...Patrice Hill 10/14/12 Shopping at Aafes Working part-time as a cashier at Aafes (army air force exchange services) on Ft. Bragg has given me a great opportunity to observe human behavior. Sometimes I think of the shoppers as white rats in a lab experiment, and the aisles as a maze. Most of the rats--customers, I mean--follow a routine pattern, strolling up and down the aisles and then escaping through the exit hatch. But not everyone is so dependable. My research has revealed three distinct types of abnormal customer: the amnesiac, the super shopper, and the dawdler. The amnesiac stops his car in the loading zone, leaves the engine running with the keys locked inside, and tries to enter the store by crashing into the exit door. After dusting himself off and slipping through the entrance, he grabs a cart and begins hurtling down the aisles against the normal flow of traffic. "Peaches or potatoes?" he mutters to himself. "Doughnuts or Ding Dongs?" He has, of course, left his shopping list at home. When he finally makes it to my register and starts unloading the cart, he suddenly remembers the jug of milk or the loaf of bread that brought him here in the first place. He then resumes his race around the store while the customers waiting in line begin to grumble and tap their feet. Of course, when it comes time to pay for the goods, the amnesiac discovers that he has left his wallet at home. The super shopper has been planning her assault for days. She enters the store with...
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...Have Killed Weird Al. It Only Made Him Stronger Background For the past three decades, Weird Al Yankovic has created parody music and has made a name for himself through his success. Yankovic is known for songs such as I Love Rocky Road based off of Joan Jett’s I love Rock ‘n’ Roll and he has also created the song, White & Nerdy, which was not intended to be based off of Chamillionare’s Ridin (Suddath). Throughout changing customer trends, Yankovic has been able to adapt to the changes and stay competitive in the music industry. In the 1980s, many artists used MTV, the T.V. show, as a medium to promote their music. During the 2000s, Yankovic had to adjust due to a decline in customer watching MTV. By 2006, Yankovic switched over to YouTube as his new advertising medium (Suddath). With the use of YouTube, he created 169 music videos and has 748,032 subscribers (AlyankovicVEVO). The demand for traditional albums has dropped 8.4% in sales; as a result, Mandatory Fun is Yankovic’s last album, which was released in the summer of 2014 (Christman). The music industry is facing a major threat of music theft known as piracy. Illegally acquired music resulted in a drop of revenues from $14.6 billion to $7.7 billion ("For Students Doing Reports"). Due to the music environment constantly changing as well as emerging, Yankovic needs to consider timely business models that present opportunities for him to stay competitive in the music industry while also managing his brand. Problem...
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...many different people as possible in order to make a good profit. Plays like Twelve Angry Men have been altered in some theaters to incorporate women roles in order to appeal to a specific gender. Seeing as though fifty percent of the world is composed of women, a play with all male roles seems a bit outdated. Twelve Angry Men has had it’s name altered to Twelve Angry Jurors in order to add women roles to the jury and even the main character. Gender is a big factor in playwriting. Women enjoy plays as much as men do and diversifying roles is a good way to bring more women into the theater thus increasing profit. Profit is not the only reason for reaching out to specific genders. The Weird Sisters Women’s Theater Collective is based in Austin, Texas and is dedicated to promoting women in Theater and other arts. They promote feminist idealealeals and produce all-women plays in an effort to showcase female talent in both female and male roles. They also have productions that are focused on education. Educating other people in the trials and tribulations of women and condemning misogyny are two popular subject matters in Weird Sister plays. Weird Sister plays, being a cast comprised only of women...
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...Ana analysis of the play Heartbreaker Name Institution Date Introduction The play Heartbreaker is a fictitious story done by Michael Golamco. It features two main characters, Vithy, who is a sixteen year old teenager and her elder sister Ra who is aged twenty two years. The play takes place in a solemn setting down in a small apartment bedroom. The room does not contain a lot of things; it is empty except for some few basic properties that make a bedroom. They events of the play take place at Long Beach in the California region. Michael Golamco has used the story in bringing out loneliness as a theme in the play and its consecutive results in the people affected by it. The play has some points as its plot develops where the instances of loneliness are stressed. It has been revealed either in a manner where the affected expresses it directly or in a way that the audience or the reader has to imply it indirectly. This theme is so diverse in the play and one is able to identify it even as it exists in isolations in the play. Throughout the play, Golamco has portrayed Vuthy as the character to portray this theme. Vuthy has featured in a number of scenarios where he has expressed his concern for the loneliness he is experiencing. Perhaps as a result of his own action or probably, as a situation he had no option as it was natural. One of the instances where this has been pictured is when Ra tries her best not to have her brother, Vuthy, to go with her. She tries to...
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...let my step father adopt me. He abandoned me when he made the choice to stop talking to me. In fact, I haven't gotten a letter or phone call from him since the fourth grade. I did, however, lose a best friend to death, but she wasn't a person. She was a dog. And I'd known her since I was just a few weeks old. As with most dogs, she died of old age at fourteen. If you ask anyone who knows me well enough, "What is Kayla like?" one of the first things they'd probably tell you is "hyper", with a capital H. I don't think I have ADHD, but I am extremely energetic. So why am I so afraid of talking to or introducing myself to new people? I'm afraid to make a bad impression. I'm scared of being looked down upon because someone new might think I'm weird if I get to know them. The truth is, I'm nothing like the girl most people know me as.When you look at someone new, what's the first thing you think? If the person is pretty or handsome, you may say or think, "Oh, they're probably really snotty. Just look at those clothes!" Or even worse in my opinion, if the person is wearing glasses or has stringy hair, "Look at the nerd! They're probably SO much smarter than I am." Well, what if that snotty, nice-looking person actually had feelings? What if, in the extreme, they were lonely and had no friends? And what if that nerdy kid was incredibly charming and funny and had a good heart? Let's face the facts: you will never truly know what a person is really like unless you get to know them. And...
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...I am a weird kind of guy. I feel that the world has become too commoditised and that the plethora of commercials, tag-lines, bill-boards and fancy slogans are mere sugar coated misrepresentations. Consequently I don’t pay attention to advertisements including POP variety. I put them in the same category as pop-up ads on the internet; they usually annoy me however for the purposes of this DQ I decided to pay some attention to POP advertisements. I should also declare that I don’t buy brand names. I compare labels, quantity, and ingredient in order to purchase what I perceive to be the product/service that offers the best pound for pound value. If I need a cola drink I would walk pass the beautiful Pepsi and Coke displays and pick up a store-branded cola. I came across a very impressive POP advertisement in a local retail buyers club. They had a flat screen display approximately 36x72 inches. This display featured local store adverts outlining price-off bargains on certain brands. Being a computer geek I was more impressed with the quality of the display rather than on the bargains advertised. I actually stood and watched this display until it looped back. It had no impression on me particularly because it focussed on brands that I was not interested in. maybe if it showed bargains on store branded item I would have been tempted to purchase. While POP advertising materials can attract a shopper’s attention to a brand and highlight pricing information as well as feature sales promotions...
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...Weird Al’s song “It’s All About the Pentiums”, the movie “Live Free or Die Hard” and the poem “Praise Song for the Day” by Elizabeth Alexander each have a common theme that relates to the computer industry in which describing the need to continually advance towards the future. The poem “Praise Song for the Day” was written by Elizabeth Alexander in 2009 as a tribute to President Obama’s inauguration. There is a lot of directions this poem can go, as far as whom it relates to. The main point is that people are here to help out each other. This is a song in the music industry provided by the artist Weird Al Yankovic. This song is a remix of the Puff Daddy song “It’s All About the Benjamins. This “nerdcore hip-hop” song was released on the album “Running with Scissors” in 1999. (Wikipedia, 2012) Lyrics to Weird Al - "It's All About the Pentiums" The action film Live Free or Die Hard was released in 2007 about computer hacking terrorist and the fight against them. Starring Bruce Willis as a NYPD Detective fighting alongside the FBI to stop the cyber attacks in the United States. (Wikipedia, 2012) Elizabeth Alexander, born in 1962, wrote the poem Praise Song for the Day in 2009 in regards to the Obama inauguration. She speaks about how people go about their normal daily business noticing each other. Everyone is fixing and/or creating something, all while talking with each other in different ways and thinking about what one has said....
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...But looking back on it now, I realized it had affected me in a different way than other people. I thought about being in that position and how embarrassing it was, and the people judging weren’t even kids I knew. If I were wearing Lululemon shorts and a spirit jersey that day in the mall, people wouldn’t have been looking at me so strangely. Why did they even care what I was wearing? Why did I care what they thought? After that experience, I figured out that everybody is so focused on fitting in and keeping up with the trend. Because of that, sometimes people who don’t follow the wave are looked at as weird or abnormal. I find myself looking at what the trend is and trying to find clothes to match, so when I went to the mall in a different outfit, I experienced firsthand what it was like to feel like a total outcast. Nobody wants to be judged by other people, so why do we do it ourselves? People of all ages should be able to express themselves however they choose without being criticized or being worried that they will. I do realize that people might like conforming, or doing it just because they want to fit in, but that doesn’t mean you have to judge anybody else for not conforming. Just because they don’t dress like the crowd or have the same things as the crowd, it doesn’t mean they aren’t good people or they don’t have good personalities...
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...Unit 17: Marketing Intelligence Buyer Behaviour and Market Research Techniques This assignment is going to be looking at understanding buyer behaviour and the purchase decision making process. It will cover describing the main stages of the process, along with explaining theories of buyer behaviour and factors that may affect this. Finally it will evaluate the relationship between brand loyalties, corporate image and repeat purchasing. Being able to use marketing research techniques will also be included within this essay; evaluating different types of market research, using sources of secondary data to achieve marketing research objectives and assessing the validity and reliability of these findings. All of the above topics will conclude with a proposal of a market research plan to obtain information in any given situation. LO1: Buyer Behaviour Figure 1.1a: http://www.enotesmba.com/2014/06/marketing-notes-consumer-decision-making-process.html (Accessed: 23rd Nov 15) Figure 1.1a: http://www.enotesmba.com/2014/06/marketing-notes-consumer-decision-making-process.html (Accessed: 23rd Nov 15) Engel, Blackwell and Kollat (1968) developed a model of the consumer buying, decision making process in five steps (see figure 1.1a): Problem or need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives to meet this need, purchase decision and post-purchase behaviour. They believed that these five stages displayed what led a shopper to purchase a new product (http://theconsumerfactor...
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...could hopefully become what his parents wanted him to be – a doctor, an accountant or maybe even a lawyer. Kevin wasn’t interested in any of that, he knew his parents had enough money for him for at least three generations so he was just chillin’. Derrick was often secretly jealous of how lucky Kevin was, but he mostly accepted the way things were and understood that certain things couldn’t be changed. On the first day Kevin transferred over to Grauer Elementary, he’d sat alone in the corner of the cafeteria during lunch. Now Derrick’s parents never packed him lunch so when he saw Kevin’s chicken nuggets, his mouth literally started to drool. It wasn’t long before Derrick walked over and asked convincingly, “Hey, I don’t know your name, but if you can give me one of your chicken nuggets, you can be my best friend.” Kevin was relatively new at the school so he didn’t really think twice about it and took on the offer. From that moment on, they literally became best friends and pretty much hung out together all the way throughout elementary and high school. Now, today was no...
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...“Morning, Mom.” I yawn as I trudge into the kitchen. I already know that she's typing furiously, working to meet some deadline. It’s a saturday morning and I couldn’t drag my feet anymore than I am now. My mother nods a greeting, “Good morning. I went to the store and bought more cereal.” She always knows what to say. I mumble, already looking through the boxes for one that catches my eye. Once I am satisfied, I get a bowl and the milk from the fridge. When I go to pour the off-brand cereal into the bowl, I’m given a surprise when a disk case falls into the bowl along with the cereal. I was pretty sure they stopped putting toys in cereal boxes years ago, and I check the box just to be sure. The box answers my silent question, when I hold...
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...is one way to measure this linguistic shift. Usually new words are added to dictionary when they became recognized and used by many people. I believe we should accept cultural adaptations and diversity and let dictionary illustrate current trends and represent our present culture. In his essay “Do you speak American” Robert MacNeil analyzes the English language and revels many dialects that culturally define us. Essay based on a documentary shows evolution of the way Americans speak, and what influence on that have an ethnicity, geography and social status. MacNeil points in his writing that Americans do not at all talk alike, but opposite they talk completely different from one another, as an example he presents a name of a sub sandwich which name depends on the place you order it (Mac Neil, 2011).One of two American linguistic critics group presented in essay, the “descriptivist” agrees that changes in a language evidence a culture’s changing nature and creativity, and should not and cannot be stopped (Mac Neil, 2011). MacNeil (2011) noted that growing population of Hispanic immigrants present a myth that immigration poses a threat to English. It has been proven he said, that Spanish speaking people integrated into the English language at the same rate as the immigrants from other backgrounds....
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...When researching our question of “What cultural factors must U.S. sports franchises overcome to increase popularity abroad? “And “Why?” you need to see things through the eyes of people from overseas. First how do our sports fit into their lives? , remember some of our sports differ in names. Soccer in the US is generally called football is most of Europe and Asia where as in America Football is a totally different game. This is the problem the NFL has overseas people have traditions set when it comes to soccer and rivalries already exist and these are two cultural factors a U.S. franchise must overcome, not to mention must people overseas don’t like the fact that we decided to call our sport football as the foot isn’t nearly the biggest aspect of the game. Some of the biggest obstacles are cultural difference. Just because it’s popular here in America doesn’t mean it will be a hit in other countries. There are many cultures abroad, and it’s nearly impossible to predict what all those cultures will enjoy. Market research comes into play heavily when deciding to take our sports overseas. Years ago US teams were mainly comprised of US athletes. But now as the U.S. sport franchises try and go global they are scouting and recruiting foreign athletes, which makes not only that team but also it might make that sport popular with that country of which these foreign players come from. Just like with any business wanting to go global they have to be willing to adapt to that countries...
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...Overview Company Brief Adidas is on the move and always has been: It has had an adventurous history since it first grew out of a family business in Herzogenaurach, Germany in the 1920s. With the hostile separation of two brothers’ interests in the 1940s, nearly going bust in the 1980s and then executing two rescue operations, first by sending production offshore to Asia and then by reinventing itself into a design and marketing company, Adidas has riden the waves of change in the sports goods sector both up and down. Alongside its own brands, it owned the Saloman ski and sportswear brand for nearly a decade and now includes the Reebok, Taylormade Golf and Rockport brands in its stable. Company Highlights * BECOMING A TRUE MULTI-SPORTS SPECIALIST From Herzogenaurach to the world: the 3-Stripes kept expanding to more and more sports throughout the years. This is reflected in the broad range of athletes who trust adidas to make them better: besides the usual suspects such as the world’s best football players, like the Argentinean national team, outdoor icon Reinhold Messner climbed mountains in adidas shoes and gymnast Nadia Comaneci scored a perfect 10, repeatedly. * A COMPUTER FOR YOUR FEET, It sounds quite common today, but back in the ‘80s, a computer did not belong, much less fit, in your shoe. Didn’t stop adidas from putting it in there. An innovation ahead of its time, the Micropacer featured a system – known today as miCoach – providing performance statistics...
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...The Apprentice The Apprentice is a reality game show; in where twenty inspiring entrepreneurs, which are all battling for a quarter of a million pounds investment money. This, as the name already describes is for the winner to invest in his or her business. As the reality game show starts the twenty entrepreneurs are divided in two teams. The teams are both getting the same task, the same amount of time and also the same starting equipment (if added to the task). Then when the time is finished, Lord Sugar will choose between the teams, which in his opinion did the best, or either it could also be depending on how much they’ve sold and the team with the most amount of sales won. This basically continues till almost the last episode. In the 11th week there are only 5 remaining. They will all be eliminated, except for the best 2. They will be chosen on for example the following facts: - Best business knowledge and knows exactly how to start their future business * Best and most clear CV * Their skills shown throughout the program After they’ve finally chosen their finale two, again they will have to do a final task, set by Lord Sugar. The one that does this one the best, or either has the finest concept could win it. Nevertheless in the end it is all about to convince Lord Sugar, because if he has no trust in either your skills or idea, you won’t be the one walking away with the two-hundred-fifty pounds of investment money. Jonathan Livingston Seagull ...
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