Gender Stereotypes Essay Example for Free

Gender Stereotypes Essay Gender stereotypes are type of generalized or oversimplified perceptions, impressions, images, or opinions about men and women (Santrock, 2007, p. 177) It is also the presumption that a certain behavior or trait belongs to certain gender and cannot be applied to the other. In short, gender stereotyping can also involve assigning a certain label to a particular gender. One of the most common gender stereotypes are the ones associated with feminine and masculine behaviors. For example, it is common for most people to perceive that males should always be aggressive and tough. In addition, generally, in emotional situations, men are expected to hold their own and not breakdown or cry. It is also a general perception that young males should always strive to be athletic and active in sports and play toys such as guns, cars, and weapons. On the other hand, there are also several female stereotypes. For example, females are generally perceived to be emotional and are the first ones affected during a dramatic situation. In other words, females are expected to be more sensitive than males. Moreover, females are also generally perceived to be always demure and reserved. Furthermore, sexism is the attitude or idea that one gender is less valuable or weaker than the other or that one gender is better and superior than the other (Santrock, 2007, p. 178). It generally has two forms: old-fashioned and modern sexism. Old fashioned sexism is the belief that there should be differential treatment between women and men because women are significantly inferior to men while modern sexism is the rejection of the belief that there is still antagonism and discrimination towards women and their rights (Santrock, 2007, p. 178). One example of old fashioned sexism is when a male employee has a problem of having a female supervisor or boss. On the other hand, an example of modern sexism is when a male lawyer denies that there is discrimination against women even after his law firm rejected a potential lawyer partner simply because she is a woman. References Santrock, J. W. (2007). Adolescence 12th edition. McGr

Tobacco Essay -- essays research papers fc

THIS IS A PAPER REGARDING THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY (3 PAGES). The Killing Business? This paper is about the tobacco industry. Some would find that the label ‘killing business’ is very appropriate. Others would say that that name is misleading and inaccurate. Biased, I am not. So we will look at the issue in regards to the industry from both consumer and producer points of perspective with fairness and equality in reach. With an open mind now, let’s peer closer at the aftermath tobacco has left us standing in. Something has to get a non-tobacco user to try his/her first cigarette, cigar, chew, or whatever it may be. What is that something? Tobacco ads play an important part in getting people hooked. The government has taken a step in the right direction by reducing the ways that the industry can advertise tobacco. They have limited it to written ads mostly like magazines, billboards, sponsorship (meaning that Marlboro could sponsor a racecar driver), and T-shirts. They aren’t able to advertise on television or radio in any way. This helps to steer youth away from tobacco. But is this grafting the industry’s amendment of free speech? Not when the industry is responsible for thousands of deaths each and every year. What is it that makes a tobacco-user keep on buying the product? One of the most addictive substances in the United States. The mystery matter that keeps consumers coming back for more is nicotine. Is it necessary that the industry utilize nicotine to keep customer...

Rebranding of Online Marketing Platforms Essay

Just a week ago, Rachel Abrams penned an exquisite piece in The New York Times titled, â€Å"Best Buy Profit Nearly Doubles in Quarter, With Online Sales up 22%.† The title of the article suggests every company’s sales dream envisions through a rigorous online marketing strategy but what is not known is that over the past decade Best Buy has experienced one of the most turbulent sessions in business history. Basing on this history, Rachel Abrams takes us through the steadily recuperating brand marketing strategy of a company that was on the brink of closure three years back. This paper therefore seeks to analyze Abrams article using the Porter five forces analysis to reflect on the benefits of analyzing markets before investing in a particular marketing strategy. Porter five forces analysis is a framework focusing on market competition analysis of specific industries and helps in the development of probable business strategies. Basing its tents on industrial organizations economics, it utilizes five major forces that are used to determine the competitive intensity of a market thereby determining the attractiveness of a market. The five forces of the porter framework are; threat of new entrants, threat of substitute products or services, bargaining power of customers, bargaining power of suppliers and the intensity of competitive rivalry- alternatively referred to macroenvironmental factors of the business. In this context the article contains various aspects of these factors and will be discussed in detail in the underlying chapters CITATION Aro14 l 1033 (Arons, Driest, & Weed, 2014). From the offset, Abrams introduces her article as a marketing piece with the introductory sentence which suggests Best Buys move to boost the visibility of thei r products through lowering their product costs and adopting a web strategy to boost online sales and marketing. Considering that Best Buy’s cost-cutting and web strategy was rolled out over two years back after they registered losses for not joining the online marketing bandwagon where competitors aggressively adopted online avenues to push their products; it is safe to say that their move will be beneficial to their sales in long run. Proof is in the Stifel Nicolaus survey which suggests that they have registered a 7% increase in their sales registering 15% sales increase in the financial year 2012/2013 and 22% sales boost in the just completed 2013/2014 financial year. This was only actualized after the company made several adjustments to its marketing strategies to strike their own competitive edge over their fellow competitors. Their major competitors are online retail giants like eBay and Amazon that over the past decade threatened to wipe out Best Buy from the market but since making adjustments in their marketing strategy, the company has witnessed top line growth considered as e roding to match up and even go to the extent of toppling their competition. Best Buy had to change from its rather abrasive told school brick-and-mortar sales strategy where customers had to go to stores to make purchases as opposed to a hands-on experience where customers can use gadgets can make online purchases and the company organizes delivery services for them. Threats of New Entrants Considering that the retail business rakes millions of dollars in revenue annually, upcoming companies have come to have a share of the big pie but still eBay and Amazon still top the online retailing businesses. However, several factors have impacted on the entry levels that will inhibit new players from making a go into a newly identified market. Take the instance of brands like Gap, banana republic and Old Navy stores who have registered drops in their sales considering the move by to adopt technology where stores are no longer viable and now what is being embraced in the markets is the new savvy online shopping. Best Buy’s Ship from Store Approach (Substitute Product Service) For their delivery purposes, Best Buy has an incentive where there customers upon purchase of a product are awarded a gift which is delivered to them considering that the country is currently experiencing bad weather conditions. Similar to other major retailers in the industry, Best Buy is moving from stocking their products stores and are now are shipping their products to consumers directly. Their market analysis suggests that 2% to 4% of traffic online is not responsible of purchases simply because there exists no inventory in its respective distribution facilities, however, most of the time the stock is usually available at their retail centers. This has been actualized through an expansion that saw over 1400 stores being opened up from the previous 400 stores in the past year CITATION Abr14 l 1033 (Abrams, 2014). This approach as simply being adopted to reduce foot traffic in stores; the company simply adopted a ship-to-store approach which was only piloted in 50 stores to see i ts impact on sales before actualizing it in the other stores across the country. This enabled all the distribution centers to handle online inventory as opposed to the previous approach where only one store was responsible for delivery of e-commerce purchases. In essence, the new shipping approach has ensured delivery of purchased products to be done two times faster than was the case in the past. It is important to note that the ship-to-store approach is responsible for achieving the sales registered in the current year considering it has ensured high clearance margins while at the same time ensures that the company reduces its out-of-stock messages thus improving online conversation with customers. Rebranding of Online Marketing Platforms The increased sale of Best Buy are credited to the fact that their e-commerce platform has been improved in the past year to engage the customers more in shopping for their perfect products by making their searches on the website simple. The improvements on the website have been actualized through introduction of new search elements, offering product prices and recommendations, optimized search engine tools and improved search elements. The involvement of these new tools helps customers easily identify products for purchase. To further make the whole process interactive and better than what their competitors are offering, Best Buy included a home-based design of their website where consumers could create a robust streamlined wish list with well enhanced navigation capabilities. Hubert Joly, Best Buy Chief executive therefore suggests that in the future, the company will be keen on transforming their print and television market spending to the new trend of online marketing channels CI TATION Dun12 l 1033 (Dunn, 2012). Above all, it is important to note that the most important aspect of a marketing initiative is the consumers who a company is trying to sell their brand to. ShopperTrack a surveying company suggests that over holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, there is an increased need for online shopping as people are seeking gifts for their families. Considering this, the survey suggest that foot traffic into malls and large retailing centers only receive 50% of this traffic and the rest goes to online shopping avenues. Consequently, following this trend, it is forecasted that during this year online sales will double brick-and-mortar sales in the current holiday season. Banking on this, Hubert Joly says that gifting customers who purchase their products online is an incentive aimed at increasing traffic online and they seek to reach out customers outside the United States specifically the China market through shipping of their products across the continent. Keen to go over their past holid ay one billion holiday sales of last year, Best Buy is seeking to go above this sales record during this Christmas and Thanksgiving season. From their previous experiences dealing with online customers, they learned six important aspects to consider while dealing with online multichannel customers. Firstly, in developing strategies, customer’s ever changing needs and behaviors have to be taken into consideration CITATION Tre07 l 1033 (Trefis, 2007). Secondly, customers need to be provided with the capability to research products before making an order while at the same time interact with the retailer; many customers want to interact before simply signing off a transaction. Best Buy should be able to give customers an entry point where they can easily access the website irrespective of their location; one way of doing this is making the application accessible on mobile devices like laptops, phones or tablets. It is also important for Best Buy to reinforce marketing across all media channels by reaching out to all audiences through product campaigns in different languages. Lastly, the company should not only focus o n growing a specific marketing channel but rather seek to fulfill customer needs on a multichannel perspective. References BIBLIOGRAPHY Abrams, R. (2014, November 20). Best Buy Profit Nearly Doubles in Quarter, With Online Sales Up 22%. Retrieved November 26, 2014, from The New York Times : http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/business/best-buy-big-retailers-announce-q3-earnings.html?_r=0 Arons, S. M., Driest, v. D., & Weed, K. (2014). The Ultimate Marketing Machine. Harvard Business Review , 78-99. Dunn, J. B. (2012). How I Did It: Best Buy’s CEO on Learning to Love Social Media. Harvard Business Review , 12-28. Trefis, W. (2007). Macroenvironment factors and Online Business . New York: Barnes & Noble Source document

Did Climate Change Make Farming Necessary

The traditional understanding of the history of agriculture begins in the ancient Near East and Southwest Asia, about 10,000 years ago, but it has its roots in the climatic changes at the tail end of the Upper Paleolithic, called the Epipaleolithic, about 10,000 years earlier. It has to be said that recent archaeological and climate studies suggest that the process may have been slower and begun earlier than 10,000 years ago and may well have been much more widespread than in the near east/southwest Asia. But there is no doubt that a significant amount of domestication invention occurred in the Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic period.   History of Agriculture Timeline Last Glacial Maximum ca 18,000 BCEarly Epipaleolithic 18,000-12,000 BCLate Epipaleolithic 12,000-9,600 BCYounger Dryas 10,800-9,600 BC Early Aceramic Neolithic 9,600-8,000 BCLate Aceramic Neolithic 8,000-6,900 BC The history of agriculture is closely tied to changes in climate, or so it certainly seems from the archaeological and environmental evidence. After the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), what scholars call the last time the glacial ice was at its deepest and extended the farthest from the poles, the northern hemisphere of the planet began a slow warming trend. The glaciers retreated back towards the poles, vast areas opened up to settlement and forested areas began to develop where tundra had been. By the beginning of the Late Epipaleolithic (or Mesolithic), people began to move into the newly open areas northward, and develop larger, more sedentary communities. The large-bodied mammals ​humans had survived on for thousands of years had disappeared, and now the people broadened their resource base, hunting small game such as gazelle, deer, and rabbit. Plant foods became a substantial percentage of the food base, with people gathering seeds from wild stands of wheat and barley, and collecting legumes, acorns, and fruits. About 10,800 BC, an abrupt and brutally cold climate shift called by scholars the Younger Dryas (YD) occurred, and the glaciers returned to Europe, and forested areas shrank or disappeared. The YD lasted for some 1,200 years, during which time people moved south again or survived as best as they could. After the Cold Lifted After the cold lifted, the climate rebounded quickly. People settled into large communities and developed complex social organizations, particularly in the Levant, where the Natufian period was established. The people known as the  Natufian  culture lived in year-round established communities and developed extensive trade systems to facilitate the movement of black basalt for ground stone tools, obsidian for chipped stone tools, and seashells for personal decoration. The earliest structures made of stone were built in the Zagros Mountains, where people collected seeds from wild cereals and captured wild sheep. The PreCeramic Neolithic period saw the gradual intensification of the collecting of wild cereals, and by 8000 BC, fully domesticated versions of einkorn wheat, barley and chickpeas, and sheep, goat, cattle, and pig were in use within the hilly flanks of the Zagros Mountains, and spread outward from there over the next thousand years.   Why Would You Do That? Scholars debate why farming, a labor-intensive way of living compared to hunting and gathering, was chosen. Its risky--dependent on regular growing seasons and on being families being able to adapt to weather changes in one place year round. It could be that the warming weather created a baby boom population surge that needed to be fed; it could be that domesticating animals and plants were seen as a more reliable food source than hunting and gathering could promise. For whatever reason, by 8,000 BC, the die was cast, and humankind had turned towards agriculture. Sources and Further Information History of Plant DomesticationHistory of Animal DomesticationGuide to the Neolithic Cunliffe, Barry. 2008. Europe between the Oceans, 9000 BC-AD 1000. Yale University Press. Cunliffe, Barry. 1998. Prehistoric Europe: an Illustrated History. Oxford University Press