Tuesday, October 29, 2019

What Are the Roles And Resonsibilities of the UK Government Towards Essay

What Are the Roles And Resonsibilities of the UK Government Towards the Public Healh of Its Citzens And In Particular Children - Essay Example This essay declares that the general public that includes the parents, teachers, alcohol retailers and even religious leaders have their role to play. Such is the case that this group bears the greatest responsibility since they are always in contact with young people. This group, especially the elderly can play their role well when leading as role models for the young people. It should be the responsibility of each of these people to advice young people on the dangers of such behaviors. Parents should pay close attention to their children needs ensuring they know their whereabouts and correct them whenever they sense they are going astray. In all these cases , it will be prudent to know that at their age these young people may not really use well their personal liberties and as such all these parties have the responsibility to provide guidance and where possible correction. This paper makes a conclusion that public health is a sensitive part of any population and as such issues raised with regard to this subject should always take priority in the UK government planning. It is true that public health issues raise some ethical problems, particularly regarding peoples liberties, that the government should tackle amicably. Using the two modalities, namely Paternalism and harm principle, the UK government can successfully balance the demands of individual liberties and the desire to promote social good for all. Looking at UK public health based on the issue of binge drinking among UK teens.

Sunday, October 27, 2019

Market and situational analysis: Starbucks Coffee

Market and situational analysis: Starbucks Coffee Executive Summary Starbucks is a long history company in specialty coffee industry, established in 1971 Seattle Washington USA and traded in NASDAQ stock market since 1985 under the symbol SBUX, provided beverages e.g. high quality coffee, tea and light food items through company-owned and licensed stores in domestic market and international market all over the world with strongly focus in differentiate and innovation known by Starbucks experience together with Global Responsibility strategy; commitment to communities and employee satisfaction policy complemented in its business strategy (Starbucks, 2009). Starbucks is a fast growing company and played a major role as the leader in specialty coffee industry until in 2006 to 2007, the company growth was starting to declined and turned to negative growth since 2008. While the company was in the bad situation with the global economic crisis and forced by the strong competitors McDonalds and Dunkin Donut, Howard Schultz had return as CEO (MSNBC, 2008) a nd tried to transform Starbucks from the struggling period return to innovative and growth again (Howard, 2009). In this following report provides analysis of company mission, business strategy with Porters Generic Strategies (Michael, 1980), using Michael Porters five forces (Michael, 1979) to analyze specialty coffee industry, situation analysis with SWOT, Starbucks core competencies (C.K. Gary, 1990) and competitive advantage (Michael, 1996) examine by C.K. Prahalad Gary Hamel method and Michael Porter competitive advantage model. The report includes strategy recommendation by using TOWS matrix in conjunction with SWOT analysis and competitive advantage, and ending with Potential fallout. Company Mission To inspire and nurture the human spirit one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time. (Starbucks, 2009) as Starbuckss recently mission statement. The company has the principles and concerns all stakeholders including their suppliers, employees which recognized as partners, customers, communities, shareholders and even environment. Starting from its products themselves (coffee bean, tea, cocoa), theyre passionate to find the finest sources, finest process of products with improving the quality of life of the farmers. With the feeling of partners, all employees treat with respect and pride, also the engagement with customers and sense of human connections by the friendly and warming stores atmosphere to earn their royalty and trust, responsibilities and contribution to communities and social, together with one of the important missions is environmental friendly these make them Starbucks as a leader for changes and new standards. (Starbucks, 2009) Business strategy According to Starbucks mission, their business strategy used is mainly on differentiation focus strategy (Michael, 1980), not the cost leadership strategy, which try to make the different, to be the leader and innovate new standard with their unique products and services that customer could perceived and valued better than others competitors which not easy to be copied or time needed (for some particular periods), as their named it Starbucks experience and with quite focus on particular target and market; customers whom share the same valued, required premium-level coffee, have spending ability; young urban professionals, teenage and trendy (Wikinvest, 2010) but not the pricing competition. Source: Generic Strategies Michael Porter (1980), http://www.marketingteacher.com Starbucks business strategy (differentiation focus) has been used in all processes and all stakeholders; starting from suppliers and farmers that Starbucks made the different in the way of finding the source of materials (e.g. coffee bean) at the origin places not from the secondary sources and the most significant is tried to improve farmers quality of life in the same time also got the good quality of coffee beans. Secondly, they treat the employees differently from the others whom they called partners that hope to make the different in the way of service-minded and relations. Another most important and differentiate point is the global/environment/community responsibilities as their shared value as mention by Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO, said You dont do these things for recognition, you do these things because they are the right thing to do (Nancy, Marya, Katherine, 2008). Industry Structure As a different industry has different nature of business, competition or level of profitability (productivity and efficiency). So for better understanding in this coffee specialty industry, it could use a framework of Michael Porter, which influenced by the five forces (Michael, 1979). First, the industry competitors or rivalry among existing firms in the current situation is very high. There are a lot of coffee specially brands and stores offers in the market including independent, local or small-chain coffee house. They are also choose the variety of competition including lower pricing, products differentiate improvement (e.g. taste, technique or quality of services Caribou coffee) (Nancy et al., 2008), innovative channel or new distribution (e.g. through fast-food chain McDonalds, Dunkin Donut, digital media, social network Facebook). There are many factors that influenced the rivalry intensity of the industries such as increasing the numbers of specialty coffee stores, declined of market growth so the firms have to fight for market share or expand the market (Starbucks is also faced this factors) with the same demand or fewer buyer and crowding with new entrances (Pascal, 2009). Next, Threat of Substitutes; the substitute of the products from other industry that can cause by the economic situation or even some new concern issue, for example, health concern (Starbucks, 2009). In economic recession period, the spending and value of customers might be an important concern and with more alternatives they may choose to consume instant coffee at home instead of costly premium-quality coffee from the stores. Also with healthy concern, customer might switch to drink healthier beverage juice, milk or less/no caffeine drink such as tea, herbal tea. Third force, Bargaining power of buyer (Buyer power), in this specialty coffee industry customers are powerful because there a lot of alternative choice of stores or others type of beverages to choose with limited scope of market, as not everyone like to drink coffee. It is easy for customer to change from one product to another without difficulty so its also low switching cost; one may pass by McCafe nearby their working place and get a coffee with meal instead of walk a long way to Starbucks. Another is Bargaining power of supplier (Supplier power), that most of industry needs raw material, component, others supplies. In this case the most significant supplier for specialty coffeehouse is Coffee bean that is the main cost of the productions following by milk (Starbucks, 2009). And the premium or high-quality coffee bean usually from the specific places or proper agriculture areas so supplier power plays important role and has power in this industry so the one who understand and take these into account also can gain the advantage from the others competitor like Starbucks currently does. At last, new entrance (Barriers to entry) is the barrier or threat to enter to this specialty coffee market. When there are opportunities or increasing in the profit of an industry, we can expect to have new comer to take or those benefit. With the not too (quite low compare to some advance technical expert required industry) expensive start-up cost, it can be seen that this specialty coffee industry is easy to entry or low barrier to entry so for the ones existing in this industry have to concern and find a proper strategy to gain the advantage or create barrier for the new comer. Starbucks Situations and SWOT Analysis From the specialty coffee industry, it can be seen that this industry has high competition with low barrier for new entrants and customer switching cost to others brand or substitute product is low. So during the previous year Starbucks faced the struggling situation to growth that will explain in the following paragraph. From the study from Pascal (2009) found that the situation in which Starbucks revenue was rose slowly in 2008 and net profit fell significantly. The growth rate began to be negative the first time in 2008 since 1997. One of the reasons may come from the economy recession that reduced customer spending but in the same period some company such as McDonalds sale increased which can be assumed that customer finding for most value for the spending from the less income. Secondly, Starbuck strategy of fast store expanding especially in U.S. markets that almost every a corner in the big city had Starbuck store has to find more customer to keep up with new opened store. So in 2008 and Jan 2009, Starbuck had closed around 800 stores in U.S. and 100 stores internationally. Third, another reason was from increased rival in coffee-house business and new competitor from fast food chain restaurant; McDonald and Dunkins Donuts that have large number of stores and existing customers provided with var ieties value or economy meals and beverages. Even Starbucks tried to provide hot breakfast but finally had to stop by the customers complaint of smell detraction from coffee house environment. According to those situations, it could be use SWOT analysis to study the detail of Starbucks situation, challenges and opportunity to overcome those situations. At first, the Strengths, it can be seen that Starbucks has a strong brand name and good brand reputation (Nancy et al., 2008), Strong visionary leadership of currently CEO, Mr. Howard Schultz with experienced management team (Starbucks, 2009), Expertise and know-how in coffee house business, Well-training systems and engagement from partners (employees) and large number of distribution stores. Especially they have their own exclusive sources of coffee beans with experienced and expert team to prove the quality of materials in conjunction with researchers to improve the quality of coffee bean. In addition Starbucks has strong financial situation as can be seen from the cash flow and the increasing of dividend which will be paid in August this year (2010) (The New York Times, 2010). Secondly, the Weaknesses, Starbucks branded itself as a premium coffee for premium customers, trendy, young and teenage that limits the scope of the markets or loses the new potential customers (Wikinvest, 2010). Because of Starbucks has experienced management and has long term relation with the company, the loss of high level management can affect the current operation and strategy plan (Starbucks, 2009). Another point is that Starbucks is a fast-growing and successful company in the past decade so this make Starbucks complacent (Howard, 2009) making the company not creating new innovations in coffee business. Next weak point is that currently, there are higher turnover rate of partners (employees) that some caused by company restructuring and others by the heavier load in the stores, less connection or relation between managements and partners also causing by the fast expansion and the large number of partners (Nancy et al., 2008). Additional, Starbucks has high cost of productions especially for the coffee bean that normally 15% higher than the market price (Nancy et al., 2008) to maintain the business strategy which aim to improve quality of farmers or workers life- fair wages and research and development for the best quality of coffee beans. Furthermore, there is not too nimble to make decision and execution together with struggling in the business strategy so there are lacks of new distribution channels, partners and networks. Third, Opportunities: There is the growth trend of specialty coffee as the demand of more people drinking coffee and the trend of flavor to have a coffee at coffee house (Vending market watch, 2008). There are International market gap that still available to fulfill the demand of coffee drinking, especially in the emerging country like Russia, India and China (The Seattle Time, 2010). Another good sign is that the economic recession seems to be at the lowest point and starting to recovered (Jeremy, 2010). And with the new technology arrival, Starbucks can improve IT system from back-end processes that can provide faster and prà ©cising information helping management to react or make immediate decision to the market situations and competitors including using IT to improve the supply chain management, factory/warehouse automation or even the operation processes at the stores to improvement customer ordering process such as billing and information gathering to expand customers network and distribute information through digital media and social network like Facebook or iPhone Apple online store (Starbucks, 2009). Additional condition of the global warming and climate change situation has bring the social concern and that can make more reputations to the Starbucks as the leader in environment friendly which is one of their mission and business strategy. Forth, Threats: The economic crisis and recession change the way of consuming and spending of customers (Pascal, 2009) and also high rivalry in the coffee house industries in which the competitors can provide similar products and services with difference values and strategies like fast-food chain restaurant such as McDonalds and Dunkin Donut in addition with new entrances which have expertise of coffee brew or experienced barista in the local brand stores. Another threat is the new technology of automatic coffee machine that can provide similar quality or taste with cost competitive and convenience as the coffee house provided. One of the most important threat is the Demographic changes which the reduce of the growth rate in number of young and teenage compare the baby boomer ages that become more and more (Wikinvest, 2010) that are not Starbucks target market and not match with their strategy. The last threat may include the concern of the health of the people to drink coffee that h as caffeine, lots of sugar and fat and this issue can become the significant threat of customers switching to the substitute more healthy products. Core competencies and competitive advantage As the core competencies are the source of competitive advantage and they are lead to the development of products and services (C.K. Garry, 1990). Source: The Core Competence of the Corporation by C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel Starbuckss Core Competencies: From the diagram above, Starbucks uses one of its competency (e.g. expert and passionate to find the finest source of raw material) to build their core product (Coffee bean) that did not sale directly to the customers but they use it to create a large numbers of end products. It can be explored more detail of Starbucks core competencies such as: From Nancy et al. found, it can be seen that, Starbucks develop their own competency on the expertise of coffee bean selection that difficult for the competitor to copied by use their passion to find out the source of great coffee bean also with the mind of differentiate and innovation, they keep researching and developing the process to improve the way of agriculture and transfer the knowledge to the contracted farmers or worker with long-term relationship using the principle of fair wages and improving the quality of their life together with community engagement. Also with the knowledge and research development in roasting technology in their factory make them expertise in coffee bean roasting process as another competency, these make Starbucks own unique premium quality coffee beans as their first core product. From this point, Starbuck distribute this core product to different business to create varies end products; one of the business unit is Global Consumer Product Group (CPG) that responsible for the different products type of packaged coffee. Another business unit, foodservice, will distribute the coffee bean to Starbucks stores to make many type of coffee beverage drink; Cappuccino, Late, etc. (Starbucks, 2009) Additional competency that we can extract from Starbucks is their expertise in management and leadership with ethical to transfer and make all stakeholders shared the same values which include partner (employees), supplier, communities or public and customers. Some of the values are global responsibility, fair trade certified, environment friendly, engagement of partners with customer in personal level and engagement of the firm to communities. From this competency they got Starbucks brand itself as another core products. These core competency can be distribute to different business units and provide others the end products such as Starbucks coffee machine, Souvenir-Mug, Cup, Cap, T-shirt, etc. or even CDs, music and books in the name of Starbucks selections. And it can be seen that these kinds of the products also generate good revenues to the company. Starbucks competitive advantage These can be used Michael Porter Competitive advantage (Michael, 1996) to analyze Starbucks competitive advantage that he categorized into two type; Cost advantage and Differentiation. It can be seen that Starbucks position itself in differential advantage and use it as their business strategy to create competitive advantages. The detail explanation will be shown in following paragraph. Source: Competitive Advantage, Strategic Management from http://www.quickmba.com As diagram above, in order to develop competitive advantage the firm must to have resource and capabilities know to utilize the resource in efficiency way, in this case Starbucks has superior resources than others competitors as mentioned in their core competency, they have strong brand and firm reputation, knowledge or expertise in specialty coffee process and business including royalty and good networking in the value chain suppliers, licensed stores and customers that not easy or very few competitor and gain similar resources. With the capabilities to utilize or bring their products and services to the market faster than competitors, those make them has the distinctive competencies (QuickMBA, n.d.). Compare to a competitor like Caribou Coffee which has fewer resources fewer stores network (less than 5% of Starbucks) (Wikinvest, 2010) and less capabilities (slower expansion stores growth rate) to bring products or innovation to the market. While compared to the potential competitor such as McDonald that has good similar resources, brand reputation in food-services and with more stores networks than Starbucks but there still some resources (know-how of coffee brew and coffee bean) Starbucks has more superior than McDonald. Even McDonald has almost the same capabilities to use those resources but they choose to use cost advantage as their strategy that opposite with Starbucks. Combining with the value that Starbucks created in the value chain system (upstream value created with suppliers, social and downstream to customer) that perceived by the customer has overall more value and differentiate than McDonald. Strategy recommendations Currently, most of Starbucks strategy are tried to create differentiate and tried to use Blue Ocean Strategy with pursuit differentiation and cost advantage (low-cost) in the same time (W. Chan Renee, 2004). So from the SWOT (TOWS) analysis in section 5 above, strategy recommendation might be developed using TOWS Matrix (Heinz, n.d.) as Source: The TOWS Matrix A tool for Situation Analysis, Heinz Weihrich, University of San Francisco First, as the opportunities in the growth of coffee drinking markets, Starbucks could use their strength in Brand reputation to build more brand awareness to new potential customers by using various type of medias include digital media especially in social network that might increase stronger network and royalty, in which Starbucks currently does it (Willis, 2010) but these would cover only the target which customers involving in the social network such as teenage and young adult so they should expand more target market to ones who still use the traditional way of media including TV, Magazines or Sport or communities activities. Also create more social responsibility activities and interaction between customers and the company. Another opportunities is to fulfill in international market that compare to the current ratio of domestic stores in U.S. (11,128) and international stores (5,507) that only a half compare inly in U.S market (Starbucks, 2009). As their strength in knowledge and experience in Specialty Coffee industry, strong management training procedure and financial situation, they should focus more in international expansion, finding local experienced partner that understanding and knowledgeable in customers in that local market. Additional strategy recommended is using Maxi-Mini which utilize strengths to minimize threats is that, as they are strong in Brand, knowledge to find the own sources of coffee bean and strong financial position by using cost advantage strategy in this economic recession, Starbucks may create additional second brand which they are started to have another brand named Seattles Best Coffee (Starbucks, 2010) distribute to different channel such their new fast food chain partner, Burger King, to compete and try to get additional market share in this sectors also create a barrier for the new local coffee brew to entrance to this industry too. And as their strength in quality coffee bean, Starbucks may create more varieties products to serves new target market to minimize the change of demographic situation that more senior citizen or baby boomer ages that have different value and life style these products may include premium quality coffee bean packages and Starbucks automatic brew coffee machine which they can make their own high quality at home and new distribution channel (not only sell in Starbucks stores) such as discount stores to supply instant soluble coffee and packaged coffees bean, even Starbucks already had this kind of products such as VIA, TAZO (Starbuck, 2010) but in the target market and focus still so strong to aim at this population changed as were not easily see those products in currently situation. One more strategies to minimize the weakness by take advantage of the opportunities that are: first, even Starbucks has faced the drop in revenue growth during economic recession but there are opportunities for them to improve their business to be more productivity using new opportunities in new IT system technology that can help them to improve customer satisfaction in the process of the stores, ordering, billing and customer feedback also provide fast and precise information for manager to make decision such as additional partners (employees) in peak period or in crowded stores by those technology include semi-automatic coffee brew machine to reduce overload task of employee that can improve partners satisfaction and reduce turnover rate. Also free WIFI-internet available (Rick, 2010) for customer while waiting and crate new attraction for customers to spend frequently time at Starbucks. Another strategy recommends minimizing weakness and avoiding threat, which Starbucks has experienced and good management team as their strength also its the weakness of them if they are lost good management team, so to minimize this effect of management turnover, they have to make sure that they have prepared successors or executive trainees to be ready to take in charge. To minimize partners (employees) turn over caused by over loaded task at store, they have to improve employees satisfaction, proper workload, improved skilled by provide well-training course, valued creation and attractive benefits. In the same time, avoiding some threats such as customers health concerned by provide more choice in healthy options like Low-sugar, Sugar-free, low-fat, decaffeinate on beverages and snacks/meals. An another important threat is the changed in demographic of Higher number of seniors and reduced number of teenage or adults that can overcome by prepared additional or wider range of product s and services to match with their life style such as more healthy drinks- fruit juice, high-calcium milk product beverages and warm friendly (not too trendy) classical with senior facilities-easy accessible comfortable chair/table at stores. Potential fallout According to the suggestions and solutions in which some of them are using different business strategy and competitive strategy (Michael P., 1980); Differentiate and Cost advantage, in the same time and same industry may create conflict each other or create others issue (Constantinosc Daniel, 2010) or even bring the company to get stuck in the middle (Michael P., 1996) so Starbucks has to concern some of this consequence that could go wrong and make problems in the future such as: As the recommended strategy they might have more distribution channels (Stores, discount/convenience store, second brand Seattles best and fast-food chain restaurants), variety of products (In-store, Ready-to-Drink, Soluble, packaged bean and meals) and different type of international expansion (Starbucks own stores, Licensing and franchising). One issue that may occur is the Channel conflict which cause by the new way of provided products and services or over productions or product substitutions such as less consume at store increasing soluble and packaged coffee bean make at home might that may drop the demand of in the store and rising the coffee sale in discount store that harm some of channels. Increasing sale through fast-food chain restaurant such as Burger King and Subway (Carol, 2010) but reduce revenue from the Starbuckss own stores or even decreasing the partner (licensed/Franchise) relationship. More than that the recommendation strategy to make new innovation, differentiation by create more Social/global responsibility, research and development, suppliers and partner satisfaction and used of new technology as customer satisfaction are more costly to the production and with the concern of cost advantage for simultaneous use of differentiation and low cost (W.Chan Renee, 2004) to create more value to customer, efficiency and stretch all the resources are important and some of them may lose from this process that may damage brand reputation or even lost the value or culture of the company (Constantinos Daniel, 2010). At last, as the current situation in August, 2010 of Starbucks leading by Mr. Howard Schultz, it seems that Starbucks has got back into the track which has the positive growth in both sales and profits (The New York Times, 2010) and will have new innovation products and services launched in sooner days.

Friday, October 25, 2019

Classroom Discipline and Management for the Beginning Teacher Essay

Classroom Discipline and Management for the Beginning Teacher Affective teaching from a beginning teachers view deals with a lot of different concerns. â€Å"Beginning teachers deal with room discipline, motivating students, accommodating differences among students, evaluating students work, dealing with parents as the most serious challenges, and classroom management or maintaining classroom discipline† (Education, 2001, p.8). All these are main parts of what beginning teachers have concerns about. The focus of this paper will deal with classroom management and all the parts necessary to maintain classroom discipline. Classroom discipline and management maybe among the most difficult challenges for beginning teachers (Gordon, 2001, p.1). â€Å"Classroom management is techniques used to maintain a healthy learning environment, relatively free of behavior problems. But at the same time it is unethical to use class management techniques just to keep students docile and quiet† (Education, 2001, p.436). Successful classroom management can set the stage for optimal learning, as well as reduce stress on the teacher. â€Å"Both professional and personal reasons underlie the need far a specific classroom management system. Virtually little or no learning can occur in a classroom bereft of effective management and discipline. In classes lacking discipline, precious learning time is wasted as the attempts to implement management strategies. â€Å"In all effective classroom management and ...

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Case Study Cameron Auto Parts Essay

1. Cameron was right to have licensed to McTaggart. Expansion strategies, as discussed in class, have different barriers and costs. For example, for Cameron to have entered a joint venture with the company would have cost both sides a lot of money and time. For Cameron to have expanded into the UK – what Andy had argued – would have been the most expensive and time consuming of the four options. The company definitely has money, however the extra cash needed to finance such large operations isn’t available. Finally, for Cameron to have simply exported into the UK economy could have been easy however, it is exactly what they are doing now. This leaves them limited to the amount that the importers are able to pay in terms of duty and freight, currency exchange, as Sandy explains, as well as the issue of never knowing â€Å"how long the goods will take†(International Management, pg 254) to arrive. Also, with the developing need, having more orders would force Cameron to build a new manufacturing facility to accommodate for the higher production. This would exuberate their need for that second plant. All of this leaves licensing to be the most viable option as it requires the least amount of capital, both financial and human. Cameron Auto Parts are paid royalty fees as well as the costs of setting up the manufacturing and training without having to spend much money to get the UK plant running. 2. I would say that McTaggart is a good choice for the company to become the licensee of the UK for Cameron. According to Exhibit 3, even though they had sales of –  £9 million from 1991, it states that this is because their sales took a plummet against â€Å"a U.S product of superior quality† (International Management, pg 255) It also states that they have the capacity to increase production substantially. This means that given the right product, they are already capable of producing according to demand. Further, because Sandy himself knows there is a huge (and growing) demand for the part, coupled with the current customers of Cameron, there is almost already a very large customer base and all it needs is a facility that is very seriously interested in becoming â€Å"exclusive agents for the UK market† (International Management, pg 256) in order to supply that demand accordingly. McTaggart also has an excellent credit record, and having been in operation for almost 150 years, it is clear that they are in the business for the long run and would not risk damaging situations and dishonored contracts. 3. The two had come to a compromise of 2% in royalty fees. They came up with the rate of using integrative negotiation techniques. They both knew that they wanted the situation to work, and neither of them came in with an unrealistic starting point or forceful attitude – distributive techniques. Alex began the negotiation at 3% while Sandy pushed a few times for 1.5%. Even though Sandy gave an offer of 2% on the first million â‚ ¬, he still kept close to his initial offer by saying that any profits after the first million would be at a 1.5% royalty rate. Pleasingly, they both agreed to meet in the middle, at 2%. Without knowing the legal royalty limit in the UK, the textbook (International Management, pg 99) does state that 3% is a stringent limit. This implies that governments consider this rate reasonable and not high enough to hurt the domestic company. That being said, 2% is the right rate. An important piece of information to take note of is the fact that even though their production skills were not as up-to-date as Cameron’s – an issue that would be rectified once the set-up of the facility is completed – McTaggart already has original cost saving ideas implemented in their current plant. This indicates an ingenuity that perhaps Cameron’s techniques could use. Because Alex specifically states that he would require a flow-back clause in their agreement, this is an added benefit to compromising that 1% since it is only a matter of time before McTaggart’s facility comes up with cost-saving techniques for the flexible couplings. This would more than make up for the compromise.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Microeconomics Project Essay

An overview Facebook was realized on February 4, 2004 by an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur- Mark Elliot Zuckerberg. Facebook has said it will be valued at up to $96bn ( £59bn) when it sells shares to investors this month in a record-breaking flotation. The first investment from Peter Thiel was $500,000 into Facebook. Facebook has minted four billionaires: Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Sean Parker. The 27-year-old Zuckerberg’s net worth was estimated at $17.5bn on the 2011 Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans. Moskovitz had a net worth of $3.5bn but pipped Zuckerberg for the title of world’s youngest billionaire, being eight days younger. The Brazilian-born Saverin, who left Facebook early on after a falling-out with Zuckerberg, had a net worth of $2bn. Parker, the Napster co-founder who briefly served as Facebook’s president, had a net worth of $2.1bn On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced it had acquired the domain name fb.com from the American Farm Bureau Federation for an undisclosed amount. On January 11, 2011, the Farm Bureau disclosed $8.5 million in â€Å"domain sales income†, making the acquisition of FB.com one of the ten highest domain sales in history Nowadays, 1 in every 13 people on earth uses Facebook, more than 900m active users, with over 250 million of them who log in every day. The average user has about 130 friends, but that has expanded in. The core 18-24 year old segment is now growing the fastest at 74% year on year. Almost 72% of all US internet users are on now Facebook, while 70% of the entire user base is located outside of the US. (Source: Facebook) At the beginning, Facebook has 1 million users. In 2008, it increased to 100 million. In 2010 the number of users reached 400 million and up to 500 million within 5 months. Google- a web search engine, it is the company’s most popular service. It began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California. Technology is enhancing us as human beings and the integrating of artificial intelligence is slowly being weaved and embedded into our activities and habits almost without us noticing. This reliance that is permeating our day to day existence even extends to a reported 60% plus of all buying decisions now starting with a Google search as we start our research online rather than walk the shop aisles and asking sales attendants questions. The first funding of $100,000 for Google was provided by Andy Bechtolsheim the co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Google’s initial public offering (IPO) took place five years later on August 19, 2004. The stock’s performance after the IPO went well, with shares hitting $700 for the first time on October 31, 2007. primarily because of strong sales and earnings in the online advertising market. In 2004: Gmail launched, Google IPO 8 billion pages indexed. They acquired YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion. Android was announced in 2007 and Google Chrome was launched in 2008. The 3 charts show the Revenue, Income and number of Employee in two companies. RIVAL PRODUCTION The big question is given, why a search engine like Google to be afraid of Facebook, a social network when the field of activities of these two different companies as far as they seem completely can live peacefully. Google is famous for its searching services, the key point lead to the huge success of Google. It links to billions of Web pages, so users can easily obtain the information they want through the keywords and the operators. Google also uses its search technology for many other search services, including Image Search (photos), Google News, interactive community Google Groups, Google Maps. They also launched variety kinds of services such as Gmail, Google Earth, Google Docs, Picasa, Google Desktop, Google talk, Google Chrome, Google Translate and Android. Facebook is a social networking website for free access with more than 600 million members worldwide with hundreds of millions of activities that occur every day. The amount of data produced in a day of Facebook occupies a huge part of Internet data. Users can communicate with others, make friends, send messages and update their personal profile. Facebook has several features that users can interact such as Wall, Pokes, Photos, Status, Tag (feature of imaging applications), Facebook Notes, Facebook Username, Facebook Messages, Voice Calls, Video Calling, Facebook Subscribe. Looking closely, using the Internet for social purpose has been increasing over the years. More and more people spend longer hours of socializing than browsing so the use of the internet had tilted more on the social side. Facebook has a strong impact to our society. The social circle will suggest what to read, what to check out, where to go to and what to see. These matters may seem not important, but for the business this is such a big deal. As a result, a vast number of companies had recently shifted their focus on socializing, this led to the competition Google versus F acebook. Google is stepping into the Facebook market. Google also has promoted the search function in social network (Social Search) combined between Facebook and search engine Bing with support in 19 languages. Google Social Search helps users to find the appropriate content from the online link on their social network such as websites, blogs, articles and other content created or shared by their friends. Moreover, through many failures of Orkut (social networking and discussion), Google Buzz and Google Wave, in 2010 Google also revealed their plan about new social networking called Google Me to compete Facebook. Google Me combines best features of these social networks having failed before such as allow users check how many visitors clicked, watched, or your missed updates, provide variety kinds of games and application, control the amount of friends who have connected with your friends, stop spreading wide for what was posted. Example, both Orkut and Facebook allow users to delete the share, but this feature of Orkut is much better. This means that if you share a picture for yourself, then you want to delete them, you are allowed to erase that image on your home page, and on top of all other friends.Facebook does not do this,so Google Me is expected as a more attractive version of social networking. In 2011, Google has officially announced the Google+project, a social networking service has the functionality looks very similar to Facebook such as update status, share links and upload photos. Google+allow users to communicate separately for each group. Instead of posting a content update for everyone, Google+ allows users to display that content to the particular group (called a circle), such as classmates, colleagues, family members. Recently, Facebook is actively improving its own search engine. Old founder of the Google Wave, Lars Rasmussen, has joined Facebook, is developing a version of the search engines social networking to develop a new version called â€Å"search engines social networking†. This system will be expected to compete with the search engine of Giant Google in the future. The main purpose of the project is to develop a better search engine that can help brows through the huge amount of content created by users on social networks, as the status updates, articles, video clips and other information. Facebook expects a new email service will help them overtake Google and dominate the social networking world. In 2010, Facebook unveiled the project Titan to compete with Gmail from text messages (SMS), instant messaging (IM), email to Facebook messages. The system will combine messaging via mobile phones, email and chat messages to send to the recipients and they can reply to messages in any way. Facebook uses this project likea special strategy for competition generally on the Internet and particularly on social network. This time, there is notjust the war on email. Facebook seems want to dominate in every field. Facebook is a best place to share photos, surpassing all other services from Flickr, Picasa to Twitter even though its image quality is not high. Facebook members posted 250 million photos per day and this is the function most users use in the social network. Therefore, the Facebook pay billions for the application only works on iPhone and Android also is understandable. Moreover, they also developed a tool Facebook camera similar to Instagram. BUSINESS MODEL To understand why Google and Facebook abominate each other, it is necessary to study their business model. Facebook is now one of the largest social networks while Google is believed as the most powerful searching engine. Each tech titans have been reaping significant success in their domain. However, they both seem have the same main source of revenue is advertising. â€Å"Facebook has 901 million monthly active users (MAUs) as of March 31, 2012, an increase of 33% as compared to 680 million MAUs as of March 31, 2011. And 488 million MAUs used Facebook mobile products in March 2012†-Facebook Amended S1. With great numbers of users, people are deeply impressed by Facebook’s growth. Nevertheless, Google has crossed the 1 billion user mark, while Facebook is not far behind at 900 million — however, users spend a far greater amount of time on Facebook per day, approximately 7 times higher. Top 10 Web Brand for August 2011 (U.S., Total) Rank| Brand| Total Internet Audience(thousand)| Time per Person (hh:mm:ss)| 1| Google | 176,235| 1:47:42| 2| Facebook| 163,163| 7:45:49*| 3| Yahoo| 149,072| 2:12:08| 4| MSN/WindowsLive/Bing| 134,410| 1:43:45| Read as: During August 2011, 176.2 million unique U.S. people visited Google’s websites(Source: Nielsen) In the term of valuation, after the most crucial event of Facebook’s timeline- IPO, going public, Facebook is known being in the position of Google’s 2003. The table below indicates the comparison between Google (GOOG) and Facebook (FB) in different categories such as revenue, revenue growth, operating income and gross margin as they are in the public day. That means for Google, its first quarter is when they were in Q3, while Facebook’s would be Q1 2010 As the table shows, the growth of both companies over the time is almost equivalent as Google 19% and Facebook 16%. If taking into the specific, Google growth rate is arguably more stable than its counterpart social network. The primary reason causing such deviation is that Google was well-established. The following chart will present that point more clearly Source: GOOG data – YCHARTS In comparison, Facebook had a dramatic variable number and especially it was negative in the last quarter, Q9 with -6%.Probably, the company has not decided which its business model is yet (Husky Financial, Facebook vs Google: what you need to know post-IPO). Besides, the other factor affects a volatile Facebook’s development is the dependence in Zynga. There is 15% of Facebook revenue from Zynga (Forbes, By the numbers: Facebook investor checklist). According to the S1, â€Å"If Zynga does not maintain its level of engagement with our users or if we are unable to successfully maintain our relationship with Zynga, our financial results could be harmed†. The crucial income of two companies is generated from advertising. Google have recently proved their Google Adwords comes off well. Thousands of business could buy ads on Google and leads or sales with a proven positive ROI, return on investment. Advertising on Facebook shows much less convincing at this position. The stop in using Facebook’s ads is the forceful example. General Motors Co said on Tuesday (June 22) it will stop advertising on Facebook, even as the social networking website prepares to go public, with a source familiar with the matter saying the automaker had decided Facebook’s ads had little impact on consumers (Reuters). When going to public in 2004, raising just under $2 billion with an initial market cap of le than $25 billion, less than a decade, Google is worth close to 10 times. The IPO gave needed capital to expand their business. This scenario maybe not actually happen to Facebook, according to the previously mention. CONCLUSION A famous Chinese quote â€Å"One mountain cannot have two tigers†. Thus, a social media site or a search engine site will gain a victory? It has not exactly answered yet. However, according to several surveys and analysis in previous parts, Google has more strengthened than Facebook for some reasons: 1. We have many reasons to access Google but only a few reasons to login in Facebook. Most of us go Facebook for chatting , sharing your thoughts , seeing new update , seeing who liked our status, and sharing from our friend or using some applications and playing games . We are busy at looking the updates rather than ads on Facebook. Nobody logins in Facebook to check or to search when they can buy a cheap T shirt or which books are famous, so on. On the other hand, Google is more useful than Facebook. We can search to know any information that we need such as which college is the best or which food is good for health. When we all open up Google for the above mentioned purposes we click on various ads and indirectly generate revenue for Google. The more we search information the more revenue we will generate for Google. 2. People use Facebook less than they used to be A recent survey showed that 34% of users spend less time for Facebook over half a year ago. They assumed that Facebook is boring, not useful, not related and not safe to keep personal information. 20% users spend more time for Facebook, 1/3 users now do not login in Facebook, and nearly 50% of users login in Facebook that stay the same. In addition, a survey from 31/5 to 4/6 /2012 with 1.036 people in America by Reuters and market research company Ipsos presented that most of 80% users never buy product or service on Facebook. As a result, many advertising companies are disappointed and do not want to advertise on facebook anymore. For example: Early 2011, Facebook earned $3.7 billion through advertising. In 2012, this revenue is slowing. In fact, General Motors has recently regained about 10 million investments for advertising on Facebook because it was not effective. 3. Facebook will be forgotten Eric Jackson, founder of Ironfire Capital, said that in 5 to 8 years, â€Å"Facebook would disappear the same way Yahoo now.† Although Yahoo is still making money, still profitable, still has 13 thousand employees, but Yahoo is just 10% in value compared with their peak in 2000. Basically, Yahoo! has been considered as disappeared. † Whether Google or Facebook win, users also have benefit. Both companies are fighting to capture the heart of users worldwide. The competition gets its benefit because it can prevent monopoly situation. As long as the two companies keep on fighting, users will continue to gain benefits because the two companies will continue to improve, change, and figure out new features to attract users. For example: Currently, Google has extra the Google Plus to attract users and many other existent features such as YouTube, Feedburner, Chat, Analytics, and Docs. Facebook has the latest new Facebook Timeline feature. The competition between Google and Facebook is just at the beginning stage. We will be seeing more actions and tricks from both sides in future. As the main goal is to gather as many users as possible, both parties will take any necessary steps to capture users’ attention. In the future, users can get more benefit such as gifts, discounts, coupons, competition prize, lucky draws and many other events by just participating. Works Cited â€Å"August 2011 – Top US Web Brands.† August 2011, Top US Web Brands. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 June 2012. . â€Å"Facebook.† Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 19 June 2012. Web. 20 June 2012. . â€Å"Google Se Tao Ra Mang Xa Hoi Tot Hon Facebook.† Http://www.pcworld.com.vn/articles/tin-tuc/tin-quoc-te/2010/08/1220500/google-se-tao-ra-mang-xa-hoi-tot-hon-facebook/. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 June 2012. . â€Å"Google vs. Facebook.† Netchunks. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 June 2012. . â€Å"PGDE Scrapbook.† Enter Website Address or Keywords to Cite. N.p., n.d. 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