Industry & Market Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Industry & Market Analysis - Essay Example In response to the continuous economic development in Smithfield, this study will purposely conduct an industry and market analysis for a coffee shop in Smithfield, Dublin. Basically, the proposed coffee shop is totally different from a typical coffee shop. On top of the high quality service, this particular coffee shop will offer added services such as the use different types of IT and communication facilities like printers, fax machine, free access to the internet, and so on. As part of examining the coffee industry in Dublin market, a Porter’s five forces analysis will be conducted in this study. After discussing the coffee shop’s target market, its expected revenue will be estimated based on some assumptions that are related to the company’s target market. After analyzing the market trends, strategic ways on how the company will increase its competitive advantage over its close competitors will be tackled in details. Industry Analysis In general, the Michael Porter’s Five Forces Analysis can be use to analyze the market competition within the coffee shop industry in Smithfield, Dublin. Through the use of the five forces framework, the business owner can easily identify internal and external factors that could directly or indirectly affect the bargaining power of its accredited suppliers and prospective buyers. Aside from discussing the risks for product substitution, the use of this particular industry analysis framework will make the business owner easily track down not only the presence of potential rivalry within the coffee shop industry but also signs of potential threats of new entrants or new businesses that wish to enter the coffee shop industry in this area (Porter 17). Rivalry among Existing Firms There is a high concentration of market competitors within the coffee shop industry in Smithfield, Dublin. Aside from the presence of Starbucks, there are also hundreds and thousands of coffee retailing companies that are curre ntly operational in this area. Because of the presence of numerous competitors that aims to compete for the same group of customers, product differentiation and offering a unique store ambiance is necessary to make coffee shop retailers win the long-term loyalty of their customers. For example, Starbucks managed to take advantage of product differentiation by offering coffee with different flavors such as amaretto, hazelnut, mint, and raspberry into its specialty coffee. This gives people some reason to become a loyal customer (Schrage). Other local-based coffee shops have publicly introduced specialty coffee like Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino (Newenham) whereas Kopi Luwak is known for its caramel and cinnamon flavored Arabica coffee that offers smooth flavor with tastes of cacao and a hint of berries (Irishtimes.com). Other than product differentiation, most of the existing coffee retailers are also competing with one another in terms of the quality of its customer service, conv enience, and the ambience or atmosphere offered within the coffee retailing outlet (Newenham). The coffee retailing industry in Smithfield, Dublin is perfectly competitive (Grant 69). On top of the local coffee shops that are being managed by Quails (McKay), the Coffee Kiosk Ballsbridge, the Greenbean Coffee Roasters, Starbucks, Java Republic Coffee Company, and Kopi Luwak are among the newly opened coffee retailing shops in Dublin (Boyd; Newenham; Irishtimes.com). One of the main reasons why the number of coffee shop retailing company is excessively high

HR Training class Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

HR Training class - Essay Example e management must evaluate; who needs the training, where the training should happen, when the training will happen, why the training should happen, as well as, how it would happen. To accomplish this, the management must conduct analysis-using information that relates to the organizational goals and objectives, jobs and other tasks, which the employees need to learn, competences that the employees must possess to execute their duties effectively, as well as, the employees that the human resource should train. An effective needs assessment, program would help the management to direct resources to the areas that have the greatest demand. The needs assessment, program should help in addressing the needed resources as far as customer service is concerned. It should as well help in evaluating the needed resources as far as enhancing productivity, achievement of organizational goals, as well as, improvement of the quality of goods and services are concerned. A needs assessment in customer service entails identifying the gap between what the human resource expects from the employees and the actual performance, as far as customer service is concerned. Needs and assess ment, therefore, helps in closing the gap. The assessment within the small retail business would include three levels, which this paper will justify their need. The first level is organizational assessment. Organizational assessment determines the current performance of the organization, as far as, offering quality services to the customers is concerned. The assessment will help in identifying if the employees possess the right skills, abilities, knowledge or competencies in customer service. The assessment helps in solving problems present in customer service. Different businesses have different customer service needs. For example, a manufacturing company would have different customer service needs compared to a retail business. This reflects the importance of assessing the needs. In other words, it would

Representation of Women in Media Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Representation of Women in Media - Essay Example This follows a keen observation of how women and men are portrayed in most movies and music videos. The part that women have been known to play in such movies often portrays them as sexual objects. There has been a widespread debate concerning the kinds of costumes that both men and women play, in most videos and erotic films, their male counterparts, who have been cited as merely taking advantage of those women, usually use them as baits for sexual activities. In most of the music videos and erotic films, women play a very passive role; their male counterparts often dictate them. Women are usually presented as weak characters and have to play their part in order to please men (Akinfeleye & Amobi 2011, p. 5-6). When people watch these movies, it has been discovered that they are largely influenced by the experiences they saw, something that has led to increased cases of sexual violence and other forms of aggression to women by male people. For this films and music videos to make sense to people who make them, women have to be dressed in a manner that is scanty and very revealing. On the other hand, the male has always been seen as being formal and well dressed, something that has raised an issue about the aspect of such passivity and submission. Most of the feminist discussions have criticized this kind of portrayal of women as a sex object rather than important and valuable members of the society just like men. Over time, the role of the mass media as a reliable and essential agent of socialization has attracted several criticisms from different segments of our contemporary society (Baran, & Davis 2012, p. 100). The images that are usually aired in mass media about music videos, erotic films and other kinds of programs have been said to change people’s perceptions about social realities, this is according to the observations from social psychologists. According to these propositions, these images are believed to play an essential role towards stimulating certain kinds of behaviors that are highly undesirable (Marnie et al. 2005, p. 67).

Realist and Feminist Structures in Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Essay

Realist and Feminist Structures in Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and Kate Chopin's The Storm - Essay Example Another similarity is the use of naturalist devices to construct both stories. Each story depicts the life of a single female protagonist who is mired in realistic situations that the reader can easily relate to. In addition to these similarities, both stories carry overriding feminist ideas and critique which essentially form the bulwark of both stories. This paper will compare and contrast both stories based on these structural, thematic and literary devices. The development of climax in both stories is gradual, uses symbols and both stories tend to end as soon as the climax is achieved. Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper depicts the protagonist as going mad over time as her husband John locks her up in her room. The author has chosen the yellow wallpaper as a symbol to reflect changing attitudes and mental state on the part of the protagonist. The yellow color itself is something that the protagonist tends to loathe from the first time she looks at it. As the story proceeds to i ts climax, the yellow wallpaper tends to indicate and enhance the climax. According to Gilman (Carnley 23): â€Å"It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw—not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper—the smell!† Again towards the end of the story (Carnley 26): â€Å"For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.† At the climax, the protagonist goes mad thinking that she just managed to extricate herself from the yellow wallpaper which signals and symbolizes the climax. The story ends immediately afterwards as the protagonist’s husband John enters the room and faints while the protagonist continues her mad movements across the room. This is comparable to Chopin’s The Storm where the author has used the storm as a symbol while she moves slowly towards the climax. The behavior of Calixta and Alcee tends to change as the storm develops gradually. At the start of the story, the author states (Gale 81): â€Å"She stood there with Bobinot's coat in her hands, and the big rain drops began to fall.† However, as the story is about to end the author expresses the character of the storm as (Gale 82): â€Å"The growl of the thunder was distant and passing away.† This indicates that the gentle rain at the start of the story developed into a large storm with thunder and lightning that subsided as the protagonists were done with their adulterous affair. What is noticeable is that the story’s climax is symbolized by a storm and that the story tends to end as soon as the climax is achieved. The end is again abrupt much similar to Galmin’s The Yellow Wallpaper. In addition to this similarity, both stories employ naturalist devices in order to develop the story. The characters and the imagery provided by either author are realist and the reader c an relate these characters and scenarios to common life with ease. The protagonist in Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is a common housewife while her husband is a physician and predictably they have a middle class background. The protagonist’s thoughts and emotions expressed in the story signify that she is an ordinary person like anyone else. The fastidious nature of the protagonist’s husband is also attributable to the trends of the time. In the late nineteenth century physicians were still discovering new methods of treatment and took their time to differentiate right treatment from wrong. The

Blog entry Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Blog entry - Article Example Other amazing architectures that I believe are related to expo Dubai 2020 include; ‘The Cloud’, ‘Dubai Hub One’, ‘Opus’, ‘Dubai Renaissance’, ‘Eta Hotel, Dubai Grand Pyramid, ‘The Arabian Blade, and ‘The Burj Al-Arab’ (BBC News, 2013). In my opinion, the architectures will play a big role in campaign for the expo in Dubai ‘architecture peace’ by promoting tourism department, boost business, attract investors and improve the lives of people living in the city. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the person in charge of the city has assured a tremendous surprise and innovation that will twist the minds of people globally in the coming occasion (BBC News, 2013). These high expectations are making the residents to work extra hard to ensure that the city is ready to host the historic event. Through this, I believe it will make the city to take risks and invest immensely, hoping that they will make huge profits through the selling of tickets, money collected from transport, the food the visitors would eat, and hotels where they will also sleep (BBC News, 2013). It is expected that expo 2020 will be make the city to cash in 23 billion USD, which is good money for the country’s

Philosophy of Karl Marx Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Philosophy of Karl Marx - Essay Example Requisite for Marx's conclusions is first an explanation of human nature itself. The nature of a living being is first broken down into two understandings. The first understanding is of the individual being itself, on its own. This focuses on what kind of species the being actually is, whether it is a tree, ant, bird, or a human being, and what physical attributes and needs that being needs to fulfill its own existence. This need to fulfill physical and material needs and advance existence is what Marx ultimately means when he discusses production, whether on the microcosm level of a man or animal preparing food for its survival or on the macrocosm of the political economy of a society. Therefore, the mode of production is what Marx means by what needs are to be taken care of, predicated on conditional material circumstances, and how such needs are achieved through the distribution of labors and what is exchanged for such labor. The other elemental understanding of the nature of a living being is how it advances its existence and species, or essentially how it procreates future generations. In the plant and animal kingdoms, this could merely be the sexual reproduction and procreation of offspring, or ants providing a colony for future generations of ants. In the macrocosm, this means the evolution of economic production within a society. The physical needs and attributes are the modes of production for the individual itself, and reproduction is the mode of production in whichever community or society the individual belongs. Man is a social animal in Marxist theory, which is an extension or interpretation of Aristotle's infamous axiom that man is a political animal. Whether man is a "political" or a "social" animals depends on how broadly or narrowly the two terms are interpreted, defined and overlap. But politics is in itself a social function: therefore, man is at least a social being. This part of human nature necessitates further understanding of humanity's existence. To understand man requires understanding of human societies and communities. How a society, or aggregation or community, is maintained and advanced through the production of the individuals that constitute it, and how the individuals are maintained and advanced depend on the general production of the society as a whole. Essentially, the individuals in a society contribute to it through their production or work, while simultaneously the individual's own substance is determined by the conditions of the society as an aggregate whole. The s ocial nature of man is the framework to the construction of a society. Also essential in human nature is its ability to not to be constrained by nature, that is the creation and innovation of technology. Man can thus employ nature and "add stature to themselves" in its mode of production. The advances in technology ultimately influence the course of human history and its mode of social production. Social production is essentially the aggregate total production of the entire society, and how the individuals in that society produce and how society itself influences such individual productions. Prior to civilization and defined civil societies in recorded history, man was primarily a hunter-gatherer society where

The Ukrainian Genocide Essay Example for Free

The Ukrainian Genocide Essay â€Å"Holodomor† means fake famine or slow killing by starvation in Ukrainian. Joseph Stalin, the premier of the Soviet Union, created an artificial famine to destroy the will of the Ukrainian people that sought independence from his rule. This famine lasted for three years killing an estimated seven to ten million people. Ukraine was known as the breadbasket of Europe before this happened. This was one of the worst cases of mass killing ever recorded. It also is one of the worst cases of food, or lack of it, being used as a weapon. Some people to this day ignore the fact that this artificial famine even existed. Ukraine had been under the domination of the Imperial Czars of Russia for two hundred years. Finally freedom had arrived in March of 1917. Some optimistic Ukrainians declared Ukraine to be an independent nation and began to re-establish Kiev, the nation’s capital. However, they did not stay free for long. Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union, wanted to reclaim Ukraine. Four years of chaos and fighting followed. By the end of 1921 the Soviets were able to crush the Ukrainian people and win the war. Half of Ukraine was then divided up between Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. The rest of Ukraine was kept by the Soviet Union. The Soviets began shipping grain out of Ukraine to satisfy hungry Russians. While the Soviets banqueted, Ukrainians suffered. Then a drought occurred resulting in widespread hunger and popular resentment towards Vladimir Lenin and the Soviets. To lessen this animosity, Lenin lessened his grip on the Ukrainian people and even encouraged a free-market. People started to relax and renewed their interests in independence, folk art, music, and literature. The Soviets began slowly losing control of Ukraine because of this revival. However, when Lenin died Stalin, one of the most cold-blooded humans to ever hold this much power, took over. Stalin thought the gradual loss of Ukraine was completely unacceptable. To crush the free spirited revival he started using the same ruthless methods used on the Soviet Union. In the beginning of 1929 over five thousand Ukrainian scholars, scientists, cultural and religious leaders were arrested with false accusations of planning an armed revolt against the Soviets. Everyone that was arrested was either shot or deported to prison camps where they would be tortured with out a trial. Stalin also disapproved of Ukraine’s system of land management. He began seizing all privately owned farms in a country where eighty percent of its people are farmers. There was a class of farmers called â€Å"kulaks† by the communists. Kulaks were wealthy farmers who made a profit by themselves. Stalin believed that all farms should be collective farms run by the government. Stalin started forcing people to join these collective farms or else they would be classified as Kulaks and put into jails, which began appearing in most Ukrainian villages. By the summer of 1932 eighty percent of Ukraine’s population started working in collective farms. They were afraid of seeing their own children die of starvation so they gave in. He thought that any revolt in the future would be led by the Kulaks so he began destroying them as a class. Kulaks were declared â€Å"enemies of the people† and were left beaten in the streets with out any possessions of their own. The Red army stole all of the kulaks possessions. It was against the law to help Kulaks or their families in any way. Millions of people were put onto railroad boxcars and were shipped to prison camps in the wilderness of Siberia. One-third of the people sent to these camps died because of the horrible conditions. Back in Ukraine things were getting worse and worse each day. Stalin sent out henchman Lazar Kaganovitch to destroy all Ukrainian resistance. He made quota shooting 10,000 innocent Ukrainians weekly. Eighty percent of all intellectuals were executed. Stalin began stealing food that was made from the Ukrainian’s own hands. All farms were raided for any possible food, blankets, cattle, and fuel. The secret police looked for â€Å"hidden grain† under men and women’s clothing. Even the smallest amounts of grain were confiscated. They blocked all railroads and streets so nothing could get in or out of Ukraine. Ukrainians began to quickly die of starvation, cold, and sickness. During the winter of 1932-1933 the famine hit full force. Soon people were eating shoes, belts, tree bark, pets, and some even ate infant children and dead bodies to stay alive. Many begged neighbors for potato skins and other scraps, but they found their neighbors equally starved. There were unbelievably emaciated bodies in the street. I remember all this I was swollen from hunger; my brother was even in the worst condition He was dying; his swollen body was leaking fluid. I was sitting beside him, he was gritting his teeth and kept asking for a cucumber Then he died His dead body had been wrapped in a blanket, the color of this blanket is still in my memory. This is the testimony of Hanna Nelasa, born in Luhansk region. She was one of the few people brave enough to give her testimony about the famine. In Russia it has been made illegal to commemorate this event. To this day people do not know the exact amount of people that died during this tragic time. At the famine’s height 25,000 people were dying per day. They estimate the number of people that died to be around seven to ten million. In the end the Soviet collective farms never succeeded. The livestock were poorly cared for on these farms and the conditions were very unhealthy. Inexperienced young communists ran all the farms. They became jokes throughout Ukraine about how uneducated they were on simple things like farming and cleaning. An American Journalist wrote this horrifying description of what he saw: â€Å"About twenty miles south of Kiev (Kyiv), I came upon a village that was practically extinct by starvation. There had been fifteen houses in this village and a population of forty-odd persons. Every dog and cat had been eaten. The horses and oxen had all been appropriated by the Bolsheviks to stock the collective farms. In one hut they were cooking a mess that defied analysis. There were bones, pigweed, skin, and what looked like a boot top in this pot. The way the remaining half dozen inhabitants eagerly watched this slimy mess showed the state of their hunger. † On a personal note, my grandfather lived through this time. He was once walking and thought he saw a log and went to go sit on it, but it was a frozen body. They were living at the edge of the woods so his father buried potatoes and grain two hundred feet deep in the back of the woods. The Secret Police came to their house and took bayonets poking them into the soil looking for any food they had. Adults and children constantly came begging to their house for scraps of food and they gave it to them. This is why I chose this as my topic because my grandparents told me hundreds of stories about growing up during these times.