The Importance Of Marketing Communication Marketing Essay

The Importance Of Marketing Communication Marketing Essay Introduction In this paper, I would like to discuss the problems associated with marketing communication in international markets. When I proceed with the assignment, with relevant examples, I will examine why an integrated marketing communication is essential to the success of a multinational in a highly competitive international market. Marketing communications in international markets needs to be conducted with care. This paper will consider some of the key issues that businesses need to take into account when promoting products or services in overseas markets with different socio, cultural background. The importance of marketing communication Those who practice advertising, branding, direct marketing, marketing, packaging, promotion, publicity, sponsorship, public relations, sales, sales promotion and online marketing are termed marketing communicators. The communication process is sender-encoding-transmission device-decoding-receiver, which is part of any advertising or marketing program. Encoding the message is the second step in communication process, which takes a creative idea and transforms it into attention-getting advertisements designed for various media such as television, radio, magazines, and others. Massages travel to audiences through various transmission devices. The third stage of the marketing communication process occurs when a channel or medium delivers the message. Decoding occurs when the message reaches one or more of the receivers senses. Consumers both hear and see television ads. Others consumers handle or touch and read a coupon offer. One obstacle that prevents marketing messages from being efficient and effective is called barrier. Barrier is anything that distorts or disrupts a message. It can occur at any stage in the communication process. Marketing Communications are messages and related media used to communicate with a market. Marketing communications is the promotion part of the Marketing Mix or the four Ps: price, place, promotion, and product. The primary goal of marketing communication is to reach a defined audience to affect its behavior by informing, persuading, and reminding. Marketing communication acquires new customers for brands by building awareness and encouraging trial. Marketing communication also maintains a brands current customer base by reinforcing their purchase behavior by providing additional information about the brands benefits. A secondary goal of marketing communication is building and reinforcing relationships with customers, prospects, retailers, and other important stakeholders. Successful marketing communication relies on a combination of options called the promotional mix. These options include advertising, sales promotion, public relations, direct marketing, and personal selling. The Internet has also become a powerful tool for reaching certain important audiences. The role each element takes in a marketing communication program relies in part on whether a company employs a push strategy or a pull strategy. A pull strategy relies more on consumer demand than personal selling for the product to travel from the manufacturer to the end user. The demand generated by advertising, public relations, and sales promotion pulls the good or service through the channels of distribution. A push strategy, on the other hand, emphasizes personal selling to push the product through these channels. Traditionally, marketing communications practitioners focused on the creation and execution of printed marketing collateral; however, academic and professional research developed the practice to use strategic elements of branding and marketing in order to ensure consistency of message delivery throughout an organization. Many trends in business can be attributed to marketing communications; for example: the transition from customer service to customer relations, and the transition from human resources to human solutions. How marketing communication become successful? For marketing communication to be successful, sound management decisions must be made in the other three areas of the marketing mix: the product, service or idea itself; the price at which the brand will be offered; and the places at or through which customers may purchase the brand. The best promotion cannot overcome poor product quality, inordinately high prices, or insufficient retail distribution. Likewise, successful marketing communication relies on sound management decisions regarding the coordination of the various elements of the promotional mix. To this end, a new way of viewing marketing communication emerged in the 1990s. It is called integrated marketing communication; this perspective seeks to orchestrate the use of all forms of the promotional mix to reach customers at different levels in new and better ways. Why integrated marketing communication is important? The evolution of the above mentioned perspective has two origins. Marketers began to realize that advertising, public relations, and sales were often at odds regarding responsibilities, budgets, management input and myriad other decisions affecting the successful marketing of a brand. Executives in each area competed with the others for resources and a voice in decision making. The outcome was inconsistent promotional efforts, wasted money, counterproductive management decisions, and, perhaps worst of all, confusion among consumers. Secondly, the marketing perspective itself began to shift from being market oriented to market driven. Marketing communication was traditionally viewed as an inside-out way of presenting the companys messages. Advertising was the dominant element in the promotional mix because the mass media could effectively deliver a sales message to a mass audience. But then the mass market began to fragment. Consumers became better educated and more skeptical about advertising. A variety of sources, both controlled by the marketer and uncontrolled, became important to consumers. News reports, word-of-mouth, experts opinions, and financial reports were just some of the brand contacts consumers began to use to learn about and form attitudes and opinions about a brand or company, or make purchase decisions. Advertising began to lose some of its luster in terms of its ability to deliver huge homogeneous audiences. Companies began to seek new ways to coordinate the multiplicity of product and company messages being issued and used by consumers and others. Thus, two ideas permeate integrated marketing communication: relationship building and synergy. rather than the traditional inside-out view, integrated marketing communication is seen as an outside-in perspective. Customers are viewed not as targets but as partners in an ongoing relationship. Customers, prospects, and others encounter the brand and company through a host of sources and create from these various contacts ideas about the brand and company. By knowing the media habits and lifestyles of important consumer segments, marketers can tailor messages through media that are most likely to reach these segments at times when these segments are most likely to be receptive to these messages, thus optimizing the marketing communication effort. Ideally, integrated marketing communication is implemented by developing comprehensive databases on customers and prospects, segmenting these current and potential customers into groups with certain common awareness levels, predispositions, and behaviors, and developing messages and media strategies that guide the communication tactics to meet marketing objectives. In doing this, integrated marketing communication builds and reinforces mutually profitable relationships with customers and other important stakeholders and generates synergy by coordinating all elements in the promotional mix into a program that possesses clarity, consistency, and maximum impact. Practitioners and academics alike, however, have noted the difficulty of effectively implementing integrated marketing communication. Defining exactly what integrated marketing communication is has been difficult. For example, merely coordinating messages so that speaking with one clear voice in all promotional efforts does not fully capture the meaning of integrated marketing communication. Also, changing the organization to accommodate the integrated approach has challenged the command and control structure of many organizations. However, studies suggest that integrated marketing communication is viewed by a vast majority of marketing executives as having the greatest potential impact on their companys marketing strategies, more so than the economy, pricing, and globalization. The importance of advertising in marketing communication Advertising has four characteristics: it is persuasive in nature; it is non-personal; it is paid for by an identified sponsor; and it is disseminated through mass channels of communication. Advertising messages may promote the adoption of goods, services, persons, or ideas. Because the sales message is disseminated through the mass mediaà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬as opposed to personal sellingà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬it is viewed as a much cheaper way of reaching consumers. However, its non-personal nature means it lacks the ability to tailor the sales message to the message recipient and, more importantly, actually get the sale. Therefore, advertising effects are best measured in terms of increasing awareness and changing attitudes and opinions, not creating sales. Advertisings contribution to sales is difficult to isolate because many factors influence sales. The contribution advertising makes to sales are best viewed over the long run. The exception to this thinking is within the internet arena. While banner ads, pop-ups and interstitials should still be viewed as brand promoting and not necessarily sales drivers, technology provides the ability to track how many of a websites visitors click the banner, investigate a product, request more information, and ultimately make a purchase. Through the use of symbols and images advertising can help differentiate products and services that are otherwise similar. Advertising also helps create and maintain brand equity. Brand equity is an intangible asset that results from a favorable image, impressions of differentiation, or consumer attachment to the company, brand, or trademark. This equity translates into greater sales volume, and/or higher margins, thus greater competitive advantage. Brand equity is established and maintained through advertising that focuses on image, product attributes, service, or other features of the company and its products or services. Cost is the greatest disadvantage of advertising. The average cost for a 30-second spot on network television increased fivefold between 1980 and 2005. Plus, the average cost of producing a 30-second ad for network television is quite expensive. It is not uncommon for a national advertiser to spend in the millions of dollars for one 30-second commercial to be produced. Add more millions on top of that if celebrity talent is utilized. Credibility and clutter are other disadvantages. Consumers have become increasingly skeptical about advertising messages and tend to resent advertisers attempt to persuade. Advertising is everywhere, from network television, to daily newspapers, to roadside billboards, to golf course signs, to stickers on fruit in grocery stores. Clutter encourages consumers to ignore many advertising messages. New media are emerging, such as digital video recorders which allow consumers to record programs and then skip commercials, and satellite radio which provides a majority of its channels advertising free. Marketing communication and public relations Public relations is defined as a management function which identifies, establishes, and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics upon which its success or failure depends. Whereas advertising is a one-way communication from sender (the marketer) to the receiver (the consumer or the retail trade), public relations considers multiple audiences (consumers, employees, suppliers, vendors, etc.) and uses two-way communication to monitor feedback and adjust both its message and the organizations actions for maximum benefit. A primary tool used by public relations practitioners is publicity. Publicity capitalizes on the news value of a product, service, idea, person or event so that the information can be disseminated through the news media. This third party endorsement by the news media provides a vital boost to the marketing communication message: credibility. Articles in the media are perceived as being more objective than advertisements, and their messages are more likely to be absorbed and believed. For example, after the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes reported in the early 1990s that drinking moderate amounts of red wine could prevent heart attacks by lowering cholesterol; red wine sales in the United States increased 50 percent. The other benefit publicity offers is that it is free, not considering the great amount of effort it can require to get out-bound publicity noticed and picked up by media sources. Public relations role in the promotional mix is becoming more important because of what Philip Kotler describes as an over communicated society. Consumers develop communication-avoidance routines where they are likely to tune out commercial messages. As advertising loses some of its cost-effectiveness, marketers are turning to news coverage, events, and community programs to help disseminate their product and company messages. Some consumers may also base their purchase decisions on the image of the company, for example, how environmentally responsible the company is. Direct marketing and database marketing Direct marketing, the oldest form of marketing, is the process of communicating directly with target customers to encourage response by telephone, mail, electronic means, or personal visit. Users of direct marketing include retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, and service providers, and they use a variety of methods including direct mail, telemarketing, direct-response advertising, and online computer shopping services, cable shopping networks, and infomercials. Traditionally not viewed as an element in the promotional mix, direct marketing represents one of the most profound changes in marketing and promotion in the last 25 years. Aspects of direct marketing, which includes direct response advertising and direct mail advertising as well as the various research and support activities necessary for their implementation, have been adopted by virtually all companies engaged in marketing products, services, ideas, or persons. Direct marketing has become an important part of many marketing communication programs for three reasons. First, the number of two-income households has increased dramatically. About six in every ten women in the United States work outside the home. This has reduced the amount of time families have for shopping trips. Secondly, more shoppers than ever before rely on credit cards for payment of goods and services. These cashless transactions make products easier and faster to purchase. Database marketing is a form of direct marketing that attempts to gain and reinforce sales transactions while at the same time being customer driven. Successful database marketing continually updates lists of prospects and customers by identifying who they are, what they are like, and what they are purchasing now or may be purchasing in the future. By using database marketing, marketers can develop products and/or product packages to meet their customers needs or develop creative and media strategies that match their tastes, values, and lifestyles. The importance of Sales promotion, sponsorships and exhibitions. Sales promotions are direct inducements that offer extra incentives to enhance or accelerate the products movement from producer to consumer. Sales promotions may be directed at the consumer or the trade. Consumer promotions such as coupons, sampling, premiums, sweepstakes, price packs, low-cost financing deals, and rebates are purchase incentives in that they induce product trial and encourage repurchase. Consumer promotions may also include incentives to visit a retail establishment or request additional information. Sales promotions can motivate customers to select a particular brand, especially when brands appear to be equal, and they can produce more immediate and measurable results than advertising. However, too heavy a reliance on sales promotions results in deal-prone consumers with little brand loyalty and too much price sensitivity. Sales promotions can also force competitors to offer similar inducements, with sales and profits suffering for everyone. Sponsorships, or event marketing, combine advertising and sales promotions with public relations. Sponsorships increase awareness of a company or product, build loyalty with a specific target audience, help differentiate a product from its competitors, provide merchandising opportunities, demonstrate commitment to a community or ethnic group, or impact the bottom line. Like advertising, sponsorships are initiated to build long-term associations. Exhibits, or trade shows, are hybrid forms of promotion between business-to-business advertising and personal selling. Trade shows provide opportunities for face-to-face contact with prospects, enable new companies to create a viable customer base in a short period of time, and allow small and midsize companies that may not be visited on a regular basis by salespeople to become familiar with suppliers and vendors. Because many trade shows generate media attention, they have also become popular venues for introducing new products and providing a stage for executives to gain visibility. When we talk about Personal selling, it includes all person-to-person contact with customers with the purpose of introducing the product to the customer, convincing him or her of the products value, and closing the sale. The role of personal selling varies from organization to organization, depending on the nature and size of the company, the industry, and the products or services it is marketing. Many marketing executives realize that both sales and non-sales employees act as salespeople for their organization in one way or another. Personal selling is the most effective way to make a sale because of the interpersonal communication between the salesperson and the prospect. Messages can be tailored to particular situations, immediate feedback can be processed, and message strategies can be changed to accommodate the feedback. However, personal selling is the most expensive way to make a sale. Marketing communication and Internet marketing Just as direct marketing has become a prominent player in the promotional mix, so too has the Internet. Web sites provide a new way of transmitting information, entertainment, and advertising, and have generated a new dimension in marketing: electronic commerce. E-commerce is the term used to describe the act of selling goods and services over the Internet. In other words, the Internet has become more that a communication channel; it is a marketing channel itself with companies such as Amazon.com, eBay, and others selling goods via the Internet to individuals around the globe. In less than 10 years advertising expenditures on the Internet will rival those for radio and outdoor. Public relations practitioners realize the value that web sites offer in establishing and maintaining relationships with important publics. For example, company and product information can be posted on the companys site for news reporters researching stories and for current and potential customers seeking information. Political candidates have web sites that provide information about their background and their political experience. The interactivity of the Internet is perhaps its greatest asset. By communicating with customers, prospects, and others one-on-one, firms can build databases that help them meet specific needs of individuals, thus building a loyal customer base. Because the cost of entry is negligible, the Internet is cluttered with web sites. However, this clutter does not present the same kind of problem that advertising clutter does. Advertising and most other forms of promotion assume a passive audience that will be exposed to marketing communication messages via the mass media or mail regardless of their receptivity. Web sites require audiences who are active in the information-seeking process to purposely visit the site. Therefore, the quality and freshness of content is vital for the success of the web site. International Marketing Communications and Cultural Issues. There are a whole range of cultural issues that international marketers need to consider when communicating with target audiences in different cultures. Language will always be a challenge. One cannot use a single language for an international campaign. For example, there are between six and twelve main regional variations of the Chinese languages, with the most popular being Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, and Cantonese. India has 22 languages including Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, and Tamil to name but a few. Of course language choice could affect branding choices, and the names of products and services. Hidden messages and humor would be especially tricky to convey. Famous examples include the Vauxhall Corsa, which was called the Nova in the United Kingdom of course No VA! Would not be an acceptable name in Spanish. A similar problem was left unaddressed by Toyota, with their MR2 in France (think about it!). Design, symbolism and aesthetics sometimes do not transcend international boundaries. For example Japanese aesthetics sometimes focus upon taste and beauty. Also look at Japanese cars from the front they have a smiling face. The manner in which people present themselves in terms of dress and appearance changes from culture to culture. For example in Maori culture, dress plays a central role with everyday clothing differing greatly from ceremonial costume. Whereas in Western business-culture the standard uniform tends to be a conservative collar and tie. Conclusion From the above discussions we can see that marketing communication has become an integral part of the social and economic system. Consumers rely on the information from marketing communication to make wise purchase decisions. Businesses, ranging from multinational corporations to small retailers, depend on marketing communication to sell their goods and services. Marketing communication has also become an important player in the life of a business. Marketing communication helps move products, services, and ideas from manufacturers to end users and builds and maintains relationships with customers, prospects, and other important stakeholders in the company. Advertising and sales promotion will continue to play important roles in marketing communication mix. However, marketing strategies that stress relationship building in addition to producing sales will force marketers to consider all the elements in the marketing communication mix. I hope, In the future new information gathering techniques will help marketers target more precisely customers and prospects using direct marketing strategies. New media technologies will provide businesses and consumers new ways to establish and reinforce relationships that are important for the success of the firm and important for consumers as they make purchase decisions. In the coming years I believe, Internet will become a major force in how organizations communicate with a variety of constituents, customers, clients, and other interested parties.

The Colonies By 1763: A New Society? Essay -- essays research papers

The Colonies by 1763: A New Society   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Between the settlement at Jamestown in 1607 and the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the most important change that occurred in the colonies was the emergence of a society quite different from that in England. Changes in religion, economics, politics and social structure illustrate this Americanization of the transplanted Europeans.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  By 1763, although some colonies still maintained established churches, other colonies had accomplished a virtual revolution for religious toleration and separation of church and state. The Anglican Church was the only established denomination in England. In contrast, the colonies supported a great variety of churches. The largest were the Congregationalist, Anglican, and German churches, but many smaller denominations could be found through the colonies. In addition to this, a high percentage of Americans didn’t belong to any church. These differences could be attributed to the fact that many of the Europeans who immigrated to America didn’t fit in to or agree with the churches in their homelands.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In a similar economic revolution, the colonies outgrew their mercantile relationship with the mother country and developed an expanding capitalist system of their own. In England, the common view was that the colonies only purpose was to compliment and support the homeland. This resulted in a series of laws and protocols called th...

Domestic Violence Research Critique Essay

Introduction Domestic abuse is a problem in the USA, and the research article that I am critiquing is studying the effectiveness of screening for domestic abuse in health care pre-screening settings. Domestic abuse is a hard situation for the woman going through it and often times it’s a hard subject to discuss. In order to help women with this process it’s important that as health care providers we understand the complexities of domestic abuse and become educated on how to approach the situation with patients. Throughout this critique we will discuss how this protects the patient, how data was obtained, how the data was managed/analyzed, and how it was interpreted. Protection of Human Participants This study is ultimately helping promote awareness/protection to patients in a health care setting by addressing the possibility of domestic abuse in each situation. The study consisted of measuring the rate of domestic abuse in the presence and absence of screenings. The study also compared the outcomes of interventions with women with known abuse from a male with women not receiving interventions who have been abused. There is a need for women to be able to get to a safer place such as a physician’s office and discuss private matters so they don’t feel threatened. Most women have a hard time discussing any issues regarding domestic abuse they have had because they fear losing something they loved so deeply. Data The data that was pulled was from multiple sources; sources included research articles combined with survey results from different medical professionals. The research articles were used to formulate the questions presented in the survey handed out the medical professionals. The three questions presented were â€Å"Do women patients and health professionals find  screening for domestic violence acceptable? Do screening programs increase the identification of women who are experiencing domestic violence? Do interventions with women identified in healthcare settings improve outcomes?† (Ramsay, Richardson, Carter, Davidson, Feder 2002). According to the study most physicians and emergency care workers were not in favor of the screening. Women who were surveyed as to whether they think it would be helpful to be screened at their physician’s office were mostly in favor by 75%. Another study that researched an emergency department’s response to nurses screening for a history of abuse and 53% were in favor. Problems The lack of solid information and research articles led to more extraneous variables. The research articles in play had lack of information and quality information. There was no monitoring of the quality of items extracted from the information from the medical records, according to this research article. Also another variable would be women who have a hard time speaking up about domestic violence even if it did happen to them, they may not speak about it and it would be a low quality outcome. The article talked about how women who had been abused dealt with the pain of the abuse after and if they sought out help? Analysis of Data 85% of women found the screening in health care settings acceptable, which is positive in relation to the fact that women care about their safety. 2 surveys found that two thirds of health care providers and emergency room nurse were not in favor of screening for domestic abuse. The results of the data collected were hard to analyze because the collection of data gained for this research study wasn’t solid and there were a lot of different variables. At the time this research study was conducted there wasn’t a system of screening women for abuse. Findings/Interpretation In the year 2015 most hospital facilities add it to part of their admission screen. The findings in this quantitative research analysis didn’t support that outcome. Healthcare providers, according to the data in this study, weren’t agreeable to the benefits of having a screening for women for domestic abuse (Ramsay, Richardson, Carter, Davidson, Feder, 2002). There are holes in the data collected as far as to why the healthcare providers  felt like this wouldn’t benefit women. There are a lot of domestic abuse cases, and I believe these findings were proven wrong many years later due to the fact we prescreen men and women in our present hospital facilities. The limitations found by the researchers included improper research/data collection done by the researchers who wrote the articles referenced in this research analysis. The research presented will set other researchers on the path to find answers to this ongoing problem of domestic abuse. I believe that in t he future we will be more thoroughly trained on the signs and symptoms of abuse, and certain cue’s we as nurses can look for. As healthcare providers it’s important that we interject when we feel our patient is unsafe. Conclusion Domestic Abuse is unfortunately happening all around us in the USA. Using and building off research studies such as this quantitative research analysis will help us open our minds to different answers. According to this research study the women interviewed about if they think it’s a good idea to pre-screen for domestic abuse. This could have been skewed in a lot of ways, but one situation that makes the most sense is talking with your physician about this problem. Usually people consider physicians’ offices as a safe zone. As long as they don’t feel threatened they tend to open up a bit more. When the research study points to the health care providers that aren’t willing/or don’t want to do the pre-screening for domestic abuse, it makes you wonder if there were other factors involved in their interview process. This study was inconclusive in regards to lack of quality information from the stated research articles. The base of this research study led us to believe that pre-screenings for women being seen in a physician offices aren’t necessary. The research had obviously gone further than this article due to the fact we now pre-screen everyone in a hospital setting. Reference Ramsay, J., Richardson, J., Carter, Y. H., Davidson, L. L., & Feder, G. (2002). Should health professionals screen women for domestic violence? Systematic review. Bmj, 325(7359), 314.

Is obesity a disease Essay

Is obesity a disease? Thirty tlve percent ot people believe that obesity is a disease, but I believe that It Is a life choice. The reason I believe that obesity Is a life choice Is because there are many ways to avoid obesity; getung plenty of exercise, eaung right, and there are surgeries that can be performed to counter obesity and be healthy. Thirty eight of Americans are obese, due to that percentage, most doctors don’t consider being skinny healthy and believe that you should be close to overweight but not obese. The average weight for a teen girl that Is 5, 1 Is 100 pounds which is nderweight to doctors they believe that the average teen girl that is 5, 1 should be 125 pounds. In 1979 the average weight for a teen girl that is 5, 1 was 109 pounds and due to the increase of obesity and weight change that now would be considered underweight and you would be considered not healthy. Many people say that obesity is caused by thyroid problems yet there are many ways to avoid this, there are foods that can’t be avoided that can stop the thyroid problem, There are medicines that will eliminate or control the problem. The thyroid causes the body to ake too many proteins that the body does not need, and this can cause increased body weight and swelling. It also controls metabolism, and can cause you to lose weight too slowly or cause you to lose weight too fast. The thyroid is the number â€Å"medical cause† of weight gain but this can be completely avoided in many ways, the thyroid cannot be blamed for causing obesity. obesity Is caused by many things such as poverty and the society In which we live In. any fast food places angle advertising towards kids and show them toys and characters form their favorite hows to get them to eat there. Most parents allow them to eat there because It makes then happy and they want to give them what they want because it Is very easy and very affordable. The percentage of kids that have obesity has risen since the kids meals were invented in 1987. Many fast food restraints have taken notice of this and gotten rid of the toy and introduced books in kids meals The places that tried this noticed that kids brought fewer fast foods because there was no toy in their meal. I don’t believe that kids meals make kids fat but I believe It’s the prices and how easy hey are to get causes not only kids but adults to gain weight and become obese, Obesity is a life choice even if you do have the medical condition hyperthyroidism there is no excuse for being fat because there are so many ways to avoid it. If obesity was a disease then that would mean something that requires medical treatment but that would also but someone doing heroin is a disease when in reality It is a life choice you either control the problem or you don’t and obesity is something you can control obesity is just caused by an eating habits. Work cited is obesity a disease By Adrivatal Thirty five percent of people believe that obesity is a disease, but I believe that it is a life choice. The reason I believe that obesity is a life choice is because there are many ways to avoid obesity; getting plenty of exercise, eating right, and obese. The average weight for a teen girl that is 5, 1 is 100 pounds which is are foods that can’t be avoided that can stop the thyroid problem. There are Obesity is caused by many things such as poverty and the society in which we live in. any fast food places hows to get them to eat there. Most parents allow them to eat there because it makes then happy and they want to give them what they want because it is very easy gotten rid of the toy and introduced books in kids meals. The places that tried this don’t believe that kids meals make kids fat but I believe it’s the prices and how easy they are to get causes not only kids but adults to gain weight and become obese. that would also but someone doing heroin is a disease when in reality it is a life control obesity is Just caused by an eating habits.

My (Not So Unique) Holiday Family Traditions Essay

When our Sociology class was assigned to write about family traditions, I instantly became nervous because I couldn’t think of one tradition off the top of my head that was special and unique to my family. I sat there and wondered, should I tell the truth and reveal the fact that my family doesn’t have any traditions? Should I make one up and fake my way through the entire thing just to get a good grade? Should I take someone else’s family tradition and call it my own? As you can probably tell, I was completely stuck. I feel as though my family traditions are ones that are shared with other families around the world. The typical family traditions that I’m referring to are about are during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. During Thanksgiving, we always have our annual family dinner down at my grandmother’s house. All the women of the family cook different dishes such as turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, etc. The women usually si t around the dinner table while the men of the family assemble in the living room and watch TV, typically football. The children of the family usually sit at a separate table and after they are done, they usually go outside to play. Christmas traditions and the traditions of Thanksgiving are much in the same. Occasionally after everyone gets their stomachs full, we usually play a game called â€Å"catch phrase.† There is never a dull moment when we play this game. It is similar to charades in which you hold a device that shows you a word that you must describe to your teammates without saying the word directly. When I was assigned this essay, I went to my mother, hoping that we had a tradition that I just overlooked. Needless to say, I was back at square one, she couldn’t think of any that were unique! I began to look to my peers for help, which resulted in the usual, â€Å"Just say something obvious, like, ‘On the twenty-fifth day of December, my family opens presents that are left underneath an artificial tree by an obese man who has some strange obsession with red clothes and non-existent animals who can fly’!† That wasn’t much help either. In comparison to the traditional Caucasian holiday traditions, I researched via internet on the African Am erican holiday traditions. A common statement that I found was that â€Å"Today’s Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners are just a taste of how African Americans used to eat.† Before you slice into that sweet potato pie, douse those greens in hot sauce or cut a corner of macaroni and cheese this holiday season, consider where those traditions came from. In the late 19th  century, geography factored in how people celebrated the yuletide season. During this time, African Americans lived mostly a rural existence, which translated into a farm-to-table lifestyle. I found a blog of two sisters discussing their African American culture during the holiday seasons. Sisters Norma Jean and Carole Darden discussed their history and recipes in recounting African-American life and culture. Their grandmother’s traditions were passed down to them in which they will pass them down to their children and so on. She lived on a dairy farm and wanted milk and cream in the family’s dishes. A favorite dish was painted Christmas cookies, made with rose water and orange-flower water. Norma will be preparing Thanksgiving dinner for her family in November. She’s been cooking since age 9. Her dinner table will have turkey with corn bread dressing on the side, many quarts of giblet gravy, whole cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes. But in h omage to her stepfather, she’ll make smoked oysters for an appetizer, corn and peas as a side dish as well as yams in a cast-iron pot, without marshmallows. Just as he taught her. We live in an age in which it is hard to spend time together as a family. Many families today wonder if having quality time together is a thing of the past. We are inordinately busy, for one thing, whether household bread-winners or college students. Also, the definition of family has changed. We are dealing with new definitions and characterizations of the idea of family. Some of us have traditional families. Some families have divorced, single, and/or remarried parents, creating a rather confusing family tree. Some people choose to live their lives alone, but may still be close enough to some friends to consider them family. Whatever the circumstances, many of us honestly don’t know how to celebrate together. We may even see the word â€Å"tradition† as something dulling and old, having no meaning for or application to us personally; something usually being forced upon us. It is up to us to create new family traditions. Celebrating is not hard. We all know about celebrating and have some ways of doing it. The only challenge is to find new ways. Why do we need to celebrate tradition? It gives us something to look forward to and makes a formal statement that there are some things in life to be grateful for. The notion of honoring tradition is unsettling for some people; let alone creating new ones. We seem to think that traditions must be heavy and complex ideas that had been around for hundreds of years and will be around  for a hundred more. In my opinion, this is not true. It need not be big or religious at all. I believe a tradition is something that you do once that feels good, so you do it again and again. Tradition is in all our lives in one way or another. Without participation in such activities there would be no family bond or pride. Being involved in these activities brings people closer and makes us understand who we are. Everything we do and every day of our lives we take part in a tradition in one form or another. After writing this paper, I realize that my family traditions may not be unique to others, but they are special to me and the members of my family and that is something that I will always cherish and hope to pass down to future generations.

Should the Drinking Age Remain at 21 or Be Lowered to 18

Dominicia Ferrell Mrs. Burns English 101 December 1, 2011 Should the legal drinking age be raised (or lowered)? Should the drinking age be lowered to eighteen years old, when one is considered an adult, and assumes adult privileges, or should the drinking age remain at twenty-one years old, since people are more mature and therefore, can be safe and responsible with alcohol? I believe that the drinking age should remain at twenty-one years old because lowering the legal age would not be the best interest of the public’s safety, as well as today’s youth.Why the drinking age should not be lowered? Let me explain some reasons why not to lower the drinking age. One is if the drinking age is lowered it will be contributing to more fatal accidents. Second, lowering the drinking age might influence eighteen year olds to buy alcohol for younger teenagers. An third, eighteen year olds may not be mature enough to know their limitations on drinking alcoholic beverages. I also beli eve that the drinking age should be lowered because when one turns eighteen years old they are considered an adult.At the age of eighteen one is able to make his/her on decision. I have come to the conclusion that the legal drinking age should be changed to eighteen. But drunk driving is the one big factor why people do not want to change the legal drinking age to eighteen years old. In this instance there would be a risk of many more deaths in America due to drunk driving. The reason would be that if underage drinkers could consume alcohol they would not have to be forced to drive from authorities.In the case I would support the legal age of twenty-one. Drunk driving is a very big concern to a lot of people and keeping the age at twenty-one would reduce drunk drivers on the road as opposed to eighteen. If the age were lowered to eighteen there would be less conflict with higher authorities such as parents and police officers. The legal drinking age should be lowered to eighteen yea rs old because at eighteen you are classified as an adult in the eyes of the law. The legal drinking age in Louisiana is currently twenty-one.It was changed from eighteen years old to twenty-one in 1996 when the Federal Government threatened to withhold money for highway construction that the law changed and the minimum age was raised to twenty-one across the board for buying, consuming and selling alcohol. This is a point that has been proven time and again with other things such as prohibition. Just because you make something illegal it does not mean that people are just going to stop doing it. Just because you make something illegal it does not mean that people are just going to stop doing it.Because of the laws many young people learn to drink in unsafe environments. They use alcohol with the intention of getting drunk rather than as an accompaniment to food. In the eighteen, nineteen, and twenty year old range do dangerous binge drinking far more often than the twenty-one who d rinks responsibly. I believe that considering twenty-one as the legal age of maturity is foremost ridiculous. Who is to say that just because an individual is twenty-one means that they are mature enough to consume alcohol in a responsible manner? Changing the legal drinking age to eighteen should be forced.Eighteen year old individuals can take on many responsibilities, but they do not have the right to consume alcohol. I feel this is unfair and biased. Just because a person lives to be twenty-one does not determine how mature they are. For example, there are many teenagers in the world that are considerably more mature than the average twenty-one year old. The determination of legal drinking should not be age, but rather maturity and ability to handle responsibility. If twenty-one is considered so mature, then why an eighteen year old is considered an adult?At the age of eighteen, an individual can vote, serve on a jury, stay out without a curfew, leave home, drive, smoke, buy wea pons, be sent to adult prisons, and die for this country. If an eighteen year old can be held to so many responsibilities, then it seems unfair to say that they are not old enough to drink. Prohibiting the sale of alcohol to people under the age of twenty-one may cause habits such as binge drinking and alcohol abuse. Binge drinking, or drinking for the purpose of getting drunk, harms both drinkers and nondrinkers.They use bingeing as the get a way that allows them to escape stress. It allows them to forget their worries, fit in with the crowd, and live a fast paced life. Keeping the age at twenty-one makes it seems as if an eighteen year old is not a real adult. Drinking is then viewed as an activity since it is only for adults. Then the underage will just find a way around it. For example, many have fake identification cards, steal alcohol from their parents’, or even put another person in jeopardy by asking someone who is twenty-one to illegally purchase the alcohol for the underage drinkers.This kind of attitude does not encourage responsible drinking habits. In addition, this gives the young individuals the urge to drink even more when they get older so they can make up for their lost time, causing alcoholism. The argument against changing the legal drinking age has many issues. There have been many vehicle crashes among eighteen year olds than twenty-one year olds after the drinking age was raised to twenty-one. I believe that there will always be people that will drink and drive, and there is nothing anyone can do to completely stop it.But people of all ages get into car accidents. Instead of restricting the eighteen year old adults, there should be better ways to educate the eighteen year olds on the dangers and responsibilities that come with drinking. My final reason for why the drinking age should be lowered is that if an eighteen year old is considered an adult and have the same responsibilities as a twenty-one year old they should be able to purchase and consume alcohol and drink as much as they desire only if they are able to control their maturity and take on much more responsibilities as to not drink and drive.

Describe only four (4) factors that create a current account deficit Essay

Describe only four (4) factors that create a current account deficit. Leave a space between each factor - Essay Example Deficit therefore implies that the value of the payment for the imports is greater than the receipt from the exports. The factors responsible for a current account deficit are:- Decline in domestic savings The domestic savings of a country is the path of increasing investments as in economics savings is considered to be identical to investments. If there is a continuous decline in the savings of a particular country then the scope of investment will causes an increase in the real interest rate of the country. Increase in the domestic interest rate (real) in turn attracts more foreign investment in the country as the scope of return is expected to be high. With increasing foreign investment the demand of the home currency in the foreign exchange market also increases because of the need of  Ã‚   currency conversion. This creates an upward pressure on the value of the domestic currency in comparison to the foreign currencies. Moreover, with the decrease in savings as a percentage of the total Gross Domestic Product of the country, consumption increases. Thus the demand for goods and services in the economy increases and if the domestic producers fail to meet up the increasing domestic demand of the country the import of the country increases resulting in a deficit in the current account. (Arnold).