The UV detector was set at the wavelength of 204nm and the sample injection volume was 20 µL. Percentage retention of charantin was calculated by, Where A= amount of charantin present after processing A0= amount of charantin present in fresh bitter gourd Both values taken dry basis Kinetics of enzyme inactivation The reaction rate constant was determined using first order equation Where A is the peroxidase or polyphenol oxidase activity at time t; A0 is the initial enzyme activity; t is the blanching time (s); k is the reaction rate constant (s-1) at given temperature. Decimal reduction time (D) of enzyme is the time required for one log10 reduction in activity of the enzyme (Cigdem and Zerrin 2005), was determined using the following equation: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Enzyme Inactivation The activity of POD and PPO in fresh samples were found POD 4Ãâ€"103 U/g and PPO- 322 U/g (fresh weight), respectively. The blanching was continued till the POD activity was reduced to 10% of the initial activity. The slices were blanched in water maintained at 95 °C (fig. a) and exposed to steam (fig. b) for different time intervals (15 to 180 sec). The time taken for water and steam blanching was 120 and 180 sec, respectively. The inactivation of PPO was also significant during this period. The bitter gourd slices were blanched using IR radiation at 200 °C chamber temperature for different time intervals. The time required for blanching was 8 min (fig. c). PPO inactivation trend was similar to that of POD, with marginally quicker inactivation. The initial content of ascorbic acid was 666.7 ± 2.3 mg ascorbic acid/100 g dry weight .Ascorbic acid is considered as a relevant nutritional quality index of food during blanching and drying because of its low stability during thermal treatments and its water solubility. Ascorbic acid is significantly lost (20– 70%) during water and steam blanching and one of the advantages of dry blanching is the higher retention of this water soluble micronutrient. IR blanching at 200 °C retained higher ascorbic acid (∠¼ 93%) compared with other two conditions.(table.1) The results showed that that the duration–temperature combination decided the retention of ascorbic acid, rather than temperature or duration alone. IR blanching removed nearly 10% moisture, which could be a favorable factor, if drying is the subsequent step. Acknowledgement The Author would like to thank UGC for the award of Junior Research Fellowship (RGNF). Authors wish to thanks Director, CFTRI for extending infrastructure other facilities for carrying out this work.

The Foundations Of Royal Crown Cola

The Foundations Of Royal Crown Cola In 1904, a young pharmacist graduate from Georgia began making soft drinks besides from his family business of bakery wholesale. What he knew at that time was little experiments will enhance and lead him to open a huge soft drink company that is still in work today. History: In 1905, Royal Crown cola introduced its first product names as Chero Cola and Royal Crown Ginger Ale, Royal Crown Root Beer and strawberry. In 1925, ROYAL CROWN Cola Company renamed as Chero-Cola and started name Nehi Corporation due to its coloured and flavoured drinks. Afterward a Chemist Rufus Kamm reformulated Chero-cola in 1934 and named it Royal Crown Cola. In 1950s the mixture of Moonpies and Royal Crown cola became famous as the working mans lunch in the South America. Royal Crown cola is the first to sell drink in aluminium can. In 1958 Royal Crown Cola Company launched the first diet Rite and diet cola and caffeine-free cola, Royal Crown 100 in mid of 1980s. ROYAL CROWN cola introduced Royal Crown Draft Cola in 1990 as a premium cola. Later on company also introduced Cherry ROYAL CROWN, a Flavor of Cherry to stand beside the Pepsi Wild Cherry and Coca Cola Cherry. Acquisition of Royal Crown Cola was happened in 2000 by Cadbury Schweppes plc. In 2001 Cott Beverages of Canada purchased Royal Crown Royal Crown Cola all international brands and started operating as Royal Crown Cola International. ROYAL CROWN Cola in Pakistan: Royal Crown is working in Pakistan since 1970s. It launched many brands there like Dr. Pepper, Salute Orange and Salute cola etc. In the start Royal Crown cola sales were considerably good. It made profits since 1990 but after that its position in the market started decline gradually. Now at this era ROYAL CROWN cola is having no values for the people of Pakistan and is going in loses so we can say that Royal Crown cola is badly flopped and failed in Pakistan. Royal Crown Cola Products: Royal Crown Cola Cherry ROYAL CROWN cola Diet Rite Cola ROYAL CROWN Royal Crown Draft Cola Kick Diet ROYAL CROWN cola Situation Analysis: Industry Analysis: Strength: Cold drink market in Pakistan is having a great time now days. Market of drink is above in terms of volume and income of this industry. Multinational companies have been providing quality products of carbonated drink to the consumers over the years according to the norms and values of an Islamic country. So it is enhancing the growth of economy of Pakistan in terms of soft drinks. Weakness: Cold drink market faces a fall down in full summer days as people starts using the traditional drinks like Rooh Afza, Jam-e-Shirin, Sandalwood etc which are highly appreciated by the Pakistani people. In rural areas especially these drinks are used very much. Opportunity: Beverages industry is growing day by day in Pakistan as the new comers like Gourmet Bakers made a huge entry in market but it is only in Lahore city in spite of this Bakery is making profits by reducing the sales of Pepsi and Coke because of its cheap prices. So government is encouraging the new comers to come in the market. Threats: Health and hygiene awareness among Pakistani is becoming more so they prefer to drink fruit juices products over the carbonated drink. The main reason for this awareness is the media who has started campaigns to make the people realize about the fruit products and benefits. Royal Crown Cola SWOT Analysis: Strength: In Pakistan the strength of this cola is its cheap prices. Its operating worldwide for more than 100 years. Weaknesses: International suits for law. Low Advertisement. Budget for promotion is also so low. Opportunities: Building equity for its brands. Hot weather in Pakistan Production of more suitable products to satisfy consumer needs Re launching in new market Threats: Very strong competitors in the market like Pepsi and Coke More competitors are looking to enter in the market Govt. Policies High tax rate on beverages PESTLE Analysis: Political Factor: Infect Pakistan is a democratic country but political condition now days is very worst. Investment in private sector is equal to none. Tax is levied heavily on beverages industry. Certain ratio of tax goes directly to the account of President of Pakistan. Trade agreement is supported but there are also strict restrictions following these. There is no regulation in the favour of the labour community. They are not even paid equivalent to their work. Economical Factor: It is a second largest element of PESTLE analysis. It involves economy conditions, inflation rate, employment level, spending power etc. In Pakistan unemployment is up above the sky. People are searching for jobs even after getting 16-18 years of education. Unemployment level reduces the buying power of consumers and in the end economy starts declining. The big threat of Royal Crown Cola re launch in Pakistan is what prices they set to get the attention of people in limited buying power. Social Factor: ROYAL CROWN was first launched in Pakistan by keeping a religious and social status of Pakistani people and it worked. They offered low quantity of gas in it. Current situation is that media is also on top of the list so if ROYAL CROWN cola re launches in Pakistan then advertisement campaign could be run on high level. So ROYAL CROWN should be able to offer those products which aims to benefit people lifestyle and behaviour. If it doesnt then the re launching of this organization will be in vain once again. Technological Factor: The current era is running in lot of pace. Everybody wants to leave the other person back. Technological changes aims to get the instant results and it does happen. Technology is all about the quick and accurate outcomes. Research and development department of Pakistan is not less than the others. ROYAL CROWN should launch the product by keeping in view the technological changes and development. Legal Factors: Legal factors include trading policies, regulatory bodies, future legislation changes etc. So Royal Crown Cola must keep all the points in mind to re launch their product in Pakistan. Environmental Factors: Royal Crown Cola production industries should be in such areas where people cant get affected by pollution. There should be rules relating to the recycling of tin bottles and other materials used by the company. Porters five forces Model: Applying five forces to the beverages industry of Pakistan allows us to create a view of potential attractiveness in the sense of profitability in the related industry. Bargaining Power of Buyers: The buyers of this industry are in extremely large numbers and buyers want to purchase this industrys products on relatively low prices, impulse, and convenience basis so making is beneficial for the industry. Bargaining power of Suppliers: In beverages industry most of the raw material is used in which there are no specialized people of such commodities like sugar, syrup, glass, plastic, tins and water etc so bargaining power of the supplier is high because shifting to another company takes a time and initially there will also be a bargaining of prices. When the suppliers are not specialized then losing them is not a big issue for the organizations. Threat of New Entrants: In this industry the threat of new entrants is relatively low because it needs a huge investment and specially when the giants like pepsi and coca cola are in the market. It is also very difficult to set up industries for bottling plant specially for new entrants. Threats of Substitute: Threat of substitutes in this industry is high whether it comes to the health issue or some other issues. People can move easily from one company to others because they have choices if company of their choice is not offering good products in terms of health, quality and money. Rivalry among existing players: In Pakistan market is heavily dominated by to giants of beverages industry Pepsi and Coca Cola with a share of 75% and 18% relatively leaving less room for others but Royal Crown Cola is an existing industry still they can make profits by making it more attractive for the customers. Objective Setting: It is very important to set the objective for every company when starting anything new or making the changes. Royal Crown Cola is already in phase of declining in Pakistan so it should set SMART objectives for its re launch and survival. Mission Statement: Our mission is to be the leading manufacturer and distributor of juices, dairy and related food products that best satisfy the growing needs of the customers. Specific: Royal Crown Cola should make specific goals to launch new products. Their goals must be according to the current position of the market of their product and and what the company wants to achieve. Measurable: being specific to the point company should be able to measure whether it is working according to the plan or not. Attainable: after that they should analyze whether the goals they set are achievable or not. Realistic: it means that the goals should not be as strict that if it is not making profit that it cannot be changed. Goals must be flexible so they could be changed when not giving output. Time bound: Royal Crown Cola should set a time frame to achieve their specific goal. They should set goals for limited time but not for longer time. Form short objectives and work on and increase the level gradually. Strategy Development: Growth strategy: Strategies are the ways to achieve the stated objectives of the organizations. There are two types of strategies which are Growth Strategy and competitive strategy. Growth Strategy includes: Ansoff matrix BCG matrix Gap Analysis GE matrix Selection of Growth Strategy for Royal Crown Cola: As we analyzed from the above situation of Royal Crown Cola position in the market the strategy which is most favorable is Ansoff matrix. Market penetration: Royal Crown Cola should sell their products to its existing users more by convincing them. They should also make such an advertisement to attract the new or non user of their product to use it. Market penetration also includes attracting the customer from the competitors and it can only happen by giving consumers such benefits which they are not provided by the competitors like discounts, buy 2 get 1 for half price, BOGOF etc. by doing market penetration Royal Crown Cola can achieve its objectives quiet effectively because they dont have enough customers so they need to penetrate the market. Market Development: Royal Crown Cola can make a development in their market like introducing in some new areas and new users by segmenting the products for different age and gender. By doing this people will attract to the product and they will buy more. Product Development: Royal Crown Cola should make some new products to let the customer now that we are offering something different comparing to our competitors. This could be done by having a look at the competitive advantage of the competitors products. Diversification: Infect it is a risky development and RC is not in the position to take more risk but they should do it in such a manner where there is less chance of risk of failure. Because when the market will be new then only the advertisement works and they should think damn seriously about the advertisement which is the main reason of their declining sales and failure. Competitive Strategy: Competitive strategy includes further 3 strategies which are Cost Leadership Strategy. Differentiation Strategy, Focus Strategy. For Royal Crown Cola the best strategy will be Focus Strategy. Focus Strategy: Focus strategy relates to the narrow competition in industry. In this strategy Royal Crown Cola will make the segments in industry. It involves two variants, Cost Focus and Differentiation Focus. In cost focus Royal Crown Cola will produce low cost products but with effective quality as compare to the other competitors and try to attract the customers with the low cost products. As the purchase power of people is very low in Pakistan now days due to economic crisis so it will be huge advantage for Royal Crown Cola. In differentiation strategy Royal Crown Cola should seek a difference of their product in their targeted segment. They can enhance their segmentation but dont make huge segmentation just start from a little one. Tactics for achievement of strategies: Tactics normally includes the 7 Ps which are as follow: Product Price Place Promotion People Process Physical evidence Product: Royal Crown Cola no doubt is an international brand working for more than 100 years but due to some reasons it failed in Pakistan so new they should need to develop a new product with meet the requirements of the consumer. To develop a new product there should be an idea which can be taken by the survey of asking to customers, employees and other stake holders. Then form all the ideas and select the best one. Product stage of Royal Crown Cola: People already know about the name because people have used it before. At initial stage there will be: High cost of production Slow Growth in terms of sales Take time to find acceptance Royal Crown Cola is also in loss now days so they should provide people with great taste and quality. Gradually the product starts making profits and grows sharply. Then the unit cost will decrease, people ask for more etc. Branding: People dont buy products they buy brands. Keeping this in view Royal Crown Cola brand should be attractive in terms of logo, symbol and slogan which must be different from others. The slogan which I suggest is Sssshhhhà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦.Comin again with new style and taste Logo: Branding Strategy: Royal Crown Cola is an international brand so its strategy will be own label branding. Style and Design: When it comes to the design and style of the product then it must be full of attraction and acceptance of people. Packaging: Packaging of Royal Crown Cola should represent protection, advertisement, informative. The comparison of the product among giants is as follow: Royal Crown Cola Pepsi Cola Coca Cola No Such Product No Such Product The comparison above is that Royal Crown cola should produce more products which its competitors are offering. RC should launch its mineral water in Pakistan to get the attraction of the people. They launch it with their own label attractive branding. Packaging of the product must be protected, informative, convenience. Price: Pricing strategy for Royal Crown Cola should be market penetration strategy. In which Royal Crown Cola offer cheap prices as compare to other competitors to get the attention of the customers and afterwards increasing the prices. This strategy will also discourage the new entrants. Royal Crown cola pricing strategy will be competition based strategy because Royal Crown Cola must offer fewer prices from its competitors to get the attention of customers. And for new products the strategy will be market penetration because by offering low prices people will come to buy. There should be incentives given to the retailers like chillers, tours on extra buying etc. different offers must be offered on special occasions like Ramadan and Eid. Royal Crown Cola should use the push strategy for their product by using different promotional tactics and through media. Distribution will be divided according to the number of areas and the nature of customer according to the literacy rate. Because if the company offers online buying than it would not be affective in rural areas of Pakistan. Representative of the company should directly go the retailers to offer them facilities like bonuses and incentives. In Lahore they should try to ask international Royal Crown Cola to give them franchise in a tax free zone and provide plants for both glass and PET bottles. Distribution Strategy: Distribution strategy which I suggest for RC is Intensive distribution because beverages are the FMCGs and these types of products need more outlets as much possible. Promotion: Promotion is the main reason of Royal Crown Cola failure in Pakistan. They did not make it well so the promotions strategies for re launching must be according to the market. Objectives of the promotion can be achieved by DRIPE Model. D iffrentiate = analyze the Pepsi and Coke Competitive advantage and create a difference. R emind = surveying the customers who have used RC and reminding them about the product. I nform = offering the products to new customers who have not used the rc products before. P ersuade = give the benefits to customers to convince them like reducing the prices. E ngage = offering such prices and quality to maintain a long term relation with customers. Promotion Tools: Advertising: AIDA model is an affective model for advertising A wareness = making television commercials, bill boards, media I nterst = adding fun to commercials D esire = creating a desire to buy product like Red Bull when customer wants to refresh. A ction = leave the home to purchase product Advertising Media: Broadcasting on tv and radio which will increase the awareness among people Creating advertisement short messages service by collecting the data from cellular companies and offering customers to buy the product Bill boards and posters will be applied on high ways, centre points, on buses and cabs. On internet little ads will be displayed to tell the product information Offering free cards with famous magazines for first month. Sales Promotion: Free vouchers will be given to retailers for the customers who buy in quantity for dine in like in McDonalds, KFC and other restaurants. For first month there will be an offer for regular pack to get 3 cans for the price of 2. Free samples will be distributed in markets and in grounds on mobile vans and opening outlets outside the public parks. Price discounts will be given to customers. Direct Marketing: SMS will be sent to customers taking data base from cellular companies Direct mails will be sent to customers Personal Selling: Marketing managers will go directly to retailers and take the orders because it will save the time of involving whole sellers. Appointing persons to go house to house and offer attractive prices to households if they buy huge quantity. Offers will be made to customers to retain them for a long time with the company. People: When it comes to the selection of employees Royal Crown Cola must appoint people with professional attitude, behavior and skills towards the operation of Royal Crown Cola in all fields. There should be careful job selection and policies of selection. Because the employees are the main stake holders of any organization. Process: Rc should make company policies affective. Rc brands must do a joint venture with public place like cinemas, parks, grounds etc to sell on Rc brands there. It will need a huge amount but it is beneficial for the company. Physical Evidence: Royal Crown Colas physical evidence must be something like attractive so the people get attracted towards the product. Logos must create colorful scheme, company vehicles could be run to make the people know something new. Company should distribute things like stationary, uniforms, equipments with RC logos. Total 18,600,000 Rs. The method which I suggest to RC is all you can afford. Because RC Cola is re launching in Pakistan it still has a risk of lost so they dont need to apply more resources according to their worth. Controlling and Monitoring: As soon as the marketing plan gets started the next ob of management is to control and monitor what is going on now. Is everything according to the plan if it is not than taking corrective actions to sort the problem out? Segmentation: We are going to segment the Royal Crown Cola market in 2 different segments Demographic Factor: Age: 10 25 years Class: Upper, Upper Middle, Middle Gender: Male and Female Geographic Factor: Country: Pakistan City: Lahore Province: Punjab Targeting: We are going to apply differentiated targeting in which different products will be offered according to the customer targeted and segmented. Critical Reflection: Why Royal Crown failed in Pakistan: ROYAL CROWN cola launched in Pakistan when there were no big competitors like coca cola and Pepsi. ROYAL CROWN cola earned lot of money in that tenure. But when Pepsi co. came into Pakistan than it started decline. Because Pepsi co. made a huge difference in terms of advertisement and promotion of their product. They launched it and then captured the whole market in a short time. Launching of Pepsi didnt make a huge difference but Coca Cola made it a huge one when it started working in Pakistan. This was the tenure when ROYAL CROWN cola started decline in real meaning. After the launching of these two giants in market ROYAL CROWN cola fall likes the tomb of cards. In started people used ROYAL CROWN a lot because they enjoyed this drink but Pepsi cola and Coca cola made a huge difference in terms of advertising and promotion only. They got the people attention towards their brand so people attracted towards them and left ROYAL CROWN brand. Any product is all about the presentation wha t it looks like what it is offering by its look. Pepsi cola and Coca Cola presentation was so good and they captured the market and left Royal Crown Cola a far behind. In spite of the fact that Royal Crown is declining in Pakistan infect it is ignored by the people so they need to be re launch it with some different looks and attraction. They have the potential to come in the market strongly. It takes time but it happens. The only difference which I felt was only the advertising and promotion. So if they want to re launch the product then they should make a difference in terms of advertisement. At the start of module I did not know it would be as interesting as I thought it before. I have a finance background but after studying marketing management Ive chosen marketing electives in my next semester. I experienced a lot of things in the start till the end of the whole course like how things go in market, how company market its product, how they apply marketing techniques, what are their goals and how they going to work on it etc. I think its all about marketing in our environment. The main thing which I learnt by this module is that Ive come to know the strategies related to marketing the product and running them in an efficient way so they get going an making profits. I can now understand how market, marketing mix and how to plan for any new and existing products which are available or about to launch in the market and specially the products which are in declining stage. Marketing gives us experience what the customers expecting from you and what u should do to satisfy their needs infect more than they want. Its now, not difficult for me to understand the models in terms of putting them into the practical life that I will be having in future, marketing has a lot to do with the businesses, these concepts which were taught to me in this course are worth more than enough for me to understand the factors which different businesses apply to gain the advantages of marketing and to gain the sophistication of their businesses. The experience was very good while I was learning this course of marketing management as it was taught to me very deeply and very finely, which helped me to get the idea of everything include in this course. It was though not as easy as it seemed to get everything in my mind for the subject that is very vast in it, but once when it was started I got the idea that it is going to be very useful and beneficial for me, in present and also in future. This is the once in a life time experience I believe which you get once in your life and you get advantages of it the whole life. This was the experience which is I dont think I will forget ever, as it was very interestingly taught and it had a lot much practical knowledge which enhanced my knowledge as well as my skills to put the respective information in my practical life, it is now easy to talk to anyone related to the market without any hesitation and with a lot of knowledge and skills to show now what I am. I have done many things in marketing, including marketing mix of products, marketing plan, and other many models of marketing such as Ansoffs model, PESTLE analysis, situational analysis and many other analyses which have been taught to me during the lectures. In the starting it was about marketing itself as an introduction, but when it went on and on, it showed up with many models and different concepts related t other market, what is happening in the market and what is the market all about, it is not easy to just go to visit the market and get what you want, a proper time is required for this kind of research, while I can easily say that during these few weeks I have learnt the experience of many months which is not easy to gain, it is actually something that you earn, it is not something that you gain without any struggle, though I also tried a lot to understand the concepts which were not easy for me to understand. Btu as the time passed I became used to of these teachings and th en I found that it was not as difficult as I presumed in the beginning, it was a lot more easy and easy to understand, easy to read, easy to write and of course easy to apply whenever needed, just a little research is required inc on text of the markets current condition at that time. Previously I was not aware of many concepts and things which has been taught to me now, I was lacking in many things, when I was studying this concept I found that I left behind many things which are really required by the market now, which have become a necessity for the marketing activities of any company and which are the core issues of any company for the activities which are related to the marketing activities and marketing plans of a company or a business. All the things which were not known by me in many contexts such as in the context of learning, in the context of skills, in the context of knowledge and in the context of practical application of these concepts, knowledge, skills and putting these all in together. I am definitely have learned too much to understand everything that has been taught in this course, I can talk to anyone regarding these concepts and I am more acknowledged than I was previously. I have changed a lot, I am more practical now, I am now able to understand which company is using what marketing strategies and what plans and implementations, it is now easy to watch the market with my perspective now, and also how market is running, how it was in the past and how it may run in the future. I am able to judge and conclude different perspectives regarding different companies and regarding the market as a whole, it is not much difficult to understand what the market is all about. I was feeling like Im being renewed, I was getting something that I was not able to think about the benefits, when the learning outcomes were undergoing, I was undergoing too, I was undergoing the process of getting acknowledged and of course it was great, it was feeling very good, when you get something new in yourself you feel new, I was feeling like I am having what I actually needed and what I have not learned so far. It was feeling as I am now being honored by having the knowledge that not everyone has. As I went through this learning process, I found that many new questions are generating in my mind about the market, these questions are related to different things related to the market, such as, marketing concepts which are used in different companies present in different segments of the market and which are present for different segments of the market, not just nationally but globally, marketing concepts are he same all over the globe, just the timing and the requirements of the people of different countries and regions.

William Faulkner :: essays research papers

Biography on William Faulkner William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi on September 25, 1897 and then moved to Oxford, Mississippi with his family at the age of 5. Most of the novels written by William Faulkner take place in the area in which he himself was born and raised. He renames Oxford and calls this place Jefferson, Mississippi. Faulkner is a contemporary American author who has achieved greatness as an author. He is already considered to be one of the world’s greatest novelists and has been awarded with the Nobel Prize for literature in 1949. This is quite an achievement as it is the highest prize that can be awarded to an author. Of all of Faulkner’s achievements, "The Sound and the Fury" is considered to be one of his greatest novels. Faulkner was part of a distinguished family in Mississippi. His name was originally spelled Falkner. The "u" was added by mistake when his first novel was published and William Falk ner decided to retain the spelling of "Faulkner". The most distinguished member of William Faulkner’s family was his great-grandfather, Confederate Colonel William Cuthbert Falkner. The Colonel first moved to Mississippi in the early part of the 19th century from his home South Carolina. Faulkner uses Colonel Falkner as a character in his novels named Colonel John Sartoris. Colonel Falkner had a notable career as a soldier in the Civil War and the Mexican War. Colonel Falkner was also a writer like his great-grandson and published one of the nation’s best sellers called "The White Rose of Memphis". Before being assassinated by a former partner in 1889, Colonel Falkner also took the time to build a railroad and run for public office. Faulkner received his initial education in Oxford, however he dropped out of high school in 1915. He attempted to join the U.S. Army but was rejected for pilot training so he joined the Canadian Royal Air Force in 1918 but the war ended before he spent any time in service. After the ending of the war, Faulkner took some classes at the University of Mississippi and spent a short time working at the university post office. The majority of his education was due to his promiscuous time he spent reading. Faulkner had started writing poetry as a young schoolboy. In 1924, he used his own financial resources and published a collection of poetry called "The Marble Faunn". William Faulkner :: essays research papers Biography on William Faulkner William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi on September 25, 1897 and then moved to Oxford, Mississippi with his family at the age of 5. Most of the novels written by William Faulkner take place in the area in which he himself was born and raised. He renames Oxford and calls this place Jefferson, Mississippi. Faulkner is a contemporary American author who has achieved greatness as an author. He is already considered to be one of the world’s greatest novelists and has been awarded with the Nobel Prize for literature in 1949. This is quite an achievement as it is the highest prize that can be awarded to an author. Of all of Faulkner’s achievements, "The Sound and the Fury" is considered to be one of his greatest novels. Faulkner was part of a distinguished family in Mississippi. His name was originally spelled Falkner. The "u" was added by mistake when his first novel was published and William Falk ner decided to retain the spelling of "Faulkner". The most distinguished member of William Faulkner’s family was his great-grandfather, Confederate Colonel William Cuthbert Falkner. The Colonel first moved to Mississippi in the early part of the 19th century from his home South Carolina. Faulkner uses Colonel Falkner as a character in his novels named Colonel John Sartoris. Colonel Falkner had a notable career as a soldier in the Civil War and the Mexican War. Colonel Falkner was also a writer like his great-grandson and published one of the nation’s best sellers called "The White Rose of Memphis". Before being assassinated by a former partner in 1889, Colonel Falkner also took the time to build a railroad and run for public office. Faulkner received his initial education in Oxford, however he dropped out of high school in 1915. He attempted to join the U.S. Army but was rejected for pilot training so he joined the Canadian Royal Air Force in 1918 but the war ended before he spent any time in service. After the ending of the war, Faulkner took some classes at the University of Mississippi and spent a short time working at the university post office. The majority of his education was due to his promiscuous time he spent reading. Faulkner had started writing poetry as a young schoolboy. In 1924, he used his own financial resources and published a collection of poetry called "The Marble Faunn".

Death of a Salesman: Tragic but Not a Tragedy Essay -- Death Salesman

Death of a Salesman: Tragic but Not a Tragedy Though a more modern version of tragedy in its’ classical sense, Death of a Salesman in many ways is very much like an ancient Greek play. In his ‘Poetics’ Aristotle tries to set out the common ideas throughout tragedy, attempting to demystify the necessary elements for such plays. One of his main ideas was that of the ‘Three Unities’ - that of Space, that of Time and that of Action. He stated that all the action of a tragedy must occur in the place, which was often the front of a palace, which allowed the poet to have many characters coming and going, and allowed random meetings to occur easily, rather than having to ‘explain’ the reason why any meeting should occur. It was, however, possible for the poet to bring in events occurring in other places through the use of messengers, who could talk about the events without the audience seeing them. All the action would have to unfold in one day, and must be played out in ‘real time’ - the time would pass as fast for the characters in the play as for the actors and the audience watching. This prevented the use of act and scene breaks, as time could not jump forward, it had to pass normally. Again references to the past often came in the form of speech from characters whom often had not been seen for a very long time, such as the shepherd in Oedipus Rex who explains how he had come by Oedipus as a baby whilst attending his flock. The entire play had to revolve around a single plot, and subplots, such as you see in many of Shakespeare’s comedies, were not allowed. Aristotle reasoned that if there were other plots interfering with and infringing upon the main plot we could not concentrate entirely on Antigony’s plight, ... ...ccept his refusal to act rationally. An audience can accept that ‘true’ tragic heroes are often irrational, and driven by very different feelings from those of normal human beings, but in the end, Willy Loman does not evoke tragic emotion because he is, simply, a dime a dozen. Works Cited and Consulted Aristotle. Poetics. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1997. Baym, Franklin, Gottesman, Holland, et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 4th ed. New York: Norton, 1994. Costello, Donald P. â€Å"Arthur Miller’s Circles of Responsibility: A View From a Bridge and Beyond.† Modern Drama. 36 (1993): 443-453 Florio, Thomas A., ed. â€Å"Miller’s Tales.† The New Yorker. 70 (1994): 35-36. Martin, Robert A., ed. Arthur Miller. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982. Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. New York: Viking, 1965.

Customer Satisfaction in E-Commerce

In Proceedings of the 17th IEE UK Teletraffic Symposium, Dublin, Ireland, May 16-18, 2001 QUANTIFYING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION WITH E-COMMERCE WEBSITES Hubert Graja and Jennifer McManis1 Abstract E-commerce is an increasingly significant part of the global economy. Users of E-commerce Web sites often have high expectations for the quality of service, and if those expectations are not met, the next site is only a click away. A number of performance problems have been observed for E-commerce Web sites, and much work has gone into characterising the performance of Web servers and Internet applications.However, the customers of E-commerce Web sites are less well studied. In this work, we discuss a way of assessing satisfaction for different customer types with a Web site according to various different parameters. Individual measures may be scaled for simple comparison, and combined to give an overall satisfaction rating. This methodology is applied to three Irish E-Commerce Web sites. 1) In troduction The World Wide Web is one of the most important Internet services, and has been largely responsible for the phenomenal growth of the Internet in recent years.An increasingly popular and important Web-based activity is ECommerce, in which various types of financial transactions are carried out or facilitated using the Web. It is widely expected that E-Commerce activity will continue to grow and that it will be a significant component of the global economy in the near future. A number of performance problems in E-Commerce systems have been observed, mainly due to heavier-thananticipated loads and the consequent inability to satisfy customer requirements. This has resulted in a lot of work attempting to characterise the performance of Web servers and Internet applications e. . [1]? [4]. However the customers of these E-Commerce systems are less well studied. Some surveys show considerable dissatisfaction with current E-Commerce and Web servers; for example, it has been repor ted that as many as 60% of users typically cannot find the information they are looking for in a Web site, even though the information is present [5]. In an area such as ECommerce, customers demand a high quality of the service they receive, since it is easy to move away to another site if they perceive the current one to be unsatisfactory. An important issue in designing E-Commerce systems is to characterise the ustomer's requirements for satisfactory service. Parameters which affect a customer's satisfaction with an E-Commerce system include the response time, number of clicks needed to find what they want, amount of information they are required to give, and predictability of the service received. This leads to the idea of customer classification, where customers in the same class would value parameters in a similar fashion. Customer classification may be performed either based on how they judge their satisfaction with an E-Commerce system, or on some other way (e. . large/medium /small budget; type/speed of Internet connection the customer has to the server; frequent/previous/new customer). Here we briefly present a methodology for measuring the satisfaction of customer classes. This methodology is applied to a test case consisting of three Irish E-Commerce Web sites in the telecommunications sector. We are able to demonstrate different levels of customer satisfaction among the Web sites, and also different levels of satisfaction with various parameters for each individual Web site. 2) MethodologyIn our methodology, we identify customer classes reflecting groups of customers with different behavioural characteristics, and Web site parameters relating to features of the Web site which will potentially affect customer satisfaction. We then seek to measure customer satisfaction with the various parameters in a consistent and quantifiable way. This methodology is summarised below; a more detailed discussion of the methodology may be found in [6]. 2. 1) Customer Classification Customers may be classified in various ways, such as their behaviour or according to how they measure satisfaction with a Web site.However this classification is made, a representation of the customer class must then be made. This representation has two components: first, customer behaviour; and second, customer satisfaction measures 1 Performance Engineering Laboratory http://www. eeng. dcu. ie/~pel School of Electronic Engineering, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland [email  protected] dcu. ie, [email  protected] dcu. ie for various Web site parameters. We define customer behaviour in terms of the interaction with the Web site. A trace behaviour is defined as the series of clicks and other information that the customer exchanges with the site.Typically, behaviour for a customer class is defined as one or more traces. For a customer class, a weighting may be associated with the traces indicating how likely it is for the customer to perform that particular trace behaviour. That is, some behaviour may be exhibited more frequently by a user in a class, and this behaviour should be given higher weighting. 2. 2) Customer Satisfaction Measures The factors which might affect customer satisfaction with a Web site are contained in a parameter list.It is important that for each parameter in the list satisfaction should be quantifiable. Some quantification measures are easily defined. For instance, if the parameter is the number of clicks, the quantification may be defined as an integer value. Other parameters may have more subjective quantifications. For instance, how does one quantify the â€Å"quality† of information available at a Web site? In order to compare the satisfaction measured for different parameters, the quantifications must be mapped to a fixed scale. For instance, all measures could be mapped to a scale of 0 to 10.This mapping is what allows us to represent customer valuation of the same parameters. For instance, some cu stomers will tolerate delay better than others. This may lead to one customer mapping a download time of 5 seconds to 10 and another mapping a download time of 5 seconds to 0. Studies such as [7] indicate that this mapping can be complex and context dependent. 2. 3) Analysis of Customer Satisfaction for a Web Site Using the above, for each trace it is possible to associate a satisfaction value with every parameter.The trace weightings may then be used to arrive at a weighted average of the satisfaction values associated with the parameters. This gives a measure of how satisfied a given class of customers is with a given parameter. Finally a weighting of parameters can be defined, allowing for an overall satisfaction measure of a class for the Web site. By varying this weighting, we can study how different parameters affect customer satisfaction. 3) Test Results The most difficult part of this exercise is in relating customer trace behaviour to the satisfaction vector. How parameter satisfaction is measured nd how it is mapped onto a fixed scale must be addressed on a case-by-case basis, although experience using the methodology may lead to the definition of some standard cases. Also, since multiple executions of the same trace may lead to different values, some statistical analysis may be required. We have applied our methodology to three Irish E-Commerce Web sites in the telecommunications sector (designated here as Web sites A, B, and C). 3. 1) Customer Classification Customers for the three Web sites we examined have been divided into two distinct classes: Private and Business.Traces are associated with searching for specific information that the customers might be interested in. Six customer tasks are identified in Table 1 and for each Web site a trace is devised to perform the task. For the sake of convenience, we call all traces associated with a given task by the same name, even though the trace is obviously specific to the Web site. Data services is sp lit into T4a and T4b because Web site B provided different pages depending on whether the customer was private or business.Trace T1 T2 T3 T4a T4b T5 T6 Task Where to buy a phone Coverage Tariffs WAP Data Services Data Services for Business Roaming List Business Tariffs Table 1: Tasks The Private and Business customer classes are defined as a collection of the above tasks, and an associated weighting is given which is indicative of the relative likelihood of customers of a given class seeking to perform that task. Trace weightings for the Private and Business classes are given in Table 2. The interpretation is that for a group of Private users roughly half might want to know where to buy a phone, 30% might want to know about tariffs, 10% ight want to know about coverage and 10% might want to know about WAP services. The Business users exhibit different behaviour with 30% wanting to know about coverage, 30% being interested in the roaming list, 20% being interested in data services an d 20% being interested in business tariffs. Customer Class Private Trace T1 T2 T3 T4a T2 T4a, T4b T5 T6 Trace Weighting 0. 5 0. 1 0. 3 0. 1 0. 3 0. 2 0. 3 0. 2 Business Table 2: Trace weightings for different customer classes 3. 2) Satisfaction Measures Three parameters were identified: Complexity, Time, and Quality.Complexity was measured as the number of clicks to reach the destination. Time was measures as total download time in seconds. Quality was a subjective measure of the quality of the information contained in the site (could the information be found, and how easy was it to find? ). Quality was measured using a small-scale user survey where the users were asked to examine the end page for each task and rate their satisfaction with the information they found there on a scale of 0-100%. A scale of 0-10 (with 0 being worst and 10 best) was chosen for a uniform comparison of satisfaction values.The measured satisfaction values were mapped onto the 0-10 scale as follows: Complex ity: Time: Quality: 10(20-(n-1)/10), where n is the number of clicks 10(10-t/60), where t is the trace download time in seconds x/10, where x is the average value of user satisfaction with the quality of the page For Quality a straightforward linear mapping was applied. More complex mappings were employed for Complexity and Time, and are shown in Figure 1. Examining the Time mapping we see that 60 seconds is regarded as an unacceptable download time, and even 30 seconds leads to a fairly poor rating.Similarly, for Complexity, 10 clicks is regarded as unacceptable, and even 5 clicks is fairly poor. Note that we have chosen one among many possible mappings. It is up to the tester to decide how to choose a mapping that best reflects customer preferences. Also note that, in this case, all customers use the same mappings, and thus are seen to perceive the parameters in a similar fashion. It is an easy extension to attach different scale mappings to different customer classes or to differ ent traces. Figure 1: mapping time and complexity measures to a 0-10 scale 3. ) Satisfaction Measurement for Web Sites Once the satisfaction measures are determined, it remains to test the Web sites and compare results. Data was gathered using the Web Performance Trainer 2. 1 tool [8] to execute each of the traces on the Web site in question. This was necessary solely to take time data, and was carried out on a weekday. The other two satisfaction values can be determined by an examination of the Web sites. Tables 3, 4, and 5 summarise the satisfaction measures for the three Web sites respectively. Web Site A Customer Class Trace Complexity rawSatisfaction Measures Time raw 37. 6 34. 0 34. 7 28. 6 34. 7 46. 9 28. 6 38. 7 scaled 2. 4 2. 7 2. 6 3. 3 2. 6 2. 6 1. 7 3. 3 2. 3 2. 4 Quality raw 80 72 67 68 61 69 66 64 scaled 8. 0 7. 2 6. 7 6. 8 7. 5 6. 1 6. 9 6. 6 6. 4 6. 5 scaled 4. 1 3. 0 4. 1 4. 1 3. 8 4. 1 3. 0 4. 1 4. 1 3. 8 Private Business T1 T3 T2 T4a weighted avg. T2 T5 T4a T6 wei ghted avg. 4 5 4 4 4 5 4 4 Table 3: Customer Satisfaction for Web Site A Web Site B Customer Class Trace Complexity raw scaled 4. 1 7. 4 5. 5 5. 5 5. 4 5. 5 4. 1 4. 1 7. 4 5. 2 Satisfaction Measures Time raw 16. 7 11. 2 17. 1 13. 9 17. 1 14. 39. 7 12. 3 scaled 5. 3 6. 5 5. 2 5. 9 5. 7 5. 2 5. 7 2. 2 6. 2 4. 9 Quality scaled 8. 6 7. 6 7. 6 7. 4 8. 1 7. 3 7. 5 6. 4 7. 6 7. 2 raw 86 76 76 74 73 75 64 76 Private Business T1 T3 T2 T4a weighted avg. T2 T5 T4b T6 weighted avg. 4 2 3 3 3 4 4 2 Table 4: Customer Satisfaction for Web Site B Web Site C Customer Class Trace Satisfaction Measures Complexity Time raw scaled 4. 1 5. 5 7. 4 5. 5 5. 0 7. 4 7. 4 5. 5 7. 4 7. 0 raw 14. 0 13. 0 11. 1 12. 4 11. 1 10. 2 12. 4 10. 9 scaled 5. 8 6. 1 6. 5 6. 2 6. 0 6. 5 6. 8 6. 2 6. 6 6. 5 Quality scaled 8. 1 6. 8 6. 8 5. 8 7. 4 6. 1 5. 3 6. 5. 3 5. 7 raw 81 68 68 58 61 53 60 53 Private Business T1 T3 T2 T4a weighted avg. T2 T5 T4a T6 weighted avg. 4 3 2 3 2 2 3 2 Table 5: Customer Satisfaction for Web Sit e C The overall satisfaction measures are summarised in Table 6. Some interesting conclusions can be drawn from these measures. Firstly, for all Web sites and all parameters, there was a variation in satisfaction levels between the customer classes. Thus, not all users find the Web sites equally good. This is most noticeable for the Quality parameter: Private users rated Quality higher than Business users in all cases.If Business customers are considered valuable, this gap is not desirable. There is also a large difference in satisfaction ratings for the Time parameter of Web site B, again favouring Private customers over Business customers. Secondly, for all users and all measures, there are a range of values across the Web sites. For instance, the Time satisfaction for Business users varies from 6. 5 for Web site C down to 2. 4 for Web site A. This indicates that Web site C might have an edge in attracting Business customers. Finally, for a given user class and Web site, different satisfaction levels are observed.For example, Private users of Web site A have a Time satisfaction value of 2. 6 and a Quality satisfaction value of 7. 5. The exact interpretation of this is difficult, since the different parameter satisfaction values are dependent on the mapping of the raw data, which of necessity, differs for each parameter. However, it does perhaps indicate a favouring of form over efficiency. Customer Class Satisfaction Customer Web Site Class Web site A Private Web site B Web site C Web site A Business Web site B Web site C Satisfaction Measures Complexity Time Quality 3. 8 5. 4 5. 0 3. 8 5. 2 7. 0 2. 6 5. 7 6. 2. 4 4. 9 6. 5 7. 5 8. 1 7. 4 6. 5 7. 2 5. 7 Table 6: Customer Class Satisfaction for Web sites A, B, and C Finally, an overall assessment of customer satisfaction may be found by weighting the various parameters. Table 7 displays the overall satisfaction results under several different weighting schemes: Weighting 1 gives all parameters equal weighting ; Weighting 2 gives Time and Complexity equal weighting and Quality zero weighting; Weighting 3 considers Time only (zero weighting for Quality and Complexity). These weightings reflect possible values the tester places on the various parameters.We can see that for all the weightings, Business users have a clear order of preference, ranking Web site C highest, then Web site B, and finally Web site A. The order of preference for Private users varies according to the weighting used, although Web site A is worst under all three weightings. Customer Class Satisfaction Customer Web Site Class Web site A Private Web site B Web site C Web site A Business Web site B Web site C Satisfaction Measures Weighting 1 Weighting 2 Weighting 3 4. 6 6. 4 6. 1 4. 2 5. 8 6. 4 3. 2 5. 6 5. 5 3. 1 5. 1 6. 8 2. 6 5. 7 6. 0 2. 4 4. 9 6. 5 Table 7: Customer satisfaction with a Web site ) Conclusions Modelling customer satisfaction with Web and E-commerce sites is not as well studied as Web server modelling, but determining whether and how the customers of these sites are satisfied with their interactions is becoming increasingly important as the Web matures. We have proposed a methodology for estimating how satisfied defined classes of customers are with a Web site. Our approach recognises that customer satisfaction is a complex issue and includes factors which are not easily measured. We have applied our methodology to the study of three Irish E-Commerce Web sites.These sites were chosen for representative purposes only and the results do not necessarily generalise to other Web sites. Choices for the tester include not only what customer categories and what Web site parameters to examine, but also how to interpret the measured data such as download time. The flexibility of the methodology means that it will be necessary for the tester to carefully consider all of their options. The next step is to investigate whether ‘generic’ categories of users can be defined, and/or wh ether they care about ‘generic’ Web site parameters (e. . it seems download time will always be a factor in user satisfaction). Given a specific Web site, we will explore methods for mapping these generic user types and satisfaction parameters into the site's content. If an analysis of the resulting satisfaction measures shows that there is a disparity in the satisfaction of different user types, we will study how the Web site designer or administrator should take this into account, and whether their reaction can be determined dynamically while the user is interacting with the site.References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Nakamura et al, `ENMA: the WWW Server Performance Measurement System via Packet Monitoring', INET99. Cottrell et al, `Tutorial on Internet Monitoring and PingER at SLAC' available from http://www. slac. stanford. edu/comp/net/wan-mon/tutorial. html Kalidindi and Zekauskas, `Surveyor: An Infrastructure for Internet Performance Measurements', INET99. Hava and Murphy, `Performance Measurement of World Wide Web Servers' Proc. f 16th UK Teletraffic Symposium, May 2000. http://www. ecai. ie/usability_online. htm Graja and McManis, ‘Modelling User Interactions with E-Commerce Services’, to be presented at ICN01, Colmar, France, July 2001. Bouch, Kuchinsky, and Bhatti, ‘Quality is in the Eye of the Beholder: Meeting Users’ Requirements for Internet Quality of Service’, HP technical report HPL-2000-4, http://www. hpl. hp. com/techreports/2000/HPL-2000-4. html Web Performance Incorporated, http://www. Webperfcenter. com

Honor Who to Protect?

GBB/GCB 1033 Management and Organizational Behavior Case Study 1 January 2013 Semester Honor Who To Protect? Don Riles, insurance claims adjuster, has the day off. He is playing with his 4-year-old daughter Erica when the telephone rings. At the other end of the line, Don's supervisor, apologizing for interrupting his time off, pleads for his help. Will Don please visit a woman in his neighborhood who has made claims for bodily and mental injury resulting from a car crash with a person insured by Don's company? The woman has consented to a visit from their adjuster to assess the injuries to her nose and mental state. Apparently the crash has caused her to relapse into a condition of paranoia and manic depression, previously stabilized. ) The claims adjuster in charge of the case has called in sick—scheduling the appointment has been difficult. Will Don please fill in? Don agrees readily, but asks if he could bring his daughter—it is their day together while his wife wor ked. Don's supervisor gratefully assures him that bringing the little girl along is no problem. When Don arrives at the woman's house, he discovers no one at home, so he and his daughter wait in the car.Eventually, the woman arrives, parks, and emerges from her car, at which point Erica cries happily, â€Å"It's Miss Anderson! † â€Å"Who is Miss Anderson? † asks her father with surprise. Miss Anderson turns out to be Erica's daycare teacher. Don conducts a short interview with the woman on the front steps of her home, satisfying himself that she does indeed have some facial injuries and that she is taking prescription medicine for her mental problems. Following the interview, Don realizes that he has a real dilemma. Insurance ethics mandates that claims investigations are completely confidential.An insurance professional with knowledge of a claims case is expected to keep silent and to refrain from using the knowledge for personal benefit. On one hand, to uphold his i ndustry's code of ethics, he is not to discuss or act on the information he has received about Miss Anderson's situation. On the other hand, he does not want his daughter under the care of a person who is undergoing treatment for mental illness and who might be dangerous. Don's wife is also an insurance claims adjuster, working for a separate company. Still, even if Don tells her, she is bound by the same professional code of ethics. What should Don do?