The Emerging Role of Electronic Markets

Internet-based electronic marketplaces leverage information technology to match buyers and sellers with increased effectiveness and lower transaction costs, leading to more efficient, â€Å"friction-free† markets. The Emerging Role of Electronic Marketplaces on the Internet Markets play a central role in the economy, facilitating the Yannis Bakos exchange of information, goods, services, and payments. In the process, they create economic value for buyers, sellers, market intermediaries, and for society at large.Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the role of information technology in markets, both in traditional markets, and in the emergence of electronic marketplaces, such as the multitude of Internet-based online auctions. Functions of a Market Markets (electronic or otherwise) have three main functions, summarized in Table 1: matching buyers and sellers; facilitating the exchange of information, goods, services and payments associated with market transactions; and providing an institutional infrastructure, such as a legal and regulatory framework, that enables the efficient functioning of the market.In a modern economy, the first two functions are provided by intermediaries, while the institutional infrastructure is typically the province of governments. Internet-based electronic marketplaces leverage information technology to perform these functions with increased effectiveness and reduced transaction costs, resulting in more efficient, â€Å"friction-free† markets. Matching Buyers and Sellers. Markets â€Å"clear† by matching demand and supply. This process of matching buyers’ demand with sellers’ product offerings has three main components: determining Matching uyers and sellers †¢ Determination of product offerings – Product features offered by sellers – Aggregation of different products †¢ Search (of buyers for sellers and of sellers for buyers) – Price and product information à ¢â‚¬â€œ Matching seller offerings with buyer preferences †¢ Price discovery – Process and outcome in determination of prices Facilitation of transactions†¢ Logistics – Delivery of information, good, or service to buyer †¢ Settlement – Transfer of payment to seller †¢ Trust – Credit system, reputations, rating agencies like Consumer Reports and Better Business Bureaus Institutional infrastucture †¢ Legal – Commercial code, contract law, dispute resolution, intellectual property protection †¢ Regulatory – Rules and regulations, monitoring, enforcement Table 1. Functions of a market COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM August 1998/Vol. 41, No. 8 35 Establishing a dialogue and a sense of community among customers can create value by enabling the sharing of experiences, problems and solutions, but also allows the collection of important information about individual consumers. product offerings, search, and price discovery. The behavior of buyers, sellers, and intermediaries is motivated by their desire to maximize their private utility. When markets function well, this also leads to an efficient allocation of productive resources. Viewed this way, markets are the engine and steering system of our economy.Markets provide sellers with information about demand that allows them to employ economic inputs such as capital, technology and labor, and develop products with characteristics that match the needs of buyers. Sellers determine a schedule of product offerings that they expect will maximize their profits based on: †¢ information about buyer demand; †¢ the cost of inputs; †¢ the available technology for production and distribution of the information, goods and services purchased by the buyers; and, †¢ the transaction costs of administering production, distribution, and payment. Buyers select their purchases from the available product offerings after considering factors such as price and product characteristics. In obtaining and processing this information, buyers face search costs.These osts include the opportunity cost of time spent searching, as well as associated expenditures such as driving, telephone calls, computer fees, magazine subscriptions, etc. Typically, sellers exploit these search costs by raising their prices, and thus enjoy higher profits. Similarly sellers may face search costs in locating qualified buyers for their products, such as market research, advertising and sales calls. A key function of markets in our economic system is price discovery, which is the process of determining the prices at which demand and supply â€Å"clear† and trade occurs. For certain markets, such as financial markets, this is their primary function.Markets can employ a number of mechanisms for price discovery. 36 August 1998/Vol. 41, No. 8 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM For instance, some financial markets use one or more of the several types of auctions to determine prices, such as the â€Å"call market† auction at the opening of a trading day at the New York Stock Exchange, when bids are accepted up to a certain time and exchange occurs when the market opens. This is the first price that is communicated via the stock market ticker to the market at large, kicking off a day of â€Å"continuous market† trading. Other markets, such as the traditional automobile dealership, employ negotiation between buyers and sellers until a price is reached.In still other markets, such as the typical department store, merchants make firm offers that customers can either take or leave. Facilitation of Transactions. The matching function of a market establishes a bilateral relationship between a buyer and a seller. After a transaction is agreed upon, the product sold must be transported to the buyer (logistics), and payment must be transferred to the seller (settlement). Markets typically incorporate mechanisms for logistics and settlement: when a tr avel agent uses an airline reservations system to book a flight, the system will generate the itinerary and the ticket, and will process a credit card payment.Furthermore, market transactions require the establishment of a certain level of trust, which protects buyers, sellers and intermediaries from the opportunistic behavior of other market participants. For instance, this trust role may include banks issuing letters of credit, credit reporting bureaus, or rating agencies such as Consumer Reports and Better Business Bureaus, which keep track of product information and seller reputations, and thus discourage opportunistic behavior. Finally, markets provide the physical infrastructure that allows transactions between the buyers and the sellers to take place. This includes real assets such as physical structures and trading floors, computers and communication networks, and transportation systems. Institutional Infrastructure.The institutional infrastructure specifies the laws, rules and regulations that govern market transactions, such as issues related to contract law, dispute resolution, and intellectual property protection, and provides mechanisms for their enforcement. In addition, the dynamics of electronic markets may raise certain antitrust issues. For example, there are large economies of scale in distribution, as a single online retailer or intermediary can serve a very large market. There are also potential demand-side economies of scale in payment mechanisms and software. These may lead to a winner-takeall market structure [1] with one or a few firms dominating the market. Purchasing a new home – Research city and neighborhood – Find a house – Inspections, title research, appraisals, contracts – Get a mortgage – Moving services – Decorators, furniture, etc. †¢ Planning a vacation – Research destination – Arrange accommodations and travel – Purchase maps, books, information – C heck out weather, items to take †¢ Purchasing a car – Research make and model – Select a dealer – Get a loan or arrange a lease – Purchase insurance Table 2. Components of consumer processes and transaction/distribution cost How the Internet Affects Markets Electronic marketplaces, especially Internet-based markets, are having a major impact on the roles of markets discussed previously [2, 12]. Product Offerings.Two major emerging trends distinguish products in electronic marketplaces from their traditional counterparts: increased personalization and customization of product offerings, and the aggregation and disaggregation of information-based product components to match customer needs and to support new pricing strategies. Electronic marketplaces support personalization and customization in two ways: †¢ Consumer tracking technology allows the identification of individual buyers; information about these buyers, such as relevant demographics, co nsumer profiles, or comparison with the known preferences of similar consumers, can be used to discover or estimate their specific preferences. Information-rich products lend themselves to cost-effective customization; for instance, delivering an electronic newspaper tailored to the interests of an individual reader need not be more costly than delivering the same copy to all subscribers. Current personalization and customization technologies use either rule-based systems like Broadvision (www. broadvision. com) that draw upon sets of expert rules, or collaborative filtering systems like the Firefly Network (www. firefly. net) that utilize the feedback and experiences of consumers with a profile of likes and dislikes similar to the targeted buyer. This allows the practice of â€Å"one-to-one marketing,† which is based on understanding individual consumers.For instance, establishing a dialogue and a sense of community among customers can create value by enabling the sharing of experiences, problems and solutions, but also allows the collection of important information about individual consumers. The ultimate objective is to provide customized services according to individual preferences, whether expressed or inferred. Increased selling effectiveness comes from being able to design appropriate products to address the needs of individual consumers, and from being able to identify the moment when a customer’s purchasing decision is most likely to occur and to be prepared for that moment, one step ahead of the competition. When determining their product mix, sellers must decide which product components or features will be included in each product offering.For example, the developer of an operating system must decide which features to implement, and whether they will be marketed and priced individually or in a single bundle. These decisions are driven by the relative cost of different product bundles, which includes the following types of costs: †¢ Production cost: the cost of producing additional units for inclusion in the bundle, including storage, processing, and communications costs incurred in the process. †¢ Transaction and distribution cost: the cost of distributing a bundle of goods and administering the related transactions, such as arranging for payment. †¢ Binding cost: the cost of binding the component goods together for distribution as a bundle, such as formatting changes necessary to include news stories from wire services in a newspaper bundle. Menu cost: the cost of administering multiple prices. If a mixed bundling strategy is pursued, where the available components are offered in different combinations, then a set of n goods may require as many as 2n prices (one for each subset of one or more goods). COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM August 1998/Vol. 41, No. 8 37 c Marginal Costs Mean Valuation c0 Marginal production, distribution, and transactions are high enough to make both bundled and unbundled Unbund led sales dominate sales unprofitable bundling Bundling is more profitable than unbundled sales Distribution Costs d Figure 1. Phase diagram for bundling and unbundling strategies as a function of marginal costInternet marketplaces are changing the constraints imposed by these costs and thus are fostering new types of intermediaries that create value by aggregating services and products that traditionally were offered by separate industries. For instance, Table 2 shows the components of three processes that generate value for consumers. In traditional markets, these components are provided by separate industries. A consumer in the market for a new car might select a make and model based on the experience collected from test drives, research from auto magazines and Consumer Reports, and recommendations from friends. She would then agree on price, order the vehicle, and take delivery through a car dealer, arrange financing through a bank, and purchase insurance from an insurance compa ny.By dramatically lowering the transaction, distribution and binding costs, the Internet has allowed intermediaries such as Auto-byTel (www. auto-by-tel. com) or Microsoft’s Carpoint (www. carpoint. com) to offer all of these products and services, with the exception of an actual test drive. Similar intermediaries are emerging in other areas, such as the Travelocity (www. travelocity. com) and Microsoft’s Expedia (www. expedia. com) travel services aggregators, or Microsoft’s Boardwalk Web site that will aggregate products and services related to real estate transactions. The Case of Information Goods. Digital information goods, such as news articles, digital images or music, allow perfect copies to be created and distributed almost without cost via the Internet.The Internet is thus precipitating a dramatic reduction in the marginal costs of production and distribution for these goods, while micropayment technologies are reducing the transaction costs for their commercial exchange. Bakos and Brynjolfsson [6] point out that this creates new opportunities for repackaging content through strategies such as bundling, site licensing, subscriptions, rentals, differential pricing and per-use fees. All of these schemes can be thought Figure 2. ComputerESP price comparison engine 38 August 1998/Vol. 41, No. 8 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM of as either aggregating or disaggregating information goods along some dimension.For instance, aggregation can take place across products, as when software programs are bundled for sale in a software suite or when access to various content of an online service is provided for a fixed fee. Aggregation can also take place across consumers, as with the provision of a site license to multiple users for a fixed fee, or over time, as with subscriptions. Many information goods have been bundled solely to save on transaction, distribution and menu costs, yet these costs are much lower on the Internet. Thus software and othe r types of content may be increasingly disaggregated and metered, as on-demand software applets or as individual news stories and stock quotes.Independent of the cost considerations mentioned previously, Bakos and Brynjolfsson [6] show that aggregation of arge numbers of information goods can be a powerful strategy that results in higher profits for sellers as well as a socially desirable wider distribution of the goods. This is due to the ability of aggregation to change the shape of the demand curve faced by the sellers to one that is easier to exploit. Aggregation can be a surprisingly profitable strategy when marginal production costs are low and consumers are homogeneous. Bakos and Brynjolfsson’s analysis provides a framework to understand the emergence of intermediaries that aggregate online content, such as America Online and Yahoo! , as well as the increasing use of subscription pricing in the sale of information goods by companies such as Netscape, Dow-Jones, or Reut ers.Figure 1 graphically summarizes this discussion and depicts the impact of marginal cost c and distribution/transaction cost d on the desirability of bundling large numbers of information goods. Search. Electronic marketplaces lower the buyers’ cost to obtain information about the price and product features of seller offerings as well as the sellers’ cost to communicate information about their prices and product characteristics. For instance, a buyer in the market for a 400MHz Pentium II microprocessor can easily compare the prices of different sellers by using a specialized search engine like Pricewatch (www. pricewatch. com) or ComputerESP (www. computeresp. com), as shown in Figure 2.Similarly, links to manufacturers’ Web sites can be used to obtain detailed information about the product features of different laptop computers. By lowering buyers’ search costs, electronic markets increase economic efficiency. Not only do buyers incur lower costs even after considering more product offerings, they also benefit from being able to identify and purchase products that better match their needs. Several Internet-based technologies assist buyers’ searching: multimedia, high bandwidth, and rating sites provide more product information. Search engines help buyers identify appropriate seller offerings. The search engines can be hierarchical directories (like Yahoo! , generic tools (like AltaVista in early 1998), or specialized tools that work best in the context of specific markets (such as Pricewatch and ComputerESP for computers and peripherals, or Expedia and Travelocity for airline tickets and other travel products).Intelligent agents such as Bargainfinder (bf. cstar. ac. com/bf) or Jango (www. jango. com) have been developed to scout the Web and compare product offerings by price or features on the behalf of the buyers. These technologies keep lowering buyers’ search costs. The lower search costs enable new markets to e merge. For example, low buyer search costs and global reach allowed Onsale. com (www. onsale. om) to create markets in goods like secondhand cameras; otherwise the search costs would be too high to enable potential buyers and sellers to find each other in a conventional market. Several other intermediaries are emerging to facilitate the process of matching buyers and sellers. Among many others they include Yahoo! , Pricewatch, Netbot’s Jango, and several other search engines, Web directories and shopping agents. They also include providers for product information (e. g. , CNet, trade magazines), recommendations and personalization (e. g. , Firefly Network), and information about sellers such as Bizrate. Price Discovery. Electronic marketplaces enable new types of price discovery to be employed in different markets.For example, some airlines auction last-minute unsold seats to the highest bidders, and Web-based auctions at Onsale. com have created for consumer goods markets th at function like the financial markets. Intermediaries such as Priceline (www. priceline. com) allow buyers to specify product requirements and the amount they’re willing to pay, and then make corresponding offers to the participating sellers, reversing the traditional functioning of retail markets. Finally, agents such as Kasbah (ecommerce. media. mit. edu/kasbah) and Tete-a-Tete (ecommerce. media. mit. edu/tete-a-tete) that can negotiate purchases on behalf of buyers and sellers, may restructure the price discovery process in Internet marketplaces [11].The ability to customize products, combined with the ability of sellers to access substantial information about prospective buyers, such as demographics, preferences and past shopping behavior, is greatly improving sellers’ ability to price discriminate—that COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM August 1998/Vol. 41, No. 8 39 is, to charge different prices for different buyers. Price discrimination is a powerful tool that al lows sellers to increase their profits, and reduces the consumer surplus enjoyed by buyers. On the other hand, price discrimination enables sellers to service buyers who would otherwise be priced out of the market, an outcome that increases economic efficiency.These new types of price discovery, such as the ability of buyers to make offers and the ability to conduct electronic negotiations between buyer and seller agents, are changing the â€Å"microstructure† of consumer markets. Finance theory has shown that market microstructure affects both the efficiency of markets and the bargaining power of their participants. The increasing importance of electronic commerce emphasizes the need to carry this type of research analysis to electronic marMarkketplaces. It is unclear who the beneficiaup ries of this process will be. The ability to r implement different price discovery mechanisms may result in more efficient marr/2 kets, thus benefiting buyers and hurting inefficient sellers . As menu costs decrease, sellers will move away from fixed pricing, and more prices will become negotiable [7].While savvy buyers may benefit, the 0 ability to negotiate prices may not be pleasant or result in a good deal, as many visitors to auto dealerships have discovered. Furthermore, when sellers are better informed, they are likely to increase their profits by charging different prices to different buyers. Economic theory predicts that buyers with more bargaining power, typically the more affluent ones, will fare better in this situation. Facilitation. The cost of logistics—the process of transporting products from the seller to the buyer— has been estimated at more than 10% of the GNP [8]. Electronic marketplaces improve information sharing between buyers and sellers, helping lower the cost of logistics and promoting quick, just-intime deliveries and reduced inventories.The distribution of information goods such as newspapers, music, videos and software, is lik ely to be completely transformed, as the information infrastructure will replace physical distribution systems. Sellers in Internet marketplaces are typically responsible for delivery to their customers, and increasingly contract with third-party providers for direct delivery from the manufacturer to the final consumer, reducing costs and time-to-delivery. Thus, direct sellers like Dell Computer are squeezing out traditional intermediaries such as wholesalers and distributors, while delivery providers such as FedEx and 40 August 1998/Vol. 41, No. 8 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACMUPS are emerging as major Internet intermediaries, because of their logistics expertise and their economies of scale in distribution. Electronic payment systems will further lower transaction costs in Internet marketplaces, and micropayment systems will lower the cost of small transactions, enabling new pricing strategies such as the metering of software use. As face-to-face marketplaces are replaced by electronic ones, there is increasing need to protect market participants from opportunistic behavior. Technologies such as public key cryptography can provide security and authentication of transactions, while intermediaries like Bizrate (www. bizrate. om) will use information from consumers to keep track of merchants’ reputaAs search costs fall from very high to moderate, new markets emerge, and both sellers and buyers benefit. However, if search costs continue to fall, market prices fall and sellers are made worse off, while buyers benefit from the lower prices and their improved ability to find products that fit their needs. r 2/4t r 2/t market breakdown buyer search cost Figure 3. The impact of buyer search costs in a differentiated market tions.Credit bureaus and credit card companies will provide credit information or guarantee payment for consumers. Finally, intermediaries like Verisign (www. verisign. om) are emerging as â€Å"certificate authorities† that match legal id entities to the possession of cryptographic keys—a public key infrastructure. Internet Marketplaces and Competition Impact of Lower Search Costs. The ability of Internet marketplaces to reduce search costs for price and product information may significantly affect competition. Bakos [4, 5] shows that lower buyer search costs in electronic marketplaces promote price competition among sellers. This effect will be most dramatic in commodity markets, where intensive price competition can eliminate all seller profits. It will also be significant in markets where products are differentiated, reducing the monopoly power enjoyed by sellers, and leading to lower prices and seller profits.Figure 3 shows the equilibrium prices for a differentiated good with zero marginal cost, which The dynamics of friction-free markets are not attractive for sellers that had previously depended on geography or customer ignorance to insulate them from the low-cost sellers in the market. consumers value at r and has a degree of differentiation t. As search costs fall from very high to moderate, new markets emerge, and both sellers and buyers benefit. However, if search costs continue to fall, sellers are made worse off since buyers can more easily find the lowest-cost seller, while buyers benefit from the lower prices and their improved ability to find products that fit their needs.The dynamics of friction-free markets are not attractive for sellers that had previously depended on geography or customer ignorance to insulate them from the low-cost sellers in the market. As geography becomes less important, new sources of product differentiation, such as customized features or service or innovation, will become more important, at least for those sellers who don’t have the lowest cost of production. Also, like an arms race in which both sides develop increasingly powerful weapons, sellers can exploit the reduction in menu costs to compensate for the lower search costs in electr onic marketplaces. Specifically, sellers can make it difficult to compare the price of alternative product offerings, and they can attempt to collect information about buyers that allows more effective price discrimination.Airlines, for example, have implemented extremely complicated and ever-changing fare structures, flight restrictions, and ticket availability, sometimes offering hundreds of fares for travel between certain pairs of destinations. It is also interesting to note that when informational inefficiencies prevail, a large number of sellers does not necessarily result in a competitive and efficient market. If search costs are high, individual sellers do not have a strong incentive to lower their prices because few buyers would discover them. As the number of sellers increases, it becomes more difficult for buyers to locate discounters, and thus the market may become more monopolistic as the number of sellers increases!This behavior is likely in certain markets with little or no advertising, such as some markets for professional legal and medical ser- ices. Internet marketplaces could provide price cutters with the means to reach a larger fraction of the buyers, and thus undermine the monopolistic nature of these markets. While there is much speculation about the effect that electronic marketplaces have on prices, thus far there has been little systematic analysis. One exploratory study by Bailey and Brynjolfsson [3] did not find much evidence that prices on the Internet were lower than prices for the same goods sold via traditional retail channels. Their analysis was based on data from 52 Internet and conventional retailers for 337 distinct titles of books, music compact discs, and software.Bailey and Brynjolfsson provide several possible explanations for their unexpected findings, including the possibility that searching on the Internet during the sample period was not as easy as is sometimes assumed, that the demographics of the typical Internet u ser encouraged a higher price equilibrium, that many of the Internet retailers were still experimenting with pricing strategies, and that Internet retailers were differentiating their products (for example, via delivery options or customized recommendations). Clearly, more empirical research is needed in this area. Increasing Differentiation and Lowering the Cost of Product Information. A higher degree of product differentiation leads to an increase in seller profits, which may partially or completely offset the decrease caused by lower search costs. Sellers in electronic markets will thus want increasingly to differentiate their products, possibly utilizing the personalization and customization technologies discussed earlier.Buyers in a differentiated market face two types of search costs: the cost of obtaining price information and the cost of obtaining information about the product characteristics of a seller’s offering. If sellers can control the type of electronic market introduced, they should favor a system emphasizing product information rather than price-shopping. COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM August 1998/Vol. 41, No. 8 41 A key variable for such a system is the cost of product information relative to the cost of price information about the product. For instance, an electronic marketplace designed to promote priceshopping makes it easy to compare price information, but might still require a higher-cost inquiry (such as a visit) to obtain detailed product information.For example, a buyer looking for a computer monitor on the Internet can easily compare prices from a large number of sellers, but then must obtain and evaluate the monitors’ specifications, assess the sellers’ reputations and return policies, and ideally locate a display model at a showroom or at a colleague’s office. By contrast, an electronic marketplace can be designed to promote competition based on product features. For example, high-quality multimedia product descriptions in standardized formats could help identify product offerings matching the buyer’s preferences, while price information could be left out of these descriptions or could be obscured by offering a large number of prices and making it difficult for the buyers to figure out which price actually applies. tained as electronic intermediaries gain a significant market share. Instead, the physical experience component might be unbundled to a physical intermediary.Auto-by-Tel, for example, may pay a fee to the intermediary where the test drive took place, a service that could be provided by a traditional dealership, but also by a specialized showroom or a car rental company. Internet-based electronic marketplaces are still at a formative stage, and it is hard to fully predict their impact on the structure of markets. However it is becoming clear that they will promote greater economic efficiency, and help sustain economic growth. In the process, they are creating major tra nsformations, full of strategic opportunities for intermediaries ready to compete by adding value for buyers and sellers rather than by exploiting information asymmetries.  References 1. Arthur, B. Increasing returns and the new world of business. Harvard Business Rev. , (July–Aug. 1996), 100–109. 2. Bailey, J. and Bakos, Y. An exploratory study of the emerging role of electronic intermediaries. International J. Electronic Commerce 1, 3 (Spring 1997).3. Bailey, J. and Brynjolfsson, E. In search of friction-free markets: An exploratory analysis of prices for books, CDs and software sold on the Internet. In Proceedings of the 25th Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (Alexandria, VA, Sept. 1997). www. stern. nyu. edu/~bakos/big. pdf.

Operation Management Case Studies Essay

Operation Management Case Studies Intoduction Case study on Salmon processing facility Question 1 E= $ 6,333.33 Therefore, the additional expenditure for the productivity of the two systems to equal will be $ 6, 333.33 Question 4                   If the cost of energy increases in future, the productivity of facility will be affected negatively and it will decrease. If the cost of the energy increases beyond the estimated additional expenditure of $ 6,333.33, the productivity of the new facility will be much lower than that of the old system and therefore, it will not be advantage to the firm. This will also affect reduce the profitability of the company. Case 2 on Hard Rock Cafe Question 1                   The Hard Rock strategic changes that it has experienced include globalization and changes in its brand through unique services that include rock music. The music has led to the growth of this company. It has managed to open 157 cafe facilities in more than 57 countries. The cafe has also diversified brands to fish and lobsters in Britain. Moreover, it has started shifting its target market from tourists to non tourists’ cities in United Kingdom in addition to leasing cafes in tourism cites such as Nottingham (Heizer, & Render, 2013). Question 2                   Hard Rock has various PRODUCTS that vary from Hamburger, beef, and other tourism attracting meal. The cafe is has also diversified its products to fish and lobsters thus widening its market and meeting the needs of the customer.                   Hard rock cafe moved its LOCATION from domestic market to global market. In addition, it has started opening in new non tourisms LOCATIONS such as Manchester united to prevent risks associated with economic fluctuations that arise from tourism business poor performance.                   Hard rock HUMAN RESOURCE has participated in developing new strategies that has helped to improve the performance the business. For example, the introduction of sound and visuals in dinner events that attract more customers and recruitment of highly trained employees that provides quality services.                   The Hard Rock has improved its  SERVICE by adding unique services that cannot be found in any other place in the world such as music on both quality visual and sounds. They serve food with enthusiasm on their customers (Heizer, & Render, 2013). Question 3 -123825158750Introduction Growth Maturity Decline Standardization Less rapid product changes – more minor changes Optimum capacity Increasing stability of process Long production runs Product improvement and cost cutting Little product differentiation Cost minimization Overcapacity in the industry Prune line to eliminate items not returning good margin Reduce capacity Forecasting critical Product and process reliability Competitive product improvements and options Increase capacity Shift toward product focused Enhance distribution Product design and development critical Frequent product and process design changes Short production runs High production costs Limited models Attention to quality Best period to increase market share R&D product engineering critical Practical to change price or quality image Strengthen niche Cost control critical Poor time to change image, price, or quality Competitive costs become critical Defend market position OM Strategy/Issues Company Strategy/Issues HDTV CD-ROM Color copiers Drive-thru restaurants Fax machines Station wagons Sales 3 1/2† Floppy disks Internet 00Introduction Growth Maturity Decline Standardization Less rapid product changes – more minor changes Optimum capacity Increasing stability of process Long production runs Product improvement and cost cutting Little product differentiation Cost minimization Overcapacity in the industry Prune line to eliminate items not returning good margin Reduce capacity Forecasting critical Product and process reliability Competitive product improvements and options Increase capacity Shift toward product focused Enhance distribution Product design and development critical Frequent product and process design changes Short production runs High production costs Limited models Attention to quality Best period to increase market share R&D product engineering critical Practical to change price or quality image Strengthen niche Cost control critical Poor time to change image, price, or quality Competitive costs become critical Defend market position OM Strategy/Issues Company Strategy/Issues HDTV CD-ROM Color copiers Drive-thru restaurants Fax machines Station wagons Sales 3 1/2† Floppy disks Internet                   The company is still in the growth stage but approaching maturity. This is from the fact that Hard Rock is trying to change its products from beef and Hamburger to lobster and fish, it can be noted that it is trying to improve its products in order to increase its competitiveness. The company is still forecasting on its future market where it want to change from tourists-dependent market to non-tourism dependent market (Heizer, & Render, 2013). The cafe has products that are reliable with little improvement. Reference Heizer, J., & Render, B. (2013). Principles of operation ,management: Sustainability and supply chain management. Pearson Source document

Is the government justified in using capital punishment Research Paper

Is the government justified in using capital punishment - Research Paper Example The work that follows aims at showing that the government is not justified in using capital punishment to execute justice to offenders, though at some time it is necessary. Capital punishment is not the best method of dispensing justice to offenders. This is because it denies individuals of their constitutional rights. Various countries show their opposition to capital punishment and instead support a life sentence. A recent example is one portrayed by a number of Americans at Santa Cruz who voted against death penalty for a bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, against whom the authorities issued a death penalty (Rankin 1). The opponents, according to Russ Rankin in the Washington Times said that it is an outdated, ineffective and wasteful method of dispensing justice. In 1972, the United States suspended the use of capital punishment following a decision by the Supreme Court. This is an indication that it is not the best method of dispensing justice to offenders. Although the state r e-established death penalty, its popularity and implementation is decreasing, with only a few exceptions (Rankin 4). The method, as Rankin points has not proofed to be the best method to deter crime. On the contrary, it costs taxpayers in a state more to execute death punishment than life sentence (Rankin 5). The government is not justified to issue capital punishment because many of them may go against the rights of those convicted. For example, Lindsey Bever reporting in ‘the guardian’ talks of a 62-year old man, Graham, wrongfully sentenced to death but escapes through being shipped to a prison in California. After the US criminal justice system reinstated capital punishment since 1976, many people have lost their lives. As Bever points, it is hard to know the exact number of people who died for crimes they did not commit. As Graham reveals, discrimination reins in the American criminal justice system where people with little crimes would face execution while others with brutal offenses would be spared. In most cases, those accused of capital punishment are poor and cannot afford to fight for their rights. This happens because the people cannot hire a lawyer for themselves unless there is a counsel provision for them and most of them fight for their rights without legal documents. This is why there is a lot of discrimination in handling these cases given that those unable to pay for the cost fail to get justice. It makes it hard to justify government’s issuance of capital punishment as there is no justice rendered to those convicted. Most of the governments practicing capital punishments go against the rights of the individuals as provided in the constitution. Every individual, even those convicted to an offense have a right to life and it is against the constitution for the government to issue a capital punishment against them. However, there are circumstances under which capital punishment may seem the best method to implement justice. Depending on the weight of the offense, a government or a court may choose to execute capital punishment on the offender. For example, following the Delhi gang rape several factors made the court term the rape worthy for capital punishment. First, the court argued that those who committed the offense did it in an extremely brutal and revolting manner which raised an intense and extreme annoyance to the society (Baxi 3). The court directly links this brutal nature of the violence to the quantum of annoyance on the society.

High School Graduation celeberation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

High School Graduation celeberation - Essay Example In some occasions the students receive a piece of paper wrapped in a ribbon; this is usually a mock of the diploma, which is awarded much latter. Students are thanked and appreciated during this ceremony for being able to complete the course and successfully graduating. In most cases the students are always present during the graduation and during speeches. In some cases some students a re also appointed to appreciate the teaches and the parents the parents are appreciated for letting the students go to school , the teachers are mentioned to have worked with the students tirelessly to see them through education and finally graduating. Students are then asked to form alumni. In this way, they are requested to support the school in all possible means as will as coming back to the school to encourage other students to work hard and look forward to such a graduation as that. In other institutions they are requested to support the school financially may be in its expansion .the immediate former students of each school should act as role models of all the remaining students. Supporting the school may even include holding fundraising in support of the school in many matters which include paying school fees for needy students in the school or building up a project in the same school. Most parents are aware that a successful education involves more than the teachers and the students , they are also supposed to be part of the learning experience. To succeed, the parents are also supposed to include their support in all ways possible including financial and moral support .the parents should form a parent and teacher’ s organization or committee so that they are able to discuss matters that should help the school. Competition is very healthy in every day life and so should it be even in education, healthy competition is where one competes with himself first before competing with the rest of the students as well as other schools latter in the education

Health Care Provider and health Diversity Essay

Health Care Provider and health Diversity - Essay Example On the contrary, Buddhism has a different world view since the faith has a straightforward looking at the human condition where nothing is ever based on wishful thinking (Murti, 2013). The origin of the Buddhism religion was based on the observation of how things are in the world and everything that the faith teaches is based on these observations, including the concept of healing. Therefore, it is imperative to discuss how the two faiths, Christianity, and Buddhism, perceive the concept of healing and how their worldviews may affect the process of providing healthcare. One of the vital questions to address when tackling issues to do with religion is the concept of spirituality. Christianity has a strong attachment to spirituality and, in this case, it refers to the extent to which human beings are connected to God as the supernatural being (Shelly & Miller, 2006). Thus, Christians hold their world view from the story of creation and fall where God, in spiritual presence, created everything and everything that happens is according to his will. Therefore, for a Christian seeking medical attention, he or she believes that the medics and healthcare providers are serving the purpose of God by preserving the life that God gives for free. In this case, the Christians believe that God uses the healthcare givers to protect the lives of human beings. On the other hand, the Christians believe that spirituality is living up to God’s expectations by following the footsteps of Jesus Christ (Woodhead, 2012). When handling a patient from Christian faith, therefore, the healthcare provider must understand that the religion has strong attachment to spirituality and doing things according to God’s will and that anything contrary to the Christian morals may invite God’s wrath as evident from the story of ‘the fall’ during the beginning of creation (Shelly & Miller, 2006). Thus, for

Environmental Studies Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Environmental Studies - Assignment Example c) Ice and gas are two different elements with different qualities. It so happens that their age would also differ depending on their qualities. d) 2.53 years younger. e) It is smallest at the bottom of the core. This is because it is exposed to elements. STEP 2 b) Very reliable c) 160.73 and 28.1 years ago respectively STEP 3 10. Carbon dioxide and temperature are directly proportional 11. CH4 is more closely correlated with temperature. This is because it is lighter than CO2. 12. They are inversely proportional 13. 199.81 and 594.65 14. CO2 = 289.76 – 189.23, which is 100.53. CH4 = 273.4 – 197.37, which is 76.03 A combination of effects of the Antarctic, Southern Ocean, processes in the tropics and in the Norther Hemisphere, where the primary sources of methane are located, had a big influence. The close correlation between CO2 concentration and Antarctic temperature indicates that the Southern Ocean played an important role in causing the CO2 increase. However, the similarity of changes in CO2 concentration and variations of atmospheric methane concentration suggests that processes in the tropics and in the Northern Hemisphere, where the main sources for methane are located, also had substantial effects on atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Part 3: Hypothesis Activity The time period with extremely elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, combined with the rings has a big influence on the patterns of increasingly hot summers and increasing torrential storms in the two cities.

World Trade Organizations Dispute Settlement Mechanism Thesis

World Trade Organizations Dispute Settlement Mechanism - Thesis Example The author of the paper states that the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism should secure the ‘rule of law’ within international trade and provide all members with opportunities to exercise their rights equally under multilateral trade agreements. But, even after ten years, there still are many countries which haven't have the option to initiate a dispute. The system has been critically analyzed and the solutions have been proposed that DSM should break the monarchy and fear of developed countries and secure the developing.  An international organization, theWorld Trade Organization(WTO) was designed to supervise and liberalize international was came into being on 1 January 1995. It is the descendant of GATT theGeneral Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which was formed in 1947, and continued to operate for almost five decades as a de facto international organization.  Most of the academic literature, even in its more critical versions, tend to share this basic assumption with the designers of the DSM. The DSM is conceptualized as a legal system where the same rules apply to countries on an equal basis, and where cases are judged according to their merits. This principle is incarnated in the AB, which has developed a case law with this emphasis.  A final set of observations from this literature focuses on biases and inequalities within and between institutions managing trade, including the WTO in general and the DSM in particular (Busch and Reinhardt, 2003; Shaffer, 2003). Here, the main problem identified is that the DSM (and the WTO) has become too technically complex and demanding for most developing countries to use effectively in the absence of adequate assistance. Originally, this is the observation that there are too much law and too little politics in the system.   The implicit biases of systems of trade rules, including the DSM, in favor of powerful countries - reinforced through the dominance of judicial forms of rule-making - have been noted by some contributors to the literature (for example, Busch and Reinhardt, 2001).  Initial studies of developing country participation in WTO dispute settlement found that they were unable to use the system effectively to settle cases, although they had expected levels of success when cases went before panels and the Appellate Body.161 This suggested that there was a need for more training and assistance to developing countries to enable them to handle the initial stages of dispute settlement more effectively. More recent experience suggests that at least the major developing countries - and quite a few Latin American countries in general - have become more effective in using dispute settlement overall, including in using it to obtain early settlements. The establishment of the Advisory Centre on WTO L aw and the dispute settlement training activities of the WTO Secretariat and others should help ensure that developing countries continue to made progress on this front (Busch and Reinhardt, 2001).