Strategic Marketing and Marketing planning process Essay

Strategic Marketing and Marketing planning process - Essay Example Therefore, it can be said that the goal of strategic marketing is in defining the course the business should take in order to achieve its strategic goals. At the same time, unlike tactical marketing, which is focused on strategy implementation, strategic marketing involves actual development of the strategy to be implemented. Based on company’s business objectives, strategic marketing deals with determining who the potential customers are, why they would buy the product or service, what it would take them to purchase and so on (Ignite Marketing Group, LLC, 2009). Consequently, strategic marketing performs such functions as market research and segmentation, targeting, and positioning the product. Completed, these tasks then become the basis for conducting an effective marketing campaign, which, in order to be effective, have be well planned. The marketing planning process, therefore, is the process of planning a marketing campaign for the product or service on the basis of information gathered from market research. However, the very first data to consider in the process of marketing planning is the overall business’ goals and objectives, because the actual goal of marketing is to achieve the set goals (Rooney, 2004). On this matter White and Uva (2000) distinguish three levels of planning activities that help businesses in defining their marketing strategies. According to the authors (White and Uva, 2000), they are: However, the strategic marketing plan, being the link between organization’s objectives and practical implementation of chosen strategies, is an essential element of the planning process, because it determines particular and precise goals and strategies to be implemented to achieve those goals. The very first thing to define in the process of marketing planning is company’s mission, meaning its orientation in the market – what

Other Word Formation Processes English Language Essay

Other Word Formation Processes English Language Essay The language learners referred to in this essay are software engineers, in the age group of 23-26, tasked with developing software products for the travel industry. They were selected on the basis of their performance in a language assessment and identified as intermediate users of the language. All of them had studied English for 10 years in school and later at the university English was the medium of instruction. A few of them were risk takers, ready to take on tasks regardless of any mistakes they may make. There were those who were spurred on by the possibility of their deficient language skills impacting their career graph; they were also ready for self-learning and willing to take responsibility for their learning. Some were hesitant, unsure of their knowledge and afraid to make mistakes. All of them were, however, comfortable with technical language, but were very diffident to face situations that called for regular communication. They needed help with everyday vocabulary to communicate effectively with colleagues and clients. Word parts If we consider words as independent/freestanding units with meaning, a notion proposed by McCarthy (1990), then we can see that these units of meaning can further be broken down and re-combined to form other words. Though the word cancelled is an independently meaningful item, under closer observation it becomes clear that this word consists of two units cancel and the past tense marker -ed. The linguistic item cancel is a freestanding word in English, but there is no such word as -ed in English, even though -ed is a meaning-bearing unit. Such linguistic items that are not freestanding are said to be bound and these forms can occur only in combination with other forms. The two meaningful parts, cancel and -ed are called morphemes. Morphemes Katamba (2003) defines morphemes as the atoms with which words are built. Morphemes are the smallest unit of lexical and grammatical meaning and they are realized by morphs, as morphemes do not have a physical representation. A single morpheme can be manifested as multiple complementary morphs in distinct phonological or morphological contexts. Let us look at the past tense marker -ed to understand the distribution of these complementary morphs known as allomorphs. Free morphemes can stand alone as words; whereas bound morphemes such as -ed are only used in combination with other morphemes. There are word forms which have but a single unbound morpheme and others which consists of more than one morpheme. Words like talk, eat and mend are examples of freestanding morphemes and words such as predictable and reflection are formed by combining many morphemes. Affixation Affixes are bound morphemes attached to a stems either to create a new word or a word form. Affixation of morphemes can be either inflectional or derivational. Inflectional affixes Katamba (2003) posits that the English language has minimal inflections because of its tendency to be an isolating language. The few inflections it has are all suffixes. These suffixes are bound morphemes and are attached to the stem to inflect or change words to express grammatical features, such as the changes in tense, number, possession, and degrees of adjectives. There are 8 inflectional suffixes in English and they are: Derivational Affixes In English derivational affixes include both prefixes and suffixes. Katamba (2003) says that the purpose of derivation is to create lexical items and not to produce grammatical units that will fit in a given syntactic position. The three important derivational processes in English are: affixation, conversion and compounding. Affixation is one of the commonest methods of forming words in English. Derivational affixes can be either prefixes, those that are added before the base, or suffixes, that are attached after the base. Word forming processes like creating nouns from verbs, adjectives from verbs and verbs from adjectives are examples of a few derivational practices in English. Derivational affixes are different from inflexional affixes in many ways: They change the word class as well as the meaning of a word to which it is linked energy (n) +- ise -Æ’Â   energise (v) Even though they combine to create a new word they are not affected by syntactic relations outside of the word, they can be separated and recombined with other morphemes to form other combinations. Stem Suffix Derived word Govern (v) -able Governable (adj) Enjoy (v) -ment Enjoyment Derivational morphemes can be attached only to certain stems. Stem Suffix Derived word Violin -ist Violinist Drum -ist *drumist Drum -er Drummer *drumist is not an acceptable word. Other word formation processes Conversion or zero derivation is the predominant method of generating lexical items in English. In this process a lexical item is assigned to a new syntactic category. The word permit can be used either as a noun or as a verb; the phonological representation and the grammatical context in which it is placed are the two aspects that can alert the change in the word-class. (Permit (v) and perMit (n). Crystal (2012) quotes from Shakespeare, Petruchio is Kated as an example of conversion the name of a person becoming a verb to further his argument that conversion was a customary word-formation process even during Shakespeares time. Compounding is the process of joining two bases to create a new word; of the two words, one which is syntactically dominant is considered the head and the other as the modifier. Generally the modifier is placed in front of the head and any suffix that might later be added to the compound word is attached to the head. Compound words are different from phrases; the meaning of a compound word, unlike a phrase, is not the sum of the meaning of the base units that form the word. Iin a compound word the primary stress is on the first word and in a phrase the primary stress is on the last word. Phrase Compound word Meaning of the compound . Blue print Blueprint an early plan or design for a project green house Greenhouse a building used for growing plants that need warmth Should word parts be learned? A cost/benefit analysis of the learning of word parts should be reason enough for a learner of English language to study word parts. Nation quotes from Roberts (1964), Grinstead (1925) and Bird (1987,1990) to point out that around 60% of the English vocabulary is derived from German, French, Latin and Greek and that a large proportion of these words make use of affixes. The analysis of the LOB Corpus carried out by Bird revealed that 97% of the words in the LOB corpus were derived from around 2,000 roots. Nation maintains that the origins of the English vocabulary and the frequency of word parts validate the study of word parts. The two arguments levelled against the teaching/learning of word parts are based on the contention that, the effort involved in learning word parts is not commensurate with language output. A word is not a sum of its parts The first argument against the teaching of word parts is that the meaning of a word is not the sum of its parts (Deighton, 1970); This argument has been countered by White, Power and White (1989) drawing on their own as well as Nagy and Andersons (1984) empirical evidence that most of the affixed words probably at least 80% convey the meaning their parts suggest. Katamba (2003) argues that compositionality is the key to understanding a word. He says that if we know the meaning of the smaller units which make up the larger units we can decipher the meaning of the whole. For example, if we know the meaning of the suffix -ful (filled with x), and the meaning of the base to which these suffixes are attached, then the meaning of words like useful, careful, fearful and cheerful become self-explanatory. Most of the morphemes that form a word have regular/stable meaning; for example, the prefix re- means again in almost all the words in which it occurs. In the light of the empirical evidence and the example we saw we can conclude that the meaning of most of the English words is what its parts suggest and therefore knowledge of the meaning of the parts can help a learner understand a word across contexts and usage. If we were to extend this argument further we could say that this knowledge along with the contextual clues would be useful in decoding even the metaphorical meaning of a word; a head hunter would thus lose the sinister overtones of the past and acquire the current meaning of someone who recruits people into key business positions. Word families in the lexicon The next argument against teaching/learning of word parts is that the knowing the parts of a word may not familiarise a learner with all the members of that word family (Schmitt 1998, 1999, Schmitt Meara 1997). Nation argues that the notion of word family is psychologically real and a word is to be seen as a member of a word family. Knowledge of the word parts can help the learners understand a word in its relation to the other members of the family. For instance, knowledge of the various inflections of English and the meaning of the base of the word predict can familiarise a learner with all the possible combinations (family members) of predict; predict- predicted- predicting- predictable and prediction are just some of the members of that family. Nagy, Anderson, Schommer, Scott, and Stallman (1989) points out that the speed of recognition of a word is based on the frequency of occurrence of the members of that word family. They quote the findings of Stanners, Neiser, Hernon, Hall (1979) to advance their argument that related words are linked in the mental lexicon. So there are linked entries for create, creates created and creation and accessing any word from this family can partly activate other family members. Word parts are not just linked in the mental lexicon, but morphologically ordered to represent the relation. Interpreting the meaning Another argument against learning word parts is that L2 learners using this for guessing the meaning of a word might cause the learner to misinterpret the word. Schmitt quotes Haynes (1993) to validate this argument; Haynes found that learners continued with the wrong meaning even though it didnt contribute to the context. For example Inflammable is often misinterpreted to mean non-flammable. Clarke and Nation (1980) caution that word parts strategy should be used to verify the guesses drawn from the context. Furthermore, knowledge of the word parts empowers the learner by teaching him to apply his understanding at the receptive and productive level. At the receptive level it teaches him a) to identify the different components of a complex word, b) to be aware that these word parts can be used to make other words, c) how the meaning of the different parts combine to make a new meaning, and d) how the sum of the parts relates to the dictionary meaning. At the productive level it makes him aware of how the formal changes can affect the spelling, pronunciation and the word class of the base when a complex word is formed. (Nation) The challenges Learning word parts presents a set of challenges to language learners. The greatest challenge is that of time and exposure. Studies conducted by Nagy, Diakody, Anderson (1993) point out that L1 learners do not acquire proficiency in morphology until their high school; if this takes so long to develop in L1 learners despite their advantage of maximum exposure, then L2 learners are likely to take more time to learn this aspect (Schmitt). Even though the learners in my group had studied English for ten years, they have learned inflectional suffixes only as part of grammar exercises and have never been explicitly taught derivational affixes. Their exposure to morphological forms was not commensurate with the duration of their study. They have used these forms productively without much knowledge about the rules that guide most of these formations; Though I have putted remainders for this tasks, accidently the remainder was unanswered; the meeting is preponed to three in the afternoon, he is very confidential during presentations are examples of the common errors. Schmitt points out that lack of consistency in affixation can cause problems even if the meaning of the parts is clear. He gives the example of the suffix -ist. Stem Suffix derived word Cycle -ist Cyclist Act -ist *actist Act -or Actor Another challenge for the L2 learner is the lack of awareness that not all words can be broken into parts. Learners sometimes try to decompose words like refuse, repel, repeat, revamp and attempt to use the perceived stem, resulting in a meaningless word. Learners often have difficulty with the formal changes that occur with affixation in spelling and pronunciation. Some derivational affixes lack consistent spelling and has to be learned individually. base suffix word suggest -able suggestible afford -able affordable Gairns Redman notes that affixation sometimes produces changes in stress and sounds in a word. democrat /demÉâ„ ¢kraet/ democratic /demÉâ„ ¢kraetÄÂ ±k/ democracy /dÄÂ ±mÉ’krÉâ„ ¢sÄÂ ±/ Derivational suffixes need to be do not follow rules strategies- guidelines how A good starting point for any teacher wishing to remedy this situation would be to train the learners to break, the complex words that are already known to the learner, into its components and to help them understand the functional meaning of these components. encourage the learners to become more aware of these morphological instill in the mond of the learner that all aspects of language learning is incremental an beA teachers task has probably never been well defines as in this situation Language learning is incremental A good game plan to remedy t Nation suggests that learners should be taught complex words as unanalyzed wholes before they begin to analyze word parts. teacher I would explicit teaching of select morphological units appropriate to the learner level, training the learners the .A teacher needs to introduce the learners to complex words before they are trained to analyse the different parts of that word. Because morphological acquisition is incremental in nature explicit teaching of level suitable affixes ,encouraging them to notice the correct forms encountered in newspapers regular exposure through exercises and receptive material. This rules out the possibility of a completely graded approach; instead I would collect words for analysis from their Collocation Time consuming Not all words can be broken into parts Affixes are not transparent Some affixes are used mor frequently than others so need to be selective Guessing a wrong meaning and sticking on with that explanation even though it made no sense. (Haynes 1993) -Clarke and Nation (1980)- word parts best used to confirm/verify the meaning. Difficulty in guessing the word class deciding on an appropriate stress, formal changes in spelling, phonetics and word forms Derivational suffixes need to be learned individually do not follow rules strategies- guidelines how Furthermore, it empowers the learner by teaching him to apply his understanding at the receptive and productive level. At the receptive level it teaches him a) to identify the different components of a complex word, b) to be aware that these word parts can be used to make other words, c) how the meaning of the different parts combine to make a new meaning, and d) how the sum of the parts relates to the dictionary meaning. At the productive level it makes him aware of how the formal changes can affect the spelling, pronunciation and the word class of the base when a complex word is formed. (Nation)

Lenonard Bernstein :: essays research papers

Leonard Bernstein was born in Lawrence, just north of Boston, on Sunday, August 25, 1918. Bernstein was named Louis at birth, after his mother’s grandfather, but at the age of sixteen he had it formally changed to Leonard, or Lenny. As a child, Bernstein was sick very often with asthma and hay fever. Perhaps due to these and many other medical conditions, Bernstein preferred to be alone. He didn’t care to spend much time with his family or even with his peers. Most likely because of this self-isolation, Bernstein’s passion for music developed at a young age. At the age of ten, Leonard’s family received a piano from an aunt who no longer needed it. She knew of Leonard’s love for music, but I doubt she knew what a great impact this gift would have, not only on Leonard, but also on the world of music. After the young boy began to show an interest in the instrument, a neighbor offered to give him lessons, which lasted for about a year. After that year, Bernstein was no longer satisfied with his teacher, so he went out to find another one. He was referred to a teacher by the name of Miss Susan Williams and despite his father’s protest, this teaching relationship with Miss Williams lasted for two years. When Bernstein decided that he needed a more professional teacher, he went under the education of Helen Coates, who would later become a life long friend and secretary. After four years of working under Helen, he was accepted as a student of Heinrid Gebhard, who was the best piano teacher in Boston. At the age of seventeen, Bernstein was accepted at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was interested in many other things other than music. For example, philosophy and history were both subjects of great importance to him. After graduating from Harvard cum laude in 1939, Leonard spent a year in New York City. He met many influential people throughout the course of this year, including Aaron Copland. Aaron Copland is regarded as being Bernstein’s composing mentor. In fact, Copland was probably the most important influence on All-American music at this time. Bernstein and Copland had many similarities that may have enabled them to create the very strong bond between them. They both came from Russian/Jewish families; both men were raised in urban areas; both became involved in left wing politics; and both were homosexual.

Lost Names

True Identity There cornes a point In time In an Individual's life In which their name truly becomes a part of their identity. A name is more than just a title to differentiate people; It Is d part of the person. In Lost Names: Scenes from d Korean Boyhood by Richard E. Kim, names play a major role on the characters identities. The absence and importance of the names in the story make the story rich with detail and identity through something as simple as the name of a character. Names are a slgnlflcant actor affecting the story and the characters throughout the novel Lost Names.When the Koreans are forced to change their family names to Japanese ones, their Korean identity is weakened. Going through this traumatizing experience is extremely hard for the Korean people because their family name is everything to them. To the Koreans, the family name Is â€Å"the only legacy we hand down to the next generation and the next and the next' (113). Taking away their family name takes away th eir culture and attempts to convert them to the Japanese way of living, The family does ot react well to the situation, as their true names must be erased forever.The day that this takes place Is known as a day of mourning among all of the Koreans. They maln characters experiences this loss first had with his grandfather and father both grieving. â€Å"Lowering their faces, their tears flowing now unchecked, their foreheads and snow-covered hair touching the snow on the ground. l, too, let my face fall and touch the snow' (1 11). The family name is a big deal in the Korean culture, and being forced to change this completely devastates the entire family.A name gives people so much about themselves, and being stripped ot It can cause many Issues. Similarly, not even having a name can suggest some comparable issues. The way that the characters do not have any names suggests that they are â€Å"lost†. Richard Kim refers to the characters as Student-of-the-Day, Teacher-of-the-Day , Japanese teacher, Principal, and many more titles throughout the entire novel. He defines each character by their position. Calling a character by their position suggests that that is the only thing ot importance related to them.The way that they are not given specific names shows their Importance and Identity. â€Å"l call the names of one of my friends You take charge while I am gone† (130). â€Å"The principal tells the policeman who I am, the son of (130). Kim does not specifically refer to d person In the class, Instead any â€Å"one†, He refuses to write out the tathers name. The main character's name is never given either. Not giving specific names to each and every character of the story makes the reader wonder what the most essential part of a story missing really means.Each character is portrayed as a general position and nothing more. All of these characters must have the same general or stereotypical personality ds the rest of their â€Å"group† i n which they are categorized. The importance ot a name is the underlying identity ot the character. Along with unidentified characters. the title of this novel also portrays the Importance of names. The title of this book relates to many aspects of the story. Lost Names alludes to the fact that the names of the characters in the story are lost.It corresponds to the Identity crisis that most of the characters In the story go that are forced under the Japanese occupation. The conservation of the main character's name makes readers ponder upon the significance of the title of the book; the lost name of this story is this lost identity of the Korean population living under tyranny. In the subtitle Scenes from a Korean Boyhood, the author does not state the novel to be his boyhood, but rather suggests a boyhood. Kim chooses to leave this pronoun out in order to prove a more generalized view of humanity.The readers ould be forced to make these characters a general idea so that a concluded common idea for them is The people of Korea are having their identity stolen. The rights of the Korean people are not being granted. Their culture is all together being stolen. A similar thing is happening in America today. The National Security Agency, which is a part of the United States federal government, is monitoring many United States citizens' personal matters. The agency has the power to access any information that they feel necessary including Internet searches, text messages, and hone calls.

CASE: Accounting for the iPhone at Apple Inc. Essay

The non-GAAP numbers of Apple Inc. reflect its economics better. Because, in the existing method of accounting, revenue and cost of goods sold are spread over the lifetime of the product (expected 24-months), while the costs incurred for engineering, sales, marketing and warranty are recorded immediately. This accurate recording of expenses while recognizing only a part of the cost of goods sold thus showed reduced margins. While this did not affect the cash flow of the business, it affected the periodic profits that the company was reflecting which was just a fraction of the actual profits that the company made. As these deferred revenues were mounting with increased sales turnover, the differences in actual profits for the period and reported profits (one quarter at a time, due to subscription accounting) were mounting too. Given that its sales were exponential, these small fractions of deferred revenue didn’t sum up at the same rate as the sales, which would have otherwise given Apple Inc an edge in the average investor’s priorities. This affected the average investor since he was unable to see the entire profits that the company was making and hence appreciate and predict its actual performance in the future. He was unable to evaluate effectively the holistic performance of the company. Having accurate information about Apple where Apple recognized its revenues immediately upon sale, its growth would have been visible, stock prices would have gone up dramatically in conjunction with the rise in sales. For Apple Inc., it would matter positively if FASB changed the rules of revenue recognition for smartphones. Although phones are not intended to be the primary goods sold for Apple (Mac is), unlike what it expected, the phone sales were on the rise and the company found that downloading programs and apps was very high by phone customers than Mac. This was largely because of the free upgrades given to iPhone customers. But the fact that about 30% of the App store revenue was from the sale of an iPhone app and the developer received 70%1, shows the rising revenues from iPhones in relation to other products of the firm. Phone revenues thus were showing significant impact on the company’s books of accounts. In this case of subscription accounting, Apple Inc.’s 4th Quarter results of 2008 showed a non-GAAP adjustment of ~$2 billion. The cost of providing unspecified additional software products and upgrades was not considered for this. The Net Income thus computed showed a final figure which was ~115% ($2.4 B over $1.1 B) mark up on the Net Income as per subscription accounting. This is too high a margin to ignore for any company. Therefore, with increasing complexity of voluminous sales in the cell phone space, not recognizing revenues (and hence performance) immediately, placed the company in a disadvantaged position in comparison with their non-U.S. counterparts, where IFRS allowed subjective measures to be used by companies. A marginal percentage of revenue was allowed to be deferred for future recognition, which was for any software updates made in future. So, in order to not be disadvantaged by different reporting standards, Apple would gain competitive edge if FASB changes the rules of revenue recognition for smart phones. Apple should hence advocate it.