African Americans In The South essays

African Americans In The South essays As a social and economic institution, slavery originated in the times when humans began farming instead of hunting and gathering. Slave labor became commonplace in ancient Greece and Rome. Slaves were created through the capture of enemies, the birth of children to slave parents, and means of punishment. Enslaved Africans represented many different peoples, each with distinct cultures, religions, and languages. Most originated from the coast or the interior of West Africa, between present-day Senegal and Angola. Other enslaved peoples originally came from Madagascar and Tanzania in East Africa. Slavery became of major economic importance after the sixteenth century with the European conquest of South and Central America. These slaves had a great impact on the sugar and tobacco industries. A triangular trade route was established with Europe for alcohol and firearms in exchange for slaves. The slaves were then traded with Americans for molasses and (later) cotton. In 1619 the first black slave arrived in Virginia. The demands of European consumers for New World crops and goods helped fuel the slave trade. A strong family and community life helped sustain African Americans in slavery. People often chose their own partners, lived under the same roof, raised children together, and protected each other. Brutal treatment at the hands of slaveholders, however, threatened black family life. Enslaved women experienced sexual exploitation at the hands of slaveholders and overseers. Bondspeople lived with the constant fear of being sold away from their loved ones, with no chance of reunion. Historians estimate that most bondspeople were sold at least once in their lives. No event was more traumatic in the lives of enslaved individuals than that of forcible separation from their families. People sometimes fled when they heard of an impending sale. During the 17th and 18th century enslaved African Americans in the Upper ...

Access Restrictions to Social Security Death Index

Access Restrictions to Social Security Death Index The Social Security Death Master File, maintained by the US Social Security Administration (SSA), is a database of death records collected from a variety of sources used by the SSA to administer their programs. This includes death information collected from family members, funeral homes, financial institutions, postal authorities, States and other Federal agencies. The Social Security Death Master File is not a comprehensive record of all deaths in the United States- just a record of those deaths reported to the Social Security Administration. The SSA maintains two versions of the Death Master File (DMF): The  full file  contains all death records extracted from the SSA database, including death data received from the States, and is shared only with certain Federal and State agencies pursuant to section 205(r) of the Social Security Act.The  public file  (commonly referred to as the Social Security Death Index, or SSDI), as of 1 November 2011, does  not  include protected death records received from the States.   According to the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), which disseminates the Death Master File, â€Å"Section 205(r) of the Act prohibits SSA from disclosing state death records SSA receives through its contracts with the states, except in limited circumstances.† This change removed approximately  4.2 million of the 89 million deaths at that time contained in the public Death Master File (Social Security Death Index), and approximately 1 million fewer deaths are now added each year.  At the same time, the Social Security Agency also stopped including the decedent’s residential state and Zip code in the public file (SSDI). Why the Changes to the Public Social Security Death Index? The 2011 changes to the Social Security Death Index began with a  Scripps Howard News Service investigation in July 2011, that complained about individuals using Social Security Numbers for deceased individuals found online to commit tax and credit fraud. Large genealogy services which offered access to the Social Security Death Index were targeted as helping to perpetuate the fraud related to use of social security numbers for deceased individuals. In November 2011, GenealogyBank removed social security numbers from their free U.S. Social Security Death Index database, after two customers complained their privacy was violated when the Social Security Administration falsely listed them as deceased. In December 2011, following a petition sent to the five largest genealogy services who provided online access to the SSDI, by  U.S. Senators  Sherrod Brown  (D-Ohio),  Richard Blumenthal  (D-Connecticut),  Bill Nelson  (D-Florida) and  Richard J. Durbin  (D-Illinois), A ncestry.com removed all access to the popular, free version of the SSDI that had been hosted on RootsWeb.com for over a decade. They also removed social security numbers for individuals who died within the past 10 years  from the SSDI database hosted behind their membership wall on Ancestry.com,  due to sensitivities around the information in this database. The Senators December 2011 petition urged companies to remove and no longer post on your website deceased individuals Social Security numbers because they believe that the benefits provided by making the Death Master File readily available online are greatly outweighed by the costs of disclosing such personal information, and that ...given the other information available on your website full names, birth dates, death dates   Social Security numbers provide little benefit to individuals undertaking to learn about their familial history.  While the letter conceded that posting the Social Security numbers is not illegal under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), it also went on to point out that legality and propriety are not the same thing. Unfortunately, these 2011 restrictions werent the end of the changes to public access to the Social Security Death Index. Pursuant to law passed in December 2013 (Section 203 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013), access to information contained in the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File (DMF) is now limited for a three year period beginning on the date of an individual’s death to authorized users and recipients who qualify for certification. Genealogists and other individuals can no longer request copies of social security applications (SS-5) for individuals who have died within the past three years under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. Recent deaths are also not included in the SSDI until three years after the date of death. Where You Can Still Access the Social Security Death Index Online

Hansen's Disease (leprosy) Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Hansen's Disease (leprosy) - Term Paper Example The oldest civilizations of China, Egypt and India were among the first to have documentation of a disease quite similar to leprosy, forcing scholars, doctors and scientists alike to assume that that was what the disease actually was. However, leprosy today is not what people had to deal with thousands of years ago. Due to the lack of medical attention, leprosy was more common and severe, causing infected people to be forced into separate leprosy colonies. Before our common era, leprosy was feared due to people believing that it was a curse or a punishment from God. Many infected people saw death sooner than they should have because they were killed for having the infection, as people did not want them spreading the curse or punishment around. â€Å"In Europe during the Middle Ages, leprosy sufferers had to wear special clothing, ring bells to warn others that they were close, and even walk on a particular side of the road, depending on the direction of the wind (Mallac, 2001).† However, due to how contagious the disease is, patients were treated similarly in more modern times, though this was out of concern for others developing the disease. Special hospitals were created solely for patients suffering from leprosy. It was in 1873 that Henrik Armeuer Hansen, a doctor from Norway, first identified under a microscope the germ that causes leprosy, which is how leprosy received its formal name. This germ is mycobacterium leprae, and was the first bit of proof that leprosy was indeed caused by a germ, and not by a curse or from sinning. After this discovery, doctors and scientists set to work to discover cures and treatments for leprosy. Before the 1940s, leprosy patients were treated with oil from the chaulmoogra nut. Some patients benefited from the painful treatment, but very little was known about the long term effects. Between the 1920s and the 1970s, numerous medical breakthroughs took place in regard to discovering medication for leprosy

BUS599 - Integrative Project, Mod 3 SLP Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

BUS599 - Integrative Project, Mod 3 SLP - Essay Example The X7 tablets have been designed for those consumers who are concerned about both the performance as well as the price of these tablets. The company performs a CVP analysis with the aim of making valuable decisions in order to determine its sales volume of the aforementioned products along with profit margin is an effective manner (CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, 2013) This discussion will emphasize upon the strategies that need to be formulated as well as implemented in relation to prices and research and development (R&D) for enhancing the performance of the company. Moreover, the formulation of the strategies that implemented by Clipboard on the basis of Cost-Volume-Profit (CVP) analysis will also be discussed. Time Warp 2 and CVP Analysis In order to determine the revised strategy comprising the prices, R&D allocation and any product discontinuations for different ranges of tablets of the company, the strategy of ‘Cost-volume-profit’ (CVP) analysis can be taken into co ncern. In this similar concern, the strategy of CVP analysis is regarded as a tool that is chiefly used for planning as well as making valuable decisions. Moreover, it is considered as a powerful instrument for devising future plans as well as developing strategies for increasing the sale of the products of the company. One of the major advantages of this tool is that it will enable the company to make appropriate decisions as well as plans for developing the three products in the business market at the beginning of the initial year i.e. 2012 (The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2011). The strategy of CVP analysis has been generally used for calculating break-even point as well as determining the prices for attaining substantial profits by increasing the sale of the products (Cambridge Business Publishers, 2005). Thus, with the assistance of CVP analysis, the company is required to formulate strategies as well as plans in order to improve the profitability as well as productivity in comparis on with Joe Schmoe. The profit of Joe Schmoe has been identified to be amounted to $ 1,431,666,391 for the four years i.e. 2012 to 2016. Conversely, the main focus of Clipboard is to formulate effective strategy with the objective of obtaining profits in excess of Joe. Product X5 The tablets X5 have been in the market for five years and it is considered to be in a stage of maturity. The X5 products have been quite price sensitive that assists the company in meeting the demands of the consumers who are price conscious. In this respect, if the prices of X5 products are reduced, then the sales of these products will enhance in an effective manner. In this regard, the prices of X5 products need to be reduced in order to increase sales. Moreover, the value of price as well as R&D along with target profit are required to be taken into concern in CVP calculator with the objective of determining sales volume for accomplishing desired target profits. In this similar context, it can be affirm ed that the CVP analysis depicts that the product X5 will be offered in the market for only two years and then it will be discontinued for the reason of acquiring substantial profits. This is owing to the reason that the company may experience loss in continuing the selling X5 product in the market. The CVP analysis of the company for X5 product is performed below. Product X6 The product X6 has been in the marke

Unions Recruit New Allies for Obama in Battleground States Case Study

Unions Recruit New Allies for Obama in Battleground States - Case Study Example Unions Recruit New Allies for Obama in Battleground States This article by Steven Greenhouse is very insightful and it gives a general overview and perspective of the role of the trade unions in the 2012 us presidential campaigns. The article gave an account of the role the labor unions have played in this campaign to ensure that Barrack Obama is re-elected the next president of the United States. It gave the opinion of the union leaders and event organizers whom they were very enthusiastic about how the unions are growing stronger and shaping the politics of the United States. The labor unions are more concentrated on the battle ground states of Ohio and Wisconsin. Teachers mainly from Chicago which is the election center for barrack Obama are very enthusiastic about this. The union members are large in number with a figure of 67, 176 knocking at the doors of residence of Wisconsin. Sandy and Elaine were just part of that 67, 176. The unions are trying to reassert themselves after realizing that they couldn’t influence much during 2010 election that were held in some states that include Ohio. This all effort is more of a strategy to regain relevance in the elections that they influence so much especially in 2008. The unions did play a big role in the election of 2008 and eight, when they campaign for election of Barrack Obama. They have seen that the re-election of the same candidate they campaign for in 2008 is not forthcoming so they have to quickly spring into action. They have for the past two years been actively involved in these campaigns mainly in Ohio and Wisconsin.... These have helped them a great deal because they can now reach out to more people. Given that union members account for only 12% of the population of the United States their constituency have now increased tremendously. Unlike in the past where they reach out to few people per hour they can now reach out to huge number of population in just an hour. They have also good strategy whereby they have been able to bring together members from different groups to join them. The republican side is however of different view and that the unions have lost the control it had in 2008. Sara Fagen, who worked under George W. Bush said that the members no longer fully support the union and no longer swayed by the union decision to support a particular candidate because they feel the have been pressed economically by the union who drew from them to run this campaign. The union according to the republicans is funding the campaigns at the expense of the workers. They claim also that Obama have not stood up to them by not actualizing the â€Å"card check† bill that could have helped them a lot. The union members have however fought for the union members especially by seeking the reversal of the law that deprives the employees of their bargaining rights. They were then to suffer another set back after their effort to oust the governor of Wisconsin proves futile. Scott walker the republican retains the seat as the governor of Wisconsin. The union have though rise with 30 unions joining the course. There are though regular setbacks and frustration on daily basis that often face the union members. They most of the times don’t find response from 2/3 of the homes they contacted so they are left with little to do other than to left notes urging the members of

Analysing Existing Trends of Space Selling

Analysing Existing Trends of Space Selling Abstract If an ad is created and placed in the media, the costs of creation and time or space in the media must be paid for. This is a major area in which advertising departs from public relations. Advertising doesnt have that problem. If time or space is bought in the media, the ads (as long as they follow the guidelines set down for good taste, legal products and services, etc.) will appear. The drawback is that ads are clearly designed to extol the virtues of products and companies, and any ad is perceived by consumers as at least partly puffery. There are two basic ways to sell anything: personally and non-personally. Personal selling requires the seller and the buyer to get together. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. The first advantage is time: the seller has time to discuss in detail everything about the product. The buyer has time to ask questions, get answers, and examine evidence for or against purchase. A second advantage of personal selling is that the seller can see them. Finally, the seller can easily locate potential buyers. If they enter a store, they probably have an interest in something that store sells. Street vendors and door-to-door sellers can simply shout at possibilities, like the Hyde Park vendors who call out. From there on they fit their message to the individual customer, taking all the time a customer is willing to give them. From the above, it appears that personal selling is much better than advertising, which is non-personal. This is true. Advertising has none of the advantages of personal selling: there is very little time in which to present the sales message, there is no way to know just who the customer is or how she is responding to the message, the message cannot be changed in mid-course to suit the customers reactions. Products, services or ideas are the things that advertisers want consumers to buy (in the case of ideas, buy means accept or agree with as well as lay out hard, cold cash). However, there is more involved in products or services than simply items for purchase. A product is not merely its function. It is actually a bundle of values, what the product means to the consumer. That bundle may contain the products function, but also the social, psychological, economic or whatever other values are important to the consumer. Chapter 1: Introduction In an era when physical tail space is still at a premium, constrained by planning restrictions and rising costs, productive use of space is a key indicator of buying and merchandising success, and high space productivity depends on offering the right range, in a logical layout, with products available and easy for the customer to find. Decisions about how much space to devote to each product line and its location in the store play an important role in the pursuit of merchandising success. The aim of this chapter is to provide an insight into this process. 1.1 Space selling management: Space selling constraint applies to all retailers, but in non-store retailing the constraints are different. A mail order retailer, for example, has page space and the number of pages in a publication as constraining factors, whilst a TV shopping channel needs to break down the airtime to different products. However, internet retailing offers great opportunities for adding space without much additional resource input. The main constraint on the amount of space used in a virtual outlet is the customers attention span. In spite of this additional freedom, the objectives of space allocation are essentially the same no matter which retail format is used. The management of retail space is concerned with a number of key objectives. The first is to optimize both short-term and long term returns on the investment cost of retail pace. The second is to provide a logical, convenient and inspiring interface between the product range and the customer. This can be particularly important in a large store, where customers can quite easily become overwhelmed and lost. Another objective is to make sure that the right selection of products is available; that products fit into the retail space and that stock-outs are avoided. Choice for the customer is maximized when the best selection for them is put into the available space. Space allocation aim has an important role to play in communicating the retail brand, When ice is managed centrally it helps a chain of retail outlets to achieve visual consistency, so that customers arc reassured by the similarity of the store layout and shelf appearance. 1.2 The Space Management Process: A retailer goes through a number of stages when allocating space to products. These four stages will they used as a framework for the Inclusion of discussion topics within this chapter. Measuring Space Selling: Although space in a store outlet is three dimensional, retail space is often measured in square, rather than cubic units, Square units arc appropriate where, for example in fashion retailing, a variety of single tier fixtures stand on the shop Iloor (see FigureS. I). Many fixtures, however, arc multilevel and so more appropriate ways of measuring space to allocate might be on the basis of linear or cubic footage (see Figures 8.2 and 8.3). Measurements of space that are more specific to individual retailers might be useful, such as the number of pages to be published in a catalogue or the total number of fixtures available in an outlet. Space Productivity: The two principal measures of retail success arc sales and profits. Sales volume and profitability can also he measured in relation to the amount of space used to generate those levels of sales and profits. This can then be compared with the level of financial investment in that space. The resulting measures express the productivity of retail space. Sales (or profits) per square meter is a commonly used measure of retail space productivity, which is an important concept in the evaluation of retail product management performance. Dividing the space into selling areas: At this stage, space management is concerned with allocating space to different product areas, defined according to individual retail businesses, but usually on the basis of product (department or category. The amount of space will he determined to a greater extent on previous performance indicators, typically sales values. However, sonic products, because of their physical characteristics may need disproportionate amounts of space in relation to sales. In a department store, home furnishings may need a relatively large amount of space to generate a good level of sales because the products are bulky, a large variety of merchandise is needed for customers to choose from and a lot of display space is needed to do the product justice. On the other hand, jewellery is a high value product category that needs relatively small amounts of space for display and selling purposes. The stage a product category is at in its life cycle is likely to influence the space allocation at this level. If a category is growing, then more space should be allocated, whereas a declining category needs to have its space rationalizes. Measuring selling space using square metres Using linear measurement for space selling Using cubic measurement for space selling Typical â‚ ¬Ã‹Å"hotspots In a Space selling Particularly evident in department stores, where specialist products such as furniture and home entertainment, as well as hairdressing salons and customer service departments   located on basement or upper floors, Customer flow can also be encouraged by locating high demand items throughout the store layout, with plenty of impulse items located in between. Retailers need to find a balance between maximizing sales of high demand products, generating flow around slower selling products (which may have higher profit margins), and providing logic and convenience in the layout for the customer, Product adjacencies: A logical route through the different product categories or departments is part of a customer focused offer, and can encourage linked sales. For example, in a baby equipment retailer like Mother cares it makes sense for merchandise to be grouped into themes for space planning purposes. These product themes are then presented in a logical way to the customer as they move through the store. Products for immediate needs, such as feeding and general baby care come first, followed by bath time and clothes; and then on to the more expensive, one purchases in the travel and nursery departments. The barbecue season provides a good opportunity for retailers to generate interest and sell distinctive groups of complementary products. Some of these products are strictly seasonal: the barbecues themselves and the briquettes for example. However, other products can be given additional space allocations in the seasonal aisle as part of the â‚ ¬Ã‹Å"barbecue category. Firelighters, matches, marinades, sauces, disposable tableware and beer are products that are found around the supermarket throughout the year, but are given a boost In the barbecue season by being merchandised as complementary goods. It is estimated that guests take an average equivalent of eight drinks when they are Invited to a barbecue, and â‚ ¬Ã‹Å"studies (bulk packed small bottles of beer) are particularly popular for barbecues as they are easy to handle, â‚ ¬Ã‹Å"women friendly, and easily chilled. Whilst the majority of barbecue beer is bulk purchased In advance from supermarkets, and then chilled down at home, convenience store retailers are often used for guests to buy drinks en route, and so providing chilled beer becomes important for this type of retail format. Allocation space to individual product: Having made a plan for the layout of departments or categories within the retail outlet, the next stage is to make a decision about exactly how individual product lines should be displayed within the outlet, whether the product is going to sit on a fixture, or be represented by a photograph within a page spread. Various approaches to space allocation are discussed, for example by using sales or profits as a guideline, some practical challenges arc considered, and the relationship between category management and space allocation is explored in this section. Allocating space on the basis of sale: The guiding principle here is the more a product sells, the more space it should be given. Retaining a high stock service level will depend on retailers ensuring that they devote enough space to a high demand product, such as milk, to prevent replenishment of that item becoming inefficient and inconvenient to the customer. A fast selling item however may not be one that a retailer makes much profit on (again milk is a good example), and so they may decide to allocate more space to their profitable lines. In taking this approach, however, the retailer is likely to encounter the problem of not devoting enough space to fast moving lines, so a balance has to be achieved. Another decision that has to be made is which â‚ ¬Ã‹Å"sales figure should he used for the allocation exercise, Alternatives are historical sales figures (for that outlet); market share figures; or projected sales figures. Store A is a branch of clothing retailer XYZ in a medium sized town centre. Ten miles away there Is a regional shopping centre where branch B Is located and twelve miles In the opposite direction, branch store C Is located In the heart of a city centre shopping complex. The policy of retailer XYZ is to offer a returns policy In all of its stores for products bought in any outlet nationwide (including those purchased from its web site). Shoppers from the town where store A is located, often take shopping trips to the neighboring centres, where B and C are located, especially if they are wanting to make a major purchase such as a coat or a suit, and require a wide choice of retail stores to select from. Unfortunately for store A, any unwanted products usually end up being returned to the customers local store. This has the effect of distorting the sales figures for store A, upon which space allocation decisions are made. Unfortunately, the retailers information system does not recogniz e the difference between a returned garment from the original store and one returned from a different outlet. In order to counteract this problem, which can be quite widespread, a retailer would need to allocate space on the basis of estimated sales rather than historical sales. Space elasticity: Allocating space according to a measure of sales assumes that there a relationship between the amount of space and the rate of sales, this relationship is termed the space elasticity of a product and it refers to the extent to which the sales of a product will change in response to a changed. In the amount of space allocated to that product Research suggests that space elasticity not uniform amongst products, or across stores or departmental locations. Using profit measures as a basis for space allocation ill prevent a business manager from allocating large amounts of best quality retail space to unprofitable products. They could mean, however, that a retailer was allocating unnecessarily large amounts of space to products that would sell as well with a smaller space. Profitable lines may not in fact sell very quickly at all, and allocating extra facings or shelves of the product may have very little impact on the sales of the product. In this case the quality of the space becomes important, so the retailer can locate high profit items in locations around the stare that arc better selling. The relationship between the sales and generated by different products, and suggests how space and ranging decisions should be made accordingly. Allocating space according to sales, and in particular, product profitability, is working with the interests of the retailer, and not the customer in mind and therefore may suggest an illogical and prese ntation of products. Long term profitability depends on customer loyalty, which is dependent (among many other things) upon being satisfied with the presentation and assortment of products. Fine tuning the allocation of space within a retail outlet therefore requires extensive amounts of high quality data, together with a pragmatic and customer orientated managerial approach at store level. Productivity and efficiency and towards are visual display improvements. Once an optimum level of efficiency is achieved, space planners can move onto the objective of making their products and fixtures more attractive than their competitors. Some of the latest planning systems are able to simulate the entire store environment, so that the product manager can view an attractive plan in virtual reality and make any adjustments they fed are necessary. Recent space optimization technology applications offer the opportunity to create specific platform. Space Allocation and Category Management: Although the performance of individual product lines is Important to retailers in terms of the rate of sales which influences availability and the levels of contribution to turnover and profitability, the focus of performance In many retail organizations is at product category, rather than individual SKU level. A retailer is more interested in overall levels of sales and profits generated by their product range, rather than the sales of a single line that might be of interest to its manufacturer. The product category has emerged as a manageable classification for most aspects of product management, and certainly applies in the case of space management. In fact, many would argue that space planning and allocation and the systems that drive the process can only be properly implemented in tandem with a category management approach. Category management seeks to optimize the depth and variety of a product assortment within a specified amount of retail space and to generate maximum profitability by seeking efficiency in the operations that support the depth and variety. This includes replenishing to guarantee availability and adding new products and running promotions to generate customer interest and increase short term sales of particular products, without harming the overall profitability of the category. Space allocation systems allow (Inc tuning of a category assortment, provide the means by which product and category performance can be monitored and analyzed. and by using the programme output the plans can he easily communicated and successfully implemented within the various retail out lets. In some categories key brands are dominant, in which case their presence needs to have immediate impact within the space allocation plan. Other categories are very competitive, in which case low price, budget own brand and promotional products strongly on the promotional. Many businesses use the principle that shoppers will a category from bottom to top, and left to right, and so well-known brands arc placed on middle and lower shelves on the left of the category space in order to provide strong cues to the customer. Premium products meanwhile are placed on high level shelves, selecting their high quality positioning, and the fact that the customer for premium products will seek out the better quality product within the category. In some categories the customer decision-making processes are quite unique and nerd to he fully reflected within space allocation plans. For example, the decision sequence for wine is generally as follows: Colour Country of origin Price Level - Brand Whereas the decision sequence for yoghurt might be: Natural or flavored type (low fat, standard or luxury) - Price Level Brand Name These decision processes should determine how products arc displayed within the category space. In certain modes, if the product is maintained in the offer, long-term customer satisfaction will be retained In spite of the Individual poor product performance. Therefore it is the stores personality traits that determine the core product ranges, and not the size; the size of the outlet determines the width and depth of the selling type that would appeal to the local customers, Stores are empowered with the merchandise that allows them to drive local market opportunities and local suppliers can also be involved in the process of providing tailored products for individual store needs, As retailers offer more formats from which customers may choose to shop, format preferences and product preferences can be matched, For example, Tesco found that its online shoppers tended to from more affluent backgrounds, and so the on-line product offer is tailored accordingly, with a large range of wines and few value lines, For many small retailers the cost of a computerized space planning is prohibitive, and so many rely on basic sales and profit margin analysis combined with trial and error in space allocation decision making. 1.3 Summary: A great deal of space selling is carried out in order to achieve relatively short-term retail objectives, such as maximizing the benefits of a product or departmental promotion, meeting seasonal sales figures, or improving branch profitability. However, the long term strategic objectives of the retailer provide the framework within which these decisions are taken. Space allocations must be in line with the overall positioning strategy of the retailer; the variety and depth of assortment and the stock availability service level should not be compromised by the need for short-term productivity gains. In addition, the arrangement of products around the store needs to be considered in the light of the contribution that product items, brands and categories make to the positioning statement, it may be necessary to over-represent new products or to allocate extra space to growing or seasonal categories in order to reinforce an innovative product positioning strategy. The local customer prof ile may also lead to exceptional space allocations in an effort to meet individuals requirements more closely. However, the retailers space is the extent of its empire, and every inch of that space must be used to its maximum effect even if, as we shall see in the next two chapters, some space is designed to he devoid of products. The measurement of that effect, however, must be appropriate in terms of the overall aims for that space. Chapter 2: Literature Review Space Selling: Space selling refers to space available for advertising in different media. The advertising media available are print, electronic outdoor. The space available and intend for advertising in different media. Decision about how much space to devote to each product line and its location plays an important role in the pursuit of merchandising success. The aim of this thesis is to have an insight into this process. First will have to understand that the services of every publication/channel, costs of space selling. The ads featured in it. And a space seller to sell that advertising space/time to potential advertisers. 2.1 UCPL acquires marketing and space-selling rights for Lemon TV and Jhankar TV: K Sera Seras recently launched free-to-air channels music channel Lemon TV, and Hindi movie channel Jhankar TV have appointed Universal Communication Pvt. Ltd (UCPL) for their marketing and space-selling rights. UCPL is a player in the space of airtime selling and marketing of serials, television programmes and feature films for various television networks in India. Jhankar TV will particularly target the Hindi speaking audience. This is a channel that would reach to the audience of cable and satellite in UP, Bihar, MP and Rajasthan. On the other hand, for Lemon TV, they are planning to have different kinds of event and programmes like Lemon party. This will bring in more interactivity too with the relevant TG. When asked about the marketing challenges for these new channels, Every new channel in India right now faces the challenges of clutter and telling the advertiser what difference does this channel bring to the table, and what is the value addition. These channels are also in the same situation and we are confident about overcoming these challenges. UCPL is associated with media and advertising agencies like Mindshare, Mediaedge:cia, Madison, McCann Erickson, Lintas, etc., and with clients like Hindustan Unilever, Procter Gamble, and Godrej, among others. As a company, UCPL has now diversified into full-fledged events and brand promotions, striving to create and mange innovative concepts, thus offering their client complete 360-degree solutions. 2.2 Using the blogging concept to sell wikis: If a person understands what a blog is, the wiki may be compared and contrasted to a blog. A blog enables a single person to get a message out. A wiki enables a group of persons to assemble a body of knowledge. A wiki can be presented as a blog with one major post (the purpose, topic, idea of the wiki) that others can build knowledge around, without the initiating post getting buried in archives as new posts arrive and are displayed in reverse chronological order. A wiki may be sold as a horizontal blog platform. Blogs are vertical, recent updates on top, all others shoved down into oblivion, with only tags, categorical sidebar listings, or site search to dredge them up again. But a wiki distributes all the information in a more horizontal, flat, single surface that stretches through pages spread out, not sedimented. The wiki may be sold as a web site set up for idea construction; it is team-architected rather than single-authored. Blogs tend to be univocal and identifiable; one known person expounding a position, with audience members invited to comment on the sermonizing, but not really authorized to begin their own topic threads. Wikis are multimodal and transiently anonymous, many unknown people working together. A wiki, thus is like a super-democratized blog. A blog where the walls between bloggers are audience is dissolved. The audience members become the contributing authors and the originating authors become the audience, and vice vers a. 2.3 Modern Trends in Working Styles: Another interesting way of presenting wikis has to do with the fact that they allow for easy remote working. One of the main advantages a wiki provides is the fact that it is available from any internet-connected web browser, at any time. Information can be worked on efficiently in an asynchronous manner. In this regard, wikis solve tricky coordination problems. Whats more, a wiki provides a virtual space where all relevant business information can be stored. Hence people working from different places, at different times of the day can still end up with a coherent document. A wiki is more efficient than e-mail for the resulting document can almost be exploited immediately and its last version is always on top (which is quite useful when working with more then one person). 2.4 The Advantages of Asynchronous Communication: Wiki content growth and increasing value in an organization by facilitating asynchronous communication which is often more convenient than other forms of collaboration that require face time or same time. On the other extreme, making large batches of content (Power Point, White Papers) are inefficient simply because they require the author to provide context and content, some of which may be error laden or out-of-date. Wikis allow smaller batches of contribution to appear at any time, thus relieving two bottlenecks to collaboration. Add to this the fact that they are completely auditable for contribution, and the need for creating credit concurrently is removed. 2.5 ROI on social software: Being able to make a business case will be very important to all convince for every enterprises and after than to make a start on adopting social software. Charlene Li has a contribution about ROI on blogging. But Return on investment has to be calculated for all sorts of social software. Then again, ROI is becoming increasingly irrelevant when online collaboration tools and social media platforms are available for free, or at extremely low cost. Many companies find they can get along just fine with the free versions of blogs (lBlogger), podcasting (Odeo), video uploading and player embeds (YouTube), and wikis (Socialtext). ROT (return on time) is the far more challenging aspect of social software. It takes a significant investment in time to become known in the blogosphere, for example. Bloggers must spend large amounts of time in researching topics, writing posts, linking to other Blogs, interacting with comment posters, reading other Blogs, posting comments at other Blogs, producing multimedia content, emailing other bloggers, and adding features and functionalities to a blog. All this in addition to remaining informed about ones industry or field of study. Warning top management about falling behind in competitive technology should be sufficient to begin a case for online collaboration tools. Explaining that the trends are massively aligned, user-generated content, customer co-creation of product, corporate contributions to innovation, and universal content utopia, advocates of social software and user media can point to great examples of Peer Pioneers companies leading the way: PG, IBM/Linux, Second Life, Digg, Jigsaw, YouTube, and InnoCentive. 2.6 Successful Strategies for Selling Ad Space on Low-Traffic Websites: Upon first thinking about it, the idea of selling advertising on a website or blog with limited traffic seems a bit daft. After all, arent most advertisers interested in putting their product in front of the highest number of eyeballs possible? Approaching them with piddly visitor numbers seems like a surefire way to end up in the deleted folder. But though it may feel like putting the cart before the horse, there are many good reasons and ways to sell ad space on low-traffic websites. What you need to always keep in mind is that, while advertisers are drawn to high traffic numbers, they desire something else even more: high conversion rates. There are plenty of success stories of websites that have limited traffic but sell a ton of advertising. These websites succeed because they do one thing well: they deliver the right type of customer to the right type of business. Space selling concept: * Take a close look at your website Whether they sell landscape or skyscraper ads, text ads, video or any other format, they have to offer something of value before you can start to sell advertising space. They know this sound obvious, but it always surprises them how many publishers and online media owners come up with a niche product that nobody wants to buy advertising space in! If they are going to make a fortune in selling subscriptions or other membership related offerings, then fine but in most cases, forget about their hobby or leisure interest, unless it is unique and offers a great angle. Do make sure their product is going to be attractive to a large enough audience before they attempt to sell advertising and if they have a fair bit of competition, make sure that they have some unique selling points and formats. As they move into Web 2.0 the requirements from a lot of advertisers will change. If they can offer a new format or idea and take the hard work out of it for th e advertiser, they are onto a winner. If they dont, theyll lose out to their rivals. * Choosing ad formats that will sell Not all ad formats sell well on ALL websites. Put another way, some ads work better on consumer websites than they do on business sites and visa versa. The trick is to test their ads with different messages, fonts, colours and designs. This research will be well worth it in the end and can make the difference between making a decent revenue stream and making a substantial one. One of the biggest things to bear in mind is where the advertising should be placed. If they sell products on their site, there is very little point displaying adverts, which could detract potential customers away from their own sales message. So, the first thing they need to do is highlight the sections and pages where they are happy to accept advertising. When they have done that, they can then take a look at design and placement. Always think of the customer when you think about designs, placements and tracking. Make it simple for advertisers to find and relate to the f ormats, as they will have to justify the ad spend to their bosses. * Reporting and statistics This is a vital part of their business! Remember, communication is the key to long-term success. If they dont have a good reporting and stats package in place, then they will find it difficult to show their customers what they are/could be getting from their services. This can take a bit of time to set up, but it really is worth the time and money they put into it. Once in place, it can be automated to match their business model and to provide an essential package for their existing and potential customers. Remember out of sight, out of mind leave it to their competitors to make this mistake! * What are their competitors doing well? Even if they are offering a good service, they bet there is something they can learn from their competition. Some media companies do have the luxury of having someone w Analysing Existing Trends of Space Selling Analysing Existing Trends of Space Selling Abstract If an ad is created and placed in the media, the costs of creation and time or space in the media must be paid for. This is a major area in which advertising departs from public relations. Advertising doesnt have that problem. If time or space is bought in the media, the ads (as long as they follow the guidelines set down for good taste, legal products and services, etc.) will appear. The drawback is that ads are clearly designed to extol the virtues of products and companies, and any ad is perceived by consumers as at least partly puffery. There are two basic ways to sell anything: personally and non-personally. Personal selling requires the seller and the buyer to get together. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. The first advantage is time: the seller has time to discuss in detail everything about the product. The buyer has time to ask questions, get answers, and examine evidence for or against purchase. A second advantage of personal selling is that the seller can see them. Finally, the seller can easily locate potential buyers. If they enter a store, they probably have an interest in something that store sells. Street vendors and door-to-door sellers can simply shout at possibilities, like the Hyde Park vendors who call out. From there on they fit their message to the individual customer, taking all the time a customer is willing to give them. From the above, it appears that personal selling is much better than advertising, which is non-personal. This is true. Advertising has none of the advantages of personal selling: there is very little time in which to present the sales message, there is no way to know just who the customer is or how she is responding to the message, the message cannot be changed in mid-course to suit the customers reactions. Products, services or ideas are the things that advertisers want consumers to buy (in the case of ideas, buy means accept or agree with as well as lay out hard, cold cash). However, there is more involved in products or services than simply items for purchase. A product is not merely its function. It is actually a bundle of values, what the product means to the consumer. That bundle may contain the products function, but also the social, psychological, economic or whatever other values are important to the consumer. Chapter 1: Introduction In an era when physical tail space is still at a premium, constrained by planning restrictions and rising costs, productive use of space is a key indicator of buying and merchandising success, and high space productivity depends on offering the right range, in a logical layout, with products available and easy for the customer to find. Decisions about how much space to devote to each product line and its location in the store play an important role in the pursuit of merchandising success. The aim of this chapter is to provide an insight into this process. 1.1 Space selling management: Space selling constraint applies to all retailers, but in non-store retailing the constraints are different. A mail order retailer, for example, has page space and the number of pages in a publication as constraining factors, whilst a TV shopping channel needs to break down the airtime to different products. However, internet retailing offers great opportunities for adding space without much additional resource input. The main constraint on the amount of space used in a virtual outlet is the customers attention span. In spite of this additional freedom, the objectives of space allocation are essentially the same no matter which retail format is used. The management of retail space is concerned with a number of key objectives. The first is to optimize both short-term and long term returns on the investment cost of retail pace. The second is to provide a logical, convenient and inspiring interface between the product range and the customer. This can be particularly important in a large store, where customers can quite easily become overwhelmed and lost. Another objective is to make sure that the right selection of products is available; that products fit into the retail space and that stock-outs are avoided. Choice for the customer is maximized when the best selection for them is put into the available space. Space allocation aim has an important role to play in communicating the retail brand, When ice is managed centrally it helps a chain of retail outlets to achieve visual consistency, so that customers arc reassured by the similarity of the store layout and shelf appearance. 1.2 The Space Management Process: A retailer goes through a number of stages when allocating space to products. These four stages will they used as a framework for the Inclusion of discussion topics within this chapter. Measuring Space Selling: Although space in a store outlet is three dimensional, retail space is often measured in square, rather than cubic units, Square units arc appropriate where, for example in fashion retailing, a variety of single tier fixtures stand on the shop Iloor (see FigureS. I). Many fixtures, however, arc multilevel and so more appropriate ways of measuring space to allocate might be on the basis of linear or cubic footage (see Figures 8.2 and 8.3). Measurements of space that are more specific to individual retailers might be useful, such as the number of pages to be published in a catalogue or the total number of fixtures available in an outlet. Space Productivity: The two principal measures of retail success arc sales and profits. Sales volume and profitability can also he measured in relation to the amount of space used to generate those levels of sales and profits. This can then be compared with the level of financial investment in that space. The resulting measures express the productivity of retail space. Sales (or profits) per square meter is a commonly used measure of retail space productivity, which is an important concept in the evaluation of retail product management performance. Dividing the space into selling areas: At this stage, space management is concerned with allocating space to different product areas, defined according to individual retail businesses, but usually on the basis of product (department or category. The amount of space will he determined to a greater extent on previous performance indicators, typically sales values. However, sonic products, because of their physical characteristics may need disproportionate amounts of space in relation to sales. In a department store, home furnishings may need a relatively large amount of space to generate a good level of sales because the products are bulky, a large variety of merchandise is needed for customers to choose from and a lot of display space is needed to do the product justice. On the other hand, jewellery is a high value product category that needs relatively small amounts of space for display and selling purposes. The stage a product category is at in its life cycle is likely to influence the space allocation at this level. If a category is growing, then more space should be allocated, whereas a declining category needs to have its space rationalizes. Measuring selling space using square metres Using linear measurement for space selling Using cubic measurement for space selling Typical â‚ ¬Ã‹Å"hotspots In a Space selling Particularly evident in department stores, where specialist products such as furniture and home entertainment, as well as hairdressing salons and customer service departments   located on basement or upper floors, Customer flow can also be encouraged by locating high demand items throughout the store layout, with plenty of impulse items located in between. Retailers need to find a balance between maximizing sales of high demand products, generating flow around slower selling products (which may have higher profit margins), and providing logic and convenience in the layout for the customer, Product adjacencies: A logical route through the different product categories or departments is part of a customer focused offer, and can encourage linked sales. For example, in a baby equipment retailer like Mother cares it makes sense for merchandise to be grouped into themes for space planning purposes. These product themes are then presented in a logical way to the customer as they move through the store. Products for immediate needs, such as feeding and general baby care come first, followed by bath time and clothes; and then on to the more expensive, one purchases in the travel and nursery departments. The barbecue season provides a good opportunity for retailers to generate interest and sell distinctive groups of complementary products. Some of these products are strictly seasonal: the barbecues themselves and the briquettes for example. However, other products can be given additional space allocations in the seasonal aisle as part of the â‚ ¬Ã‹Å"barbecue category. Firelighters, matches, marinades, sauces, disposable tableware and beer are products that are found around the supermarket throughout the year, but are given a boost In the barbecue season by being merchandised as complementary goods. It is estimated that guests take an average equivalent of eight drinks when they are Invited to a barbecue, and â‚ ¬Ã‹Å"studies (bulk packed small bottles of beer) are particularly popular for barbecues as they are easy to handle, â‚ ¬Ã‹Å"women friendly, and easily chilled. Whilst the majority of barbecue beer is bulk purchased In advance from supermarkets, and then chilled down at home, convenience store retailers are often used for guests to buy drinks en route, and so providing chilled beer becomes important for this type of retail format. Allocation space to individual product: Having made a plan for the layout of departments or categories within the retail outlet, the next stage is to make a decision about exactly how individual product lines should be displayed within the outlet, whether the product is going to sit on a fixture, or be represented by a photograph within a page spread. Various approaches to space allocation are discussed, for example by using sales or profits as a guideline, some practical challenges arc considered, and the relationship between category management and space allocation is explored in this section. Allocating space on the basis of sale: The guiding principle here is the more a product sells, the more space it should be given. Retaining a high stock service level will depend on retailers ensuring that they devote enough space to a high demand product, such as milk, to prevent replenishment of that item becoming inefficient and inconvenient to the customer. A fast selling item however may not be one that a retailer makes much profit on (again milk is a good example), and so they may decide to allocate more space to their profitable lines. In taking this approach, however, the retailer is likely to encounter the problem of not devoting enough space to fast moving lines, so a balance has to be achieved. Another decision that has to be made is which â‚ ¬Ã‹Å"sales figure should he used for the allocation exercise, Alternatives are historical sales figures (for that outlet); market share figures; or projected sales figures. Store A is a branch of clothing retailer XYZ in a medium sized town centre. Ten miles away there Is a regional shopping centre where branch B Is located and twelve miles In the opposite direction, branch store C Is located In the heart of a city centre shopping complex. The policy of retailer XYZ is to offer a returns policy In all of its stores for products bought in any outlet nationwide (including those purchased from its web site). Shoppers from the town where store A is located, often take shopping trips to the neighboring centres, where B and C are located, especially if they are wanting to make a major purchase such as a coat or a suit, and require a wide choice of retail stores to select from. Unfortunately for store A, any unwanted products usually end up being returned to the customers local store. This has the effect of distorting the sales figures for store A, upon which space allocation decisions are made. Unfortunately, the retailers information system does not recogniz e the difference between a returned garment from the original store and one returned from a different outlet. In order to counteract this problem, which can be quite widespread, a retailer would need to allocate space on the basis of estimated sales rather than historical sales. Space elasticity: Allocating space according to a measure of sales assumes that there a relationship between the amount of space and the rate of sales, this relationship is termed the space elasticity of a product and it refers to the extent to which the sales of a product will change in response to a changed. In the amount of space allocated to that product Research suggests that space elasticity not uniform amongst products, or across stores or departmental locations. Using profit measures as a basis for space allocation ill prevent a business manager from allocating large amounts of best quality retail space to unprofitable products. They could mean, however, that a retailer was allocating unnecessarily large amounts of space to products that would sell as well with a smaller space. Profitable lines may not in fact sell very quickly at all, and allocating extra facings or shelves of the product may have very little impact on the sales of the product. In this case the quality of the space becomes important, so the retailer can locate high profit items in locations around the stare that arc better selling. The relationship between the sales and generated by different products, and suggests how space and ranging decisions should be made accordingly. Allocating space according to sales, and in particular, product profitability, is working with the interests of the retailer, and not the customer in mind and therefore may suggest an illogical and prese ntation of products. Long term profitability depends on customer loyalty, which is dependent (among many other things) upon being satisfied with the presentation and assortment of products. Fine tuning the allocation of space within a retail outlet therefore requires extensive amounts of high quality data, together with a pragmatic and customer orientated managerial approach at store level. Productivity and efficiency and towards are visual display improvements. Once an optimum level of efficiency is achieved, space planners can move onto the objective of making their products and fixtures more attractive than their competitors. Some of the latest planning systems are able to simulate the entire store environment, so that the product manager can view an attractive plan in virtual reality and make any adjustments they fed are necessary. Recent space optimization technology applications offer the opportunity to create specific platform. Space Allocation and Category Management: Although the performance of individual product lines is Important to retailers in terms of the rate of sales which influences availability and the levels of contribution to turnover and profitability, the focus of performance In many retail organizations is at product category, rather than individual SKU level. A retailer is more interested in overall levels of sales and profits generated by their product range, rather than the sales of a single line that might be of interest to its manufacturer. The product category has emerged as a manageable classification for most aspects of product management, and certainly applies in the case of space management. In fact, many would argue that space planning and allocation and the systems that drive the process can only be properly implemented in tandem with a category management approach. Category management seeks to optimize the depth and variety of a product assortment within a specified amount of retail space and to generate maximum profitability by seeking efficiency in the operations that support the depth and variety. This includes replenishing to guarantee availability and adding new products and running promotions to generate customer interest and increase short term sales of particular products, without harming the overall profitability of the category. Space allocation systems allow (Inc tuning of a category assortment, provide the means by which product and category performance can be monitored and analyzed. and by using the programme output the plans can he easily communicated and successfully implemented within the various retail out lets. In some categories key brands are dominant, in which case their presence needs to have immediate impact within the space allocation plan. Other categories are very competitive, in which case low price, budget own brand and promotional products strongly on the promotional. Many businesses use the principle that shoppers will a category from bottom to top, and left to right, and so well-known brands arc placed on middle and lower shelves on the left of the category space in order to provide strong cues to the customer. Premium products meanwhile are placed on high level shelves, selecting their high quality positioning, and the fact that the customer for premium products will seek out the better quality product within the category. In some categories the customer decision-making processes are quite unique and nerd to he fully reflected within space allocation plans. For example, the decision sequence for wine is generally as follows: Colour Country of origin Price Level - Brand Whereas the decision sequence for yoghurt might be: Natural or flavored type (low fat, standard or luxury) - Price Level Brand Name These decision processes should determine how products arc displayed within the category space. In certain modes, if the product is maintained in the offer, long-term customer satisfaction will be retained In spite of the Individual poor product performance. Therefore it is the stores personality traits that determine the core product ranges, and not the size; the size of the outlet determines the width and depth of the selling type that would appeal to the local customers, Stores are empowered with the merchandise that allows them to drive local market opportunities and local suppliers can also be involved in the process of providing tailored products for individual store needs, As retailers offer more formats from which customers may choose to shop, format preferences and product preferences can be matched, For example, Tesco found that its online shoppers tended to from more affluent backgrounds, and so the on-line product offer is tailored accordingly, with a large range of wines and few value lines, For many small retailers the cost of a computerized space planning is prohibitive, and so many rely on basic sales and profit margin analysis combined with trial and error in space allocation decision making. 1.3 Summary: A great deal of space selling is carried out in order to achieve relatively short-term retail objectives, such as maximizing the benefits of a product or departmental promotion, meeting seasonal sales figures, or improving branch profitability. However, the long term strategic objectives of the retailer provide the framework within which these decisions are taken. Space allocations must be in line with the overall positioning strategy of the retailer; the variety and depth of assortment and the stock availability service level should not be compromised by the need for short-term productivity gains. In addition, the arrangement of products around the store needs to be considered in the light of the contribution that product items, brands and categories make to the positioning statement, it may be necessary to over-represent new products or to allocate extra space to growing or seasonal categories in order to reinforce an innovative product positioning strategy. The local customer prof ile may also lead to exceptional space allocations in an effort to meet individuals requirements more closely. However, the retailers space is the extent of its empire, and every inch of that space must be used to its maximum effect even if, as we shall see in the next two chapters, some space is designed to he devoid of products. The measurement of that effect, however, must be appropriate in terms of the overall aims for that space. Chapter 2: Literature Review Space Selling: Space selling refers to space available for advertising in different media. The advertising media available are print, electronic outdoor. The space available and intend for advertising in different media. Decision about how much space to devote to each product line and its location plays an important role in the pursuit of merchandising success. The aim of this thesis is to have an insight into this process. First will have to understand that the services of every publication/channel, costs of space selling. The ads featured in it. And a space seller to sell that advertising space/time to potential advertisers. 2.1 UCPL acquires marketing and space-selling rights for Lemon TV and Jhankar TV: K Sera Seras recently launched free-to-air channels music channel Lemon TV, and Hindi movie channel Jhankar TV have appointed Universal Communication Pvt. Ltd (UCPL) for their marketing and space-selling rights. UCPL is a player in the space of airtime selling and marketing of serials, television programmes and feature films for various television networks in India. Jhankar TV will particularly target the Hindi speaking audience. This is a channel that would reach to the audience of cable and satellite in UP, Bihar, MP and Rajasthan. On the other hand, for Lemon TV, they are planning to have different kinds of event and programmes like Lemon party. This will bring in more interactivity too with the relevant TG. When asked about the marketing challenges for these new channels, Every new channel in India right now faces the challenges of clutter and telling the advertiser what difference does this channel bring to the table, and what is the value addition. These channels are also in the same situation and we are confident about overcoming these challenges. UCPL is associated with media and advertising agencies like Mindshare, Mediaedge:cia, Madison, McCann Erickson, Lintas, etc., and with clients like Hindustan Unilever, Procter Gamble, and Godrej, among others. As a company, UCPL has now diversified into full-fledged events and brand promotions, striving to create and mange innovative concepts, thus offering their client complete 360-degree solutions. 2.2 Using the blogging concept to sell wikis: If a person understands what a blog is, the wiki may be compared and contrasted to a blog. A blog enables a single person to get a message out. A wiki enables a group of persons to assemble a body of knowledge. A wiki can be presented as a blog with one major post (the purpose, topic, idea of the wiki) that others can build knowledge around, without the initiating post getting buried in archives as new posts arrive and are displayed in reverse chronological order. A wiki may be sold as a horizontal blog platform. Blogs are vertical, recent updates on top, all others shoved down into oblivion, with only tags, categorical sidebar listings, or site search to dredge them up again. But a wiki distributes all the information in a more horizontal, flat, single surface that stretches through pages spread out, not sedimented. The wiki may be sold as a web site set up for idea construction; it is team-architected rather than single-authored. Blogs tend to be univocal and identifiable; one known person expounding a position, with audience members invited to comment on the sermonizing, but not really authorized to begin their own topic threads. Wikis are multimodal and transiently anonymous, many unknown people working together. A wiki, thus is like a super-democratized blog. A blog where the walls between bloggers are audience is dissolved. The audience members become the contributing authors and the originating authors become the audience, and vice vers a. 2.3 Modern Trends in Working Styles: Another interesting way of presenting wikis has to do with the fact that they allow for easy remote working. One of the main advantages a wiki provides is the fact that it is available from any internet-connected web browser, at any time. Information can be worked on efficiently in an asynchronous manner. In this regard, wikis solve tricky coordination problems. Whats more, a wiki provides a virtual space where all relevant business information can be stored. Hence people working from different places, at different times of the day can still end up with a coherent document. A wiki is more efficient than e-mail for the resulting document can almost be exploited immediately and its last version is always on top (which is quite useful when working with more then one person). 2.4 The Advantages of Asynchronous Communication: Wiki content growth and increasing value in an organization by facilitating asynchronous communication which is often more convenient than other forms of collaboration that require face time or same time. On the other extreme, making large batches of content (Power Point, White Papers) are inefficient simply because they require the author to provide context and content, some of which may be error laden or out-of-date. Wikis allow smaller batches of contribution to appear at any time, thus relieving two bottlenecks to collaboration. Add to this the fact that they are completely auditable for contribution, and the need for creating credit concurrently is removed. 2.5 ROI on social software: Being able to make a business case will be very important to all convince for every enterprises and after than to make a start on adopting social software. Charlene Li has a contribution about ROI on blogging. But Return on investment has to be calculated for all sorts of social software. Then again, ROI is becoming increasingly irrelevant when online collaboration tools and social media platforms are available for free, or at extremely low cost. Many companies find they can get along just fine with the free versions of blogs (lBlogger), podcasting (Odeo), video uploading and player embeds (YouTube), and wikis (Socialtext). ROT (return on time) is the far more challenging aspect of social software. It takes a significant investment in time to become known in the blogosphere, for example. Bloggers must spend large amounts of time in researching topics, writing posts, linking to other Blogs, interacting with comment posters, reading other Blogs, posting comments at other Blogs, producing multimedia content, emailing other bloggers, and adding features and functionalities to a blog. All this in addition to remaining informed about ones industry or field of study. Warning top management about falling behind in competitive technology should be sufficient to begin a case for online collaboration tools. Explaining that the trends are massively aligned, user-generated content, customer co-creation of product, corporate contributions to innovation, and universal content utopia, advocates of social software and user media can point to great examples of Peer Pioneers companies leading the way: PG, IBM/Linux, Second Life, Digg, Jigsaw, YouTube, and InnoCentive. 2.6 Successful Strategies for Selling Ad Space on Low-Traffic Websites: Upon first thinking about it, the idea of selling advertising on a website or blog with limited traffic seems a bit daft. After all, arent most advertisers interested in putting their product in front of the highest number of eyeballs possible? Approaching them with piddly visitor numbers seems like a surefire way to end up in the deleted folder. But though it may feel like putting the cart before the horse, there are many good reasons and ways to sell ad space on low-traffic websites. What you need to always keep in mind is that, while advertisers are drawn to high traffic numbers, they desire something else even more: high conversion rates. There are plenty of success stories of websites that have limited traffic but sell a ton of advertising. These websites succeed because they do one thing well: they deliver the right type of customer to the right type of business. Space selling concept: * Take a close look at your website Whether they sell landscape or skyscraper ads, text ads, video or any other format, they have to offer something of value before you can start to sell advertising space. They know this sound obvious, but it always surprises them how many publishers and online media owners come up with a niche product that nobody wants to buy advertising space in! If they are going to make a fortune in selling subscriptions or other membership related offerings, then fine but in most cases, forget about their hobby or leisure interest, unless it is unique and offers a great angle. Do make sure their product is going to be attractive to a large enough audience before they attempt to sell advertising and if they have a fair bit of competition, make sure that they have some unique selling points and formats. As they move into Web 2.0 the requirements from a lot of advertisers will change. If they can offer a new format or idea and take the hard work out of it for th e advertiser, they are onto a winner. If they dont, theyll lose out to their rivals. * Choosing ad formats that will sell Not all ad formats sell well on ALL websites. Put another way, some ads work better on consumer websites than they do on business sites and visa versa. The trick is to test their ads with different messages, fonts, colours and designs. This research will be well worth it in the end and can make the difference between making a decent revenue stream and making a substantial one. One of the biggest things to bear in mind is where the advertising should be placed. If they sell products on their site, there is very little point displaying adverts, which could detract potential customers away from their own sales message. So, the first thing they need to do is highlight the sections and pages where they are happy to accept advertising. When they have done that, they can then take a look at design and placement. Always think of the customer when you think about designs, placements and tracking. Make it simple for advertisers to find and relate to the f ormats, as they will have to justify the ad spend to their bosses. * Reporting and statistics This is a vital part of their business! Remember, communication is the key to long-term success. If they dont have a good reporting and stats package in place, then they will find it difficult to show their customers what they are/could be getting from their services. This can take a bit of time to set up, but it really is worth the time and money they put into it. Once in place, it can be automated to match their business model and to provide an essential package for their existing and potential customers. Remember out of sight, out of mind leave it to their competitors to make this mistake! * What are their competitors doing well? Even if they are offering a good service, they bet there is something they can learn from their competition. Some media companies do have the luxury of having someone w

Why Drugs Should Be Legal :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  America is wasting it’s money and resources. It’s trying restrict something on which restrictions don’t have any effects: drugs. People who don’t use recreational drugs don’t do so because of the health risks; people who do use drugs would whether or not they are legal. The fact that they are illegal makes little difference. Nevertheless, $15,000,000,000 goes directly into drug prohibition every year, and has very little effect. Very much money is spent to pay police narcotics officers, fund the D.E.A., and house drug-offenders in prison. The prisons are full of drug-related criminals, and violent offenders go free earlier because of this. Which would you prefer walking the streets, a rapist, or a potsmoker?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Legalizing recreational drugs does not mean making drugs accesible to all people. The drugs that are legal today, alcohol and tobacco (nicotene) aren’t available to just everyone; they are regulated. Only certain people are allowed to buy them. Since the drug trade is unregulated, drugs are sold anywhere they can be (e.g. schools), allowing children to have access to them. If these drugs were illegal, than that trade would stagnate, and children wouldn’t have such easy access to them. It makes sense†¦ do you ever see people in schools selling beer or cigarrettes? Also, the usual cause of drug overdose is the fact that a person cannot know the potency of the drug he/she is taking. There are no standards because the trade of drugs is illegal in the first place. If they were legal, there would be a standard of quality for all drugs, regulated by the FDA.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The state of Georgia has the highest excise tax on liquor of any state. It also has the lowest tax on gasoline (which is good especially now with gas prices the highest ever). If drugs were legal, the government could place such an excise tax on them. In addition to freeing up money used for their prohibition, this extra money could fund the real problems of America, and eliminate our national debt quite quickly.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Doing drugs is dangerous, yes†¦ but so is tanning, smoking, drinking, chewing tobacco†¦ the list goes on and on. People are still free to do these things, notwithstanding the fact that they may be stupid acts. The ratio of deaths from tobacco versus drugs is 425:1, and that of alcohol versus drugs is 50:1. Drugs are less dangerous than both of these legal things, and people are still free to do them and not free to do drugs?