Brand Management Assignment2 Managing Price Discounting and its Essay

Brand Management Assignment2 Managing Price Discounting and its possible impact on Brand Equity - Essay Example Price is the ingredient of the marketing mix that has been subjected to the most intensive analysis -- particularly by economists. But as an aspect of the mix, it cannot be divorced from other ingredients. It must incorporate and reflect them. Optimal prices cannot be established, and pricing remains an art with a host of factors to be evaluated for which there are no precise measures and weights. Price discounting is the main strategy used by managers to attract customers and popularize a product. Consumers do not respond to price discount alone; they respond to value. A lower price does not necessarily mean expanded sales. Moreover, marketing activities influence price. For example, governmental agencies have investigated advertising as a cause of higher prices. In microeconomic theory it has received great attention; in marketing, the significance of price varies among industries, competitive situations, and products (Baker, 2006). Pricing is significant where the market impact, profit results, or both, of price variations is great, and where firms have considerable discretion over the prices charged. In many instances pricing decisions are severely constrained and are sometimes relatively unimportant. Large purchasers of industrial goods, for instance, may specify prices at which they will buy, determine product specifications, and send specifications to suppliers for co mpetitive bids (Philips, 2005). For other products price may not be a relevant factor. In some technical areas where products require much research and development and involve much uncertainty, a cost-plus scheme may be used. In other situations, sellers may be almost completely free to set prices, while in still others, they may only be able to decide whether or not to sell at a price. In an economy of scarcity, price is accorded more attention than any other marketing factor. In an economy of abundance, non-price factors assume increasing marketing importance and products are differentiated on other bases than price (Marn et al 2004). Price Discounts and Marketing Objectives The main considerations for pricing discounts decisions involve market objectives and organizational considerations, costs and marketing mix strategies. Also, it is important to take into account market demands and psychographic characteristics of the target audience, competitors' prices and market position of the company. Pricing is a sensitive and complex decision area affecting sales, costs, and profits for both industrial and consumer goods. For consumers, price reductions and increases have symbolic meanings. A customer may associate a price reduction with a reduction in quality, the anticipation of new models, or even lower prices or poor market acceptance (Philips, 2005). Higher prices may indicate better quality, a good image, and good value. Customer perceptions of price are important. Whereas pricing is usually perceived as a short-run action, its implications can be long-run, even to the point of shaping industry structures. Markets that may be viewed as systems of informa tion on cost and demand determine the appropriateness of prices (Marn et al 2004). They contain signals that businessmen must decode. But market information is ambiguous, fragmentary, and imperfect; it contains much uncertainty and is interpreted differently by various executives. To those who can read the signals properly, increased

An Event that Defines Me Essay -- Personal Narrative Writing

An Event that Defines Me There really is no particular event in my life that I can say defines me. Though there are a series of events that has shaped me into the person that I am today. The events that have defined my life have been trials that have tested my integrity and my faith. I have stumbled and fallen but have gotten up time and time again to only go further than before. There have been walls and obstacles that have kept me from being an individual that values higher education. During my high school career I never thought that I would have attended a university or even a community college. I never thought of the concept of higher education though I was pushed by my parents to attend college I never had it in my plans to go to college. Never the less I was given good advice from friends and family telling me that a college education would be the best for me. Without a degree I was certain not to achieve either financial success or career security. While in high school the only thing on my mind was to join the United States Army. Since almost half of my family was either in the military or in prison, I chose to go the path of the military. I was an outstand cadet in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corp. I had many decorations and medals that boasted my achievements of scholarship, integrity, loyalty, and leadership ability. It seemed that I was almost destined to become a United States Soldier. School was an easy thing for me, I floated through courses and could have graduated a year early but didn’t cause I wanted to walk with my class. I had lots of things going for me even applying to West Point Military Academy. Unfortunately I never was accepted to at... ... later I received a call from the same recruiter, â€Å"Chris, guess what? We have a position that opened up in military intelligence.† He said. â€Å"No, Thanks. I’m going to college.† These series of events have a significant value to me, there has never been a family member in either both sides attended a community college or a university. I am the first one and I never knew how to get here but with the help of my family and friends I have accomplished something that never has been accomplished by anyone close to me. I feel everyone looking at me and wondering if I will succeed or fail. Since I have been in College I have done my job. I have interned for Senator Jon Kyl, worked for Latino Vote Project, and helped out on campaigns. And due to these accomplishments my views have changed about the military and made me more humble and wise towards other issues.

Jorge Luis Borges – Use of Ambiguity

The Art of Being Ambiguous In his collection of short stories, Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges uses dreams, imagination and fantasy to establish ambiguity in his stories. With the use of juxtaposition and symbols, Borges blends a realm of dreams and imagination into the individual’s everyday worldly experiences. Through these devices, Borges commonly blurs the line between aspects of reality for his characters versus the constructs of his or her mind.By combining the real with the fictitious, Borges incorporates ambiguity into his stories and introduces his readers to new perspectives of world around them. In â€Å"The South,† Borges establishes ambiguity by dropping subtle textual hints that would ultimately allow for the reader to attain vastly different interpretations of the same text. If taken at face value, the main character Dahlmann is released from a sanatorium after a serious head injury.On the train ride back from the sanatorium, Borges hints that Dahlmann perio dically transitions into his illusory past of the old South. Even as he enters the cab that would take him to the train station, he admits that â€Å"reality is partial to symmetries and slight anachronism† (175) meaning that his past, although misplaced and irrelevant to modern times, continues to have significance in the present. The reader can argue that Dahlmann’s nostalgia induces illusions of the world from a time he remembered and celebrated it.On the train ride back to his ranch, he describes that the car â€Å"was not the same car that had pulled out of the station†¦ the plains and the hours had penetrated and transfigured it† (177) and that Dahlmann â€Å"was traveling not only into the South but into the past † (177). Borges uses this description to indicate that Dahlmann transcends into his fantasies of the old South on the train ride home as a result of a longing for the past. However, Borges also hints that Dahlmann might not have left the sanatorium at all, but has actually only dreamed about his release.Some readers find it improbable how Dahlmann is told he is â€Å"coming right along† (175) by the doctors at the sanatorium when only the day before Dahlmann was told that he was on the brink of death from septicemia. For Dahlmann, dying in the sanatorium would be a humiliating ending. When he is informed of his near death experience, Dahlmann felt â€Å"suddenly self-pitying† (175) and broke down crying. Borges points out that Dahlmann aspires to be like his ancestors and die heroically in the old Argentinian manner. Because dying in the sanatorium would have een a disgrace for Dahlmann, Borges highlights the possibility that Dahlmann dreamed up a perfect, heroic death in which he would defend the honor of the Old South. This is portrayed when Dahlmann gears up to fight â€Å"a young thug† (179), symbolic of modern Argentina, outside a country store at the end of his journey. When Borges sta tes that â€Å"it was as the South itself had decided that Dahlmann should accept the challenge† (179), he emphasizes how Dahlmann viewed himself as about to fight in the name of the Old South.For this reason, it is arguable that Dahlmann fantasized his whole journey home and his dreams reflect how he desires to die a heroic death in reality. By incorporating these subtle hints throughout â€Å"The South†, Borges establishes ambiguity between whether Dahlmann had actually left the sanatorium or simply dreamed the whole story. Through this ambiguity, Borges allows for readers to form multiple interpretations to the same story. In â€Å"The Secret Miracle†, Borges blurs the line between the factual world and what constitutes as a fantasy by introducing the idea of having dreams transcend into reality.The main character Hladik has begun to formulate his own play through the inner-workings of his imagination. Aspects of this play mimic Hladik’s reality as he reveals in the end that the main character of his play, Jaroslav Kubin, actually dreams up the events that occurred before in the story. â€Å"The play has not taken place; it is a circular delirium that Kubin endlessly experiences and re-experiences (160). † As Kubin dreams up the plotline of his story, Hladik constructs and reenacts the plotline of the play in which Kubin is part of through a dream, thus incorporating a dream within a dream.By juxtaposing Hladik’s reality and the play he has constructed in his mind, Borges introduces the overarching idea of how the mind constitutes for a different realm in which the dreamers and thinkers can shape, share, and confide in. This idea is again prominent when the bullet that is intended to kill Hladik on the day of his execution stops seconds before taking him. Borges states that, â€Å"in Hladik’s mind a year would pass between the order of the fire and the discharge of the rifle† (162) as a result of God.I f taken at face value, God has intervened as promised in Hladik’s dream. If the reader was to interpret this story in this manner, it is clear that events from Hladik’s dream transform and impact his reality. In which case, Borges clouds the distinction between Hladik’s reality and dreams. However, oddly enough, when Hladik requests the assistance of God in a dream the night before, the librarian states â€Å"I myself have gone blind searching for it [God]† (161), indicating that presence of God is questionable at most.If God is not yet found, He could not have given Hladik the extra year. By incorporating these subtle hints, Borges also allows the reader to interpret that it was solely Hladik’s perception of time, rather than the intervention of God, that allowed him another year. By blurring the line between aspects of Hladik’s reality versus the constructs of his mind, Borges permits the reader to question the presence of God in Hladikâ⠂¬â„¢s execution and introduces the idea that time is relative to how an individual’s mind perceives it.In the last short story â€Å"Circular Ruins,† Borges again uses dreams to introduce the reader to a new way of perceiving the world. In this story, the protagonist would dream each individual part of a boy until he would have finally engineered a son using his own imagination. However, the irony lies herein that the creator realizes at the end of the story he too â€Å"was but appearance, that another man was dreaming him† (100). The protagonist was nothing but a dream of another dreamer like his son was the dream of himself.Through â€Å"The Circular Ruins,† Borges asserts that the individual’s perception of reality might simply be an elaborate illusion. The protagonist did not realize he himself was a dream until the end of the story when he steps into the flames. Similarly, Borges questions the credibility of the reader’s own existence . Borges uses the circular ruins where the protagonist dreams his son – and where his son might possibly dream his own creation – as a symbol to represent the infinite loop of dreams.Additionally, because a circle does not have a definite beginning or end, it signifies the dreams itself have an ambiguous beginning and an indefinite end. In essence, the ambiguity within this story lies in that the reader is left to question the original dreamer, had there even been an original. The individual is left to ponder whether the circular ruins are to constitute reality or whether the dreamer is simply experiencing a dream within a dream, another popular style of Borges as delineated within â€Å"The Secret Miracle. Overall, Borges opens up a door of possibilities that lead to a string of unanswerable questions left to the reader’s interpretation. In general, Borges uses dreams, imagination, and constructs of the mind to brilliantly incorporate ambiguity into his short stories and thereby allow his readers to ponder new thoughts and ideas. In â€Å"The South†, the readers are left to question whether Dahlmann’s journey back to the South had actually taken place or whether it was only a dream in which he portrays his desire to want to die a heroic death like his ancestors.Within â€Å"The Secret Miracle†, Borges weaves aspects from Hladik’s own imagination into his reality such as the possible presence of God. This in turn allows the reader to question the distinction between factors of Hladik’s real world versus that in his mind. Finally, in â€Å"The Circular Ruins,† the ending leaves the reader to question whether dreams constitute a reality of its own or whether these dreams had an original dreamer who was simply dreaming within a dream, a popular motif in other Borges stories.When Borges blurs the line between reality and fiction, he establishes ambiguity and often induces his reader to question the cr edibility of their own reality. Through this ambiguity, Borges asserts that there is no clear or correct way to understand his short stories and that each story is open to the individual’s own interpretation. As a result, the short stories are open to a wide range of interpretations. Through these multiple interpretations, the reader opens him or herself up to new ways of perceiving the world.

Business Intelligence - 905 Words

Business intelligence (BI) processes monitor and analyze business transaction processes to ensure that they are optimized to meet the business goals of the organization. These goals may be operational goals that affect daily business operations, tactical goals that involve short-term programs such as marketing campaigns, or strategic goals that entail long-term objectives like increasing revenues and reducing costs. This is a kind of predictive analytics which helps to give idea about most critical factors affecting the growth. Business intelligence is proved to be beneficial in decision making. We analyze all data like orders, inventory, accounts, and point of sale transactions and also of customers. Key Performance Indicators is a term†¦show more content†¦This creates a so-called closed-loop decision making and action-taking system for managing and optimizing business operations. An efficient and integrated closed-loop system must enable a business to work smarter by closely aligning business performance to tactical and strategic business goals. This creates a feedback loop where positive activities are recognized and encouraged, while value-detracting activities are either improved or eliminated. The need for organizations to be more agile, however, requires that this closed-loop process also be employed to optimize day-to-day business activities. At present, most data warehouses do not provide the near-real-time or low-latency transaction data required for such processing. The solution is to use BI applications against live transaction data, or to capture transaction data in-flight, and integrate it into a low latency data store (which may be an extension to an existing data warehouse). Business intelligence applications provide new and calculative approach and helps in business development. 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