Branding
Essays

¶ … Saints and the Roughnecks by William Chambliss is a masterpiece study in Seattle suburb in the 1970s and it demonstrates the significance of connecting the macro and micro factors together.

Virgin America has quickly established itself as one of the premier airlines operating throughout North America, generating $760M in Operating Revenues as of the close of its latest fiscal period reporting a Net Loss of $19M and operating margin of -1.6%. As Virgin competes in a very price-driven and capital-intensive industry, their latest financial results the exceptionally high pressure on new entrants into commercial aviation. Their latest financial results are shown in Appendix A: Virgin America Consolidated Statement of Operations and Appendix B: Comparative Operating Statistics, both obtained from the company's website. Analyzing their financial condition indicates just how challenging the launch and successful operation of an airline is. Their fuel costs increased 66.9% for the nine months between September 30, 2010 to September 30, 20112, and Aircraft Maintenance increased 51.5% in the same period. Both of these figures are shown in Appendix A. To reduce the costs of operations many commercial aircraft service providers also rent jets to mitigate the costs of purchasing them. The use of value-based and time-based pricing optimization pioneered by Virgin in the Australian and Asian markets has given the company an advantage in managing its cost of capital requirements as well (De Roos, Mills, Whelan, 2010). Virgin is expanding aggressively into new markets and this is costing the company a significant amount of their cash as well. In the nine months from September 10, 2010 to September 30, 2011, Virgin spent 26.4% more on landing fees and other rents. The total invested in the first nine months of 20-11 was $63M, a significant amount by any standard of commercial aviation (Hazledine, 2011). This also created the need for a high spending level in Guest Services, which jumped by 30% in the same time period, reaching $31M. Virgin continued to invest in these areas with the goal of ramping up their freight and third party logistics businesses, which are significantly smaller in their revenue contributions that the main Guest revenues. For the latest nine month fiscal period, Virgin generated $62.14M in revenues, a 26.4% increase in these non-passenger revenue business models. The high prices Virgin is paying for aircraft rents, maintenance, increased landing fees and operating expenses were important to establishing their freight businesses. Virgin however is finding the growth of their 3rd party logistics and non-passenger revenue slow in the business-to-business (B2B) markets globally.

Comparing the price elasticities of two products, the first having price elastic demand, and the second having price-inelastic demand, followed by an assessment of their respective implications for total revenue are…

This paper is about foreign exchange and international trade. The prompt relates to General Mills and its operations in Greece and France. So there is discussion of FX risk (or lack thereof), and of the impacts of the common market on trade between these two countries. There are some sections speculating about the nature of the international operations of this company.

There are several significant advantages of using qualitative measurements in marketing research. The most significant is the ability to capture the voice of customers that may have evaded the more structured, numerically-based approaches that force respondents to provide a specific set of answers. Qualitative research can also lead to entirely new insights into a new market or service that has not been seen in the past, given the open-ended questions inherent in this approach to research. Qualitative research techniques also can be used to capture the shared knowledge of experts as well, as the Delphi Technique is so well-known and used for. Capturing the tacit expertise and knowledge of a specific group of thought leaders can also be accomplished using qualitative techniques as well. Additional advantages of qualitative measurements include the ability to complete greater exploratory or primary research into a specific subject, often following a specific line of questions as they develop within an interview. An additional advantage of qualitative research techniques are the ability to understand how prospects and customers make trade-offs on substitute products and services. While price elasticity studies are often highly quantitative in scope, the use of interactive discussions of pricing trade-offs can be highly effective in determining just how much a prospect is willing to sacrifice price for a given feature or benefit. The total value of a brand can also be ascertained through the use of these types of qualitative techniques, providing respondents with the ability to define in their own terms the value of the experience a brand delivers. The many advantages of qualitative research are predicated on having more interactive sessions with respondents, including the ability to ascertain how they make trade-offs over time on value versus price. For the many advantages of qualitative measurements, there are several disadvantages as well. First, the results of any study predicated on this approach cannot be analyzed at the higher levels of statistical analysis. As the results of studies and research completed with qualitative measurements are by nature not nominal, ordinal or interval in terms of data orthogonality, they cannot be used to represent an entire customer or segment population. At best they can be used as a means to capture nominally-based data that can lead to only a rough approximation of an overall market size or series of market dynamics. Qualitative data can only be as useful as the means used to capture it as well; if a methodology is very informal and focused on a series of loosely-guided objectives, the overall data will of mediocre quality at best. When the goals and objectives of a research study, in addition to the sampling frame and methodology lack rigor or precise focus, the resulting research can also lack precision and meaning. It is more difficult to create greater levels of meaning and transferability of data when the methodologies are highly qualitative in scope; the data is only relevant for a specific series of objectives and often is defined by applicability to a given point in time as well. Qualitative data is often also open to interpretation, as the methodology can be debated in terms of its relative appropriateness, robustness and value over the long-term. Finally, qualitative data cannot be taken entirely on its own; it must be combined with a series of other research sources to ensure relevancy and accuracy of interpretation, especially over time. In conclusion, qualitative data needs to be taken in context and often balanced with quantitative data to ensure a 360-degree view of a given situation or strategy of interest has the greater level of insights gained from research efforts.

The replacement of the Convention Center roof is a critical decision in the long-term lifecycle of that asset. The preventative maintenance aspects of this decision and the selection fo Composite Tiles will significantly reduce TCO while also also causing the minimum amount of disruption to the Convention Center's availability. Tiles are also the best approach to minimizing reactive maintenance, which would have been the case with asphalt shingles for example. Tiles will also stay consistent with the aesthetics and overall appearance of the property making it more marketable in the years ahead. All of these factors need to be taken into account in choosing a preventative and predictive maintenance strategy over the long-term for the roof replacement.

The Quick service industry in the United Kingdom has flourished over the last few decades. In addition to Multinational Corporations such as McDonalds, there are also British owned chains such as Chicken Cottage.

The BCG index was designed to help managers determine how departments were performing in their company (NetMBA, 2002). The matrix is a simple calculation that labels the departments as a star, question mark, cash cow or…

ShopperTrak's National Retail Sales Estimate (NRSE) reported that U.S. retail sales for the week ending April 23 increased 9.9% as compared to the same week last year. Although adverse weather throughout the Midwest led…

Marketing in American business is essential to the ultimate success of any product or service (Archambeau, 2007). The field of marketing is relatively new having emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War and the…