Brand awareness, recall or recognition

Discuss which form of brand awareness, recall or recognition, is likely to be involved with purchase decisions for brands in a number of categories, and why. Coca Cola Coca Cola has a strong brand awareness. The first thing everyone in the world will probably recognize are the colors red and white, these are the colors Coca Cola uses in their logo from the beginning.Related to these colors is the Coca Cola font that hasn't changed a lot over the years, it always had the same style and size. Coca Cola also sponsors a lot of sports, charities and events; people like to be seen with a product that does such things as it makes them feel right or cool! Coca Cola stand for sustainability this attracts people who are focusing on environmental awareness. These days being environmental friendly is very important also to people that are not very aware of these subjects will see that it's a good thing to recycle.The Coca Cola commercials are very famous for their Jingles, tunes and creativity. These commercials are broadcasted so many times the Coca Cola tunes will be remembered by consumers which will most likely result in a purchase. Since people recognize Coca Cola pretty easy, they know It's an A brand product. Apple One of the strong characteristics from Apple Is their design; It's always smooth, fancy and one of a kind. Besides It's a catch for the eye It's also useful for very diverse In aspects in the CIT and design world.The Apple logo Is placed on every product In every technology line, this makes the products recognizable for consumers. A lot of Apple products are shown In TV shows and movies all around the world. This makes the product more desirable for consumers as they see their ‘heroes' using these rodents. Apple Is the number one brand In the world this means most of the people In the world know this product as popular, people want to be popular as Apple Is the popular brand they will buy It!Apple has an entire family of products, you can synchroniz e all these products so you will have all your Information at every time. If you made a video on your phone and watch It on your TV you simply synchronize your Apple TV to your Phone, there Is no need to buy any other products. Every Apple product has It's charisma and Is known for It reliability and easy usage. Consumers Like easy to handle products and Apple has proven Itself so many times In this field. It's easy and won't let you down! Recognize Coca Cola pretty easy, they know it's an A brand product.One of the strong characteristics from Apple is their design; it's always smooth, fancy and one of a kind. Besides it's a catch for the eye it's also useful for very diverse in aspects in the CIT and design world. The Apple logo is placed on every product in Apple products are shown in TV shows and movies all around the world. This makes products. Apple is the number one brand in the world this means most of the people in the world know this product as popular, people want to be po pular as Apple is the popular brand they will buy it!Apple has an entire family of products, you can synchronize all these products so you will have all your information at every time. If you made a video on your phone and watch it on your TV you simply synchronize your Apple TV to your phone, there is no need to buy any other products. Every Apple product has it's charisma and is known for it reliability and easy usage. Consumers like easy to handle products and Apple has proven itself so many times in this field. It's easy and won't let you down!

Consumerism in Today’s Society Essay

To analyze and explain the significance of something, you must first define it. Consumerism is â€Å"advocacy of a high rate of consumption and spending as a basis for a sound economy†. Consumerism plays an enormous role in Brave New World. It gives us a small view of what a different type of economy we might have. People are solely dependent on the things that the world state provides for them. There is much significance to consumerism in BNW, and through an analytical view of it, we find many similarities between consumerism in BNW and in our world today. In this novel the use of consumerism is prominent. Every person is provided for so that they do not have to worry about anything. In the US we constantly use our available resources even when it is not truly needed. A simple example would be, buying too much food at the grocery store, and most of it going to waste in about a weeks time. All the branches of society in BNW indulge in overconsumption just as we do, but it the Alpha group that really shows us this. Alphas show us this in many ways, often through the use of a drug. The best item in this society to get your hands on is soma. It is the most widely used and distributed item, it is used to keep individuals happy. From an example in the book, many of the castes are paid for their work with soma. Soma keeps the population under control, they take it when they do not feel â€Å"normal†, the drug keeps them from thinking unusually, thinking as an individual. The general public in BNW is encouraged to use public transportation, often to entertain themselves, to visit one of the reservations, or to play a game, such as Obstacle Golf, another example of consumerism in BNW, because it costs money to play. Or even to spectate, the population would still have to pay for transportation to watch. In our world today we also use public transportation, but it is not the only means of transportation. The public consumerism regarding entertainment in the form of games, such as golf, not a cheap sport but one we indulge ourselves in for amusement. Another example of how consumerism in BNW relates to us, is how the population in BNW are raised to use products provided by the World State, and dispose of them and continue to get more, and provide more money to the economy, therefore keeping the world at a constant steady state. This may sound very familiar, where products in our society become faulty overtime, some may say it is planned obsolescence, where maybe it isn’t completely broken and you cant fix it, maybe it is just so outdated it cannot keep up anymore. So we as individuals are forced to toss the product and purchase a new one. Our society has many examples of consumerism. Individuals with more money to spend often overindulge or spend it on unneeded things for our pleasure. We buy televisions, video games, extra clothing, more than one of a similar item, like a person having three different iPods. Sporting events have a huge impact on our economy as well. Millions of people in the US turn out to attend or watch on TV football during the regular season and the post season. We spend a lot of money of medicine and drugs. If one were to look into a persons medicine cabinet at home, it would be likely to find lots of pills and drugs for different uses that are defiantly not cheap, that are rarely used. Also a small minority of Americans in relation to the whole country, spend money on illegal drugs. Alcohol is also another product many Americans spend their money on that is an example of consumerism. Most individuals in our world today have given in to some form of consumerism. Unfortunately the peoples in BNW are trained and pretty much forced to give into consumerism. And if our world continues to overindulge we soon could also turn into a milder form of the society in this novel. But first we have to realize and start to conserve our valuable resources, so that we don’t have to depend upon our government for necessities.

A Babel of Tongues †The Dialectic of Communication and Solitude in Virginia Woolf

A Babel of Tongues – The Dialectic of Communication and Solitude in Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf’s answer to Mr. Ramsay’s philosophical pursuits in To the Lighthouse is a reconciliation of both worlds – subjective perception and interpretation, and external objectivity. The first chapter of the novel is entitled â€Å"The Window,† and serves to represent the point of contact between subjective and objective states. This, Woolf believes to be our reality. External facts are arbitrary and meaningless until they are apprehended by a subjective state which gives them form; on a social level, communicating as a participant in society exposes the individual to an incoherent tumult of impressions that have to be reorganized into a coherent whole in solitude. Only then can one achieve peace. The individual is hence continually in search of an equilibrium in the dialectic of communication and solitude. Peter Walsh summarizes this concept in Mrs. Dalloway: For this is the truth about our soul†¦our self, who, fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities†¦suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping. However, to re-enter society as a participant entails at least a partial suspension of one’s subjectively constructed reality. Creative organisation is forfeited, and the â€Å"infinite richness† of life that Peter experienced a moment ago gives way to anxiety and a sense that events are spiraling out of one’s control. The city appears to be â€Å"floating off in a carnival,† and the febrile party of life – â€Å"the flare and the glare† – becomes lurid and chaotic. The coherent whole fragments and becomes meaningless isolated elements of reality that wash past Peter in an incomprehensible manner: â€Å"the cold stream of visual impressions failed him now as if the eye were a cup that overflowed and let the rest run down its china walls unrecorded.† The consequence of this is that â€Å"the brain must wake now†¦the soul must brave itself to endure.† Previously, as an invisible flà ¢neur amidst the bustling city, Peter could relax his mind to appreciate the myriad impressions of London life. To join the party would entail shedding invisibility and arresting these mental excursions in order to function socially. He takes out his pocketknife again, as he did when he first went to see Clarissa in the morning. T.E Apter suggests that the pocketknife is â€Å"a tool with which to pare down his perceptions, to preen his identity, and to defend himself against others’ views.† This is observed in Peter Walsh’s proleptic defense constructed in his thoughts against society’s voice, including Clarissa’s. He defends himself against the labels â€Å"Socialist† and â€Å"failure,† asserting that the future of civilization lies in the â€Å"hands of young men like[himself],† a nd diminishes Clarissa’s negative opinions of him by suggesting that she is superficial and snobbish. While Apter feels that Peter Walsh’s pocketknife is not a â€Å"worn-out masculine symbol,† Peter’s self-defensive maneuvers are undeniably offensive. Watching Peter handle his pocketknife, Clarissa imaginatively formulates his self-defense as revealed in his interior monologue – that she was â€Å"frivolous; empty minded; a mere chatterbox.† His self-defense invariably becomes an attack – interaction and communication hence turn into a battleground. Clarissa retaliates â€Å"like a Queen whose guards have fallen sleep and left her unprotected,† and â€Å"summoned to her help the things she did; the things she liked; her husband; Elizabeth; her self, in short†¦to come about her and beat off the enemy (my italics).† Her self, violated by misrepresentation, seeks to validate itself and emerges as the â€Å"indomitable egotism† that safeguards her vanity by overriding Peter’s claims. As a result, both Peter and C larissa â€Å"challenge each other† as in a â€Å"battle.† Clarissa validates her identity through external indicators – â€Å"the things she did; the things she liked; her husband; Elizabeth.† This is because a pattern of symbolic interpretation preexists the objects she names. Husband, daughter and hobbies can therefore be used as symbols representing success and felicity to vindicate Clarissa’s choices in life and challenge Peter’s position. However, these external indicators often make reductive summaries of their characters that they would not accept so easily in solitude. Clarissa chooses to define herself in these terms insofar as they offer her protection against Peter’s accusations; they cannot, however, fully represent her essential being, which explains â€Å"the feeling†¦of dissatisfaction† she often experiences of â€Å"not knowing people; not being known.† On the other hand, using social language to â€Å"preen one’s identity† does scale down the task of defend ing oneself against the whole of society into manageable proportions. One tactic Peter employs is in reproducing the external indicators imposed upon him in a dismissive tone (hence â€Å"preening his identity†), as he does later during the party. This subverts the significance of the criticisms and places him in a more enviable light than the term â€Å"failure† would normally allow. This is done without necessitating a head-on battle against society’s rather ill-founded impositions and labels – a task which would only make him appear insecure and, indeed, even more of a â€Å"failure.† Another means of self-defense is to appeal to another set of external indicators, which Peter does in response to Clarissa’s attack. He draws upon his â€Å"praise; his career at Oxford; his marriage† and tackles society’s implicit criticisms with another implicit social argument, and hence simultaneously defends and misrepresents himself. When one is alone, the self is relieved of the tedious tasks of self-defense and self-validation. The individual is allowed his own subjective understanding of events passing in the world and meets no resistance in his interpretation. Peter, upon leaving Clarissa, can therefore criticize her as having â€Å"something cold,† â€Å"a sort of timidity which in middle age becomes conventionality,† without facing Clarissa’s offensive self-defense. These criticisms are individual interpretations and are expressed in terms that are more subjective and descriptive, though less peremptory (which reduces their defensive power) than the predetermined arguments implicit in reductive and generalized social indicators. While these interpretations would afford a more meaningful debate, their lack of defensive power causes them to be eschewed on social battlegrounds where the more imperious external indicators are favoured. Only in solitude is Peter able to organize a more meani ngful representation of reality based on his own subjective interpretation of the events around him. Social language can be seen to impose frameworks of identity on characters, denying them the validity of their subjectively construed self-representations. It is this imposition of identity that characters in The Hours find unbearable. Cunningham describes his text as a â€Å"riff† on Mrs. Dalloway. Faithfully enough, his text is informed by the same theories of identity as a fluid concept as is seen in Woolf, where the self is constantly foiled and resurrected in an etiology concerning identity shaped by communication and solitude. Richard feels that the party could go on â€Å"with the idea of [him].† His self identity has been subsumed into facile social categorization, and he is defined as the tragic and sick artist who writes â€Å"weird book[s].† It is for this reason that he feels he â€Å"got a prize for [his] performance†¦for having AIDS and going nuts and being brave about it.† The external indicators – his sickness and his lengthy book – once again triumph over the true qualities of the self, here partially represented by the actual contents of his work, which nobody seems to understand. Laura Brown likens her anxieties about meeting her husband to the feeling one gets when â€Å"about to go onstage and perform in a play for which [one] is not appropriately dressed, and for which [one] has not adequately rehearsed.† She is acutely aware of the disparity between her self-perceived identity and the identity society has constructed for her, which she has to assume. She finds social identity – â€Å"the inchoate, tumbling thing known as herself, a mother, a driver† – superficial and meaningless, and liberates herself from the constraints of being a wife in a perfect home by escaping into a hotel. She experiences there â€Å"a sensation of deep and buoyant release,† which is the solace of self-reconstruction in solitude. Having â€Å"slipped out of her life† and escaped social imposition, she experiences â€Å"a sensation of unbeing,† for she has just lost social definition. Formerly, the being and the living had been the existence defined by society – the meaningless performance. The dissolution of the social â€Å"I† in solitude allows her self to emerge and conceive how â€Å"it is possible to die,† how death has a â€Å"dreadful beauty.† The â€Å"neutral zone† of the hotel room is void of socially imposed reality, and it is there, for the first time, that L aura is able to understand the appeal of death. This appeal is Laura’s subjective interpretation of the world (and of death in particular), and is an interpretation that has thus far been suppressed by social definition. Her â€Å"patriotism† for her husband – her civic responsibility to remain by his side and uphold the social tenets of familial duties – previously made such an idea unthinkable. A more insidious aspect of social interaction and communication is highlighted in Mrs. Dalloway and is represented by the two â€Å"Goddesses† of â€Å"Proportion† and â€Å"Conversion.† These are essentially abstractions of social establishments that enforce definitions regarding moral, political, emotional, or aesthetic realities, and which are given a satirical mythological status. They â€Å"smite out of [the] way roughly the dissentient, or dissatisfied† and â€Å"bestow†¦blessing on those who†¦catch submissively from [their] eyes the light of their own,† asserting their blinkered positions to be the only truths. Hugh Whitbread, who kissed Sally Seton to â€Å"punish her for saying that women should have votes,† could be said to be an agent of â€Å"Proportion† and â€Å"Conversion.† He masquerades under the â€Å"venerable name† of â€Å"kindness† and does more harm than â€Å"the rascals who get h anged for battering the brains of a girl out in a train.† Having been converted, he becomes a proponent of the â€Å"Goddesses†: by embodying outward social perfection without real depth of character, he is empowered, under the aegis of society, to stifle imagination, creativity and understanding, and repudiates Sally’s self-conceived reality, which made only the very modest claim that equal voting opportunities are appropriate in a civic moral society. Michael Cunningham, in The Hours, examines Woolf’s â€Å"Proportion† and â€Å"Conversion† in the context of the homosexual identity. By transposing Woolf’s diegesis of anomie onto the postmodern constructionistic concepts of identity, Cunningham is able to intensify the paradoxical tensions concerning the need for validation of one’s subjective experiences and the longing for social acceptance and integration. Walter Hardy, desiring acceptance, succumbs to â€Å"Conversion.† He possesses physical health, wealth and happiness – the touchstones of social success – leaving not a trace of the â€Å"overweight, desperately friendly† child â€Å"able to calibrate the social standing of other ten-year-olds to the millimeter.† But by accepting society’s criteria for judging success, he affirms its truth. Richard is hence justified in saying that â€Å"eternally youthful gay men do more harm to the cause than do me n who seduce little boys.† At least in seducing little boys, these men are affirming their subjective life experiences (which are their homosexual attractions and emotions), whereas men like Hardy, by their outward subscription to the social norm and passive assimilation of society’s ideological truths, allow the cycle of self-invalidation to continue into the next generation, and end up as simulacra of the â€Å"boys who tortured them in high school,† becoming the very forces that convert other individuals into the â€Å"Proportions† of masculinity and success. Oliver St. Ives is another character that embodies â€Å"Proportion.† Sally remarks â€Å"how much Oliver resembles himself.† The Oliver as movie star is almost identical to the Oliver of real life. As a movie star his image on television is defined through popular appeal, through society’s ideals. That his private image should correspond so well with society’s golden standard reveals Oliver’s lack of true self-identity – â€Å"as if all other brawny, exuberant, unflinching American men were somehow copies of him.† He is the face of the American male. Characteristically, his movie panders to society’s â€Å"Proportion†: an action thriller with a guy â€Å"who saves the world, one way or another.† An additional caveat attached reveals that â€Å"this one would have a gay man for a hero.† Unfortunately, saying that â€Å"it’s not a big deal. He wouldn’t be tortured about his sexuality. He wouldn ’t have HIV† is once again to deny the homosexual experience, to insist homosexuals had â€Å"never been strange children, never taunted or despised,† and to reinforce the experiences of society’s heterosexual norm. As David Bergman points out in â€Å"Gaiety Transfigured: Gay Self-Representation in American Literature,† â€Å"the child who will become gay conceives his sexual self in isolation. I cannot think of another minority that is without cultural support in childhood.† This precarious identity developed in solitude is allowed to be stampeded by the need for social confirmation, and Oliver becomes the very force of â€Å"Conversion.† Sally’s anger with â€Å"every optimistic, dishonest being† who denies their subjectively construed identity in favour of society’s brutal misrepresentation is hence vindicated. Such are the perils immanent in social participation that make a retreat into solitude so appealing. â€Å"Our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish† – here, Mrs. Ramsay recognizes that the self is inevitably distorted by and heavily concealed from society. Human relations are â€Å"flawed,† â€Å"despicable† and â€Å"self-serving at their best,† because people inevitably choose to understand the world in a manner most gratifying to one’s vanity. She relishes the solitude wherein â€Å"she needs[s] not think about anybody,† and needs not continually fight for self-validation. â€Å"Having shed its attachments,† her self is free to wander uninhibited, and â€Å"the range of experience seem limitless.† These â€Å"strangest adventures† are not merely Mrs. Ramsay’s escapist fantasies of traveling to Rome and India; they are life experiences that are reorganized and refashioned by the â₠¬Å"unlimited resources† within one, and which form a subjectively conceived coherence – â€Å"a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability.† Society foists itself on the individual, and it is only through â€Å"losing personality† and escaping social participation – whether as mother, wife or host – that the external world is held back, enabling one to lose â€Å"the fret, the hurry, the stir† and create â€Å"this peace, this rest, this eternity† by and for oneself. In retreating into the â€Å"wedged-shape core of darkness† of her self, subjective experience seemingly overwhelms the external objective world and turns it into a self-referential mirror – â€Å"She (Mrs. Ramsay) became the thing she looked at.† This mirror affords â€Å"peace† because it is the expression of the â€Å"core of darkness,† the moi splanchnique. Seeing the self reflected on the face of the world lets i t conceive of a harmonious unity, as if the essential truths of reality are indeed within oneself. Woolf, however, as a lover of parties, maintained that communication with the external world is not only desirable, but also necessary. Septimus’ decline into solipsistic insanity corroborates the idea that â€Å"communication is health; communication is happiness.† Septimus may also be seen as Clarissa’s doppelgà ¤nger. The tragic force gathers him, the alienated individual, in its nihilist folds and leads him to a premature death just as the comic force in Clarissa repeatedly pulls her back into society’s embrace in an affirmation of the positive and the social order. Shell-shocked after the war, Septimus appears to repudiate the impositions of the objective world – the social and the external – and constructs a reality based almost exclusively on his thoughts and emotions. His preoccupation with Evans conjures up images of him with hardly any objective stimulus – he hears him sing and speak where there could only possibly be birds singing or people talking. The objective world is lost to him, and he reveals: â€Å"I went under the sea†¦ but let me rest still.† He has collapsed into himself; his reality implodes. â€Å"Under the sea† he stays immersed in his own self and society’s call for him to emerge is feverish, lurid and cacophonic: But let me rest still; he begged†¦and as, before waking, the voices of birds and the sound of wheels chime and chatter in a queer harmony, grow louder and louder and the sleeper feels himself drawing to the shores of life, so he felt himself drawing towards life, the sun growing hotter, cries sounding louder His â€Å"doom† was hence â€Å"to be alone forever.† By the end of the novel he turns away from life and his doctors who are â€Å"forcing (his) soul,† committing suicide to preserve â€Å"the thing†¦that mattered.† This is the self which is â€Å"wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured†¦let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter.† â€Å"Closeness draws apart† because social language is inadequate. He cannot survive in this solitude and appealed to death for â€Å"death was an attempt to communicate.† Clarissa does come to intuit his self-identity in the solitude of her â€Å"little room† by imaginative recreation of his death, drawing material from her own experiences and emotions. She feels his â€Å"terror; the overwhelming incapacity,† the â€Å"indescribable outrage† of a â€Å"soul† being â€Å"forc[ed]† and experiences his death vicariously – â€Å"her dress flame d, her body burnt.† She appeals to her own understanding of the world, remembering how she once felt â€Å"if it were now to die, ’twere now to be most happy.† She seeps into Septimus’ consciousness thus by an empathetic subjective understanding. If Septimus’ death is a triumph against Time’s transience and an offering to the epiphanic moments of life, then Clarissa’s quote from â€Å"Othello† would be representative. In solitude, through these references to her subjective world she achieves communication with Septimus. Woolf thus presents a paradox of opposites which is developed further in To the Lighthouse. Lily Briscoe, the artist, finds that â€Å"distance had an extraordinary power.† Distance enables withdrawal from social participation. As she paints, Lily retreats into solitude, going â€Å"out and out†¦further and further, until one [she] seemed to be on a narrow plank, perfectly alone, over the sea,† in order to peer into â€Å"the chambers of the mind and heart† of Mrs. Ramsay. To understand the â€Å"sacred inscriptions† of Mrs. Ramsay’s soul, Lily has to rely on her subjective understanding of the people and places which completed her. As Clarissa Dalloway suggests, â€Å"to know†¦anyone, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places.† It would hardly be conceivable to accomplish this mammoth task physically. Lily, however, is able to â€Å"make up scenes,† of which â€Å"not a word†¦was true.† While objectively speaking these events had never occurred they are nonetheless completely plau sible, extrapolated hypothetically based on one’s understanding of other people. Fiction, formed by the creative self, is hence a useful tool for exploring human responses to various situations and elucidating their characters. Lily realizes that â€Å"it was what she knew them by all the same,† and views and reviews Mrs. Ramsay from the subjective viewpoints of the Rayleys, of Mr. Carmichael, Mr. Bankes and the other Ramsays. She felt she needed â€Å"fifty pairs of eyes to see with† in order achieve reconciliation amongst the kaleidoscopic representations of Mrs. Ramsay, so that her portrait is not saturated with her limited perspective. Eventually, like Clarissa, she has to experience Mrs. Ramsay’s emotional and intellectual experiences vicariously to achieve understanding. â€Å"What did the hedge mean to her, what did the garden mean to her, what did it mean to her when a wave broke?† – all these questions Lily strives to answer through imaginative enactment of events. She eventually manages to apprehend the world through Mrs. Ramsay’s consciousness and her fear for Mr. Ramsay segues into love and need – â€Å"she wanted him.† This is probably one aspect of Mrs. Ramsay’s emotional response to her husband which Lily has never shared. In this rare instance of human communication, Lily achieves the same unity and peace that Mrs. Ramsay experienced with the lighthouse beam earlier on, for she had become, â€Å"like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object [Mrs. Ramsay] one [she] adored.† The mirror returns, and she solves Mr. Ramsay’s philosophical conundrum – the relationship between subjective and objective worlds – by creating a work of art that affirms the expression of the subjective self using material from the objective world. Her portrait is accurate for the â€Å"odd-shaped triangular shadow† corresponds with the â₠¬Å"wedge-shaped core of darkness† so essential to Mrs. Ramsay’s identity; the finishing stroke scored through the middle of the canvass is also reflective of the severance in human relationships that Mrs. Ramsay has always fought against. Lily, like Woolf herself, rejects the notion of art as mimesis. â€Å"To be on level with ordinary experience† is to experience the phantasmagoric flux of fact and dream, to interweave between objective reality and subjective organization of that reality. Her painting is hence a â€Å"razor edge balance between two opposite forces; Mr. Ramsay and the picture† – the uncompromising facts of objective reality embodied in Mr. Ramsay and Lily’s own subjective understanding of them come together, equipoised, â€Å"clamped together with bolts of iron. Objectivity in society and subjective latitude in solitude soldered together – this is Woolf’s answer to the dialectic of the comforts of solitude and the asperity of communication in external society.

The automotive industry in For almost the past hundred years the Essay

The automotive industry in For almost the past hundred years the automotive industry has dominated Michigan's economy. How and - Essay Example In addition, in 1990, the city ranked thirteenth amongst largest cities in the United States with a population of about 285,000 residents (Cooney & Yacobucci, 2006). The other thing is that the city was situated along a river, whose water offered power and transportation for outgoing goods and incoming supplies. This paper therefore, seeks to find out why for almost the past hundred years, the automotive industry has dominated Michigan’s economy. In addition, the paper will explore how and why the industry established itself in Michigan, and what have been its effects--positive and negative. From the beginning, Detroit was preferably positioned to be a hub of the automobile industry in the United States. This is based on the fact that the place was squarely located in the heartland of United States—an area that connected many other key regions in the US. For instance, it was linked Pennsylvania, lower New England, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana (McAlinden & Andrea, 1992). W ith these, the required raw materials for production of automobiles were easily transported to the city via rail and the Great Lakes waterways (McAlinden & Andrea, 1992). Furthermore, the coal producing regions of West Virginia and Pennsylvania were directly connected to Michigan and specifically Detroit by rail. Furthermore, the great steel factories of Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Gary, Chicago and Cleveland were just a few miles away from Detroit. The copper and iron mining zones of Minnesota and northern Michigan were reachable without any difficulty by ship (McGinnis, 2005). The other contributing factor was that its centrality at west and east confluence offered auto manufacturers easy access both to the much needed capital and product markets for its unprecedented growth. The contribution of Henry Ford and Dodge was another factor behind the establishment of Michigan as an auto hub (Cooney & Yacobucci, 2006). Before, the coming of Ford, the first auto companies were very tiny oper ations, however, this changed as Ford invented the methods of mass production, along with the advanced assembly line techniques, including vast River Rouge complex, aspects which turned around the scale and scope of auto production in Michigan (McGinnis, 2005). Dodge, on the other hand, set up an enormous Main automobile Plant just close to that of Ford. All these grand automobile plants served to turn Michigan into an American automobile hub. The accessibility of Detroit also brought in enough workers who provided reliable labor for the labor-hungry automobile industry. Potential auto workers from Midwest moved into the area as a result of the declining logging industry. In short, Henry Ford, based in Detroit, Michigan, was responsible for the groundbreaking innovations that were later copied by competitors such as Chrysler, American Motors and General Motors. Each organization set up their headquarters in the Detroit making it the main center for car production not just in America but also world over. Positive impacts of auto industry in Michigan Enhanced Diversity The emergence of the automobile industry completely transformed Michigan and especially Detroit, attracting more than one million new migrants and via its technological aspect and its demographic impact, reshaped the cityscape in different ways. The population of the State changed in diversity (McAlinden & Andrea, 1992). On top of migrants from the hinterlands of Midwest,

Unit 3 - visual argument Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Unit 3 - visual argument - Essay Example This development necessitated a strong response from the nations and NGOs that respect human rights, but even the discussion has been compromised. Some of the efforts that have been put forward by the NGO representatives and officials to call for subversion of the Islamic stated have been disrupted before the Council President banned the Human Rights Council. One of my interesting claims that I would like to highlight in my project is that the movement that favors the Islamic Human Rights have been presented to the council as a mere complementary to Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The opposition that the proposal got; termed as a religious matter is increasingly forbidden from talks in the United Nations Chamber. The Western Powers have failed to support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or withdraw from the discussion. Therefore, the worrying trends need to be traced and looked briefly into the historical explanation of the emergence of the Islamic politics into the setting of the international relations. Various forms of technology will be used for this piece of work. Therefore, some of the technological tools that I will be comfortable with include the poppet, Jing, Apple IPad, Dropbox and also Slide Shares. Of the mentioned technological tools, the ideal ones will be slide shares, Popplet, and Dropbox. With slide share, it will be favorable to upload the presentations, videos and share them with the rest of the world. Even better, it will be possible to take advantage of materials that other people have uploaded. Popplet will be used to brainstorm ideas, create the SlideShare, mind maps and also collaborate. Finally, the drop box will be helpful for storing, sharing, and accessing data from any given place with an easy to used drop box service.  The trailer will be the perfect genre that will be used in the work. The named genre will have a thriller type of style that

Logic and critical thinking class Research Paper

Logic and critical thinking class - Research Paper Example This paper, therefore, discusses children as victims or media victimize offenders in a crime. As a result, it discusses the manner in which media conduct interviews and news coverage, whether they stick to legal requirements, and access the manner in which children are victimized in the reporting processes. Victimization of Children Currently, media is seen as a source of all social problems in the world. Media not only provides access to but also constructs social problems in view of their multiple effects on people. It has been blamed by wide group of people including critics and theorists for promoting crimes against humanity such as violence, sexism, racism, homophobia, and other oppressive phenomena. Media has caused social harm by negatively influencing children and youth, pornography, degradation of women, and promotion of excessive materialism (Tandon, 2007). There is rising concern over issues to do with media interviewing victims at the wrong time, recording and airing clip s of bodies, revealing the negative sides only, revealing identity of juveniles, and inappropriate digging into the past of victims. The media coverage on crime gives rise to increased responses from community, which include vigilance, sorrow, revenge, and caution. A critical exploration of social media coverage of crime victims is crucial in the development of crime policy and popular imagination. Not all victims of a crime receive equal treatment in the social media news. In most cases, intense media coverage is devoted to victims with a questionable past are regarded as ‘ideal’. The ideal victims refer to a person or individuals who receive a legitimate status of being a victim upon being hit by a crisis (Tandon, 2007). This category of victims includes defenseless, innocent, vulnerable, and worthy of sympathy victims. Elderly women and children categorically fit into this group. On the contrary, young men, homeless people, drug addicts, and others marginalized in th e society may find it difficult to attain the status of legitimate victims (Nielson, 2003). In addition, media may misrepresent, under-represent, or over-represent victims of crime. Since children and adolescents are seen as future leaders, any engagement in deviant practices is viewed as declination of the society into moral chaos. The concentration on children means that deviant behaviours lead to more victimization than would have been involved if adults were involved. Under the law, children are not deviant from birth. Their behaviour is influenced by socio-economic factors and psychological problems. The law therefore, protects children and provides them with facilities for rehabilitation. The Rights of the Child in the UN Convention states that one is regarded a child until he or she reaches the age of 18. Consequently, the juvenile Act of 2000 also mentions that 18 years is the age of children. Therefore, it is illegal to publish or air any information regarding persons less than 18 years in the media. However, it is common to spot violation of this law in the media. The analysis below proves the claim (Fritz, 1992). In an article that appeared in Times of India in 2003, two children were published as being responsible for heinous crimes. Indeed, their actions were strange and needed condemnation; however, the media should have exercised some strain in reporting the crimes since the victims were minors. The article portrayed a very negative

How income inequality effects teen pregnancy Research Proposal

How income inequality effects teen pregnancy - Research Proposal Example (Rich, 2012). According to a survey conducted by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, â€Å"nearly 330,000† girls of an age group from 15 to 19 are reported to be pregnant in a year (Ipatenco, 2014). Inspite of a decrease in American teen childbirth for the last 10 to 20 years, among the most developed countries, the United States have the highest level of pregnant teenagers than other developing countries (Rich, 2012). Scientist have been trying for years to â€Å"untangle† the mixed complication among different aspects like education, economic, culture and contraception which cause pregnancy during teenage (Rich, 2012). Scholarly studies reveal that there is a direct â€Å"connection† between teenage pregnancy and income inequality (Oakes & Jolicoeur, 2012). This study intends to find out the relationship between income inequality and teenage pregnancy as this is becoming the most discussed public problem in present day. Teenage childbirth has a big risk on mother as well as the child. Many studies have identified a relation between â€Å"income inequality† and teen pregnancy. Researchers contemd that the teens living in a place where the income inequality is greater, in such a situation they are not able to grow up to their needs of life, such teenagers tend to lose their hope and get on the path of depression, which forces them into a carefree life style (Oakes & Jolicoeur, 2012). The authors say that not only income inequality can be stated as a reason for teen childbirth but this is a â€Å"topic† which needs more studies (Rich, 2012). To overcome this problem , various aspects that lead to the problem need to be identified and accordingly solutions for the same must be found out. Hence through this research the reasons and preventive measures for this issue will be discussed. The rate of teenage pregnancy was

Buying Behaviour Research Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Buying Behaviour - Research Proposal Example They gave maximum importance to time saving, followed by ease of preparation, family health, and taste. Their choices of brands were entirely different. The non-working women gave maximum importance to taste, followed by family health, ease of preparation, time saving, whereas the working women gave maximum importance to saving, ease of preparation, good taste, and good for the family. Their choices of brands were entirely different. 1. Needs - Needs of both working women and non-working women are different. A working women would need coffee during her breaks whereas a non-working women needs coffee only in the morning during breakfast. So, their needs are entirely different from each other. As coffee satisfies her hedonic needs for example, consumers who drink coffee feel refreshing, which an emotional response. Also, her symbolic need to be fast, modern, confident, sophisticated etc. which is related to her status symbol and functional need to reduce the need of thirst. Whereas for cakes the they satisfy the functional need to reduce hunger, and hedonic need for example it satisfies the taste buds of the consumers and can be classified as a feel good factor. a) Brand awareness: For coffee the brand awareness among the working women was very high as they personally preferred coffee as compared to non-working women for them it was a low involvement purchase and hence the awareness is not that high. For cakes the brand awareness among the non-working women was high as they consider it to be a special occasion preparation and thus wants the most information about the cake. b) Perception: Perception is the process of selecting, organizing and interpreting information inputs (sensations received through sight, taste, hearing, smell and touch) to produce meaning. Selective Exposure - select inputs to be exposed to our awareness. More likely if it is linked to an event, satisfies current needs, intensity of input changes (sharp price drop). Selective Distortion - Changing/twisting current received information, inconsistent with beliefs. Advertisers that use comparative advertisements (pitching one product against another), have to be very careful that consumers do not distort the facts and perceive that the advertisement was for the competitor. c) Role of emotions: Generally working women show great involvement while purchasing coffee as she a habitual drinker of coffee everyday and feels connected to the brand and they generally stick to one brand whereas non-working women usually prefers taste and experiments with various brands and are not very emotionally connected to the brand. Working women usually prefers cakes with low calories and hence go for products for cake preparation that are low in fat but are that brand loyal whereas the non-working women prefer cakes with better taste and thus it becomes a high involvement product for them and tend to stick to one brand providing the taste they want. d) Attitudes: Individual learns attitudes through experience and interaction with other people. Consumer attitudes toward a firm and its

Coca olas Response to Changing Market Conditions Essay

Coca olas Response to Changing Market Conditions - Essay Example While Coca Cola was focusing too much on carbonated drinks, PepsiCo was responding to market changes in two important ways. To begin with, Pepsi chose diversification as its strategy to increase its customer base. By this time, they had already realised that they would be better access a bigger part of the market by offering complimenting products such as energy bars and other snack foods. Meeting emerging consumer concerns PepsiCo also realised one important thing about consumer needs. As people started to be more concerned about the health issues caused by cola drinks, PepsiCo was quick to launch healthy products such as diet code and other non-sugary products. This was a very good way to access the segment of the market which was tied in people who could not use the normal carbonated beverages. At the same time, the number of people with health issues such as diabetes was becoming very high and this made it possible to have a big market share for non-sugary beverages. Pepsis was q uick to respond to this rising marketing needs. Yet, at such a time when non carbonated drinks were becoming favourite for so many people who were either concerned about the health impacts of carbonated drinks or whose health issues could not allow them to use the same, Coca cola, under the leadership of Goizueta, continued to focus on its cola drinks. Roberto Goizueta believed that being able to efficiently produce carbonated drinks was the strategy that would help the firm to have a permanent grip on the market. This was both right and wrong. This is because although low production costs are a good strategy, they can only be helpful to a business if they are geared towards the right direction. In other words, Coca cola’s low cost strategies were good but were focused on the wrong product. This is a time when Coca cola should have been focusing on looking at how it could have been able to introduce new products which would fit the new and emerging consumer needs. This made C oca cola to remain behind PepsiCo and therefore giving PepsiCo the upper hand in the market. Coca cola not only failed to diversify like PepsiCo had done, but is also failed to consider new market needs. Q2 Coca Cola Coca Cola’s marketing orientation is geared towards affecting the way the buyer thinks about the product. A closer look at the way in which Coca Cola manages its marketing in the times of Goizueta indicates that Coca cola is not customer oriented. This is seen as the old-school marketing in which organisations did not look too much into what the customer wanted but rather only focused on developing a product and the presenting it to the consumer (Ireland, Hoskisson and Hitt 2010). In this regard, it means that Coca Cola only focused on producing the products which they thought best for customers and then delivering this product. In such an arrangement, marketing is done by massive branding campaigns which would be geared towards making the customer to believe tha t the product is best for them (Kenny 2009). This is what coca cola had used for a long time leading it to become the number one brand in the world. Coca Cola also seems to focus on specialising rather than diversification. In this regard, especially under the leadership of the charismatic leader Goizueta, Coca Cola focused too much on its main product which was its cash cow. In fact, Coca Cola’s diversification was only as a reaction to PepsiCo’s market success brought by PepsiCo’s diversification strategy. PepsiCo PepsiCo on the other hand had a different marketing orientation. Towards the end of the 20th century, PepsiCo seemed to have realised that aligning the business strategy to the needs of the customer was the next big thing. Unlike Coca Cola, PepsiCo started focusing on looki

Critical Management Studies Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Critical Management Studies - Coursework Example Modern life, to a considerable extent, is governed by managerial or economistic approach whereby, in the context of business in organizations, the efficient allocation of resources takes precedence over humanistic or ethical concerns. In this respect, many public services are increasingly facing new forms of managerialism, while many aspects of socio-cultural activities are also being subjected to the same business, management, and economic perspectives. Over the years, narrow interests such as financial institutions have traditionally dominated research in business, management, and economics leading to biased theory of practice (Barratt 2011, p.110), which CMS has been countering; CMS is now a valid and vital aspect of the Business school curriculum, and is even visible in professional bodies for practitioners in business, management, and organization studies. The pervasive scepticism regarding the essence of the mainstream management ideas and practices have spurred the need to expand the field of management through research, to espouse alternative innovative ways of understanding management (Alvesson and Willmott 2012, p.5), instead of relying on the ineffective status quo, thus the emergence of Critical Management Studies. Overall, CRS often seeks to bring to fore the subtle workings of power while identifying and reforming the daily workplace practices that enforce injustices both in firms and in the society. CMS views the prevailing conceptions and forms of management as well as organization as unjustified and unsustainable (Alcadipani & Hodgson 2009, p.130), with a keen focus on the social injustice as well as the environmental destructiveness of the wider socio-economic systems that managers and specific firms serve and reproduce (Foster & Wiebe 2010, p.271). In this respect, it is not really the failures of individual managers or the poor management of specific firms that informs and motivates CMS,

Exploring Marketing with Delta Airlines as a Case Study Essay Example for Free

Exploring Marketing with Delta Airlines as a Case Study Essay Tedlow, Richard S. believes that the history of consumer product marketing in the United States can be divided into three phrases.1 The history of marketing will aid us in understanding the business world today and is thus useful in this essay to explore this in brief before embarking on studying Delta Airlines as a case study to approach the topic of marketing, in the context of the U.S Airline Industry. Phrase 1 is that of fragmentation and this is purely due to logistics reasons, rather than the result of any marketing strategy. This results in transportation of bulky goods from one region to another being relatively expensive and for a consumer product to achieve national distribution, a favorable ratio of weight and bulk to value is required. This phrase happened before the 1880s and the market size is restricted due to a lack of information, and it is characterized by a high margin and low volume. The second phrase of unification is the rise of mass marketing, with high volume and a low margin, which is the direct opposite of the first phrase of fragmentation. The development of this phrase is possible due to firstly, the development of the railroad and the telegraph and secondly, innovations in manufacturing technology. All the above innovations led to a more effective transportation and communication network that lowered the cost of mass marketing products by significant percentages. There is a rise of standardization with advances in manufacturing technology, and it is now possible to produce in great volumes and also, in small packages. Phrase Two occurred in the period 1880s to 1950s, and during this period, brand marketing and management grew in importance. Manufacturers attempt to transform the name of his product into a kind of supername Ââ€" a brand.2 The products of this phrase not only aimed at national distribution, but also strived to attract all consumers using a single brand or product, that will be regarded as ‘standardÂ’. 1 Richard S. Tedlow, The fourth phase of marketing: Marketing history and the business world today, in Tedlow, Richard S. and Jones, Geoffrey, editors, The Rise and fall of mass marketing (London ; New York : Routledge , 1993), p. 19 2 Richard S. Tedlow, New and improved : the story of mass marketing in America (New York: Basic Books, 1990), p. 14 The third phrase is that of segmentation. The innovations that led to this phrase after the 1950s is made possible by radio and television advertising. There were also major changes in America culture that influenced consumer demand. Commercial advertising through television showed that certain programs appealed to certain classes of viewers. This meant that the opportunities for segmenting markets, that is, concentrating the selling appeal on one particular group of potential customers who might be defined by their age, income, and education ( known as demographics) or by their lifestyle ( known as psychographics) were greatly enhanced. 3 There is a rise in image advertising in this phrase, for example, Coca-Cola had always been “the symbol of the standard bearer of changeless, ageless Americana”.4 Commericals were no longer about characteristics of the products, but of the people portrayed as using them, and this led to the development of the “Pepsi Generation” for example. All this saw the breakdown of the whole American mass market developed in Phrase Two to spilt into numerous product categories from necessity items to up-market consumer-durables. Segmentation also occurs at the retail level. This phrase is characterized by high volume and value pricing. The key developments of the railway, telegraph, production technologies and television advertising, are external to corporations, but yet they manage to capitalize on them and turn opportunities into profits. This is how market segmentation evolved. Marketers are sensitive to changing times and they capitalize on opportunities and turn the situation around to a positive one, in terms of fulfilling the companyÂ’s objectives. This is the second proposition put up by Tedlow, that of “entrepreneurial vision”, of which risk-takers need to make investments and turn their visions into reality. 5 3 Robert D Buzzell and Jean-Louis Lecocq, “Polaroid France (S.A.),” in Steven H. Star, Nancy J. Davis, Christopher H. Lovelock and Benson P. Shapiro, editors, Problems in Marketing, (New York:McGrawHill, 1977), pp. 191-213 4 Richard S. Tedlow, The fourth phase of marketing: Marketing history and the business world today, in Tedlow, Richard S. and Jones, Geoffrey, editors, The Rise and fall of mass marketing (London ; New York : Routledge , 1993), p. 18 5 Richard S. Tedlow, The fourth phase of marketing: Marketing history and the business world today, in Tedlow, Richard S. and Jones, Geoffrey, editors, The Rise and fall of mass marketing (London ; New York : Routledge , 1993), p. 21 Another important proposition put up by Tedlow is that of “managing change”. Consumer tastes and the external environment are constantly changing. Corporations have to be flexible and adapt quickly to the unstable environment facing them. Competition can come from other corporations in terms of either trying to beat the firstmover with the same strategy, or trying to change the rules.5 Tedlow proposes a fourth phrase of marketing and this is due to information technology. “Inventory, is the price of the lack of information; and the information revolution is lowering that price in the factory, in the distribution system, and at the point of sale.”6 This is the stage of “micromarketing”, which is hyper-segmentation, of possibly every customer as a component of a segment of one. Supply is able to increase due to information technology, but, at the same time, demand for micromarketing is increasing. Consumers are becoming more and more demanding and they expect to get what they want, thus there is a rise in customization. Consumer choices will increase and it is every marketerÂ’s hope to sell any potential customer precisely what they want and to ensure they get maximum satisfaction. It is no longer necessary to convince consumers to purchase the standardized products that the factory has made. However, disadvantages of micromarketing must be noted. The latter may result in an overflux of choices and consumers become confused, as differences diminish. There is also the problem of shelf space or that of the limitations of distribution. Scarce resource in the form of shelf space has to be allocated by the retailers, and thus products canÂ’t just keep increasing. I will now turn my attention to the U.S Airline industry, where marketing is a framework for airline decision-making. During the period 1979 to 1983, the deepest world recession created many problems in the U.S Airline industry. Among these were rapid expansion of fuel prices, which increased the operating costs of airlines. Slot restrictions caused by the walk-out of air traffic controllers in August 1981 also posted a problem. The U.S recession resulted in a general weakness in air traffic and yields. This 6 Richard S. Tedlow, The fourth phase of marketing: Marketing history and the business world today, in Tedlow, Richard S. and Jones, Geoffrey, editors, The Rise and fall of mass marketing (London ; New York : Routledge , 1993), p. 27 is an indicator that the external environment that airlines are operating in, is thoroughly unstable. Economic upturns and downturns are expected. When the Airline Deregulation Act was passed in the United States on October 1978, the airline industry is faced with overcapacity and fare wars, and it is impossible to maintain yields. But, lessons have been learnt since the last world recession for the U.S airlines. One New York analyst comments that “I have never seen an industry so well prepared for a recession.” Airlines now are sensitive to the capacity cycle and even though the industry has a number of new aircraft on the way, there are no excessive commitments for new capacity. A lot of flexibility is built into the aircraft deals and airlines have older, fully depreciated aircraft that they can either hold on to or retire, in the face of overcapacity. There are now two new weapons open to the North American majors that they did not possess in the last downturn. The first is that of the regional jet that revived the regional airline industry, and is a potential new market. The second is the low-cost airline-within-airline operations, such as Delta Express and US AirwaysÂ’ new MetroJet. The majors are able to compete with Southwest, who can ride out a recession well because of its dedication to keeping costs down and knowing its markets well.7 Delta Express, the airline-within an airline, launched in 1996, was started not only to protect the mainline carrier from increasing low-fares competition in America but also to prove to Wall Street that Delta management can be innovative and progressive as well. The Just Plane Cookies, shaped to resemble aircraft, became the signature of Delta Express. Delta Express offers lower salaries than those at the mainline, but it is launched to motivate DeltaÂ’s employees once again, after the trust factor has been broken, with the 7.5 program as an attempt to cut costs drastically during the last industry downturn. Some 65% of Delta departures from Orlando are now delta Express flights and the market is so important to Delta Express that the carrier now occupies the whole wing of a terminal at Orlando Airport. Delta Express releases the creative skills of their people and this boosts employeesÂ’ morale. Innovations are created this way as the management is able to respond immediately. The key to making Delta Express work is to define the boundaries 7 “US majors aim to break the cycle,” Airline Business, January 1999, p. 52 so that the customer differentiates between their product and that of the mainline. Delta Express operates a point-to-point service that is not part of the mainlineÂ’s network. Delta Express gains leverage from being able to offer Delta Skymiles frequent flier points. About 70% of the customer mix is leisure and Delta Express has since moved from three fares to six fares and better yield management. They introduced seasonal fares, and they constantly reassess processes to keep costs down. Keeping costs down as an airline that is a business unit of a major carrier remains a serious challenge. However, the advance seat reservation facility that Delta Express offers is a useful advantage over both MetroJet and SouthWest, but the most obvious success of Delta Express is the way it has helped revived the spirit of Delta. 8 Even though the industry remains intensely competitive now, major carriers has a route system well suited to their individual strengths, and fewer carriers are on the verge of bankruptcy, unlike the financial crisis that we saw in the 1980s and early 1990s. “All carriers are using much stronger yield management systems which allow them to offer discounts without giving away their product through ruinous price wars”, says Raymond Neidl, an analyst at ING Barrings in New York.9 The problem of ticket discounting that led to great uncertainty in airlinesÂ’ revenue forecasts as a result of deregulation, is no longer a big problem now, as a result of stronger yield management systems. With a better outlook for traffic, the prospect of low rates of capacity growth in the near future and a manageable level of new aircraft deliveries, there seems to be better times ahead. 10 Successful airlines are market-oriented airlines, who are well-led with the topmanagement setting a clear, sound and long-term strategy. The potential available markets are identified and which market segments to exploit are decided, and the whole of the corporate resources are devoted to meeting the product needs of those identified market segments. This is the application of the marketing theory. But, first of all, what is marketing? “Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably.” 11 There is a need to differentiate 8 “Express Yourself,” Airline Business, February 1999, pp. 56-57 9 “US majors aim to break the cycle,” Airline Business, January 1999, p. 51 10 Chris Tarry, “ Time to Break the Cycle,” Airline Business, June 2000, p.94 11 U.K. Institute of Marketing, quoted in Wilmhurst (1978), p. 1 between consumer and industrial marketing. The former consists of items of a relatively low unit price and there is usually not much contact between the consumer and the producer. The latter is characterized by smaller number of buyers and unit prices are high higher and there is direct contacts between the producer and the buyer. What is being market-oriented? Marketing investigation is done to gain a thorough knowledge of the market segments that the airline is interested in going into, and areas of unsatisfie d consumersÂ’ wants and needs will surface. An airline may also consider going into a market segment where consumersÂ’ wants and needs are satisfied less than their expectations. A collection of competitorÂ’s actions is important also in this initial stage of the application of marketing theory to real-life corporations. Next, a firm needs to define its marketing strategy and this starts off with the firmÂ’s objectives, that include both corporate and social ones. The corporate mission is then established which defines the broad area of activity of which the corporation is concerned. The corporation then needs to adopt a marketing plan, that consists of what consumers want and need, competitorsÂ’ actions, the strengths and weaknesses of the corporation and the opportunities and threats posed by the external environment. Marketing communication is important to secure sales of products in particular markets and also to promote the corporate image of the firm in question. At the many stages of marketing, a corporation must make a choice between deploying its own resources or hiring services. The internal organization is important and thus the appropriate corporate management structure must be established and also the application of appropriate personnel recruitment and training policies. The external organization will consist of others not in the corporation, in the role of marketing, such as services of consultants in market research. The marketing mix is the combination of the four controllable variables, of product, price, place, promotion (the four Ps) that an organization creates to satisfy its target market. Airlines need to offer a range of products such that they are better placed due to the probability of a downturn in some markets being counter-balanced by upswings in other markets. An important reason for product and market diversification is due to “synergy”. “It is the term used to describe a situation where a firm producing several products is able to do so more effectively than a set of firms with each firm concentrating on a single item.” 12 Most airlines pursue the total market strategy, that is the attempt to provide services for significant parts of the business, leisure and freight segments. Even though this strategy gives great opportunities to airlines, there is the problem of designing products which meet the conflicting requirements of the different segments. The business market segment requires a wide route network with good interconnections and a high flight frequency, and thus costly products. High seat accessibility is required as well, but high prices are charged for this segment, due to the relative price elasticity of demand. The leisure market, on the other hand, competes based on prices and this results in price instability and very low yields, and leisure demand will only peak during only a few times a year. Its products can be offered comparatively cheaply though. However, the leisure market is potentially the largest segment of the total airline market, and its longterm prospects are better than that of the business segment. As for the freight market, an all-freight airline should concentrate on large and bulky items that are too large to fit into the lower holds of even wide-bodied passenger aircraft. Overnight delivery of urgent parcels by Federal Express, has also proved to be highly successful and passenger airlines canÂ’t compete since the proportion of their flying is done in the daytime. Frequent Flier Program(FFP) as an Airline Marketing Strategy The starting point of a successful FFP is to lay down the airlineÂ’s aims and structure first. The main goal will most likely be to increase seat sales through generating repeat business among loyal customers or attracting new customers. The FFP database can be a source of marketing information and it can be used as an additional source of revenue through the trade of FFP points with associated partners. There is also the opportunity for consumers to differentiate products in a world filled with too many consumer choices, as in TedlowÂ’s fourth marketing phrase. The program needs to be accessed regularly to adapt to constantly changing market conditions and redeveloped if necessary. Airlines should not focus too narrowly on one particular objective and risk damaging the whole scheme. Thus, they should work 12 Stephen Shaw, Airline Marketing and Management, (Malabar : Krieger , 1988, c1985), p.16 across all their strategic aims. Every department needs to recognize the loyalty program as a key marketing tool and internal support need to be won. The FFP also needs market acceptance and thus the program structure needs to meet the expectations of the consumer, who looks to the awards and service benefits. Flexibility is important in the unstable economy, as in TedlowÂ’s proposition of “managing change”. Delta has long introduced a non-expiring policy for its miles, and Air France was the first European major to adapt this change after being influenced by its alliance with Delta. Customer service is also very important in FFP programs and quality management needs to remain under strict airline control. The elite program catering for the customer segment of frequent high-yield travellers, enable the airlines to keep their best customers. “A successful FFP must be one that is based on clear strategic goals, and that achieves a balance between them supported by an attractive program structure benchmarked against best global practice.” 13 For example, Delta has started a strategic alliance with Aeromexico, Air France and Korean Air. They call themselves “Skyteam”. The agreement outlines the formation of an enhanced marketing relationship among the carriers. SkyTeam airlines have a reciprocal frequent flyer program, extensive codesharing network and the best growth potential of any global alliance. SkyTeam With four airlines now working together to continually improve customer benefits, SkyTeam compares very favorably. SkyTeam is the first alliance built around customer needs and is currently one of the world’s top three global airline alliances. SkyTeam has strong hubs in key markets where 80 percent of the world’s traffic flies. Passengers will continue to enjoy the benefits of their home airlines while traveling on any SkyTeam airline, with more choices of flights and departure times, plus all frequent flyer program and lounge benefits. SkyTeam offers customers worldwide access, improved choice and convenience, consistent service and the ability to be recognized and rewarded for their loyalty. Immediate benefits include reciprocal frequent flyer programs, worldwide lounge access, 13 Ravindra Bhagwanani, “ Keeping the high Fliers,” Airline Business, June 2000, p. 93 and the combined network of Aeromexico, Air France, Delta and Korean Air. By yearend, benefits will include priority baggage handling, preferred seating for our elite frequent flyers and other benefits based on our extensive employee training program. Aeromexico has long been recognized as a market leader and the preferred choice in air travel for passengers in the Mexican and Latin American markets. Joining the alliance with like-minded partners allows Aeromexico to expand its international route network and better serve the needs of passengers as they travel on both business and pleasure throughout the world. Air France’s hub at Charles de Gaulle International Airport offers an extensive schedule of connecting flights to points throughout Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. It is the best-positioned hub in Europe for transatlantic passengers traveling beyond a European gateway. In addition, the airport offers great potential for further capacity growth. Delta’s hub at Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport offers passengers more connections than any other airport in the world, with 1,316 daily flights to 126 destinations. Customers have access to a global network of 5,390 flights each day to 356 cities in 57 countries on Delta, Delta Express, Delta Shuttle, the Delta Connection carriers and Delta’s Worldwide Partners. Korean Air’s hub in Seoul is the best Asian hub for SkyTeam, offering service to 78 cities in Asia. Korean Air’s upcoming hub at Seoul’s new Inchon Airport will be the future leading hub in Asia and one of the few major hub airports in the world with room to expand. SkyTeam is a multi-lateral, global alliance among the four airlines. In addition, each carrier will continue to have bilateral relationships with airlines in their respective markets. SkyTeam plan to explore all synergy possibilities. SkyTeam has tremendous potential in the area of cargo. Delta and Air France have already announced a joint agreement, and plan to expand this to a multi-lateral level. This is the fulfilment of the total market strategy mentioned above, and strategic alliances enable a pool of resources together to serve more routes and consumers, especially when SkyTeam is the first alliance built around customer needs. History of Delta Airlines Delta Airlines began modestly, as a crop-dusting outfit in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1928, the first professional crop duster in the nation. Delta was founded by C.E Woolman, who headed the company for 38 years, until his death in 1966. He moved DeltaÂ’s headquarters to Atlanta in the early 1940s and that hub became the heart of its operations and ultimately the course of most of its management. Even though Delta actively opposed deregulation, it entered deregulation with a number of strengths. By growing, it has elbowed its way into the “big five.” Delta has expanded significantly in the Southeast by acquiring Citizens and Southern Airlines in 1953. It expanded north with its acquisition of Northeast in 1972. And in 1986, Delta joined the stampede to merge by acquiring Western Air Lines, hubbed in Salt Lake City. Because Delta paid its workers well and had never laid any off, it enjoyed relatively amicable labour relations and had few union contracts. That enabled it to enjoy high productivity, excellent service, and high worker morale with little turnover. DeltaÂ’s greatest asset of all was its people. While deregulation has brought the industry tremendous labour strife, labour-management relations were goos at DelataÂ’s Atlanta headquarters. In 1986, DeltaÂ’s workers dug into their pockets and bought the company a jet. A job with Delta is security for life, but DeltaÂ’s salary expenditures were high and they were saddled with the largest labour expenditures in the industry. But, Delta has been blessed with profitability, except in 1983, when it made a loss. This loss is because a market survey in 1982 revealed that Delta had acquired a reput ation for being highpriced in the new regulated environment. Hubs The question of hub-and-spoke networks has been a central issue in route planning under deregulation. Many airlines have based their planning on the idea that if they build a major hub, with large numbers of flights in and out of it, it will be very difficult for a newcomer to break in, as they will be able to match the wide network. This is the first-mover advantage in one of TedlowÂ’s propositions, not mentioned above. The limitations to this concept is that passengers prefer to take direct flights rather than those requiring intermediate stops. At Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, Delta Airlines operates and it can claim to be the busiest single-airline hub in the world, with 600 daily departures. More than 20000 Delta passengers change planes in Atlanta each day. Each of DeltaÂ’s arriving and departing waves consists of over 50 aircraft, requiring all four runways to be used simultaneously for arrivals and then for departures. 14 DeltaÂ’s Mission Statement and Corporate Strategy Delta wants to be the “Worldwide Airline of Choice” and their strengths lies in the competitive edge of DeltaÂ’s people, customer service as the cornerstone of their company, a strong route system, outstanding operations and fleet and ethical and honest actions. DeltaÂ’s vision builds on DeltaÂ’s heritage and their vision results in sustained profitability that comes the opportunity for growth and advancement and the pride that comes from being part of an exceptional business organization. Delta has a Success Through Service training and that led to its achievement of a competitive advantage. Delta has built a legendary reputation for family-friendly, “deltastyle ” customer service. Employees are loyal and contented members of the “Delta Family”. Delta has also led the industry in customer satisfaction ratings, providing passengers with a consistent, high-quality flying experience. For example, Delta received the “2000 Grand Prix Customer Service Award”, whereby Teleperformance, a Parisbased customer relationship management company, honored Delta’s Online Customer Support Desk with the U.S. 2000 Grand Prix Customer Service Award, for superior email customer service support. Delta also took second in the T ransportation and Travel category for its telephone customer handling. DeltaÂ’s fundamental belief about service to people, customers and personnel, remains unchanged. Delta personnel treated one another as extended family and this concern is mirrored in the way Delta personnel treat customers. Delta hires at entry level, so thus, managers are able to handle problems of their staff with empathy since they have been through that before. There is a strong tradition of employment security in Delta. 14 Pat Hanlon, Global airlines : competition in a transnational industry, (Oxford : Butterworth Heinemann , 1996), p. 80 During economic slumps, extra staffing is redeployed into other jobs and creative options such as job sharing and voluntary personal leaves are also made available. Delta has a flat and thin management structure and engages in cross utilization and thus employees has a broader view of their company. Delta emphasizes a lot on the people side of the profit equation and thus, it has a strong compensation structure that acknowledges the people side of business and the value of experience and draws and keeps the best people on the team. Team work is inherent in Delta and everyone respects one another. There is empowerment in the job and employees are motivated to work harder and be more productive. The best measure of passenger satisfaction among U.S Airlines today is the number of complaint letters written directly to the Department of Transportation by consumers. Since 1971 when that reporting began, Delta has maintained the best overall record for passenger satisfaction of any major U.S airline per 100,000 customers boarded. “Delta knows the only way to achieve the goal of being the best and most respected airline in the world is to deliver excellent service, one customer at a time.” Importance of Information Technology Delta Airlines have exploited the challenges posed by the millenium bug to overhaul its obsolete IT infrastructure with leading-edge technology that will help achieve operational excellence and give a big boost to customer service and even contribute to revenue performance. The gate and boarding project which includes new computer systems and software, boarding documentation and procedures, is the cornerstone of the airlineÂ’s ongoing Airport Renewal program to modernize and standardized DeltaÂ’s ancient airport technology and physical plant. Not only is the system simpler but it greatly enhances DeltaÂ’s ability to recognize and regard its best customers or those needing extra attention. The system is tied to DeltaÂ’s customer database, and thus the customerÂ’s past history or possible dissatisfaction with DeltaÂ’s services could be established and corrected for in the customerÂ’s next flight. The systems greatest value will be when things go wrong and people wi ll be satisfied that they are handled well during those circumstances. Delta develops technology around process, rather than function. They have been planning and changing their technology around the customers, rather than the systems being functionally focused around reservations, airports and the Internet. Delta is ultimately interested in the “Customer Experience”. Delta cuts costs by $30 million per year, due to a standard technology infrastructure at all locations and thus expect to increase customer service significantly.15 Delta continues evaluating emerging technologies that may further increase its customer services. Conclusion As shown in DeltaÂ’s case above, Delta engages in information technology and now, they are able to focus individually on every customer, and increase their customer service and this is characterized by TedlowÂ’s fourth marketing phrase Ââ€" micromarketing. An airline is very service oriented and thus, consumers will not be confused in terms of numerous products emerging, but rather, they will be pleased by the excellent service they receive. Delta has also been a well-managed company, whereby employees are empowered and teams are used to facilitate brain-storming and everyoneÂ’s opinion is taken into consideration. Employment at the entry-level further enhances the ability to empathize with others working in other departments. Delta is also very customer-oriented and that totally encompass the marketing concept of putting customerÂ’s needs and wants first. Delta is able to compete globally and become one of the ‘big fiveÂ’ in America and has one of the busiest hubs in Atlanta. All this comes from sound marketing principles, a mission statement of being the “Worldwide Airline of Choice”, a total market strategy in the business, leisure and freight market segments. Delta has also gone into strategic alliances in SkyWest to further enhance customer service. Delta concentrated also on standardizing its operations through its technology infrastructure and this is part of TedlowÂ’s Phrase two where standardization is widespread. Delta also segments its markets into the three market segments and continues to serve its different market segments with excellent service and this is Phrase Three in what Tedlow comes up with. 15 King, Julia and Wallace Bob, Corporate standards are key to Delta plan, Computerworld, Volume 33, Issue 24 (Framingham, June 1999), p.16 The case on Delta has shown that focus on the customer is very important for any corporation to succeed. Management is also very important with the right corporate culture and structure instilled, and coupled with marketing strategies, can achieve a worldwide standard and accepted corporation. Bibliography Buzzell, Robert D. and Lecocq, Jean-Louis, Polaroid France (S.A.), in Steven H. Star, Nancy J. Davis, Christopher H. Lovelock and Benson P. Shapiro, editors, Problems in Marketing, (New York:McGrawHill, 1977): 191-213 Flint, Perry, Being last is not always the worst thing, Air Transport World, Volume 36, Issue 9 (Cleveland, September 1999): 68-69 Hanlon, Pat, Global airlines : competition in a transnational industry, (Oxford : Butterworth Heinemann , 1996). J. Paul Peter and Donnelly, James H., Marketing Management : knowledge and skills : text, analysis, cases, plans (Homewood, IL : Irwin , 1992). Jones, Patricia and Kahaner, Larry, Say it and live it: 50 corporate mission statements that hit the mark (New York : Doubleday , 1995). King, Julia and Wallace Bob, Corporate standards are key to Delta plan, Computerworld, Volume 33, Issue 24 (Framingham, June 1999):16 Shaw, Stephen, Airline Marketing and Management, (Malabar : Krieger , 1988, c1985). Spechler Jay W., Managing quality in Americas most admired companies (San Francisco : Berrett-Koehler Publishers ; Norcross, Ga. : Industrial Engineeering and Management Press, Institute of Industrial Engineers , 1993). Tarry, Chris, Time to Break the Cycle, Airline Business, June 2000: 95-96 Tedlow, Richard S., New and improved : the story of mass marketing in America (New York: Basic Books, 1990). Tedlow, Richard S., The fourth phase of marketing: Marketing history and the business world today, in Tedlow, Richard S. and Jones, Geoffrey, editors, The Rise and fall of mass marketing (London ; New York : Routledge , 1993): 8-35. Weaver, Nora and Atkinson, Tom, Training for Success Through Service: How Delta Air Lines Does It, in Zemke, Ron and Woods, John A., editors, Best practices in customer service (New York, N.Y. : AMACOM, 1998): 109-118

The State of Public school integration Essay Example for Free

The State of Public school integration Essay Abstract The public schools, more than any other area of society, received the most attention concerning desegregation in the early 1950s. Fully aware that black had been admitted to white colleges and that numerous cases concerning the public schools were being argued in the federal courts, school officials in many parts. Brown vs. Board of education was the ultimate triumph that placed the rights of blacks before the law, on equal footing with whites. The story of Brown vs. Board of Education is a half-century old now and has been retold many times bye historians, legal scholars, sociologists, and others. A number of social forces during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s continue to shape school social work practice. The 1954 Brown vs. Board of education of Topeka, KS decision concluded that separate educational facilities on the basis of race are inherently unequal and unconstitutional. The State of public school integration In recent anthropological study of a California school, John Ogbu makes the point that relationships between the school and the community are sporadic and limited in scope. Parents and community involvement in the schools, he writes, normally mean participation in such extracurricular programs as PTA, open house, and social entertainments rather than more vital matters such as making decisions concerning the pattern: The extent of community participation or control over the schools may vary, but, in general, parents and other community members are content to leave schooling to the teachers and school administrators. (Fein, 1971). This traditional separation between school and community often breaks down, however, when the schools become actively involved in contemporary social and political issues. Large numbers of parents or other groups may not organize committees or attend meetings when a mathematics or history curriculum is on the agenda, but they are aroused when the topics for decision include drawing school boundary lines or busing pupils. School integration—the deliberate placing of previously separate minority and majority groups within the same school building—is surely the prime recent example of how social and political issues bring the school and its various communities into a more direct relationship. (Amir, Sharan, Ben-Ari, 47) Most of the literature tracing the response of local communities to school integration concentrates on the experience in the United States during the past quarter century. Social scientists have analyzed the complex processes that accompany integrated previously segregated Black and White schools in both the North and the South. Not surprisingly, these studies have primarily explored the political problems and processes arising from school integration. This point is emphasized in a recent study of integrated schools. Rist (1979) states: The most ambitious study along these lines is Crain and Associates monograph entitled The politics of School Desegregation (1968). Focusing on an entire city rather than a particular district or neighborhood, the authors analyze the complex interplay among civil rights advocates, boards of education, school officials, and local political and business elites in 15 U.S. cities, as they struggle and bargain with one another while seeking to implement (or delay) voluntary or court- ordered school desegregation. The authors conclude, for example, that school boards are more important than school superintendents in developing integration policies, and that the political style of the city and its elites is particularly critical. This emphasis upon political processes is also apparent in Gerard and Millers (1975) longitudinal study of the outcomes of Black—White school integration in Riverside, California. Hendrickss describes a rash of meetings, demonstrations, boycotts, and violent episodes (a school building was deliberately set on fire) that accompanied the onset of desegregation in Riverside. However, the Riverside schools were quickly integrated, and the demonstrations and meetings came to an end. Indeed, the Riverside case exemplifies rapid community acceptance and cooperation. (Amir, Sharan, Ben-Ari, 48) The New Millennium Atlanta led the way toward integrated schools in the early 1960s. Under Mayors Hartsfield and Allen, the Atlanta school board complied with federal mandates despite pressures from many in the state legislature to resist integration. In 1960, the general assembly gave some ground and appointed John A. Sibley, a prominent Atlanta businessman and civic leader, to chair a state committee to develop guidelines and more understanding on integration issues in Georgia. The Sibley Committee held numerous meetings during the course of a statewide canvass, and subsequently issued recommendations that Georgia allow local school boards to set their own policies and agenda for federal integration compliance. The effort to achieve integration was a gradual one, beginning with the admission of two African-American students to the University of Georgia in 1961 and the incremental integration of four Atlanta city high schools in 1961 and 1962. In 1963, local high schools, local high schools in Savannah, Athens, and Burnswick followed suit and began integration. Although the move toward compliance took almost a decade, by the early 1970s, public schools in Georgia achieved almost full integration. School integration and the gradual end of segregation in public facilities and accommodations brought a growing white-flight movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Huge numbers of urban whites in cities in Georgia and across the South moved out of the city centers and into growing suburbs. Atlanta was typical during this period. As metro Atlantas population passed 2, then 3, million in the late 1970s and 1980s, its central city population decreased. White migration to the suburbs created an unintended and unanticipated paradox in the march toward full school integration. Inner-city schools in Atlanta and other large southern cities came to have disproportionately high numbers of African-American students, while suburban schools were primarily white. The response to this emerging tend was the federally mandated school busing effort of the early 1970s. Students of both races were bused out of their local neighborhoods to schools in other sections as a most controversial aspect of public education during the period in Georgia and across the United States. Mandated busing to attain balanced public school integration began to subside by 1980, largely due to the overwhelmingly negative response by parents of schoolchildren of both races. The Case of Brown Vs Board of Education (1954): The Inequality of Separate but Equal This landmark Supreme Court decision was actually based on a consolidation of four similar cases from Kansas, South Crolina, Virginia, and Delaware. While they were based on different facts and local conditions, they were considered together because of the common legal question being considered. In each of the four cases, African American children were denied admission to state public schools attended by white children. This racial segregation operated under state laws that permitted or required by the practice. These laws had to that point protected been by the precedent of Plessy v, Ferguson. The schools for blacks and whites in each case had been or were being equalized in terms of buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers, and other tangible conditions. The question before the Supreme Court was whether or not the segregation of black children and white children resulted in the children being deprived of the equal protection guaranteed by the fourteenth Amendment. A related question was whether or not the separate but equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson could be applied in the area of public education. (Meyer, Weaver, 181) The Supreme Court Rules on Brown v. Board of Education (1954) The event: On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court declared racial segregation illegal in its landmark decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. For more than half a century, since its 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, the high court had upheld as constitutional all separate but equal accommodations and facilities for blacks. Schools, public transport, restaurants, hotels, and other public facilities were rigidly segregated throughout much of the country, especially the South. Beginning in the mid-1930s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) brought a series of suits against segregated school districts. In these early cases the Supreme Court ruled that because the tangible aspect of schools for blacks and those for whites were equal, the laws providing for segregated schools were constitutional. In the case of Brown v. Board of Education, however, the NAACP lawyers, among them Thurgood Marshall, presented expert testimony on the debilitating effects of segregation—testimony that proves to be extremely important in the courts ruling, which this time held that segregated school systems were inherently unequal because of intangible factors. (Axelrod, Philips, 280) Implication for school social works School social workers draw on a number of diverse roles and tasks to meet the unique needs of each school and the priorities of each building principal. Using the ecological framework as an organizing principle, these tasks include advocating for risk students and their families; empowering families to share their concerns with school officials; maintaining open lines of communication between home and school; helping families understand their childrens educational needs; consulting with teachers about students living situations and neighborhood conditions; making referrals to community agencies; tracking students involved with multiple agencies; and working with the larger community to identify and develop resources to better serve the needs of at-risk students of their families.11 Impact of the Brown vs. Board of Education upon the School social work was great. As a result, schools were faced with the daunting task of desegregating classrooms and educating increasing numbers of students whos lifestyle and language differed from the middle-class orientation of the school (Germain. 1999, p.34). At the same time, a flurry of federal educational legislation during the 1960s and 1870s significantly increased in federal governments role in public education. For example, the: Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibited discrimination in federally assisted programs based on race, color, or national origin, assisted school staff in dealing with problems caused by desegregation. Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), through Title I, authorized grand for compensatory education in elementary and secondary schools for children of low-income families. 1972 Education Amendment (Title IX) was the first comprehensive federal law to prohibit sex discrimination in the admission and treatment of students by educational institutions receiving federal assistance. Title IX also prohibited schools that were receiving federal funds from discriminating against pregnant teens and teen mothers. Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504) covered students who have a disability and may need special accommodations but not special education and related services as specified in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Children with attention deficit disorder with hyper activity (ADHD) and students infected with the AIDS virus are often served under a 504 plan. Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, enacted in 1974, provided federal financial assistance to states that had implemented programs for the identification, prevention, and treatment of child abuse and neglect. A component of this act was the creation of the National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect. Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 provided resources to develop and implement programs to keep elementary and secondary students in school (Dupper 10). Focus on school social works responsibility to help modify school conditions and policies that had a detrimental impact on students by incorporating general systems theory and the ecological perspective as frameworks for social work practice (Costin, 1978). It was also during this time that group work methods were incorporated into school social work practice. However, despite this renewed emphasis on school and community conditions as targets of intervention, the vast majority of school social workers continued to focus on traditional casework models (Dupper 10, 17). Brown v. Board: The Ruling In the first three cases, black children were challenging ruling that denied them admission to white-only public schools. In contrast, the Delaware school system was attempting to regain such segregation. In each case, students had at one point or another been denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting separate but equal segregation. The court ruled: Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of children to learn. Segregation with the sanction of the law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of Negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system. (Brown v. Board of Education) (Meyer, Weaver, 309) As a graduate student completing the Master of Social Work degree at Tulane University in New Orleans, I had my first exposure to ADC. I had come to social work through entirely different routes and had no idea that welfare assistance, which we studied and researched, was synonymous for many people discussion; even poverty and disadvantage were rarely mentioned. The assumption appeared to be that all of that was behind the nation after the reforms of the New Deal and the economic development of the World War II and postwar years. But by 1960 and the presidential contest between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, welfare had become a substantial public issue. Kennedy talked about poverty and welfare assistance in the presidential campaign. He focused on the great needs of West Virginia people and others in Appalachia. One began hearing discussions of Pockets of poverty, rather than hearing need addressed as a pervasive and national human problem. Kennedy also founded the Peace Corps, another effort that raised public consciousness about disadvantage and its consequences. Perhaps the most salient event that brought public attention to the problems of poverty was the publication of Michael Harringtons The Other America (1962). Harrington wrote that during the Depression, President Roosevelt spoke of a nation in which one-third of the people were poorly housed, clothed, and fed. But by the 1960s, he showed, one-fourth of the people were living in poverty. He said that the poor were isolated from people with power, which perpetuated their poverty. Their only contact with people in authority was with social workers who, Harrington suggested, also lacked power. So the roots of welfare reform are found in the early 1960s, and that is true for both sides of the welfare reform efforts—those who want to make welfare more generous and more humane for the recipients and those who want to reduce its availability and its generosity. Some observers might suggest that there were other factors operating in the origins of the welfare reform debates. Although the earliest proposals were those designed to improve welfare from the perspectives of clients, there was a consistent backlash, and the most global pro- client reforms did not pass Congress. Part of that backlash may have been correlated with the advent and growth of the Civil Rights movement. The Brown vs. Board of education school desegregation decision in 1954 spawned the grass roots efforts to end segregation in employment, housing, and public accommodations. Dr. Martin Luther King and many other African American leaders as well as civil rights organizations took various postures and strategies to end the separation and discrimination that operated from the end of official slavery until mid-century. One might speculate that the new concern about welfare was a surrogate for concern about civil rights. The disproportionately large percentage of African Americans who received assistance (although, like the whole population, the majority of recipients were and are white) seemed to serve as a way of criticizing minority group members without doing so directly.(Nackerud, Robinson 3) Conclusion Public school integration became an explosive issue in New Orleans because it forced into conflict both racial and class interests. The city was roughly 40 percent Catholic in 1950 and in 1962, some 39,000, or 47 percent of the citys white students attended Catholic schools. The city had well established private, Catholic, and public schools; all three systems were segregated. Although the quality of schools varied throughout the city, depending upon the affluence of the neighborhood involved, black public schools were acknowledged to be inferior to white public schools. Black children often attended schools on half-day platoon shifts in buildings that were dilapidated and in need of basic supplies. Black PTAs had protested these conditions throughout the 1950s, and the NAACP leadership hoped that school integration would equalize opportunities for the citys black children. But the public schools were the most vulnerable educational institutions in the city. Affluent whites preferred to send their children to elite private or Catholic schools, and ambitious black parents tried to educate their children in rather private institutions like Gilbert Academy, or in the black Catholic system. It was not surprising that working –class segregationists interpreted school integration as class exploitation and victimization in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Many went to drastic measures to avoid the loss of status that racial integration signified. In the fall of 1960, their collective actions included demonstrations, picketing, acts of terrorism, and boycotting of integrated schools. In 1956, Judge J. Skelly Wright rendered a decision on the Bush case. He ordered the OPSB to cease requiring segregation in the citys public schools with all deliberate speed. A lengthy series of appeals followed, while the school board and the state legislature sought to stall school integration. Reference Amir, Yehuda. Sharan, Shlomo. (1984). School Desegregation: Cross Cultural Perspectives. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publisher. Pg. 47, 48 Dupper, David. (2002). School Social Work Skills and Interventions for Effective Practice. Wiley .com Publisher. Pg. 13 Marger, Robinson. Nackerud, G, Larry. (2000). Early Implications of Welfare Reform in the Southeast. NY: Nova Publishers. Pg. 3 Meyer, G, Robert. Weaver, M, Christopher. (2006). Law and Mental Health: A Case-Based Approach. NY: Guilford Press Publisher. Pg. 307 Philips, Charles. Axelrod, Alan. (2004). What Every American Should Know about American History: 200 Events That’s†¦. US: Adams Media Publisher. Pg. 280 Rogers, Lacy, Kim. (1993).Righteous Lives: Narratives of the New Orleans Civil Rights Movement. NY: NYU Press Publisher. Pg. 50, 63