Customer Care Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Customer Care - Essay Example This is an opportunity for the business to introduce new changes in order to retain its competitive in the market (Shaw, 2011). In case the company was not the leading firm in the market, it can take this as an opportunity to make the first changes, an aspect that would attract the loyalty of the customers towards its products or services. Therefore, it can gain a competitive edge in the market by introducing new changes that aim at satisfying the needs of the target market. Complaints by the customers create an opportunity for the business to initiate a research on how to satisfy the interests of the target market. This is through coming up with innovative ideas which are recent (Shaw, 2011). Many of the companies have identified new avenues of improving the business performance while trying to look for ways to address the complaints made by the customers. Therefore, customer complaints can act as a turning point for the

Article response paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Article response paper - Essay Example They created their president whom they could dictate who got rebelled, and they invaded. To counter resistance you need a few natives on your side. Even if it means buying them you have to do it. Americans collaborated with a native constabulary to try and restore the law and order that was lacking. The responsibility was given to the gendarmerie d’Haiti Resistance should be expected anywhere where individuals feel infiltrated like the case of Haiti where the resurgence of cacoism was witnessed (Plummer 245). In my view methods used by the American military should not be employed when solving a crisis. Shooting at protesters and anybody deemed a rebel is not a diplomatic solution to the crisis. The Americans continued their occupation in Haiti and they even paid spies for information. They continued their dominance by establishing absolute military control over the Haitians. People were oppressed, and only the good could be in the news riots and protests and killings all could be blacked out. Is it not the system in the modern world nowadays where there is censoring of information to the world? The aspect seems to have evolved a long way. To help Haiti develop they build infrastructure and open up the state to investments foreign investors flocked in after all this was an opportunity the Americans had seen. They choose to commercialize agriculture. Plantation farms emerged that wanted to exploit the cheap labor of Haitians. Gayle explains the aggressive nature of the Americans in the process of occupying Haiti. It is evident from the way they could suppress strikes and protests using force, exploitation of cheap labor of Haitians and racial discrimination. As much as the occupation was not accepted well I can say there was economic development in Haiti that was not there before. It may have served the interest of the Americans but at the end of the day it’s happened in Haiti. Conception of a revolutionary idea is not easy to contain. The Haitians

Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words - 14

Research Paper Example f Palestine refugee problem, the core issue remains about the â€Å"right of return† for these refugee to their land, which is now part of Israel, recognized by many countries around the globe. The return of these refugees to present Israeli territory would mean giving up the claim of having an exclusive Jewish state by Israel. In addition, there is the religious angle that has significance, when discussing the Palestinian refugee issue. As both Israeli Jews and Palestinians, mostly Muslims, have diverse religious beliefs; neither can digest the idea of Palestinians return to Israeli land, at present. While Israel accepted Jews from Russia and other countries, in huge numbers, the country is averse to accepting Palestinian refugees back. The struggle of refugees thus takes the shape of Holy war for Palestinians, as they ask for returning to their land, which is now Israel. The complex problem can find solution, only after the Palestinians refugees soften their adamant stand on the issue of â€Å"return back† to their homeland, which is now Israel. The age-old concept of Holy war between Muslim Arabs and Jewish Israelis will never solve this problem. After the failure of Arab world war against the establishment of Israeli state, UN took the responsibility of looking after the displaced Arabs, as a result of this war. Accordingly, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established in 1949 for this purpose. However, it is a fact now that the number of such displaced persons, now Palestinian refugees, has gone up many times. While many refugees in the world would like to seek asylum and settlement in prosperous lands across the globe, the case seems to be different here. Therefore, the problem of Palestinians as refugees needs investigating from different angles. However, the solution can become visible only after considering that humanitarian issues should not be dictated by man-made dogmas like religion and

Sales and Financial Forecast Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Sales and Financial Forecast - Essay Example ocate resources where they are most needed in an order of priority, and this would allow one to control the business cash flow instead of the cash flow controlling them. The strategy would be to use sales promotion campaigns and advertising through posters at least 5 hours per day to create awareness of the product in the upper market areas of New York. Below is a sales and expense forecast that would be expected to be incurred in selling a new cosmetic brand from a small enterprise to the upper market New York. It is expected that these products are sourced directly from the warehouse already packaged in bundles. Sales promotion $ 300 (marketing and selling are different concepts and some products might be offered free to customers who meet certain criteria as a sales promotion strategy, including posters for advertising) The four Ps in marketing mix will affect the sales. With the 3 well trained employees in sales and noting that the upper New York residents and visitors have a high purchasing power, and that the sales will increase with time as customers have the awareness of the new cosmetic

Starting your Marketing Plan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Starting your Marketing Plan - Essay Example A syndicated mall is a convenient location to attract people who will walk past the mall. Segment location of Zsamar’s Barber Salon will spreads around ten miles within the radius of the mall. The location of the salon will harbor a target population of 4500 people. The location of Zsamar’s Barber Salon will consider various demographic, behavioral, and geographical factors. The business will serve their target market from a centrally located region. Geographically, Zsamar’s Barber Salon immediate city is New York and the communities that will surround the business consist of 100,300 people. Demographically, the business will serve adult women, teens, young women, and children. Consequently, 3-12 years will comprise 0.1% of the target market, 13-19 years will comprise 14% of the target population, 20-30 years will comprise 26%, while 30 years and above will comprise 56% of the target population. Based on the business’ distribution, the services and product s of Zsamar’s Barber Salon will be dispensed from the central

Chinese Philosophy and Poetry Essay Example for Free

Chinese Philosophy and Poetry Essay Chinese Philosophy and Poetry One of the most prevalent beliefs of the Chinese philosophies is that men are born good. People are naturally good unless they fail to develop their feelings and senses. Confucianism teaches that a lack of knowledge can be the cause to evil. In Poem 238, a woman named Chiang Yuan gave birth to the human race by sacrificing and praying to God. She bore her child easily because she sought after blessings from God. Confucianism teaches that good things will come to those who are good and do good. A. N. Whiteheads quotation of a Cambridge vicar says, For well-conducted people, life presents no problems. The mother in the poem seemed to be well-conducted and therefore she was blessed with a painless, easy childbirth. It says that God gave her ease and blessed her because he was pleased with the sacrifice and prayer. The poem paints a picture of how even the animals protected the baby. This might be because of their view of being born flawless and without evil. This baby was protected by the animals because there was no evil in him. Hou Chi, the baby boy, grew up to be a wise man and continued to be blessed and prospered through his crops and farming. He would be considered to be the superior man because of his moral wisdom and his ability to tell right from wrong. Because he lived by his mothers example and gave sacrifices to God, good things came to him. The power of moral example is strongly shown here. His mother first taught him the importance of sacrifice and prayer and through that, he learned to do the same and show respect and fear God. Another philosophy is the importance of filial piety and reverence. Parents are revered because they give life to their children and sacrifice much for them. The child brought honor to his mother by keeping her religious traditions. God was pleased by his actions and blessed him his entire life. This is a very ideal form of what a man can be like, but it is very unrealistic. If man were actually born good, then evil would not have such a major influence and affect everyday lives.

SWOT Analysis of HM

SWOT Analysis of HM The paper provides an overview on Hennes Mauritz (HM), analyzing the industry environment and the position in the retail market. The paper also explores the impact of the recession upon the human resource management activities, based on publicly available details of HM, which has been analyzed and presented within the context of the perspective. Introduction The retail industry is usually a very dynamic, and a fast changing sector in the market. It represents one of the main sectors in the UK economy, in terms of employment, transactions and turnover, so that as a consequence, it is a highly competitive and a sophisticated industry. Thompson (2002) argues that economic conditions are an important element in the industry and he states that they may affect the way, weather easy or difficult, a business runs the activity successfully and profitable .Furthermore he claims that economic conditions may affect both capital availability, cost and demand. Companies in the fashion sector have to keep all the time the attention on monitoring the market, and should try to identify any new trends as soon as possible and, above all, they have to keep up with the customers increasing expectations, needs and changing tastes. As the paper shows above, the analysis will be on the HennesMauritz fashion business which is considered one of the worlds favourite and preferred designers of clothes and accessories for man, women, teenagers and babies. In addition, HM its also known not only for the fashion cosmetics and accessories but also because of the quality of the clothes ,using sustainable materials like organic cotton, wool and organic denim, all being environmental friendly (HM website (1), viewed 20 October 2010). According to the Datamonitor (2010, p.4) HM is a large clothing retailer with its operations primarily set in Europe, North America, and Asia, owning in 2009 1,988 stores worldwide and reaching sales of 119 billion Sweden Kronor. (HM website (2), viewed 20 October 2010). The companys main office is based in Stockholm, Sweden and employs almost 76,000 workers out of which more than 53,476 are on full time employment as of November 2009. HMs strategic approach is to offer designer clothes to general population at affordable prices, the company working with such brand names as Stella McCartney, Karl Lagerfeld, Roberto Cavalli and Lanvin (Capell Beucke 2005, p. 16; Kroll 2004, p. 71; Zimmerman 2009, p. D1; WWD 2010, p. 2). RECESSION IN RETAIL SECTOR Nowadays almost all kinds of industries are willing to maintain their competitive position in the market during the recession period. Most of the challenges that the retail market faces are related to the economic and the financial aspects. The fashion industry faced unfavourable situation due to the reduction of the money spent on clothes, but also due to the change in consumers behaviour. According to Kambil (2009) recession should last less than 2 years, and managers should take full advantage of this in order to rethink and renew their strategies and their competitive positions in the UK retail market. The UK retail market was just one of the industries hit by the global economic downturn, as shoppers were forced to limit their spending and consumer confidence was shaken by the failure of important retail giants like Woolworth. With the retail market getting back on its feet in 2010 particularly the online sales segment, where UK web sales grew by 18% in August 2010 (BBC website, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11034030 ), compared with the same month a year earlier one of the most pressing concerns is whether there will be long-term effects on consumer confidence or spending. The retail industry has been an excellent contributor to the UKs economy. According to the British Retail Consortium, the retail sector is one of the second largest employers in the UK, employing 11% of the UK workforce, some 2.9 million people as of March 2009. Historical evidences depict that the UKs economic development has been dominantly fuelled by the successes in the fashion industry especially because of the existence of 286,680 retail outlets in the UK (British Retail Consortium website). Over all these years, industrial success in textiles and fashion goods component have been significant and can be attributed to the continuous change and improvements in the lifestyle of the shoppers and the increasing value being placed to such products. Consumers constantly experimented different looks, styles, fabrics and ideas and their interest in fashion accessories has been stimulated by high media exposure, which have been growing over the last few years. This assiduous rise in the consumer spending on fashion products led to practically unchallenged growth in the industry. Despite the crisis in this sector of the economy, some of the organizations managed to grow their market share. According to Kambil (2008) companies need to focus their attention on the market share and in addition they had to launch new products and adjust the existing ones in order to improve their relations with the customers. Using HM as a company example, they tried to beat the effects of the downturn, by launching designer clothes in partnership with well-know designers like Jimmy Choo, Roberto Cavalli and Lanvin this November (HM website, viewed 21 October 2010). Moreover the economic recession has affected many HR Processes and they needed to be adapted to the new economic environment and furthermore they had to be ready to face the new reality. The impact of the recession is not the same and many HR Processes can continue their regular operation without any adjustment. Even if recession has affected many fashion organisations, closing stores or slashing prices, one of the big retailers operating on the UK market, HM ,was keeping quite well, in addition they were opening stores, entering new markets, and adding new brands (Spiegel website, April 9 2008, ). Another major effect of the recession in the retail industry is the staff redundancies. According to The Telegraph website there is an important downsizing in this sector, which may affect retail organisations in many ways. The article shows that at the beginning of 2009 economists were announcing massive staff reductions between 100,000 and 135,000 jobs due to the severity of the slowdown. Moreover the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development predicted at that time more than 600,000 jobs will be lost and many companies will be forced to freeze their workforces pay. Sales have been also suffering by the economic downturn, reporting a volume of retail sales lower with 0.1% than October last year (National Statistics Online website, http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=256). Among the factors that should be taken into consideration is the current economic growth rate in the nation. This directly refers to an economys rise in value of services or goods produced. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in the case of United Kingdom, the economic growth rate in 2010 grew by 1.1% in the second quarter of the year (BBC website, National Statistics Online website, http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=256 ). Another economic factor that may influence retail business in the fashion industry is the inflation. According to the BBC newspaper, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), inflation increased to 3.2% in October from 3.1% per cent in the previous month (BBC newspaper, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11784775, Appendix A) SWOT Analysis of HM According to Armstrong (2004) SWOT is defined as (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and is a popular framework for developing a marketing strategy. SWOT analysis is basically done to find out if they have sufficient resources to cover their weakness and still achieve their objective. Strength Hennes Mauritz AB build its strengths by operating through complementary retail channels stores, Internet, and printed catalogues. According to Datamonitor (2010) one of the significant strength of HM Company is the request for its products which rise up the inventory turnover and enables low price cut. Customer express their preference for HM product especially clothes because of its quality at the best price but also because of the stores which are refreshed and reordered daily with new garments products. Moreover, collaboration with designer like Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, Roberto Cavalli and Lanvin this November, which are very well know worldwide, will improve the desire for their garments ,but also will accelerate sales growth ( Business week website, viewed 19 October 2010) . Another major strength of HM is the presence on different markets such as Europe, North America and Asia with almost 2000 stores (HM website (4), viewed 20 October 2010). This fact is a positive aspect for the company because they can diversify their risk, but also be sustainably- financially, socially and environmentally (CSR Report 2009). Weaknesses One of the most important and noticeable weakness that HM encounters is the segment that the fashion company targets. HM designs clothes for young customers offering them the HM Divided and HM L.O.G.G collections. Second fact that can be taken into consideration as a weaknesses is the shoppers base which is influenced by the macro economic environment in a negative way (Datamonitor 2010).The article claims that HM focus on the young segment of the market, which is one of the worst hit by the recession, with 21% rate of unemployment for teenagers under age of 25. Opportunities First of all, one of the most important opportunities that HM faces is the e-commerce. According to Datamonitor (2010) HM online sales grew by 22% with 4.7% of the total retail online sales in Europe. Moreover the online sales within more 17 European Countries (such as France, UK, Germany) are estimated to grow by 11% each year over the next five years. Even if the recession affected the retail industry, Hennes Mauritz opened in 2009 250 stores worldwide with 25 more than they planned. (HM website (3), viewed 21 October 2010) Second of all, the expansion plans 2010-1011 for HM intend to reach a 10-15 % each year. The Company tries to focus on markets like Asia where the sales double over, China Japan and South Korea. (Financial times website October 20, 2010). Another opportunity that HM takes full advantage of is the use of organic cotton which classified the company in the top twelve global brands and retailer using organic cotton. Threats Threats of the company are also related to the economic recession because shoppers spend less money on clothes. Over the year 2010 employment were expected to become worse, peaking towards the end of the year at approximately 10.3% and consumers were expected to apply for benefits. Second major threat for the organisation is the VAT which has been reduced in the UK in 2008 by 15% and in January 2010 has been changed again do 17.5%. Apart of this change the cost for cotton has been modified as well with almost 60-75 % by the end of 2009 and with 20-30% during 2010 (Datamonitor 2010 , http://web.ebscohost.com/bsi/pdf?vid=20hid=7sid=4b01c02d-b8cf-414f-b787-7f93a0b69865%40sessionmgr113 ). Human Resource Management in a recession The retail sector is one of the most hit by the global economic recession, so that managers should handle the effects of recession as professionally as possible in a downturn. But since when human resource management is dealing with the implementation of the strategies and policies relating to the management of individuals, the department become one of the most responsible to bring the organisation on the right track during recession time. According to Kambil (2008) there are some important steps that a business should follow in order to maintain their competitive position on the market. Some of these vital steps are the improvement of prices in order to grow margins, the increase of the financial and operational efficiency, but also the concentration on the market share. According to Armstrong (2009, p.5) the purpose of the human resource management is to make sure that an organisation is able to perform well through its staff, but also to increase the efficiency and the capability of the business. Furthermore, it also helps the business to reach it goals by using the resources available to their best use. One of the first processes affected by a recession is the recruitment selection policies which have been massively affected by the recession. Newell and Shackleton (2000) argues that recruitment and selection process involves making anticipation about what will happen, so that decisions are made about who is the most suitable person for a certain job that can increase the performance of an organisation. Now managers and recruitment agencies are being extra careful who they bring in, and they prefer to rethink and implement new strategies in order to improve their relations with the customers. In addition, companies are even more demanding than before, making sure that they recruit the best candidate that can bring real value to the company. Another significant effect on human resource management which impact an organization in recession time is the cost cutting. Retailers are conscious about the situation of the business and try to do everything to maintain their competitive position on the market. They started to cut working hours, holidays, labour costs, and travel expenses and they dont offer long-term benefits anymore. According to Retail Week website (http://www.retail-week.com/cost-cutting-the-lean-machine/1923604.article ) organizations needed to reduce its cost not only to their store level, but also to their head offices. The career and development process have been also affected by the recession, so that managers offer limited trainings to their staff. Selecting and training employees with great potential, contribute to the increase of the sales and organisations performance. It also leads to a more structured career path which ensures that staff has the necessary skills to improve the quality of services and products of a company. Introducing flexible working arrangements and part-paid sabbaticals is another effect of the recession that has a significant impact on an organisation impact on an organization. Managers prefer to make these changes, rather than implementing redundancy programmes, because it allows them to manage every cost. This measure eliminates the need of hiring extra staff for busy periods such as Christmas or Easter holidays. The operations are also suffering due to the recession, because managers develop different channels which imply lower labour costs, such as online sales. A number of retailers found more innovative ways to deal with cost cutting by introducing 9 day fortnights, reducing daily hours and offering unpaid sabbaticals, so we also saw an uplift in the request for interim specialists to renegotiate these new practices. Conclusion The middle of 2008 saw huge changes for the UK retail industry, with the sector suffering a very intense downturn and several well-known brands were disappearing from the high streets. But on the other hand there have been retailers that improved their performance during the recession. As seen above, HM is one of them, reaching a SEK 118,697 million turnover, and about 76,000 employments. The human resource management is one of the sectors that have been also affected by the economic downturn. According to Armstrong (2000) Human resource management is a construct largely invented by academics and popularised by consultants. So that many retailers took decisive actions, like concentrating and simplifying their operations by reducing staff numbers and costs, both through natural wastage and implementing redundancy programmes and flexible working hours. Furthermore, there is now evidence of significant change in the retail sector. In line with the drop-off in demand for goods not being as bad as had initially been feared, retailers are now re-evaluating and rethinking their HR strategies. In conclusion, the paper demonstrates that the current economic conditions have provided the opportunity for the UK retail industry to learn and deal better with HRM structures and recession, adding to what had already been in progress before the economic downturn, which in turn shows an opportunity to make the business stronger, successfully and profitable. Moreover, there is a lack of standard qualifications across retail sector which is also unfavourable.ÂÂ   Government policy in this area is ineffectual and needs to be improved as soon as possible.