Environmental Economics Essay

Agriculture has an instrumental role and close association in preservation and conservation of the environment and economic development. It promotes environment diversity and enhances the creation of artificial habitats. The green biomass that covers many fields forms a basis of aesthetic to the human emotions. Intensified uses of chemical in agricultural production threaten the above benefits that arise from agricultural fields. In the recent past, a growing concern has been raised with regard to the negative impact arising from agricultural related activities and policies. Legalization of substances such as pesticide and fertilizer enhance negative consequences on the environment. They contain toxic elements thus causes pollution of surface water and underground water, drainage of wetlands, air pollutions and loss of diverse life forms and habitats. Settlement scheme in implemented on fragile lands such swamps, disturbances the ecological balance in the area. Environmental issues can be resolve by promoting organic agriculture, establishing relevant institutions, formulation of legislation and policies. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) members agreed that reforms should, to the extent possible, simultaneously enable progress to be made on trade liberation and environment. They also agreed to uphold the need to integrate agricultural development with environmental issues. (OECD 1993, p, 24-50) The focus of this study is therefore to examine the risk of inorganic agriculture against organic agriculture on the environment and thereafter formulate alternative strategies to foster sustainability. Environmental issues are diverse and multi-disciplinary in nature since they cut across all sectors of the economy and cultures. Unsustainable agriculture and increase in populations in the world modifies environmental issues. Population increase exerts high pressure on the economic processes to stretch, in most cases beyond the natural sustainable limit, to accommodate the excess demand (Sandler, Todd. 1997, p, 34-73) In response, the world has embarked on intensified adoption to scientific invention and advancement in technological development to improve production. Organic means of production are therefore considered redundant and barbaric in favor of inorganic agriculture. Unsustainable means of production, consequently, have widened and continue to widen environmental global challenges that threaten to cripple and suffocate the world’s economy. Studies have shown that increased use of chemical, such as pesticides and fertilizers for production in farming activities perpetuates the environmental global challenges. This puts the future livelihood for mankind at a stake and uncertain. It is therefore important to examine environmental challenges attached to intensive use of chemical for agricultural production and thereafter provide an alternative strategy to enhance sustainability. (Dutch Committee, 1994, p, 30-50) Intensified use of chemical for production is largely attributed to agricultural and industrial revolution. Population has also influenced the need to use chemicals to increase food production to meet the ever growing world demand for food. Initially, the above means of agricultural production were common in Europe and Asian continent. Abject poverty in the world has created great desire and demand for technological innovation to increase food production. Globalization and scientific advancement has therefore provided a solution to the world food demand problem. However, the solution comes with a bundle of side effects. Technological and scientific information transfer, particularly, to African countries, where poverty is obsolete and unsustainable (Andersons, L. and Bruce, Yundle, 2001, p, 50-200) Over the last three decades there has been an increasing global use of chemicals for agricultural production. Traditionally, production was based on organic means thus less environmental concerns. Merchandised agriculture has raised the public concern over the nature of the problems that arises from agricultural production. These problems are diverse and wholly attributed to environmental pollution caused by intensified use of pesticide and fertilizers. (Uri, Noel, 1999, p, 23-123) The problems are aggravated by improper management of agricultural chemicals thereby causing serious environmental issues. These pose a great problem to the survival and well-being of humanity, particularly those living in developing world. This is because fertilizers and pesticides are agent of pollution to water bodies, food sources, land, air and vegetation. The development of agriculture production through specialization and intensification of land use in recent decades has given rise to a wide range of environmental effects, both within the agricultural industry itself and increasingly, externally to it. The recognition and understanding of these consequences of modern high technology agriculture developed in the 1970s and during the 1980s progress was made in addressing these impacts. Some problems still remain however and will be of increasing importance. (OCED, p, 177) The use of chemicals for agricultural production therefore will continue to compromise the environmental sustainability. The World Health Organization estimates that about a quarter of the diseases facing mankind today occur due to prolonged exposure to environmental pollution. Most of these environmental related diseases are however, not easily detected and may be acquired during childhood and manifest later in adulthood. The indiscriminate and excessive use of agrochemicals for crop protection represents by far the greatest threat to human health, to the genetic stock of the population and to sustain agriculture and environment. At a United Nations seminar in Nairobi Kenya in 1984, it was reported that almost 370,000 people suffer from pesticide poisoning and about 10,000annually die due to poisoning. Recently, the World Health Organization estimated 500,000 fatalities due to pesticide poisoning in developing world. This WHO’s report further claims that another 400,000 cases of poisoning were due to pesticide handling and usage. (Mervyns, p, 12) From the quotation above, it is clear that the impacts of agrochemical increases with time and magnitude. This kind of trend is unsustainable and therefore threatens the future of humanity. The impact of pesticide and fertilizer on human health is crucial and therefore should never be under-estimated. The traces of these chemical causes inhalation problems. Accumulation of the elements in the body system affects the free circulation of blood in the body. Biodiversity forms a basis upon which the world’s beauty, emotional fulfillment and aesthetic appeal are based. Agriculture spices up the aesthetic-array of the world. It also creates artificial habitats that shelter migratory organisms such as birds, insects and animals. It therefore follows that agricultural production is a gene bank for scientific development. Intensive use of pesticides and fertilizers puts the existence of nature in it natural form at stake. This is because chemicals kill organisms that perpetuate natural fertilization processes thereby hindering the natural form of nature stabilization. Chemical enhances the process of mutation. This leads to evolution of hybridized species of pests which are resistant to natural mean of pest control and at times even resistant to pesticides. Loss of biodiversity as a result of chemical use in agricultural production is therefore eminent. It has been reported that, â€Å"The first sub lethal effect of a pesticide on a bird was probably the eggshell thinning phenomena first described by Ratcliff. DDE, the stable metabolite of DDE is reported to be the cause of eggshell thinning and consequent decline in the breeding success of birds of prey. † (Mervyns, p, 78) Equity is a controversial aspect of resource distribution in the world. The gap between the rich and the poor is quite disheartening. Economic processes and advancement also work towards widening the gap. Commercialization of agriculture with intensive use of chemicals, poses environmental degradation. This consequently deprives the land of its ability to naturally produce food thereby lowering its production yield. The poor depend totally on the environment for their livelihood. Inorganic agriculture is a world’s strategy to check the gap between the poor and the rich. It is widely believe that many people in the world sleep without food for many days. Increased food production, will therefore help to resolve one of the greatest challenges that is threatening to tear the earth a part. However, inorganic farming has failed to bridge the gap between the poor and the rich. The efficiency of using chemicals to increase food production is questionable. Traditional means of production were more manual, labor intensive and time consuming with minimum negative impacts to the environment. Current means of agricultural production are merchandized and more efficient as compared with the traditional methods. However, with regard to the environmental challenges, the efficiency of inorganic production to address the abject poverty in the world is low. Ecology is defined as the domestic site of organism, knowledge and the sum of the relation of the surrounding world. It is a self sustaining environment. Ecology is always sensitive to changes. Introduction of foreign substances such as traces of pesticides and fertilizer modify the ecological characteristic and identity. Nutrients like nitrate and phosphate are normally washed down into water bodies when it rains. This initiates the process of eutrophication. Eutrophication is a process whereby the water experiences enrichment with nutrients of nitrate and phosphate. Consequently water lilies, phytoplasm and algae blooms to experience luxuriant growth. This phenomenon has negative impacts on the functions of the water body. In the first place, Algae bloom forms a green like layer on top of the water thereby hindering penetration of light to the water body. Due to high accumulation of substance in the water, decaying process increases. This causes a biological oxygen demand which leads to suffocation of aquatic lives in the water body. Bad smell arises from the water body as a result of decaying processes. The value of water for domestic use therefore reduces.

Advertising Appeals

Dissertation On Study of advertising appeals used by the top Indian brands and its impact on consumer purchase. By SHARMA  PRATEEK JAYANT A0102210041 MBA (M&S) Class of 2012 Under the Supervision of Mrs. TEENA BAGGA FACULTY Department of Marketing In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Business Administration –Marketing & Sales AMITY BUSINESS SCHOOL AMITY UNIVERSITY UTTAR PRADESH, SECTOR 125, NOIDA – 201303, UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA-2011 AMITY BUSINESS SCHOOL DECLARATION I, Sharma Prateek Jayant student of Masters of Business Administration from Amity Business School, Amity University Uttar Pradesh hereby declare that I have completed Dissertation on â€Å"Study of advertising appeals used by the top Indian brands and its impact on consumer purchase. † I further declare that the information presented in this project is true and original to the best of my knowledge. Date: Sharma Prateek Jayant Enrollment No: A0102210041 MBA Class of 2010 Place: Noida AMITYUNIVERSITY UTTAR PRADESH AMITYBUSINESSSCHOOL CERTIFICATE Dissertation: Progress Review Stage 1 I, Mrs. Teena Bagga hereby certify that Sharma Prateek Jayant student of Masters of Business Administration at Amity Business School, Amity University Uttar Pradesh has completed first two chapters of dissertation on â€Å"Study of advertising appeals used by the top Indian brands and its impact on consumer purchase†, under my guidance Mrs. Teena Bagga Faculty Department of Marketing TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER- 1 INTRODUCTION 1. 1 Advertising appeals: The Indian â€Å"TOP BRANDS† perspective 1. 2 Purpose of the study 1. 3 Context to the study CHAPTER- 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. 1 Advertising appeals: The Indian â€Å"TOP BRANDS† perspective. The reason to buy any product of any brand is derived by an advertising appeal. An advertising campaign can have more than one advertising appeal. Only one appeal can be used and it can have sub themes in an advertising campaign. The appeal must be unique and must give a positive impression about the product/brand to the target audience. Every appeal that is used by the brands in advertising is as per their competitors. Also, an important aspect of appeal is that it needs to be believable by the audience (Kumar, 1998). The audience tries to comprehend the advertisement and only then their purchase behavior gets inclined towards the brand. Only when the audience behavior is molded by the advertiser towards the brand, their purpose of advertisement is achieved. In order to do so advertisers understand the psychological aspects of the audience and then they try to develop the advertising appeal which can position their attitude towards the brand. For the advertiser it is very important to understand â€Å"How the diffusion of the message takes place in the target audience†. And in order to have a positive diffusion advertiser creates a favorable environment. Advertising mediums play an important role in the advertising message as it directly affects the mind of the target audience. These mediums can be Television, Radio, Internet, Print etc. Psychologists feel that all the human activities are based on the needs (Lamb et al. , 1992, Schewe, 1987). A consumer may have different types of needs like physiological, physical or latent. An individual who has a specific need always looks for the information from the marketing world. When there is a cue which is as per the need of the consumer, then an individual responds for the product/brand. Drivers that are present in individuals, vary at different levels. Consumers may be inclined towards the product because of the aura of prestige which is associated with the advertising appeals. Advertising appeal is the main central message in the advertising message. It arouses the desires and addresses the human need that can be satisfied by the product/brand which is advertised. Appeal is the underlying content in advertising. Advertising appeal and execution are usually interdependent. Advertising appeal can be used in all types of media but the execution style is different for different type of media. Advertising appeal is something which attracts the consumers and develops interest in esteem, sex, fear, security and sensory pleasure. Advertiser uses the word appeal to emphasize on the creativity. Commonly appeals persuade the consumer to invest in the product. Appeals not always have all the product attributes but they create an atmosphere where the target audience’s desires are evoked towards the product. For example, if there is a product for the housewives then the appeal would be related to family. The Indian top brands for the year 2011: India Rank (2011) | Brand Name| Category| | Amul| Milk Powder/Milk/Ice cream| 2| Kingfisher| Beer/Full-service airlines| 3| Big Bazaar| Retail| 4| ICICI Bank| Bank| 5| State Bank Of India| Bank| 6| Airtel| Mobile service provider| 7| LIC| Insurance| 8| Cafe Coffee Day| Coffee| 9| Titan| Watch| 10| Lakme| Cosmetics| SOURCE: Campaign Magazine which releases Asia’s top 1000 brand list every year. have had the best of the advertisi ng mixes with appeals reaching to the audience 1. 2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY To find out the extent to which consumer purchase gets affected by advertising appeals used by the top Indian brands. . 3 CONTEXT TO THE STUDY Everyday consumers are bombarded with different advertising campaigns but they do not respond to everything as they need something other than just tangibles. There is a need to explore something more than tangibles that can attract their attention. The top brands in India have been able to do this in an excellent manner and today they have reached the top of the charts for the same reason. They were able to do this by using appropriate advertising appeals in their advertising campaigns. CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE †¢ (Verma, 2009) No communication is complete without feedback or reaction. The intent behind advertising is to persuade consumers to purchase and repurchase the product over and over again, but does the consumer respond to all communications sent by the advertisers? The human brain has a limited processing capacity and consumers have the tendency to process the most useful and appealing information first. Advertisers use different types of appeals and demonstrations to attract and retain customers, but the literature review shows very less work on evaluating the differential impact of various types f appeals on consumer purchase decisions. This study empirically tests the differential influence various advertising appeals create on consumer purchase decisions. †¢ (J. Hornik, August 2010) Marketing managers and scholars have focused substantial attention on the role of advertising message appeal in the persuasion process. The most common appeals (fear, humor, sex, comparative, gain/loss frame, t wo or one sided, and metaphor) have been compared to determine their relative effectiveness. Separate analysis for each response variable, to assess the contribution of several moderating effects on the results has also been performed. A test of heterogeneity indicated the presence of moderators on observed relationships. To supplement the quantitative analysis, a qualitative comparative analysis has been done. Results show that the overall appeal effect between conditions is of small to moderate size and that profound differences exist between appeals while some moderating variables have significant effects on effect sizes in appeal studies. All methods provided the opportunity to obtain results of theoretical and practical interest. †¢ (Nathalie Dens, Sept. 2010) The aim of this study is to investigate interaction effects between branding strategy (new brand versus established brand), advertising execution strategies (informational, positive emotional and negative emotional) and product category involvement (low and high) on consumers’ attitudes towards the product, purchase intention and the (parent) brand. Two analyses are performed in which involvement is manipulated at product category and at individual level. The results show that in general, line extensions of established brands are preferred over new brands. Furthermore, advertising strategy has little impact on consumer responses to line extensions of familiar brands. The type of advertising strategy used does have a significant impact on product and brand attitude and purchase intention for new brands, where negative emotional appeals lead to significantly more negative responses. The results are further moderated by product category involvement. Informational appeals score especially well in high-involvement situations, whereas positive emotional appeals perform better in low-involvement situations. Interestingly, the differences between advertising appeals in both low- and high-involvement conditions are greater for new brands than for extensions. †¢ (Mishra, 2009) Everyday consumers are bombarded with different advertising campaigns but they do not respond as they need something other than tangibles. There is need to explore something more than tangibles that can attract their attention. This can be done by using appropriate advertising appeal in the advertising campaign. If advertising appeal is interesting then it grabs the attention of the customers. It was revealed that persuasiveness, distinctness, perfectness, fascinating, sensational, energetic, aesthetic, elegant and captivating were the factors that emerged for the advertising appeal and dimensions were energetic, sensational, persuasiveness, distinctness and captivating. Factor and dimensions are compared on the basis of gender. It was found that persuasiveness, perfectness, sensational factors and energetic, sensational and persuasiveness dimensions do not vary on the basis of gender as males and females both feel that these factors and dimensions are important but females perceive that distinctness factor and dimension and aesthetic factor is more important than males but for males fascinating factor is more important than the females. †¢ As per the books referred There are mainly two types of appeals rational and emotional appeals. Rational appeal addresses the consumer’s functional needs of the product. Kotler (2000) opined that rational appeal is based on logic and product are been sold by highlighting the product attributes, quality, its problem solving capacity and its performance. Rational appeals are informative in nature and it focuses on the suitability of the product. This appeal is used by consumer durables and in competitive advertising. There are different types of rational appeal like feature appeal that focuses on important traits and features of the product. Information content in such kind of advertisement is very rich. It is used by high involvement product. There is another type of appeal named as competitive advantage appeal which gives a comparative picture of two or more brands. Comparison can be direct or indirect depending upon the brand and the product category. Price appeal is another type of rational appeal which focuses on the price or value of the product. This appeal is also used during the festival season. News appeal is used when a new product is introduced in the market or if certain modifications are done in the existing products. When the message is to be communicated to a larger audience and it is the established brand then popularity appeal is used as it emphasizes on the experience of the satisfied consumers. Rational appeals are based on the logic and reason to buy to product. In the actual scenario both the appeals i. e. , rational and emotional appeals works together. Emotional appeals are woven with the sensation of fun, love, enjoyment, fear etc. Ramaswamy and Namakumari, 2002). Kotler (2000) opined that there could be positive emotions as well as negative emotions but in the advertising campaign negative emotions can be converted to positive emotions. Emotional appeal is the feeling associated with the product. There are certain dreams and hope which are present in the individual which works consciously or subconsciously and gives pleasant feeling in the individual’ s psyche. Emotions also help in arousing and directing the behavior of an individual (Morris, 1999). Emotions also affect the consumer’s memory. When the state of mind is excited or agitated then it prompts the consumer to buy the product (Chunawalla et al, 1998). Therefore, emotional appeals are known as transformational appeals as they transform the feelings of the consumers towards the product. It gives positive mood to the consumers as it is related to the psychological attribute of the consumer. Emotional appeals are more effective for the older market then the newer or the younger market. When the emotional appeals are used in the advertising then consumption pattern of the product is very enjoyable. Sex appeal is used in the advertisement of soaps Audience is attracted as the desire is evoked and then it helps in selling the product. Sex appeal mainly helps in attracting the opposite gender masculine or feminine (Wright, 2000). According to Bradley (1995) sex appeal considered to be an offence sometimes depending upon the culture and the country but if the sex appeal is not obscene then it is acceptable in the society. For the perfumes and cosmetics love appeal is used. These appeals are used more younger generation.

New Cultural Experience Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

New Cultural Experience - Essay Example India is a democratic and secular country. It is the second most populous country in the world and people of several religions live there. India is a Hindu majority country, and Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jain, are minority in this country. I have had a worthwhile experience of staying in India and take part in the rich cultural heritage of the country. Overview of experience A short or long stay in a foreign country in the midst of a new culture might be exhilarating and personally rewarding. Personally, I feel that this experience is highly intellectually stimulating. According to my opinion, a stay in a foreign country is not free of undesirable experiences. However, both pleasant and awkward incidents together make the experience intellectually stimulating. A person learns to accept new things and adapt into new circumstances. In this section I shall explain my experience as a minority in India. Types of experience vary according to the period of time spent in the cou ntry and the level of adaptability of the visitor (UNESCO, 2003). Visiting a country as a part of foreign trip implies a short stay, mainly for the purpose of visiting different sites and shopping. However, I have stayed in India for a period of five years for the purpose of making an in depth study of the Hindu religion. ... Participation in cultural activities Traditional dinner I personally prefer taking part in the activities of the country that I visit. Therefore, I made a prior research about the traditional activities, festivals and games that are popular in India. I had stayed in the house of a Hindu family in Kolkata. The family is well known as a well to do family in the city. They are quite modern and have liberal views about the world. Yet, I noticed on the first dinner with the family that the members dearly hold certain traditional norms. Some of these norms are very similar to the Catholic norms, while others were unknown to me before I visited India. During my stay I took part in a traditional dinner with my host family at their ancestral home in Kolkata. It was the annual meeting of all the members of the family. There were specific Bengali dishes that are favored by the Bengalis. Among other food, fish was one of the main ingredients. There were various preparations of fish, starting fro m fry, to curry to even a sweet preparation called ‘chutney’. Bengalis consider fish as a part of their traditional diet. I did not have a taste for fish before I ate Bengali food. Initially, I faced problems with fish since it has a typically strong smell. But, very soon I adapted with the culture of having fish in the main course in both lunch and dinner. Analysis During my stay I have mixed with the people of the country with the desire of in-taking a rich essence of their culture, faith, religion, environmental concern, food habits, sports and other activities. Went new to a country, it seems confusing to identify these norms or follow them as an outsider. However, the key

CROSS CULTURAL ISSUES IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS Essay

CROSS CULTURAL ISSUES IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS - Essay Example On the other hand, if they insist on promoting their own culture and their value system, whether it agrees with others or not, then it can be surmised that sooner or later, the personal relationship will encounter major conflicts. This analysis is logical and general, but it goes without saying that there is more than meets the eye. In the case of merging two different cultures in business, many factors need to be considered in order for people to work together harmoniously. Key to understanding cultural differences are theoretical foundations that explain them. Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprà ¼ngli AG (known as Lindt) is an international company that prides itself of being recognized as the leader in the market for high quality chocolates and other chocolate related products. Its history spans more than a century of developing the best formulas for chocolates, with the business run and developed extensively by a family organisation. From humble beginnings, the business has expanded enormously with its products being sold internationally in more than 80 countries with almost $1 billion in worldwide sales. â€Å"The predominantly Swiss-owned corporation manufactures various products of its renowned Lindt brand in Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, and Austria, as well as in the United States. The international group includes major sales and distribution firms in England, Poland, Spain, Canada, and Australia, as well as sales offices in Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, and Dubai. Lindt & Sprà ¼ngli products are distributed by a network of distributors that spans the globe.† (Fundinguniverse.com, 2010, para. 2). The top management of the company do not rest on their laurels and would want to expand further in the Far East and Asia. However, a thorough study of possible cross-cultural issues must be undertaken, since European

Argument Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Argument Paper - Essay Example Dry weather caused the bad droughts and the wildfires. When people have enough water they do not think about water. But when people do not have water they suffer. When people do not have water they do not have a good life. In some countries business is in charge of water. Privatization is when a business is in charge of the water in a community. Public water management is when the government has control of the water in a community. Some communities have a combination of business and government in charge of water management. Governments cannot control climate change but they should manage water because then water will not be too expensive, it will be easy for people to find, and people will be healthier. This paper argues for government management of the water industry. the paper identifies the need for affordability, hygiene, and equitable distribution as the major reasons why government should manage the industry because the private sector cannot guarantee the factors. Argument for public water management One of the arguments in favor of public water management is that with public management, water will be cheaper to the consumer. Shah Anup argues that water is the most fundamental of all human rights and should not be treated as a commodity. Private companies should not manage water because they have self-interest in making profits than fulfilling the public’s interest. ... Essie Solomon from Environment Probe shares the opinion that water is essential and is a fundamental right. The author explains that water is one of the â€Å"inalienable rights†; and â€Å"do not come from a government† but must be protected by the government (Solomon 1). Consequently, the government must take the responsibility of water management to ensure that people’s right to access water is protected. Such protection ensures availability and a subsequent affordability of water to all economic classes of people (Solomon 1). Macdonald Nancy argues that it has a great success story, with increased efficiency, quality, reliability, and affordability. She explains that â€Å"privatizing water services is bad for the poor, bad for the environment, and leads to inequitable distribution of water† (Macdonald 1). This is because the poor becomes the most vulnerable due to the profit orientation of the private sector that focuses on delivering quality services to the rich who can promote the sector’s profit motive. According to industry’s track levels, privatization has often led to private companies’ violation of operational standards of water services. These have resulted in high prize fixations which often lead to the poor people consuming contaminated water. In Britain, for example, after privatization, water and sewage bills increased by 67% and water disconnection because of lack of payment rose by 177%. A report by the French government showes that consumer fees increased by a whopping 150% after privatization (Shah 1). Currently, 90 per cent of the world’s water distributions are controlled by the state and records indicate that they are well managed. The

Signs and Miracles Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Signs and Miracles - Research Paper Example The miracles of Jesus create a representation of his state as the Messiah and close reading with the stories of the miracles, along with an understanding of the past and the future allow the reader to see the miracles than more than just wondrous events. The Eight Miracles During his lifetime Jesus performed a long series of miracles that helped to give credibility to his ministry. In addition, these miracles gave beauty and compassion to the historic value of the nature of his love. His miracles can be broken down into six periods and the stories of those miracles provide different meanings to the context in which they are told. The first period is a â€Å"preparatory period† between his baptism until he calls his disciples to him.1 Four miracles occurred during this time that as it is reported in the histories. He then continued forward to perform sixteen miracles in the first portion of his ministry, eight in the second, six in the third, and four in the last days before hi s death. After his resurrection he performed one miracle. The total number of miracles reported as having been done by Jesus is 34.2 There can be identified eight miracles that are considered to be sign miracles. Leeler, Grimbly, and Wiggins define seven sign miracles that suggest that Jesus is the son of God. These ‘signs’ are intended to signal his arrival and to be taken as reflective of the nature of worship that would be used towards Jesus as the son of God. As well they define him as deified. The first sign, according to Leeler, Grumbly, and Wiggins, is the most important sign as it is the first to signal that he was more than a prophet or a man. The first sign miracle identified is that of the miracle at the wedding feast in Cana where Jesus turned the water into wine.3 The importance of these signs, such as turning the water into wine, is that they are visible and do not leave an abstracted idea of the nature of Jesus. They clearly proclaim that he is divine.4 I n turning the water into wine, the act provided for â€Å"symbolic actions (that) were valuable for his purpose because they were able to integrate several levels of meaning into a coherent whole†.5 Jesus showed himself through compassionate and real life applications of his miracles. The sign of the wine is also connected to prophesy concerning the messiah. According to Koestner, the use of wine was symbolic of the expectation that there would be an â€Å"outpouring of divine favor upon Israel†, the quote from reflections that suggested that â€Å"the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it’ and sometimes connecting abundant wine with the restoration of Davidic rule (Amos 9:11, 13; Joel 3:18; Isa 25:6)†.6 That the messiah was from the line of Davis was an important proof of his deity, however reinforcing that deification through associating his miracles with wine provided for symbolic proof, as well the proof of his lineage. Because of the well known, but sometimes vague nature of prophesy, creating symbolic proofs was as important as creating blatant proofs. Short of crying out this claim, the miracle of creating wine from water was a sign to those who had studied the prophesies that Jesus was the Messiah that Israel had been waiting to arrive. The second sign miracle can be considered as the act of healing the royal official’s son. According to Gross who paraphrases John 4: 46-54, Jesus says to the official that â€Å"

'To tackle the fight against trafficking, we need to concentrate on Essay

'To tackle the fight against trafficking, we need to concentrate on state intervention and stricter border controls'. Discuss - Essay Example This however is not usually the case as sexual exploitation is the first harsh condition they encounter before being sneaked into the desired and promised country due to lack of proper travel documentation. Human trafficking is majorly carried out by agents whom according to Agustin (2005) may be governmental, religious, nongovernmental, academic or even medical groups and organizations (Agustin, 2005, pg. 100). These groups and organizations operate on a legitimate basis upfront but carry out the illegal immigration and human trafficking as a form of black market business hence making it harder for immigration authorities to detect them. Even with the strict immigration laws being enforced in some European countries like Germany and even UK, illegal immigrants still find their way inside those nations. According to statistics provided by the United Nations, there are over 175 million people who cross borders on a yearly basis and majority of them do so illegally without being detect ed or through fraudulent means. Human trafficking is a global affair and it has been able to rise due to the fact that it is intertwined with issues of international crime, corruption deals (conducted through unscrupulous immigration officials), coercion and even lack of stringent state laws concerning immigration or even border patrol. The lack of anti-trafficking statutes in most states contributes to the increasing trafficking of people. This is evident in even famous place like New York City in United States of America. This lack of laws provides a leeway for the agents to ferry the illegal immigrants from Latin nations like Mexico, through US and finally finding themselves in European nations like France. Testimonies have been provided by the trafficked people especially women who are illegally or even legally assisted to migrate into European nations through the promise of being enrolled into the domestic labour market of that country. However on reaching their destination, th e domestic labour market turns out to be a thriving sex industry where sexual exploitation is the order of the day under organized pimps and even in brothels. Those lucky to enter the domestic labour market do so as helps or by providing cheap labour services and even in these places, they are still sexually exploited (Long, 2004, pg. 18). Some critics argue that it is easy to prevent such sexual exploitation that happens through the cover of provision of domestic labour market but it is not so easy. This is because the trafficking that takes place under this front has legal cover ups as mentioned earlier of legitimate organizations whose side business is trafficking of people without the knowledge of the authorities. It is evident that trafficking moves from the South towards the North and it heavily consists of women. According to feminists and especially the African feminists, women are the most negatively affected by development policies and measures taken by their countries, fo r example those that follow conditions dictated by International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in order to grant loans and financial aid to these countries. These Bretton Woods financial organizations demand (as one of their conditions) restructuring which in short means cutting some of

Personal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 8

Personal - Essay Example They are generally talkative and the best way for them to understand a concept is by talking about it (Bixler, 2010). The Kinesthetic learner, on the other hand, learns best by going through an activity. They prefer carrying out the activity in a practical way rather than listening to a teacher giving a lecture or carrying out a demo. As a student, it is important that one understands his or her learning style as it will help them adopt study habits that are in line with their learning style. This will not only make the learning process easy but will also go a long way in ensuring that the student performs better in his or her studies (The Center for New Discoveries in Learning, 2012). Being a public relations student, the major reason for seeking a college education is to ensure that I can obtain the required knowledge for public speaking and handling clients because my job will entail a lot of that. Therefore, as the study indicates that I am an auditory learner, I totally agree with it because I best learn by hearing and speaking. As I listen to the lecture, I form a mental picture of what is being said, and as I read, I internalize the whole concept that is being taught. This is important because as a student I should be able to picture the whole concept of what is going on (Bixler, 2010). In the public relation sector, listening and talking is key, therefore, while developing this skill, I am laying a good foundation for my future career. As a public relations officer I should be able to listen carefully and get the whole concept of what is being discussed. Furthermore, I should be an eloquent speaker who can relate well to the clients, understand the whole c oncept and relay the necessary solutions. It can be concluded that many people use or prefer varied learning styles that come with various techniques. While many may have learning styles that can be said to be

Assigment 4 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Assigment 4 - Assignment Example Living in a motel room is a constant reminder to these kids that they do not have a proper home. The kids have to face tortures of not having a home and not having enough money. In the documentary, a girl gets sick in the stomach, and his father could not visit her because he did not have the gas money. When these children look at other happy kids going to Disney Land, it has a damaging impact on their socio-emotional development. They would grow up hating society and the system. These children are vulnerable to negative thoughts. They are also constantly reminded of their poor life quality. Fireworks at Disney Land compared to their small space in a cheap motel room. Luxurious food services in part of the city while they have barely enough to survive. Physically, they might be weaker and undernourished compared to other children. One girl in the documentary gets sick, and her father cannot come to take care of her for he does not have money to pay for bus or buy gas. Under such dire circumstances it is highly likely for these children to be angry, depressed, frustrated and sad. These emotions greatly hamper the cognitive abilities. They might also be uninterested in their school and homework because they have many problems to face on daily basis. Moreover, their socio-emotional de velopment is also under the threat from hostile neighborhood. These kids have to spend a lot of time on the streets where there are drug dealers, gangs and thugs. The first solution is to raise the minimum wage. If working parents cannot afford an acceptable lifestyle despite working then there is something wrong with the money system. Second, the necessary facilities like school, food and medicine should be free. This approach is idealistic but possible. Healthcare and education should not be an industry. Companies would open pharmacies and clinics to make money. It is the government’s job to think of the poor people

Argumentative Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Argumentative - Essay Example Biblical Christianity, on the other hand, is a worldview that attributes our ethics and morals to a universal standard of right and wrong that is not subject to change over time (Beach 54). In this way, these two opposing worldviews have two opposing positions on the nature of ethics and morality. One holds that morality is relative – the other holds that morality is not relative. They could not be in greater opposition. We can see the ways in which this worldviews and their ideas about ethics/morality shape the culture we live by looking at our past and comparing it with our present. Once this is done, it will be seen that our culture must return to religion if we are to maintain the happy and healthy lifestyle we claim to desire. Our culture, if you think about it, has been digressing for quite some time, and recently the problem has become more serious from an ethical standpoint. God is being removed from nearly every aspect of life and being replaced with other belief systems, such as humanism or naturalism. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were written by men who believed in God, men who thought prayer was important, that life was sacred, and that many of our current-day controversial practices, such as homosexuality and abortion, were biblically and morally reprehensible. The reality that a few of our Founding Fathers were deists, rather than theists, does not change the fact that these documents were written by and for a generally theistic people. According to John Adams, "Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other" (Beach 59).   Today, however, popular culture has forgotten that our nation was founded, in larg e part, on Christian principles, and that the Constitution was written for a "moral and religious people." We are, of

Supply Chain Integration Essay Example for Free

Supply Chain Integration Essay As a market leader in the fruit drinks industry, Delicious Fruity Company (DFC) offers fresh juice, long life fruit juice and juice concentrates to the consumer market. It has been establish in year 2001 located at Butterworth, Penang and with 12 years of experience, Delicious Fruity Company serve their consumers with the highest honour by practise continuous improvement and innovation in the fruit production process. The vision of Delicious Fruity Company is ‘To become one of the leading company in fruit beverage manufacturers and develop healthy and high quality products to serve our customers. ’ There is a wide distribution of network that enable customers to purchase fruit juice and juice concentrates of Delicious Fruity Company as the company situated their products in the most biggest supermarket in Malaysia which they are Tesco, Giant, Carrefour, Sunshine , Aeon, Jusco , Pacific and Econsave. The main consumer market that is target by Delicious Fruity Company is consumers in Malaysia which Delicious Fruity Company concentrate on local distribution channel. Description of Product According to The Times of India, benefits of drinking fruit juice such as oranges will keep your skin glow and keep you away from cold. Besides that, fruits juice contains essential nutrients that is much higher than a meal normally consumed by an individual. Delicious Fruity Company formulates fruits juices, long life fruit juice and juice concentrates that is high in nutrients and also quality as a promise to their customer where they think of quality, they will think of Delicious Fruity Company. They use fresh oranges, apples, lemons and etc. to extract the natural flavour of the fruit which there is no artificial flavouring used in the process of formulating the fruit juice and juice concentrates. This would reflect the safety of ingredient used by Delicious Fruity Company as it is insured from excessive use of chemical in their products. Problem Statement As mention before, Delicious Fruity Company use the extraction of fruits to transform the unprocessed fruit juice to become long life fruit juice. The main raw material that is largely used by Delicious Fruity would be fresh fruits like oranges, apples, lemons, grapes and etc. Repeated ordering from local growers below a significant time would likely to raise the cost of ordering, shipping and holding of fresh fruits and also the availability of materials which is always a major issue for Delicious Fruits Company. However, in the last two years, General Manager of Delicious Fruity Company, Ms Serena had come out with a plan which raw material would be order in bulk, which this idea would effectively help to brings down the figure of cost of ordering and shipping, ensure the availability of raw material but it would cause an increase in holding cost as those raw materials were about to keep under Delicious Fruity Company’s warehouse and facilities like huge refrigerator would have to be ready for the arrival of those fresh fruits. The benefit of the decision seems to be higher than the cost of the decision which in the end, Delicious Fruity Company started practice Ms Serena’s plan. Economies of scale would sound pleasant to Delicious Fruity Company but there is a serious problem arise from this decision which this approach creates overstocking problems, and as those fresh fruits are perishable commodities, the issue transform from bad to worse as the fruits lifespan ends. Proposal of Solution Nowadays, corporation with supply chain partners seems to be a new and better option for most of the company to run their businesses. The problem faced by Delicious Fruity Company would be able to be solve by using some of the strategies in supply chain integration which they are cross docking, collaborative, planning, forecasting, replenishment (CPFR) and joint product development. These strategies would be explain in details in the following paragraph. Cross Docking As cost of holding and handling materials is quite expensive which Delicious Fruity Company is not just pay for the rental of warehouse but they also pay for other overhead cost such as utilities of warehouse, insurance of raw materials and etc. Cross Docking would help to reduce this cost to minimum which cross docking is the practise of loading goods from an incoming truck and shift the goods directly in to another truck, trailers or rail cars. It is a combination of shipment and warehouse are not function as a storage house but it act as a distribution centre that receive shipment in bulk and break them into specific packaging and then send them out immediately to the manufacturer. As a fruit beverage manufacturing company, raw materials of Delicious Fruity Company are mostly perishable items which they are better suited to cross docking than others. Cross docking will ensure the freshness of those fruits that needs to be process. As the fruits needed to be kept in wooden crates and held in refrigerated cool rooms which the time required to be stored would decrease the lifespan of those fruits, therefore, fresh fruits is essential for Delicious Fruity Company which with this, ordering in large quantities and in large volumes would not work. The benefit that comes with this strategy would be cut down the time from the beginning of production which raw material could be deliver in a short period of time and the finished goods would be able to send out to customers faster which would keep the freshness of the fruit juice that brings out customer satisfaction. But to really implement this strategy, Delicious Fruity Company need to understand the demands in the market so that forecast would be carryout and accurate estimation of needs in the market would provide sufficient information to those local growers so that the quantity of each shipment can be send correctly and also the freshness of those fruits would be ensured. Joint Product Development One of the reasons that causes the General Manager, Ms Serena to make the wrong decision is because of insufficient information regarding Delicious Fruity Company. Ms Serena fail to make forecast of the market demand and focusing on only cost effectiveness and left the most important issue behind which is the equilibrium of the consumer market. Joint product development is an alliance between two or more parties in the supply chain. Delicious Fruity Company could implement this strategy with their retailers as retailers understands more on how consumer behave, this is because of retailers are the one who have daily contact with the final consumers and they share some of the customers’ preference by better understanding and keep up-date the consumers’ behaviour. With the help of Delicious Fruity Company’s partners such as Tesco, Giant and etc. Delicious Fruity Company should be able to forecast the demand of fruit juice beverage more accurate than before. Collaborative, Planning, Forecasting, Replenishment (CPFR) This strategy facilitate the demand forecasting process which the demand patterns and plan promotion activities for product were run cooperatively with supply chain partners. As CPFR not only just forecasting market demand and doing logistics stuff to help a firm, instead, it proactively articipate the whole process of business between the firm and its supply chain partners. For Example, may be the reason for bulk ordering to be fail is not cause by the inaccurate of forecasting market demand, but it is cause by the economic crisis that hits the consumers. Hence, if CPFR is about to implement, suppliers of raw materials would help in decreasing the price of fruits and the retailer of the company would introduce promotion to t he final consumers so that the market demand would not fall too sharply from normal season. There is a few steps that need to be followed while implementing CPFR which the first step would be Front-end agreement where participating company such as those local growers and retailers such as Jusco, Tesco agree to confidentiality and dispute resolution processes, develop a scorecard to track key supply chain metrics relative to success criteria, and establish any financial incentives or penalties. The second steps would be joint business plan where suppliers, retailers and also Delicious Fruity Company develop plans for promotions, inventory policy changes, store openings and closings, and product changes for each beverage category as to adopt the changes brought by CPFR. After that, retailers such as Tesco, and Delicious Fruity Company share consumer demand forecasts, and identify exceptions that occur when the plans that design do not match, or change dramatically. Delicious Fruity Company and their retailers resolve exceptions by determining causal factors, adjusting plans where necessary. This process is known as sales forecast collaboration. The next steps would be order forecast collaboration, which Delicious Fruity Company and its retailers and also raw material suppliers share the replenishment plan that had been design collaboratively with the retailer and then identify and resolving exceptions that would altered the initial plan. Finally, Order generation or delivery execution will be performed and the results from database of the retailer such as point of sales (POS), orders, shipment data and etc. s widely shared among supply chain partners. This would resolved the issue that mention before by this paper such as forecast accuracy problems, overstock or understock conditions, and execution issues. Challenges of Implementing Supply Chain Integration Although supply chain integration had been recognized as a successful strategy to manage the problem face during the operation process from a manufacturer to a retailer, however, there are issues and challenges that face by most of the industry to perform supply chain integration. Delicious Fruity Company need to overcome some of these barriers so that the implementation of supply chain integration would be successful. Trust would be the first element that a Delicious Fruity Company had to keep practising once the firm went into a supply chain integration which with if Delicious Fruity Company do not keep in faith in their suppliers, they will be unwilling to share data with their suppliers. In the end, the supply chain integration would not be able to perform. As a company is about to implement new policy, some stages of changes within the company will be required. As Delicious Fruity Company will implement this new strategy in the future, the management personal should consider the adaptiveness of the firm upon the implementation of new strategies. Besides that, there will be an increase in interdependency as Delicious Fruity Company engage in supply chain integration which suppliers, retailers and the firm are dependent on each other to survive in the market place. Yet, this interdependency would rise another issue which in reality there will be one or few parties or stakeholders in supply chain would better off and they enjoy the supply chain integration strategy the most, this situation been known as uneven partner benefit which Delicious Fruity Company needs to tame their emotion while they face such kinds of situation in reality. Lastly, most of the supply chain integration strategies requires extensive information technologies which Delicious Fruity Company need to equip themselves with hardware and software that is needed to implement a brand new supply chain integration policy. This would actually means that Delicious Fruity Company needs to allocate a large amount of cash flow as the restructuring cost that will be invested into the relationship with their supply chain partners. Conclusion Implementation of supply chain integration by Delicious Fruity Company is needed in order to keep up with its company vision which is ‘To become one of the leading company in fruit beverage manufacturers and develop healthy and high quality products to serve our customers. This is because of supply chain integration create more value for Delicious Fruity Company and also its customers, which can create stronger attraction for its products and services as extra competitive advantage. As stated in this proposal, where some of the practise of supply chain integration may lead Delicious Fruity Company to a better platform of serving their customers. But obstacles that faced by Delicious Fruity Company need to be overcome so that the successfulness of implementing suppl y chain integration strategy would be ensured.

Introduction To Modern Technology Media Essay

Introduction To Modern Technology Media Essay Modern technology has made the requirement for information flow to be quick and effective. We have been able to achieve this through the internet; the medium i.e the internet has facilitated each of us, by making the communication cheap and fast. News for U.K is available in the Australia as soon as its on the media, accessible by millions at one time. The growth of the internet is a necessity nowadays. Now internet, where people choose to spend a major part of their day has brought social communities where people can chat, message, share beliefs, extract information, share information about things they are interested in. The internet being the centre of usage for millions of users every day, thus it also appears to be a medium for brands and products to advertise, but this advertisement is different from the advertisement we see otherwise. This advertisement takes into account that the information flow is fast and inspired by people more than the advertising agencies. So let us see how social networking became the part of our lives. The last ten years of the century brought the innovative technology Internet. As predicted by Newman (1991) Internet: Altered the meaning of geographic distance. Allowed the huge increase in the volume of communication. Provided the possibility of increasing the speed of communication. Provided opportunities for interactive communication. Allowed forms of communication that was previously separate to overlap and interconnect. Whereas Grieco and Holmes (1999) (citied in Combe et al, 2003) identifies three powerful features of Internet: Disintermediation or the removal of brokers by allowing direct communication across spatial and sociometric distance; Asynchronicyty of the removal of temporality as a barrier to communications; Oculacy or the ability to communicate messages through images. According to Hermeking (2006) the spread of modern technology, including information and communication technology (ICT), is commonly regarded both as an indicator of the postmodern era of globalization and as the very precondition for that era of intensive worldwide interactions of people and exchanges of goods, services, information, and capital. On the contrary Hoffman (Hoffman et al., 1995) believes that the popularity of the WWW as a commercial medium (in contrast to other networks on the Internet) is due to its ability to facilitate global sharing of information and resources, and its potential to provide an efficient channel for advertising, marketing, and even direct distribution of certain goods and information services. world internet users Sixty five per cent of all UK households had a broadband connection in 2008. Adults under 70 years of age who had a degree or equivalent qualification were most likely to have access to the Internet in their home, at 93 per cent (Office for National Statistics,2009). According to Linda Peters (1998) the Web presents a fundamentally different environment- both as a medium and as a market from traditional communication channels perspective. It creates the Marketspace a virtual realm where products and services exist as digital information and can be delivered through information-based channels (Rayport and Svikola, 1994). Social Networking is a phenomena that has seen a rapid growth over the last few years. If you are not involved in one (or more) of these sites you are probably wondering, so what is this Social Networking thing all about?. Let us go through a general overview of a description of a Social Network A website where people are able to develop networks of friends and associates (whether only ever on line, in real life, or both) and create, share or give information on similar interests, tastes, lifestyles and other information. Also keep in mind that social networking websites are like communities. The Social Networking sites have gained popularity and are on the increase for one simple reason, the ability to share, with others, information about yourself, your interests, your hobbies, your thoughts and your feelings or anything you choose. These can quickly be seen by others in your network and by you through messages, comments, instant messaging applications, photos, games, and group interaction. Facebook one of the most popular social networking sites started as a site for previous College Associates to remain in contact with one another during and after they had finished College. Youtube is another social networking site not just a repository for uploading various types of videos. Some people have found new friendship and romance. People get to know events like fires, storms, and even floods in other countries that have occurred locally in that vicinity, usually even hours before these events are made public by the media. People become involved in many discussions which have given them an opportunity to get to know differing cultures and beliefs One other belief some people have is that it is only Generation Y that use these sites. You will be surprised that many people from many different walks of life in many countries in many age groups use these sites. Some sites are broad category sites like Myspace and Facebook (now). Some are specific to a narrow category, like Small business, the Arts, connecting Families, Blogging, Making Money on the Internet and Dating Services (using a broad and polite term there). Some are popular by type of category they use, where others are popular by region (like UK and Europe, Africa, etc). Social media According to Liu Shrum (2002) new media (Internet), brought new models of interactivity: user-to-user and user-to-message. The interactivity develops a new meaning when it is applied through Web 2.0 platforms and Social media channels as dialogue between consumer and company becomes much more active and interactive. Contemplating about user-to-user interactivity Ha and James (1998) suggested that the more communication in a computer-mediated environment resembles interpersonal communication, the more interactive the communication isà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬-. Defined by Steuer (1992) users-to-message interaction as follows: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬ ¢the extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of a mediated environment in real timeà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬-. The above figure outlines the E marketing strategy suggested Constantinides (2008) Nielsen Company analyzed and found that the global average time spent for a person on social networking sites is over five each month (February 2010 data), Facebook being the major part of the usage. Social networking is a great option to advertise your business. Social networking does not require large amounts to be invested in, rather its free most of the time, moreover its very simple, easy and quick. There are dozens of websites on the internet where you can sign up within a few minutes and network with millions of people quickly and easily. Social media encourages feedback from everyone who is interested. Social media provokes the user controlled media, empowering the users to drive the communities they are in. Make their comments on products and brands, as they come to them. They can exploit these communities to promote a product and also ruin the reputation of one. Weston (2008) says that, social networking, if approached in the right manner, can build brand awareness, find new customers, help find talent, and help creating a database for market research and analysis. Some businesses find it unnecessary to market themselves on social networking sites, although it is a good way to advertise products/services with knowing what consumers think and want. Social network marketing can be very fruitful for businesses. Social networking media has been thought to be an advertisement source though should be used cleverly to reap of the benefits from it. Thus it is important that the brands committed to using it should use it in the correct way. Zirinsky, 2009 believes online social advertising is all about two way conversations with consumers, not one way broadcastmaking this mistake is far too common and simply makes brands appear out of touch with their audience and reality, and is detrimental to their overall image. Social media keeps an edge over other forms of online communication for its use of enabling content sharing on a network. Content sharing and interaction is defines social media making it different from other means of communication. This means that if brands are going to the get value from social media, they should use it for what it is good in; allowing and helping the sharing of interesting material to create relevant positive hype for the brand or product. Powell, 2009 on the other hand states that Brands need to add value into an online community through enabling the sharing of content, if it cannot do this it has little value, and will be perceived as having little value. For information sharing social media has accelerated the entire process. James in 2009 has said Across networks, a good or bad experience will be shared, potentially on a huge scale. Between 700,000 and 1.3 million blog posts are made daily and, according to Google, a new blog post is being created every second of every day. Most social media services are open to feedback and participation. They encourage voting, comments and the sharing of information. There are rarely any barriers to accessing and making use of content password-protected content is frowned on. Thus a free portal for information sharing, which is effective and fast engages millions of users, now for brands they should be aware how to engage masses they are interested in, because as discussed earlier social networking is probably the fastest way of communication and words positive or negative spread very quickly. Powell, 09 debates Normal social etiquette has crossed over into social media. Social media are communities and there are standards and protocols as to what kind of behavior is acceptable and unacceptable. This statement suggests that the brands should communicate and behave in the social media as to not offend the users of social networking. It is important that whatever information the brands or products are interested in sharing has been uploaded after careful screening and thought process. The strategy for online advertising has to be defined precisely. Thorbjornsen et al. in 2002 affirms that empowering consumers is crucial to online relationships. Rowley in 2007 argues that the concept of customer community leadership has been proposed with the customer being viewed as a partner. Virtual space was a key aspect in amplifying community member experience. Kozinets solicited that retribalized virtual communities of consumption require a newer framework for traditional relationship marketing theory. It is therefore vital at this point to provide a brief overview of tribalism. Cova, 1997 proposes that the potential of tribalism and the linking value has been developed. A tribe is defined as a network of heterogeneous persons in terms of age, sex, income, etc. who are linked by a shared passion or emotion; a tribe is capable of collective action, its members are not simple consumers, they are also advocates; (Cova and Cova 2002: 602). The Internet has only helped to increase the potential of tribalism. E-tribes allow people to gather together in groups based on a huge range of cultural and subcultural interests and social affiliations (Kozinets, 1999: 253). Muniz and OGuinn, 2001 argue that it is crucial to notice that tribal communities are argued to be less explicitly commercial than brand communities. Social Media Web 2.0 Social media and Web 2.0 are two words which are many times used interchangeably in the marketing literature, even though they are not entirely the same. As per the marketing perspective, the Web 2.0 should be apprehended as the recent tool for the marketing communication mix and facilitator and enabler of social media. The Web 2.0 term was introduced by Tim Oà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¸Reilly in 2004, it has originated from talks about social software and the communities surrounding these applications. Tim Oà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¸Reilly said the companies that survived the dotcom boom had something in common; these companies realized that the Web is much more useful for delivering service than being used just as a platform for packaged products (i.e. software). Constantinides and Fountain (2008) on the other hand defined Web 2.0 as follows: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬ ¢Web 2.0 is a collection of open-source, interactive and user-controlled online applications expanding the experiences, knowledge and market power o f the users as participants in business and social processes. Web 2.0 applications support the creation of informal users networks facilitating the flow of ideas and knowledge by allowing the efficient generation, dissemination, sharing and editing / refining of informational content . Hoegg believes that Web 2.0 is the philosophy of mutually maximizing collective intelligence and added value for each participant by formalized and dynamic information sharing and creationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬-. Both of these definitions are exhibits of similar concepts for amplifying the collated intelligence, a community regulated by itself, effects of the network, openness in showing the information creation and sharing process, but the vital aspect here is the consumer. There are not many changes in the Web 2.0 compared to Web 1.0 applications from the technological aspect; value over here is created by the people as they do not just use this software but also play a major role in the creation of these soft wares. Thus as apprehended in modern IT solutions and models, user input is the most vital aspect, can be viewed on a global level with each social networking website. Web 2.0 applications are still considered to be in the development stage, they are categorized according to the purpose and field of the research. Constantinides and Fountain (2008) classify them into 5 broad types according their nature: Blogs: Short for Web logs: online journals, the most known and fastest-growing category of Web 2.0 applications. Blogs are often combined with Podcasts, that is, digital audio or video that can be streamed or downloaded to portable devices. Examples: www.blogtopsites.com , www.blogger.com and several others. Social networks: applications allowing users to build personal websites accessible to other users for exchange of personal content and communication Examples: www.facebook.com , www.myspace.com and others. (Content) Communities: Websites organising and sharing particular types of content. Examples are applications of Video sharing: http://video.google.com, www.youtube.com, http://etsylove.ning.com, Photos sharing: http://www.flickr.com, Social Bookmarking: www.digg.com , http://del.icio.us and Publicly Edited Encyclopedias (Wikis): www. wikipedia.org , http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page. Forums/bulletin boards: sites for exchanging ideas and information usually around special interests Examples: www.epinions.com, www.personaldemocracy.com, http://www.python.org. Content aggregators: applications allowing users to fully customise the web content they wish to access. These sites make use of a technique known as Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary (RSS). Examples http://uk.my.yahoo.com/, http://www. google.com/ig, http://www.netvibes.com/. Blogs and blogging Web Logs (knows as Blogs), according to Tredinnick (2006), are arguably the oldest Web 2.0 applications and have been in the web space since mid 1990à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¸s. Constantinides and Fountain (2008) states that it is the most known and fastest-growing category of Web 2.0 applications. Published in Daily Blog Tips, 2008 A Blog is a Web site, usually run by any individual with regular entries of discussions, happening of events, or other content such as graphics or videos where entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order and has permalinks. Antony Mayfield argues (2008), the most important features of the blogs are Linking, Trackbacks, Comments and Subscription (RSS) which allow companies to engage with their stakeholders and facilitates conversations between them. Good blogs are used by people to easily access information and share the viewpoint of things. People from various geographical locations, can log in and write blogs at one place, being able to share knowledge and express them. Blogs help people discover a lot a things that a layman would not be aware of but yet, through a search engine would reach a blogspot where he or she can gain the information they require. The internet guru Seth Godin (2004) remarked that good blogs work when they are based on: candor, urgency, timeliness, pithiness, controversy and utility. Armano (2008) groups these features to 4 Cà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¸s of blogging. Furthermore, Huang in 2007 identified the main techniques for how to manage brand communications according to various blogging motivations. Table 2.2. Bloggersà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¸ motivations. Source: Huang (Huang al., 2007) Social networks Social networking is the fastest growing Web 2.0 application, and this is the main reason for the social media to prosper as quickly as it is powered by effective, fast communication, this media is driven by the users demand. A user prefers to believe in their counterpart rather than any organization. McKinsey defines social networking as systems that allow members of a specific site to learn about other members skills, talents, knowledge or preferences. Pew/Internet believes- A social networking site is an online location where a user can create a profile and build a personal network that connects him or her to other users. Wikipedia states that a social network service focuses on the building and verification of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. It provides various ways for users to interact chat, messaging, email, video, file sharing, blogging and discussion groups The features of social networks present an opportunity to create brand communities and interact with them online. It allows people from all over the world to sign up within a few minutes and access the information available, this has allowed the organizations to be acting in a multinational mode, as they can reach anywhere in the world with the least amount of time taken. Tim Oà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¸Reilly (2005) thinks otherwise and said that Web 2.0 doesnt have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core which could be visualized as a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles, at a varying distance from that core (Appendix 2.4). Therefore it is difficult to classify the Web 2.0 into the precise groupings, because the applications are interrelated and most of the time a few Web 2.0 features works on one platform. The mixture of Web 2.0 applications working under one site are known as Mash-ups. On the contrary according to Mayfield (2008) this combination of two or more pieces of content (or software, or websites) is one of the phenomena in social media that make it at once so exciting, fast-moving and sometimes bewilderingà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬-. But even more vital aspect of Web 2.0 applications is the coherence with the different platforms. Social applications are getting more and more popular on mobile devices (Phones, iPods (via podcasts)). In fact, according to BBC News (2008) one of the reasons the Internet usage on the mobile devices is increasing Web 2.0 applications. According to Drury (2008) social media applications has an ability to bring Head (Professional) and Tail (UGC) content together in all the formats (audio, video , text). As more and more professionally edited websites incorporate social media content some companies (i.e. Joost) are trying to apply Web 2.0 principals (live participation) for even bigger media platforms as TV. These applications are being tested in the Internet TV and in the near future have a good chance to redefine TV experience completely. All these changes open new opportunities for integrated marketing campaigns, where marketers are enabled to reach bigger number of audiences of consumers at all their touch points with mediated world at one-stop shop. Facebook is the most used social networking site that has involved the masses all over the world. Facebook is a social networking site, which provides users with a platform to create a personal profile page, add friends, and send messages, post on their profiles, comment on their status. Kazeniac, 2009 said that since the company was founded in 2004, it has become the top ranked social networking site. According to Facebook Statistics (2009), there are over 300 million current active users (i.e. users that have logged-on in the past 30 days). Facebook users have claimed the site a necessity, along the lines of oxygen, water, and food (Verna, 2009). For many people, visiting Facebook has become an integral part of their daily lives, and has even caused some to have an unhealthy obsession with the site. According to Elizabeth Cohen (2009), a CNN medical correspondent, therapists are seeing more and more Facebook addicts, who become compulsive Facebook users to the point where the site interferes with relationships, jobs, and normal daily life. The site has transformed social communication in the 21st century, with Facebook and other Social networking sites reaching hundreds of millions of people across the globe. Facebook achieves the comptetive edge by adding new features and developments on a continuous basis. Since it is free to create an account, Facebook has to generate its revenue elsewhere, through a venue such as advertising. Companies can utilize Facebooks features to reach their audiences in different ways. Gangadharbatla (2009) states that Social networking sites are changing the way advertisers reach consumers, and that these changes are transforming online advertising all together. There are a variety of ways to use Facebook, and the different features allow creativity and experimentation in advertising. For instance, when users log-on, they are taken to a homepage called a News Feed which highlights recent activities from other users. Each Facebook account also includes a personal profile page, a Wall to write public messages to other users, Facebook-generated applications (photos, events, groups, video, notes, and links), and an inbox to write private messages to other users. T he site also allows users to add optional features called Platform applications to connect in new ways. According to Facebooks statistics (2009), more than 70% of Facebook users utilize Platform applications on a monthly basis. Since these Platforms are optional, it is significant that users are seeking out additional Facebook features and uses for the site. The purpose of Facebook has shifted, as the continued popularity of added features proves that its users are looking for more than just casual networking with friends. A few of the currently popular platform applications include games, fan pages, and gifts. Social-network gaming company Zynga has dominated the site with applications such as FarmVille, Cafà © World, and Mafia Wars. Zynga has over 126 million monthly active users, making it the leading Facebook development platform. The company reported that they currently spend approximately $50 million on Facebook advertising annually, and this figure is expected to increase as the company continues to develop over the years. The games allow Facebook users to purchase virtual products with a credit card, as a means to advance further in the game. Techniques such as these provide Zynga with Facebook-user generated revenues and encourage more advertising and developing on the site. Advertisers can also utilize the option to create a free fan page, where companies and individuals can invite users to become a fan of a product, service, person, company, brand, etc. The page is set up similarly to a profile page, with the option to add status updates, photos, announcements, etc. According to Facebooks statistics (2009), over 10 million users become fans of pages on a daily basis, which provides growing possibilities to reach consumers without any financial risk. The updates on the fan pages are also displayed on the home page news feed of the fans who have joined as fans. There is also a chance to buy birthday gifts, as Facebook has expanded its gift shop to include real gifts alongside virtual ones. This type of online shopping connects cyber space with the real world, so that what happens online does not necessarily stay online. Impact of Social media advertising Castells, 2000 states that it has long been suggested that the western world in particular operates in a network society. The leitmotif of societing the link is more important than the thing is central to tribalism. Crucially, tribalism encourages dialogue in many directions and combinations; Business to Consumer (B2C), Customer to Business (C2B) and Consumer to Consumer (C2C). Drury (2008) suggests that when analyzing social media marketers too often concentrates on the media factor, when social element is the key, because marketing within social media is about building a relationship and conversation with the audience, where the simple message delivery is changed by ongoing exchange of perceptions and ideas between company and the consumer. Haven (2008) argues that social media key elements are not entirely new as features of sharing, connecting, opining, broadcasting and creating has been long in our lives, but there are several characteristics of new technologies and behaviors that set them apart from the past: Reach Historically, audiences for the common person have been limited: a tribe, family, friends, neighbors, or the local community. Todays technologies provide scale and enable anyone to reach a global audience. Accessibility The means of production for most media used to lie in the hands of enterprises with unlimited resources (financial or human). Todays technologies for media creation are available to anyone at little or no cost. Usability The means of production typically required specialized skills and training, both technically and creatively. Todays technologies simplify those processes, or in some cases reinvent them, so anyone can create and operate the means of production. Transparency People, especially Americans, historically kept personal information to themselves and had a general distrust of authority (enterprises, government, etc.). Today, people are willing to share anything about themselves (interests, location, family situations, health condition, etc.) in a public venue, and todays technologies make that both possible and purposeful. Recency When people did have the means of production and distribution in the past (albeit limited), the time lag between communications was typically long (days, weeks, or even months). It was a limitation of the technology or system in which it operated. Todays technologies enable instantaneous responses and dialog where only the participant determines the delay in response. From the results of a research, Ofcom (2008) identified the following fundamental principle of social networking; By extending their social networks, users have the opportunity to communicate with people who share their interests and with people from different countries, cultures and backgrounds (Ofcom,2008). And, Communication with family and friends was found to be the main reason adults used social networking sites (Ofcom, 2008). Next Thing Now (McCann, 2008) said that 74% of social media users use the social media to be able to get in touch with their friends. This fact emphasizes on the fact the social network advertising has to be dealt with care and for the reason of not getting into the line of bad publicity. Glen Urban argued that the customer has much more power then ever before because of the three main reasons: More information. More alternatives. Easy transaction. A study from Delloite Touche USA narrated that 62% of the U.S consumers read consumer generated online reviews and 98% of them find these reviews reliable enough. 80% of these consumers say that these reviews have affected their buying intentions. According to Lockhorn (2007) word of mouth campaigns can take off very quietly through niche communities and can be powerfully persuasive, or conversely result in an astonishing backlash. This perhaps is not good for products, the habitat in which they are pushing to gain an entry is not notably considerate, and even if they do get a break, there is still a lot of competitor brand presence. James, in 2009 states that In a UK study by Jam/MySpace in early 2009, 26% of social media users said they already felt bombarded by too much clutter/advertising. The social media networking is uncommon and challenging and the brands that do not comply to the requirements will have to combat as their competitors reap on the market share. But the ones that can exploit the environment stay to make deeper relationships with the audience, and increase their brand awareness. The information over a social network spreads like a fire. Thus a bad word or a wrong mode of communication will also travel to millions of people at the same time, accessible by millions. The User Generated Content (UGC) can become an influential message of the consumer to the consumer (C2C) about the company and therefore should be carefully monitored. In fact, the content is the new message in social media channels. According to Eikelmann (Eikelmann et al, 2008) the best marketers can do in this environment is to try to engage with the consumers through social media in order influence these messages. Drury (2008) proposes that instead of sending simple messages, marketers should provide the audience with content that would intrigue them and would also be a means to kick off conversations at. Therefore, influence will become a standard measurement in Marketing 2.0 (Dowdell, 2008). As blogger and social media strategist Douma (2008) put it: The age of persuasion is over. Welcome to the age of influence. Give us the people control and we will use it, if you do not give us control you will lose us (Jarvis, 2009). Control now lies with the users, their perceptions, opinions, demands, satisfaction is what matters more. Previously, the powerful; companies, institutions and governments believed they were in control, and they were. Now the internet allows us to speak to the world, to organise ourselves, to find and spread information, to challenge old ways, to retake control (Jarvis, 2009). Companies realize this shift in control when they can stop holding on to what is lost, and start indulging in what is going to attract consumers. Engagement means giving the users content that is interesting and would appeal the masses, also providing them space where they can discuss the content. The control can be handed to the consumer. If the consumer spreads out a positive word for brand, this will create a positive image for it. Social media communities are used by humans, for a brand to prevail, it must use emotions, or undergo the subsequent results. Jarvis 2009 quotes Today, when you lose a customer, you dont lose just that customer, you risk losing that customers friends. And thanks to the internet and blogs and consumer rate and review services, your customers have lots and lots of friends all around the world. According to Powell (2009) The brand is no longer

Gender Differences In Politeness

Gender Differences In Politeness Nowadays the difference between mens and womens use of language is one of the most important research subjects among sociolinguistic scholars as a result of its importance in communication. Understanding the different communication patterns which women and men typically use assists interlocutors to reach to better understanding and finally to achieve effective communication. Numerous studies have been widely and deeply conducted to come to conclusion that women and men are dissimilar in the way of interacting and communicating in terms of minimal responses, turntaking, changing the topic of conversation and self-disclosure. As a noticeable feature in cross-gender communications, politeness has begun to draw a lot of interests from many researchers during the past forty years. Therefore, there has been an upsurge in discussions, seminars, journals and researches in such fields as word choice, syntax and intonation to portray how dissimilarly men and women use politeness strategies. It is a high likelihood that gender differences in polite behavior will lead to failure in cross-sex communication. So as to get effective communication, speakers need to understand verbally politic behavior in different genders well. There is a general agreement that women are more likely to use politeness patterns than men in their speech. Lakoff, one of the most significant pioneers in this issue, distinguishes womens speech from mens speech in these striking features including the use of words related to their interests, empty adjectives, question intonation, hedges, hypercorrect grammar and superpolite forms (1975, p. 53-55). Based on Lakoffs commonsense beliefs and stereotypes about differences in the way of being polite between men and women in daily conversations, Montgomery concludes that womens speech is more polite than mens (1995, p. 151). This claim is supported by a great number of well-known empirical works. There is a substantial body of evidence supporting the view that, in general, womens linguistic behaviour can be broadly characterized as afliliative or cooperative, rather than competitive or control-oriented (Cameron (1985), Kalcik (1975), Smith (1985)) and as interactively facilitative and positive politeness-oriented (Holmes (1984b, 1986), Thorne, Kramarae and Henley (1983)) (as cited in Holmes, 1988, p. 451). In fact, every study makes a marked contribution in building an assumption on the difference between men and womens speech. In order to continue forming a clear sociolinguistic picture of gender differences in communications, this research is dedicated to a Vietnamese social setting. It will provide a profound study of whether female speakers are more polite than male speakers or not in foreign language centers. In this research, some linguistic politeness devices are focused to contribute to better understanding about dissimilarities in polite ways of talking between women and men. Methodology Based on the theoretical study in politeness-related differences between males and females, this project uses the noticeable findings as a data elicitation procedure to investigate the following question: To what extent do the male and female English learners from the foreign language center of Ho Chi Minh Technology University use similar or different politeness devices in daily conversations? Participants In this small-scale research, 50 male and 50 female speakers aged between 18 and 25 from the foreign language center are selected to answer some questions. The selection is carried out through the background questions in the first part of questionnaire given to 100 English learners at the foreign language center. All of chosen participants are native speakers of Vietnamese from different family, social and educational backgrounds. In details, the majority of objects are university students whose level is intermediate. They spend a lot of time studying English because they believe that a good command of English will provide a better chance of getting a good job in the future. Instruments The questionnaire used as the instrument for this project contains 3 opened-ended questions and 3 closed-ended questions. The reason why the questionnaire is used and there is no interview is that they can have more time to think about the answer and give response naturally in English. Most importantly, in this way, they can avoid losing their face when they encounter some confusing situations. First of all, the open-ended questions contain some common scenarios in day-by-day communication, namely making compliments and requests. In particular, every situation requires students to provide two responses in which one is for the same gender and the other is for the different sex. It is widely known that the level of politeness partly depends on many variables including age, social status, and relationship; therefore, two control settings are designed for aforementioned speech acts. Additionally, each part is set up to ask the participants to respond to friends or strangers. All the situations are divided into two main topics. Topic 1: Situation in which participants give a compliment. Topic 2: Situation in which participants ask a person to do a favor. Secondly, in the closed questions participants are asked to rate the level of politeness as well as the frequency of some functions according to their perceptions of using tag-questions and requesting in cross-sex conversations. These multiple-choice questions are created for categorizing and summarizing the results in any meaningful way. Procedures The data were gathered by employing questionnaire used to evaluate the participants politeness performances in their daily conversation. To strengthen the argument, each question asked them to write down their responses in either verbally or nonverbally. There is no time limitation so that they cannot suffer from the time pressure. Presentation and analysis of data After collecting the date, participants are classified into two main categories in terms of gender. One is the male group and the other is the female group. Next, under each group, their performance of politeness is analyzed in line with syntactic structure and lexical items among the same sex or different sex interlocutors. The result is gathered into three major parts, namely using tag-questions, complimenting, and making complaints. Tag questions It is widely acknowledged that the major grammar function of a tag question is seeking agreement from the listeners. Besides, tag questions are considered a kind of polite statement in which it does not force any agreement or belief on the addressees as in Lakoffs pioneering research, she concludes that womens speech sounds much more polite than mens in terms of linguistic forms like tag-questions and requests (p.17-19). Therefore, using tag questions is one of linguistic features which this research is primarily concerned to verify gender differences in politeness. The finding of question about the frequency of using tag-questions reveals that men tend to use more tags questions than women in communication. The number of male speakers who often use tag-questions doubles that of female speakers with 7 and 3 out of 30 respectively. Although the result is completely opposite to the description of womens speech given by Lakoff, one of the most significant pioneers in gender-difference research, that women have a tendency use more tag questions than men (1975, p. 53). However, it matches with Dubois and Crouchs surprising findings that in at least one genuine social context, men did, and women did not, use tag questions both formally and informally. In this context, the claim that tag questions signify an avoidance of commitment, and cause the speaker to give the impression of not being really sure of himself, of looking to the addressee for confirmation, even of having no views of his own, is open to serious doubt (1975, p. 294). A small number of people choose tag questions when interacting with other speakers is that they are not familiar with the structure of tag questions. For them, the grammatical rules are too complicated and various to acquire in a foreign language as it is a new terminology which does not exist in their first language. In fact, Zhang explains that mistakes arising in the process of learning English tag questions are caused by students incomplete application of rules. In order to produce some sentence structures, more than one rule should be used or a rule is used to some different degrees. But learners sometimes fail to understand or apply these rules completely. For example: She hardly plays with you, doesnt she? (does she) I never said she was wrong, didnt I? (did I) The learner knows the agreement rule of forming an English tag question. But when there are some words which denote negative without the word not, the learner has some difficulties in dealing with the whole sentence. Thus he produces the above sentences instead of correct ones. (2010, p. 580) Another reason for low level of frequency in using tag questions is the variation of intonations. In English, the intonation on the tag questions determines the function of the tag. In other words, communicators can change the meaning of a tag question with their pitch of voice. For instance, with rising intonation, tag questions sound like a real question. Notwithstanding, when the intonation falls they sound like a statement which does not require partners to give a real answer. If the tag is spoken with a rising intonation, as in a question, the function of the tag is much closer to that of an interrogative. The speaker indicates that he has made an assumption about the state of affairs but he is not sure as to the validity of that assumption. The listener is requested to indicate whether the assumption is valid. If the tag is spoken with a falling intonation, as in a declarative sentence, the speaker indicates that he has made an assumption and is requiring only confirmation of its validity from the listener (Mills, 1981, p. 643). In addition to the frequency of using tag questions, there is a big gap in the purpose male and female speakers use in daily conversation. The following table presents the result after investigating how similarly men and women use tag question. Function Men Women Expressing uncertainty 54% 30% Facilitative 23% 27% Softening 23% 43% It is clearly seen from the table that male and female interlocutors have completely different purpose in using tag questions. While numerous men use tag questions to signal doubt about what they are asserting and look forward to information confirmation, a large number of women consider them as facilitative devices and softening tools for negative comments. This finding is the same as Holmes summary in her research into tag questions as politeness devices. She identifies that women put more emphasis than men on the polite or affective functions of tags, using facilitative positive politeness devices. Men, on the other hand, use more tags for the expression of uncertainty (1992, p.320). This finding is mainly explained by the most widely-identified difference theory which reveals that men and women use language for different social purposes, having been socialized in different ways from earliest childhood (Edwards, 2009, p. 137). In his large-scale study, he clarifies that womens gossip traditionally focuses on personal relationships, experiences and problems in a generally supportive atmosphere. They consider the world as a network of connections and conversations as negotiations for closeness in which people seek support and reach consensus. Men, on the contrary, are more concerned with factual information, often in a competitive or combative format. They see the world in a hierarchical social order in which they are placed either up or down. For them, life is a contest and a struggle to achieve and maintain their power (Edwards, 2009, p. 137). Compliments In everyday life, there are a large number of speech acts we can use to show positive politeness like greetings, seeking agreements, avoiding disagreements, joking and showing sympathy. Among them, a compliment serves the function of not only positive politeness strategies but also potential face threatening acts (Holmes, 1988, p. 445). The questions four and five are designed with the intention of measuring how many politeness linguistic patterns both male and female speakers use when they pay their friends or a stranger a compliment. Response to friends Response to strangers From the two above bar charts, in general, women are more polite than men in paying and receiving compliments, which matches with Wardhaughs claim that women are reported to use more polite forms and more compliments than men (2010, p. 343). In details, in the scenario in which the participants is required to give a compliment on their same sex friends new clothes, the figure of female speakers choosing to compliment in an extremely polite way is four times more than that of male speakers. The percentage of the former is nearly 80% and the latter is 20%. They use some compliments such as It really looks good on you, doesnt it?, How pretty your dress is and What a pretty blouse youre wearing! as positive politeness devices. Another evidence is that when they compliment on a strangers a pair of shoes, men use less polite compliments than women to either the same sex or the opposite sex partner. The dominance theory is one of most significant explanations of the commonly held belief that women are more polite than men in cross-sex conversations. The relationship between gender-related difference in politeness and power has been investigated for the past a few decades. After OBarr and Atkins (1980) explore the complexity of the aforementioned relationship, they find out that the different language features particularly politeness strategies between males and females are related to the status rather than the sex of the speaker. They indicate that more females use polite linguistic forms than males in everyday interaction because they are more likely to be in lower-status positions (as cited in Kendall Tannen, 2003, p. 549). Thus, in the society women wish to gain higher status; for example social class, occupation, etc. by using more standard language and more polite forms in day-by-day conversations. As a result, they become more aware of the importance of linguistic politen ess in maintaining communication. In a word, higher speaker power will be associated with lower level of politeness. However, it is interesting to find that male participants use as many politeness linguistic strategies as females when they have a cross-sex conversation with both friends and strangers. It means that men tend to compliment more politely to women than to men. In addition to the belief that womens self-esteem is lower; hence, their face needs to be protected, females are more nurturant, more emotional, and more sensitive to the needs of others than males (Bern, Eagly, Piliavin and Unger, as cited in Durkin, 1995, p. 456). That is the reason why male participants pay much more attention to their use of words and speak more politely when having a talk with female partners in order to avoid the risk of hurting their feelings. In this case, gender plays an indispensible part in the choice of polite language forms. Requests Most sociolinguists remarkably appreciate the role of indirect requests in building up the politeness in conversation. Ervin and Tripp, for instance, illustrate that it is useful for speakers to use indirect interrogative requests because they give listeners an out by explicitly stating some condition which would make compliance impossible (as cited in Saeed, 2003, p. 234). In terms of requests, from the above data, not only female participants but also male interlocutors prefer using indirect and polite structures so as to reduce the risk of threatening the addressees negative face. Will you please close the door?, Wont you close the door? and I wonder if you could be so kind as to close the window are used by over 60% of men and women when they are required to ask a person to do a favor. The finding is partly against the general agreement that female communicators use more superpolite forms than male ones. This result offers some new insights into how gender influences the way men and women uses politeness strategies. Therefore, a new way of studying the gender difference in politeness-related linguistics is found in the 1990s. Many recent sociolinguists appreciate the social constructivist approach in explaining the variation of politeness behavior between men and women. A social constructivist approach shifts the emphasis to language as a dynamic resource used to construct particular aspects of social identity at different points in an interaction. Social categories are not fixed but are subject to constant change; talk itself actively creates different styles and constructs different social contexts and social identities as it proceeds. (Holmes, 2001, p. 14565) Additionally, in her research, Goodwin view activities rather than society as the relevant unit for the analysis of the data. She concludes that stereotypes about womens speech fall apart when talk is arranged in a range of activities. In order to construct social personae appropriate to the events of the moment, the same individuals articulate talk and gender differently as they move from one activity to another (1990, p. 9). In other words, speakers do not hold the same communication style across a wide range of activities. For example, a woman may choose linguistic forms which can contribute to the construction of a more feminine identity in a romantic date. Nonetheless, in a meeting in the role of a chairwoman, she will linguistically construct a powerful identity. When interacting with her children at home, she may use linguistic devices with the intention of creating a maternal identity. Therefore, the way speakers use structures to construct proper events changes in their comm unication activities. Criteria It can be clearly seen from the table that it is the relationship between the communicators that affects how politely participants speak, not the gender difference. Both men and women claim that they will take the relationship into consideration when they make a request (the figure of the former is 56% and that of the latter is 67%). The closer the relationship is, the more direct their request is. Their answer is supported by Samovar, Porter and McDaniels conclusion in their 2009 work. They find out that the closer the relationship between two persons, the less the power differential between them and smaller the magnitude of imposition the less likely it is that they will employ conversational indirectness (2009, p. 173). The implication in a language classroom All the results of this small-scale study not only confirm the previous findings discovered by numerous celebrated sociolinguists but also reveal some new findings from Vietnamese foreign language classrooms. These interesting findings about the differences in politeness use between male and female learners lead to some implications for the process of language teaching and learning. The first implication centres on the acquisition of tag questions in classrooms. From the survey, a great number of Vietnamese students whose level is intermediate or even advanced hardly use tag questions although they can adequately manipulate the form, usage as well as intonation when they are required to do so. Therefore, as an English teacher, a well-prepared presentation and a lot of intensive exercises and drills should be used in order to get students to apply them to real life situations. Besides the basic rules, some exceptions and complications should be introduced to learners so that they give a correct form of tag questions in no matter what conversation they have. More importantly, educators should help students recognize the importance of this grammar points in communication. Whenever learners know that tag questions are regarded as an extremely useful tool in daily conversations regardless of their complexity in the forms, meanings and intonations, they prefer using tag questions more often. For example, tag questions are not normal questions which are used for asking new information but powerful devices for addressers to confirm certain information, express uncertainty, facilitate and soften negative comments. Last but not least, owing to the complicated system of tag questions, Beardsmore (1970) recommends that the teaching should be undertaken from an easy to more difficult stage. The difficulties come on three levels including form, meaning, and intonation. To achieve a positive use of tags, the teaching should pay more attention to basic patterns and leave some anomalies to the end (p. 18). Another implication for English teaching and learning comes from the new results in complimenting and requesting. It cannot be denied that the gender difference plays an important part in selecting appropriate polite forms; nevertheless, there are other criteria such as age, social status, culture and relationship which communicators should bear in mind before making up their mind to use a certain politeness strategy. Accordingly, in their 1985 book, Tillitt and Bruder advise that in many cultures it is considered inappropriate to compliment babies while in the U.S it is common to say What a cute baby!. Moreover, when you are invited to a dinner in an English family, the host is happy to hear that you appreciate the food. Hence, you should compliment the food no matter how delicious the real food is. However, you do not need to compliment each dish separately. You can give a general compliment which is followed by a s specific one. For example, the meal was delicious, especially the lamb (p. 68). Additionally, based on many ELT researches into communicative approaches, Canale and Swain summarize that communicative competence consists of three components like grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence and strategic competence. In their well-known work Theoretical Bases of Communicative Approaches, they write: In view of Chomskys (1965) strong claim that competence is to be associated exclusively with knowledge of rules of grammar, both Hymes (1972) and Campbell and Wales (1970) propose a broader notion of competence, that of communicative competence. This notion is intended by them to include not only grammatical competence (or implicit and explicit knowledge of the rules of grammar) but also contextual or sociolinguistic competence (knowledge of the rules of language use). Furthermore, Hymes (1972) explicitly and Campbell and Wales (1970) implicitly adopt the distinction between communicative competence and performance, where this latter notion refers to actual use (as cited in Canale Swain, 1980, p. 4) Therefore, I strongly suggest that the procedure of teaching and learning either compliments or requests consists of three following steps: Teaching and learning some possible patterns used in compliments and requests in line with the scale of politeness (from less polite to more polite and then to superpolite) Teaching and learning sociolinguistic competence of these patterns. Practising these patterns in real life exercise so that learners can get used to the patterns. As a result, they can use these politeness devices naturally. Lets take a clear illustration. Firstly, teachers ought to provide learners with the knowledge of requests especially the importance of indirectness of requests in maintaining politeness. For instance, the function, whom to request, what to request, how to request and how to reply to a request need to be presented in various situations in daily life. Next, social knowledge about how and when to use utterances appropriately should be given for Vietnamese learners to acquire sociolinguistic competence. In this way, they can know when to use some superpolite forms or when to use less formal language. After that, they are given some authentic drills to practice how to give and reply to a request appropriately. Conclusion In summary, this paper gives a view on politeness gender difference between Vietnamese male and female learners. The findings make a positive contribution in portraying the picture of both similarity and difference in the way men and women use polite language. It can be concluded that women are not always more polite than men in Vietnamese context. Many interesting insights; for example, the gender of the listeners is one of crucial factors influencing polite behaviors of the speakers are found in this research. Besides, language educators can know that Vietnamese students see politeness as an effective way to avoid conflicts and to save face in conversations. Lastly, Vietnamese leaners politeness strategies change with the relationship between addressers and addressees. In this case, gender becomes less significant factor affecting the change of interlocutors politeness strategies. Thanks to the result of this paper, language planners can know more about their leaners communicative competence especially in using politeness linguistic devices in the process of language teaching and learning. Gender Differences in Politeness Gender Differences in Politeness From my experience and observation in teaching English in a great number of mixed-gender classes, there is a big gap in the way men and women use a certain language. For example, when both male and female students are asked to discuss one particular topic, men interrupt women more often than women do. The differences lead me to the wonder whether or not there is a correlation between language and gender. In fact, differences in the way men and women use a certain language have been of interest in the study of sociolinguistics. Therefore, there has been an upsurge in discussions, seminars, journals and researches in gender-related differences. A lot of issues such as word choice, syntax and so on have been taken into account so as to portray how dissimilar men and women use a language. Not understanding gender differences when interacting in either formal or informal situations will result in communication breakdowns. In order to communicate effectively, communicators need to make use of some appropriate politeness strategies as speakers always hope to obtain the respect from the counterparts. Hence, based on a great number of theoretical bases and empirical studies, my paper examines gender differences in conversations in in terms of politeness. My review comprises four sections. The first part looks at the definition and the function of politeness. There is an analysis and synthesis of differences in the way men and women use politeness strategies in the second section. From some explanations for these differences in section three, I suggest some implications for teachers to help learners to avoid misunderstanding and misinterpretation in conversations by using politeness techniques in the teaching process. The definition, genres and strategies of politeness A multitude of researches on politeness have been carried out to explore and expand the classic sociolinguistic work of Brown and Levinson (1987), who state that it is important to avoid causing offence in communication by showing deference to other interlocutors. They consider deferential responses as forms of politeness to avoid communication breakdown between individuals (as cited in Meyerhoff, 2006, p. 84). From the above definition, I assume that the focus of politeness is on the hearer. In this way, tactful consideration of other peoples feeling assists to avoid some potential conflicts, to gain better understanding and then to achieve effective communication. Conversely, modern linguists consider politeness as proper social behavior. In ordinary language use, according to Geyer (2008), politeness is associated with civil or well-mannered behavior and with social attributes such as good upbringing, status and formal etiquette. In addition, Watts (2003) adds his idea to validate the current conceptualization of politeness. Politeness is not something we are born with, but something we have to and be socialized into, and of politeness are available (p. 10-11). Accordingly, Holmes suggests that making decisions about what is or is not considered polite in any community involves assessing social relationships along the dimensions of social distance or solidarity and relative power or status (Holmes, 1992, p. 297). In order to be linguistically polite, communicators should choose some proper expressions which show the degree of social distance and the status difference. Based on two aforementioned dimensions, politeness is classified into two different genres. Positive politeness which is solidarity oriented emphasizes shared attitudes and values while negative politeness involves expressing oneself appropriately in terms of social distance and respecting status differences (Holmes, 1992, p.297). In terms of the social significance especially politic behavior, Lakoff (1989) distinguishes three kinds of politeness: (1) polite behavior, which is manifest when interlocutors adhere to politeness rules, whether expected or not; (2) non-polite behavior, amounting to non-conforming with politeness rules where conformity is not expected; and (3) rude behavior, where politeness is not conveyed even though it is expected. (as cited in Kasper, 1990, p.208) It is advisable to use some proper strategies in order to maintain politeness between speakers and listeners in the conversation. Following the above notion of politeness, Brown and Levinson (1987) point out that some linguistic strategies need to be realized in language to minimize the risk of losing face. They outline four main super-strategies such as bald on-record, negative politeness, positive politeness, and off-record. Firstly, bald on-record strategies used in situations where the speaker has a close relationship with the addressee are direct and unmitigated. The next strategy is positive politeness one which is often utilized to make the hearer comfortable when communicators know each other rather well including using in-group identity makers, seeking agreement, joking, and raising common ground. In contrast, negative politeness strategies are chosen to avoid imposition on the audience through distancing styles like giving deference, hedging, questioning rather than asserti ng, and apologizing. Lastly, off-record or the indirect strategy explores conversational implicatures by using hints and involving irony. For example, a speaker may use a proverb A penny saved is a penny earned to serve as criticism You are always spending a lot of money instead of a piece of advice You should save money (p. 91- 227). Some politeness variations between men and women Differences in the ways that men and women use politeness language strategies have been one of the most important research subjects in sociolinguistic. Lakoff is one of the most significant scholars of gender-difference research for the past forty years. Her 1975 study into language and womans place plays a key role in launching the issue of gender-related differences in politeness. In her influential research, she concludes that womens speech sounds much more polite than mens sound in terms of linguistic forms like tag-questions and requests (p.17-19). In other words, in conversation females are more likely to use politeness strategies in their speech than males. One aspect of politeness strategies is that the speaker should not impose a viewpoint on other people. Thus a tag-question is a kind of polite statement in that it does not force agreement or belief on the addressees. Using tag-questions is a special linguistic feature of gender differences in politeness. Holmes agrees that in general the women use more tags than the men, as Lakoff predicts. She summarizes her findings in the following table after she carries out a research into a sixty-thousand word corpus containing equal amounts of female and male speech collected in a range of matched contexts. On the contrary, as it is clearly seen in the result that Holmes identifies that men and women do not use tag questions for the same purpose. Women put more emphasis than men on the polite or affective functions of tags, using facilitative positive politeness devices. Men, on the other hand use more tags for the expression of uncertainty (1992, p.320). In fact, women tend to consider tag questions as an indicator of politeness while men use them to express uncertainty in colloquial situations. The different conversational strategies of men and women can be analyzed in terms of compliments to demonstrate that women tend to be more polite than men. Like tag questions, compliments are regarded as exemplary positive politeness strategies as the apparently main function of compliments is to consolidate the solidarity between participants. The remarkable gender difference in politeness is the way women and men use compliments. From the obvious data given by Holmes (1988), it is clearly seen that women give and receive significantly more compliments than men do. Holmes does not only focus on the frequency of complimenting patterns but also the purpose men and women use compliments. Her study finds out that women generally perceive compliments as positively affective speech acts, while men may perceive them differently (Holmes, 1988, p. 451). This claim is supported by many well-known empirical works. There is a substantial body of evidence supporting the view that, in general, womens linguistic behaviour can be broadly characterized as afliliative or cooperative, rather than competitive or control-oriented (Cameron (1985), Kalcik (1975), Smith (1985)) and as interactively facilitative and positive politeness-oriented (Holmes (1984b, 1986), Thorne, Kramarae and Henley (1983)). Linguists describe womens contributions to interaction as other-oriented, and then come to conclusion that women regard compliments as positive politeness devices. Therefore, the assumption that women use more compliments than men is consistent with this orientation. (as cited in Holmes, 1988, p. 451) While many linguistic studies on gender and language agree with the hypothesis concerning that women are more polite than men, there are also some researchers who disagree. Based on the data drawn from voice mail messages in a legal setting, Hobbs argues that the frequency of male speakers negative politeness markers is roughly equal to that of womens whereas men prefers to use more positive politeness techniques than women (Hobbs, 2003, p.243). Hobbs collected 22 informational messages of which 11 were gathered from the males and 11were from the females to analyze the dissimilarities in the way men and women use politeness strategies. The findings indicate that the general claim about women being more polite than men turns out to be incorrect in the legal voice mail messages. Positive politeness strategies such as compliments, joking, claiming reciprocity, etc. were used almost exclusively by male speakers; only one female speaker used any of these strategies. Moreover, positive politeness was used only by attorneys; five of the six male attorneys, as well as the sole female attorney, used positive politeness in their voice mail messages. (Hobbs, 2003, p. 249) The research analysis mainly falls into two kinds of politeness including positive and negative ones. In contrast with positive politeness strategies which are used by the majority of male speakers, the 2003 study of Hobbs reports that men and women use an equal number of negative politeness strategies in their voice mail messages. Such strategies as thanking, taking blame and apologizing, softening the force of requests are frequently used by both male and female lawyers. (p. 252) Why women and men use differ in the way they use politeness strategies The commonly held belief that women are more polite than men in cross-sex conversations has been well documented in range of linguistic features from tag-questions to directives. This assumption enables innumerable scholars to undertake a number of researches to explain why this difference exists. Some researchers argue that innate biological differences account for gender differences in politeness while others place an emphasis differential distribution of power between men and women in society. First of all, dominance perspective is used to interpret gender variations in politeness. After OBarr and Atkins (1980) explore the complexity of the relationship between gender and language concerning with polite strategies, they find out that more females use polite linguistic forms than males in everyday interaction because they are more likely to be in lower-status positions.(as cited in Schiffrin, Deborah Heidi, 2003, p.549) Moreover, Edwards (2009) concurs that most explanations centre on womens allegedly greater status-consciousness. If women in the society are more status-conscious than men, they may wish to gain status by using more standard forms and polite strategies. Therefore, they are more aware of the social significance of linguistic politeness variables to make their speech a sort of surrogate status. If womens and mens speech differs because the status of the genders differs, then it is clear that large social issues of power and subordination are involved. As a subordinate social role implies less freedom of movement, greater insecurity, uncertainty and lack of confidence, womens speech is expected to be more polite than mens speech (p. 134-135). In fact, it is necessary for women to secure their social status linguistically especially through the use of politeness strategies. Thanks to politeness strategies in daily conversations, women avoid straightforward statements as politeness involv es an absence of a strong statement, and womens speech is devised to prevent the expression of strong statements (Lakoff, 1975, p. 19). Another answer to the questions why the way men and women use polite strategies varies is associated with the difference approach. This philosophy is mainly based on gender socialization. According to Edwards (2009), a great number of noticeable analyses of gender differences in speech reveal that womens features especially using greater politeness forms imply more about genuine facilitative and supportive desires than about insecurity and lack of confidence. In other words, men and women may use language for different social purposes, having been socialised in different ways from their early childhood. Women are traditionally expected to focus on personal relationships, experiences and problems in a supportive atmosphere in which networking is a key whereas men are more concerned with factual information often in a combative context. (p. 137) It can be clearly seen that two above theoretical explanations of gender-related differences in politeness are influenced from diverse philosophies. However, Weatherall (2002) discovers the connection of two assumptions by giving an obvious illustration. The interactional styles of women and men as co-operative and competitive, respectively, have also been viewed as reflecting mens powerful social position relative to women. Being polite and co-operative is likely to be most effective at promoting positive interactions for those who hold little power. (p. 80) Although these explanations come from two different strands of thinking, they have the same goal that is why in cross-sex interactions, polite strategies are used by more women than men. However, they are not an explanatory factor for Hobbs finding from his research. His surprising findings are elucidated by the social constructionist approaches. A social constructionist approach shifts the emphasis to language as a dynamic resource used to construct particular aspects of social identity at different points in an interaction. Social categories are not fixed but are subject to constant change; talk itself actively creates different styles and constructs different social contexts and social identities as it proceeds. (Holmes, 2001, p. 14565) For example, a woman may select linguistic forms contributing to the construction of a more feminine identity in a romantic dinner. Nevertheless, in a meeting she will linguistically construct a powerful identity, for she is a chairwoman. When interacting with her children at home, she may use linguistic forms so as to build a maternal identity. Therefore, the way members of a society use structures to construct proper events changes across the communication activities. The implication in a language classroom It is widely acknowledged that understanding the different polite patterns which women and men typically use makes speakers to achieve more effective communication. The fact that interlocutors make fewer attempts to involve politeness in daily conversations because they have been taught not to expect participation!, Stereotyping can have intense negative effects, especially The conception of gender-differentiated politeness use leads to some implications for language teaching and learning. The first implication for foreign and second language classroom centres on social power awareness. As an educator, we had better reduce the role gap between men and women by selecting materials that represent identity groups more equally, by reorganizing classroom interaction so that all students have the opportunity to talk and demonstrate achievement in their everyday conversations regardless of gender (McKay Hornberger, 1996, p. 261). Another implication for teaching focuses on gender difference in stereotype rather than on so-called dominance approach. Because womens interactional style is absolutely different from mens, the interaction between teachers and females students differs from males. While men consider conversations as negotiations to compete women regard as a social network to gain support. It is difference in interactional styles that teachers should take into account when they perform, monitor and conduct one certain activity in class. Due to their opposite viewpoint, teachers had better balance the number of male and female students when they ask students to cooperate to fulfill one task. A group of men is likely to be over-competitive whereas a women group tends to be more supportive. As a result, there will be an imbalance of arguments in a discussion or debate. Last but not least, teachers should design some tasks related to gender-related differences in politeness so that students can acknowledge what kind of polite linguistic form they use in a cross sex communications. It will result in a more effective interaction in their real life. Teachers help students to realize that stereotypes of womens speech cannot stay the same style from one activity to another activity. The question is that how and when male speech and female speech are similar or different depends on the conversational contexts, not gender. Conclusion As a result of womens liberation movements, researches on gender and language in politeness started dramatically in 1970s. During the past several decades, many investigators examine politeness variations between women and men in daily interactions. Based on many well-known studies of gender-specific language, this literature review leaps to the conclusion that women tend to be more polite than men through a range of differences in tag-questions, compliments, etc. Most of these linguistic forms are used by more females than males to maintain politeness in cross-sex conversations. Notwithstanding, there are some oppositions to this belief in sociolinguistics. Many researches into language and gender in term of politeness rely on three distinct approaches including dominance approach, difference approach social constructionist approach to give an explanation for these discrepancies. In summary, I have explored politeness variations between men and women and questioned the validity of the assumption that womens speech is more polite than mens. In an attempt to determine the truth of this statement I have concluded that in daily conversations, politeness is regarded as a social lubricant which helps to create rapport. Knowing the differences in polite behavior between men and women can be very helpful to achieve effective communication as well as to enhance relationship. Therefore, politeness plays an indispensible in todays modern world in which a lot of interactions take place at both personal and business-related level.