Porter forces model on Dell Company

Introduction Dell is a multinational company operating in the computer industry and the company has achieved great success in marketing its products in the global markets. To maintain its market position the company has embarked on manufacturing differentiated products by the application of innovative technologies.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on Porter forces model on Dell Company specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The company has focused on marketing its products in the global market and to achieve this strategy the management has established online marketing channels, retail stores and other foreign partnerships (Ignatiuk, 2009). The position of the company in the computer industry is explained by porter’s five forces analysis. Application of Porter’s Five Forces Analysis to Dell Porter’s five forces provide an analysis about the external and internal environments of an organization . The forces analyzed by the Porter’s tools are: threat of new entrants, bargaining power of customers, bargaining power of suppliers, and rivalry among competitors in the industry. Dell has experienced these forces in the computing industry and these have provided threats and opportunities for the company. Threat of new entrants Entry costs The cost of establishing a computer company is very high and many investors have feared incurring the huge costs of penetrating the market. In addition, there are high costs involved in promoting new products in the global markets to enhance acceptance. The market has been unfavorable to new entrants because the costs of entering the market have been very high and this makes the existing companies to continue dominating the market (Ignatiuk, 2009). Speed of adjustment There is great need for companies to adopt better technologies in order to adjust from one products or system to another in the computer industry. This has made it impossibl e for new companies to enter the market because they lack the technologies required to adjust from one product to another (Ignatiuk, 2009). Sunk costs Starting up a computer industry requires large capitals. In addition, the investors should have adequate capital to sustain the business before profits are made. Many companies have found it challenging to sustain them in the market because there are high costs incurred before they start making profits (Gilad, 2011). Economies of scale The computing industry requires manufacturing products at large scale in order to make profits. This has restricted investors from penetrating the market because it is not possible to enter the market when a company manufactures small quantities of products. Companies without enough capitals to produce in large quantities cannot sustain themselves in the market in the long term (Kotler Lee, 2005).Advertising Looking for research paper on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Network effects The customers for Dell products are sparsely distributed and there is no single market with excess concentration of customers to an extent that they can influence the marketing polices of the company. The customers in the market have little or no control over the prices and quantity of products offered in the market (Lucas Kirillova, 2011). Reputations Firms in the computer industry are working on promoting their brands so that they can maintain a high level of reputation. Consumer loyalty is earned when the products of a company have a good reputation. As such, Dell has applied various methods, such as online retail marketing, advertising, and other strategies to promote its products (Lawton Michaels, 2001). Switching costs There are high switching costs for the consumers in the computer industry. Switching costs refers to the extra costs that consumers must incur to shift from purchasing a certain product to another. F or a customer to change from using Dell products to other products higher costs will be incurred and this makes customers loyal to specific companies (Fields, 2004). Government restraints The government has encouraged a competitive environment in the computer industry to ensure that companies offer the best products at the best prices possible. Power of input suppliers Supplier concentration There are many suppliers in the computer industry and there is no single supplier with complete dominance on the supply of materials and equipments. Many companies have entered the market and are offering competitive prices for their supplies. Therefore, the suppliers have no power to control the pricing of supplies in the market (Gilad, 2011). Price/productivity of alternative input There has been a stiff competition among suppliers in the computing industry and this has made prices to be as low as possible. Many suppliers compete in terms of lowering prices to attract more companies. Dell has enjoyed favorable prices for its supplies and this makes most of its products to be sold at fair prices (Gilad, 2011). Relationship-specific investments Dell has invested in a wide variety of businesses which are related. The company manufactures computer hardware, software, computer peripherals and other related products. As such, the company has been able to influence the suppliers in the market because it makes bulk purchases. As such, the company has been able to bargain successfully for cheaper and high quality supplies because of the control it has in the market (Kotler Lee, 2005).Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on Porter forces model on Dell Company specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Supplier switching costs Suppliers find it difficult to switch from one company to another. This has been contributed by the high costs of promoting, entering new markets among other associated costs (Lawton Michaels, 2001). Government restraints There are few restraints on the supply of computer devices. Many governments encourage investment in technologies especially in the computer industry to ensure new products are developed. This has caused the development of competitive products in the market. Thus, input suppliers are free to manufacture and sell their products locally and globally (Kotler Lee, 2005). Rivalry among competitors The computer industry has experience a very high level of rivalry among the existing firms. Product differentiation is a major aspect in the industry. Companies in the industry have developed variety of products which are differentiated as a way of promoting their market position in the global markets. There is free flow of information in the industry and there is no specific company with the monopoly to manufacture specific products. This increases the level of competition ion the market (Lawton Michaels, 2001). Switching costs for consumers are low and this make s them change easily from purchasing from one company to another. More firms are entering the market and the level of concentration is increasing. This has increased the level of competition in the market. To position their products effectively in the market, firms in the industry are focusing on improving the quality of products, reducing prices and manufacturing in large quantities to enjoy economies of scale (Lawton Michaels, 2001). Conclusion Dell has a good market position in the computer industry and the management should focus on continuing with the strategies adopted. Threat of new entrants into the market is low and the company should not fear the entrance of new companies in both domestic and global markets. Suppliers to the company have low influence on the strategies adopted by the company. It is important for the management to focus on offering competitive prices while ensuring that the quality of products is high. This can only be achieved by regulating the activities of the suppliers. Bibliography Fields, G. (2004). Territories of Profit: Communications, Capitalist Development, and the Innovative Enterprises of G.F. Swift and Dell Computer. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Retrieved from Questia database: https://www.questia.com/read/108982845/territories-of-profit-communications-capitalistAdvertising Looking for research paper on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Gilad, B. (2011). Strategy without intelligence, intelligence without strategy. Business Strategy Series. 12 (1). pp. 4-11. Ignatiuk, A. (2009). Analysis of Dell’s Business Strategy. Germany. GRIN Verlag. Kotler, P. and Lee, N. (2005). Corporate social responsibility: doing the most good for your company and your cause. New Jersey: NJ, John Wiley and Sons. Lucas, M. T. and Kirillova, O. M. (2011). Reconciling the resource-based and competitive positioning perspectives on manufacturing flexibility. Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management. 22 (2). pp. 189-203. Lawton, T. C., Michaels, K. P. (2001). Advancing to the Virtual Value Chain: Learning from the Dell Model. Irish Journal of Management, 22(1), 91+. Retrieved from Questia database: https://www.questia.com/read/1P3-88097056/advancing-to-the-virtual-value-chain-learning-from This research paper on Porter forces model on Dell Company was written and submitted by user Ernest Cameron to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Nelson Mondela Essays - South Africa, Xhosa People, Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mondela Essays - South Africa, Xhosa People, Nelson Mandela Nelson Mondela Mandela of South Africa Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa in 1994. He is the country's first black president. He was elected by the country's National Assembly. The Assembly had been chosen in South Africa's first elections in which the country's blacks were allowed to vote. Blacks won a majority of the Assembly seats, and the Assembly selected Mandela as president. These developments marked the beginning of a new era in South Africa. They resulted in blacks gaining control of the government after a long period of domination by the white minority. Since 1991, Mandela had served as president of the African National Congress (ANC), a largely black group that opposed the South African government's policy of rigid racial segregation called apartheid(Connolly 2000, 45). He had long been a leader of protests against apartheid and was imprisoned in 1962 on charges of conspiring to overthrow the white-minority government. While in prison, he became a symbol of the struggle for racial justice. After being freed in 1990, he led negotiations with white leaders that eventually brought an end to apartheid and established a nonracial system of government(Katz 1995, 103). Mandela and then-President F. W. de Klerk of South Africa won the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. They were honored for their work to end apartheid and to enable the country's nonwhites to fully participate in government(Dell 1995, 180). Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Umtata, in the Transkei territory of South Africa. His father was a chief of the Xhosa-speaking Tembu tribe. Mandela gave up his right to succeed his father and instead prepared for a legal career. He attended the University College of Fort Hare, studied law by correspondence at Witwatersrand University, and received a law degree from the University of South Africa in 1942. That year, in Soweto, he and a friend opened the first black law partnership in South Africa(Conolly 2000, 99). Mandela joined the ANC in 1944 and helped form the organization's Youth League. In 1948, the South African government established its policy of apartheid. The ANC called for equality for all races and began leading open resistance to the government. In 1956, the government charged Mandela with treason and other serious crimes, but he was found not guilty in 1961. The government had outlawed the ANC in 1960, but Mandela renewed the protests and went into hiding. One night in 1963 Nelson and Winnie were awakened by the South African police.(Derenberg 1991, 104). The police took Nelson away to jail. . He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Nelson was sent to Robben Island. That was the state's most guarded prison, ships couldn't come near it. It was considered a prison that no one could escape from. In 1983 and 1984 headlines started saying things like FREE MANDELA and LET MANDELA GO. People wanted to free Nelson so much that the whole world started to notice. Soon the United States and Great Britain were naming streets and parks after him. Human rights groups and universities were giving him honors and awards(Conolly 2000, 155). In 1984 a reporter was allowed to see Nelson for the first time. Nelson was offered his freedom in 1985 by president Botha, but Nelson refused it. Botha said that in order to go free Nelson had to agree to a lot of conditions: he had to live in the transkei and formally reject violence, among others. Nelson refused(Steoff 1990 168). In 1989 F.W. de Klerk became the president of South Africa instead of Botha. In 1990 de Klerk made some amazing statements: The ANC and sixty other organizations would be allowed to operate legally. Restrictions on three hundred and seventy-four people would be lifted. There would be a temporary halt to executions. The national state of emergency would soon be lifted. The government was committed to implementing a new constitution with no domination. And I am now in a position to announce that Mr. Nelson Mandela will be released at Victor Verster Prison. . . . We would like Mr. Mandela's release to take place in a dignified and orderly manner(Derenberg 1991, 190). On Sunday the 11th of February 1990 at 4:15 Nelson Mandela was finally free. He had been in jail for 27 years. After leaving prison, Mandela

Augsburg College's physician assistant studies program is one of many Essay

Augsburg College's physician assistant studies program is one of many program nationally. What are some of the reasons you are applying to this program - Essay Example Among all physician assistant programs offered in Minnesota, I chose Augsburg College’s physician assistant program. I got to learn about this program while working as a volunteer at Abbott Northwestern Hospital as I interacted with various students in the physician assistant program during their clinical rotation. I undoubtedly consider Augsburg College’s physician assistant program the best among the three physician’s assistant programs offered by colleges in Minnesota. Augsburg College was the first to offer physician assistant program in Minnesota, which has a strong bearing on its reputation. The program as offered by Augsburg is well established and most members of the faculty practice in the medical setting. They are also committed to serving the community which is one of the main factors that has motivated my choice of the physician assistant program. The college’s faculties are up-to-date in that they all offer new skills and are committed to lifelong learning. The PANCE test score has proven the success of the Augsburg physician assistant program as it hit 93% nationwide for the first time taker. In addition to its great teaching strategy, Augsburg’s physician program is committed to serve already underserved community of urban and rural areas. Clinical rotations are done in both rural and urban areas which satisfy my desire to work in the rural setting. In conclusion, physician assistants play a very important role in health care teams. The principles that guide my choice of best school such as commitment to undeserved population, skillful teaching strategies, and lifelong learning are the same principles that guide the physician assistant program in Augsburg College (Keizer 3). This is an assurance that this program will give me an opportunity to learn, grow intellectually through lifelong learning and dedicate my work to under-served communities. Augsburg

Literature review of five journal articles about The Shortage of Research Paper

Literature review of five journal articles about The Shortage of Qualified Workers - Research Paper Example Increased Demand for Labor: According to Barnow, Trutko and Schede (2010), if demand for labor increases continuously and faster than the supply of labor, there occurs a is equilibrium where some work will not be done. They argue that a special phenomena may occur which would require special skills which making the specialist take time and hence during that period there will be a labor shortage. For instance, after the 2nd World War, a situation occurred where engineers were needed to deal with effect of great shock of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During that period, the demand for engineers was high than the supply. Rasool and Botha (2010) argued that it is only in time of abruptly that demand of labor supply and demand can cause a labor shortage else people will be there since supply of quality laborers is increasing with population growth. Decreased supply of labor: Hajela (2012) indicates that when bodies entitled to train professionals cannot do so due to lack of the minimum qualification to join the course, there will be a low rate of producing graduates and this will lead to lack of personnel to work on specific positions. If I quote â€Å"Shortage of skills revealed may suggest that the educators do not impart them during training. An implication that would mean that the employees’ lack competences, since they do not have the requisite skills†. This leads to graduates who cannot perform and hence labor shortage. Research by Rasool & Botha, (2011) showed that the literacy rate was 36% and numeracy rate was 35% amongst Grade 3 children. Only 10% of the children scored above 70%. This is a clear show that competent people who get out of school with needed skills are very few. Emigration: According to Rasool & Botha, (2011), emigration is another worrying factor in South Africa for the role it is playing in skills crisis. South Africa is

Research intressed Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Intressed - Research Proposal Example He uses his emotional space to connect brands and then adheres to it, whether by being loyal or by never using that brand. (Blythe, 2008) Moreover, luxury brands have a very different significance, especially in such times of recession, and thus researching over the consumer behavior for luxury brands during such troublesome times would surely give interesting results, and findings which these companies can capitalize on. The research project would include thorough primary as well as secondary research. It has to be found out whether the Lexus brand name is distinct from the brand name of its maker, or if it is still being endorsed by its parent company. The more the brand starts moving towards that end of the continuum where the "branded house" stands, the more the brand becomes successful and breaks through from the parent company, and makes an identity of their own. Moreover, the elite class, which is more likely to be using the luxury brands, is going to be interviewed for their preferences, as well as for rating various luxury automobile brands on the Brand Value Pyramid (BVP), which has the features and attributes in the bottom most tier, then the middle layer has the benefits whereas the top most layer focuses on the beliefs and values. If a customer starts rating a brand as being part of the beliefs and value systems of a target market, then that brand has reached the altitude of brand success, and can be considered a top of the mind brand. This model has to be applied on Lexus, by asking for opinions of the target market. (Simmons, 2004) The recession is taking its toll on almost all big brand names. But some brands are actually emerging as the survivors and as better than their rivals. It has to be researched whether Toyota and Lexus, in particular, is one of them. The preparations for this research will be the design of a questionnaire which will help in the survey of the

Concepts and Applications of Deep Learning

Concepts and Applications of Deep Learning Abstract: Since 2006, Deep Learning, also known as Hierarchal Leaning has been evolved as a new field of Machine Learning Research. The deep learning model deals with problems on which shallow architectures (e.g. Regression) are affected by the curse of dimensionality. As part of a two-stage learning scheme involving multiple layers of nonlinear processing a set of statistically robust features is automatically extracted from the data. The present tutorial introducing the deep learning special session details the state-of-the-art models and summarizes the current understanding of this learning approach which is a reference for many difficult classification tasks. Deep Learning is a new area of Machine Learning research, which has been introduced with the objective of moving Machine Learning closer to one of its original goals: Artificial Intelligence. Deep Learning is about learning multiple levels of representation and abstraction that help to make sense of data such as images, sound, and tex t. Introduction: Just consider we have to identify someone’s handwriting. The people have different ways of writing, for example, the numbers-Whether they write a ‘7’ or a ‘9’. We know that if there is a close loop on the top of the vertical line then we named it as ‘9’ and if it contains a horizontal line instead of loop then we think it is ‘7’. The thing we used for exact recognition of digit is a smart display of setting smaller features together to make the whole detecting distinguished edges to make lines, observing a horizontal vs. vertical line, seeing the positioning of the vertical section under the horizontal section, detecting a loop in the horizontal section, etc. The idea of the deep learning is the same: find out multiple levels of features that work jointly to define increasingly more abstract aspects of the data. So, Deep Learning is defined as follows: â€Å"A sub-field of machine learning that is based on learning several levels of representations, corresponding to a hierarchy of features or factors or concepts, where higher-level concepts are defined from lower-level ones, and the same lower-level concepts can help to define many higher-level concepts. Deep learning is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on learning representations. An observation (e.g., an image) can be represented in many ways (e.g., a vector of pixels), but some representations make it easier to learn tasks of interest (e.g., is this the image of a human face?) from examples, and research in this area attempts to define what makes better representations and how to learn them.† see Wikipedia on â€Å"Deep Learning† as of this writing in February 2013; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning. The performance of recent machine learning algorithms relies greatly on the particular features of the input data. As for example marking emails as spam or not spam, can be performed by breaking down the input document intowords. Selecting the exact feature representation of input data, or feature engineering, is a technique that people can recall previous knowledge of an area to enhance an algorithms computational performance and accuracy. Moving towards general artificial intelligence, algorithms need to be less dependent on this feature engineering and better learn to classify the descriptive factors of input data on their own. Deep learning approaches is useful among many domains: it has had great commercial success powering most of Google and Microsofts current speech recognition, digital image processing, natural language processing, object recognition, etc. Facebook is also planning on using deep learning approaches to understand its users. How to build a deep representation of input data? The main idea is to learn a hierarchy of features one level at a time where the input to one computational level is the output of the previous level for an arbitrary number of levels. Otherwise, shallow representations (most current algorithms like regression) go directly from input data to output classification. Inspirations for Deep Architectures The main inspirations for studying learning algorithms for deep architectures are the following: The brain has a deep architecture The visual cortex is considered and demonstrates an order of regions all of them have a representation of the input, and signals move from one to the next. In case there are also miss connections and at some level parallel paths, so the picture is more complicated). Each level of this feature hierarchy represents the input at a different level of concept, with more abstract features further up in the hierarchy, defined in terms of the lower-level ones. Note that representations in the brain are in between dense distributed and purely local: they arelight: about 1% of neurons are active concurrently in the brain. Given the vast number of neurons, this is still a very efficient (exponentially efficient) representation. Cognitive processes seem deep Humans organize their ideas and concepts hierarchically. Humans first learn simpler concepts and then compose them to represent more abstract ones. Engineers break-up solutions into multiple levels of abstraction and processing. Introspection of linguistically expressible concepts also suggests alightrepresentation: only a small fraction of all possible words/concepts are applicable to a particular input (say a visual scene). One good analogue for deep representations is neurons in the brain (a motivation for ANN) the output of a group of neurons is given as the input to more neurons to form a hierarchical layer structure. Each layerNis composed ofh computational nodes that connect to each computational node in layerN+1. See the image below for an example: Related Work: Historically, the concept of deep learning was originated from artificial neural network research. (Hence, one may occasionally hear the discussion of â€Å"new-generation neural networks†.) Feed-forward neural networks or MLPs with many hidden layers, which are often referred to as deep neural networks (DNNs), are good examples of the models with a deep architecture. Back-propagation (BP), popularized in 1980’s, has been a well-known algorithm for learning the parameters of these networks. Unfortunately back-propagation alone did not work well in practice then for learning networks with more than a small number of hidden layers (see a review and analysis in (Bengio, 2009; Glorot and Bengio, 2010). The pervasive presence of local optima in the non-convex objective function of the deep networks is the main source of difficulties in the learning. Back-propagation is based on local gradient descent, and starts usually at some random initial points. It often gets trapped in poor local optima when the batch-mode BP algorithm is used, and the severity increases significantly as the depth of the networks increases. This difficulty is partially responsible for steering away most of the machine learning and signal processing research from neural networks to shallow models that have convex loss functions (e.g., SVMs, CRFs, and MaxEnt models), for which global optimum can be efficiently obtained at the cost of less modeling power. The applicative domains for deep learning: In natural language processing, a very interesting approach gives a proof that deep architectures can perform multi-task learning, giving state-of-the-art results on difficult tasks like semantic role labeling. Deep architectures can also be applied to regression with Gaussian processes [37] and time series prediction. Another interesting application area is highly nonlinear data compression. To reduce the dimensionality of an input instance, it is sufficient for a deep architecture that the number of units in its last layer is smaller than its input dimensionality. Moreover, adding layers to a neural network can lead to learning more abstract features, from which input instances can be coded with high accuracy in a more compact form. Reducing the dimensionality of data has been presented as one of the first application of deep learning. This approach is very efficient to perform semantic hashing on text documents, where the codes generated by the deepest layer are used to build a hash table from a set of documents. A similar approach for a large scale image database is presented in this special session. Conclusion: Deep learning is about creating an abstract hierarchical representation of the input data to create useful features for traditional machine learning algorithms. Each layer in the hierarchy learns a more abstract and complex feature of the data, such as edges to eyes to faces. This representation gets its power of abstraction by stacking nonlinear functions, where the output of one layer becomes the input to the next. The two main schools of thought for analyzing deep architectures areprobabilisticvs.direct encoding. The probabilistic interpretation means that each layer defines a distribution of hidden units given the observed input,P(h|x). The direct encoding interpretation learns two separate functions theencoderanddecoder- to transform the observed input to the feature space and then back to the observed space. These architectures have had great commercial success so far, powering many natural language processing and image recognition tasks at companies like Google and Microsoft.

Joan Didions Essay Los Angeles Notebook -- Didion Los Angeles Noteboo

Joan Didion's Essay "Los Angeles Notebook"   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Santa Ana winds cause people to act more violently or unruly and makes others irritable and unhappy to a great extent. Joan Didion explains to the reader about how the Santa Ana affects human behavior in her essay â€Å"Los Angeles Notebook.† Through the use of imagery, diction, and selection of detail Didion expresses her view of the Santa Ana winds.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Didion paints uneasy and somber images when describing the Santa Ana winds. â€Å"There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air†¦ some unnatural stillness, some tension,† starts the essay off with the image of Los Angeles people in a sense of stillness or tense. She further adds, â€Å"Blowing up sandstorms out along Route 66†¦ we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night,† propagating the uneasy and stark image of Los Angeles. â€Å"The baby frets. The maid sulks,† she adds, giving a depressing view into the effects of the Santa Ana winds on people. Didion, in an attempt to show the craziness associated with the Santa Ana winds, points out the Indians who throw themselves into the sea when bad winds came. At any rate, Didion attempts to show the negative effects of the Santa Ana winds through images of stillness, uneasiness, and sobriety.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In her tone, Didion remains clear, consistent, and vivid. Her choice of words remains simple as if to not alienate the readers of her essay. Her tone for the first half of the opening, primarily the first and second ...

Fifa World Cup

The FIFA World Cup Syafadzil : A very good morning to our English class teacher, Mr. Lee and to all my friends. Today, me and my friends, Amir and Firdaus are going to engage in a forum about the World Cup. Syafadzil : To explain it briefly, the World Cup is the world’s biggest sports event. It was held every 4 years since the first World Cup in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946 when it was not held because of World War 2. The tournament will be held in South Africa which involves 32 teams, each got to be in the tournament by a series of qualification phase, which took place over the three years after the recent World Cup. The host nation has automatic qualifiqation. The World Cup is the most watched sporting event, with an estimated 715 million people watching the 2006 tournament, which was held in Germany. To go with the largest sports event, there are some notable records that had been set along the month-long exhibition since it was held. Brazil holds the record for lifting the coveted trophy the most, which stands at 5. Brazil also boast the most goals in the tournament, scoring a whopping 201 goals. Moreover, it is the only country that had participated in every World Cup. individually,the most goals scored is held by Ronaldo, who plays for Brazil, with 15 goals to his name. Diego Maradona also set a record for appearing as captain 16 times for the Argentina nation. Amir : thank you for the interesting informations, Syafadzil. Shall we move on with the questions then? Syafadzil : Yes. First off, which team would you bet on to lift the crowned World Cup this year? and why do you think that? Firdaus, any thoughts? Firdaus : A very good question, Syafadzil. I think Spain would win it this year. Here are some of the reasons. Undoubtedly, they are the team at the moment. They boast one of the best records along their way to South Africa. They are currently the number 1 ranked team in the world, which comes to no surprise to many people. Footballers like Xavi, David Villa, Fernando Torres, Cesc Fabregas, Xabi Alonso all but to name a few, all playing their trades for their national team. Just say their names, and it will bring a cold shiver down to the spine of their opponents. Spain is a side full of footballing talents, with their players showing great form at the moment with their respective clubs. This team has resilience and team spirit. That’s just some of the reasons why I choose Spain. But Spain is not going to have a easy run-in to the trophy. They are going to face some stern test along the way, notably Brazil who wants to lift the trophy for the sixth time. Brazil is the 2nd ranked team in the world. Their attacking talents such as Robinho, Pato, Luis Fabiano and also not to forget their midfield engine, generated by the 2007 Ballon D’or winner, Kaka. They are not going to be easy to beat, especially with some great run of form recently found by the players. Syafadzil : Looks like Spain is going to be the winner, yes? What do you reckon, Amir? Amir : Not if I have something to say about that. The team to watch by my opinion had got to be Holland. Don’t take your eyes on this team, which ranked 3rd in the world. Their star player is arguably Robin van Persie, who plays for Arsenal but his progress had been held back due to the recent serious injury to his ligament. But he will be fit to play in the World Cup. Everybody knows that no team is made up of only one player. Other key players are Arjen Robben, who recently scored a spectacular volley that sent Manchester United out of the Champions League, Wesley Sneijder, who scored the winner at Russia that sent Inter Milan to the semi-finals of the Champions League, and not to mention the footballing masterclass of Dirk Kuyt, Mark van Bommel and many other talented footballers. This team is rich in attack, and will surely run riot in the opponets defence in this upcoming World Cup. like Spain, they also thrive on an enviable record along their way to South Africa. They were the first European team to secure a place in the finals, with a perfect 10 wins out of ten in the group stages. Syafadzil : thank you for sharing your thoughts Amir. I guess we’ll just have to wait to see who will be the champions then. Moving on, who is going to outshine any other players in this tournament? Firdaus, give your take on this one. Firdaus : It’s hard to choose, but I think I will go with Messi. The plucky Argentine forward had got to be the best striker in the world. He spear-headed Barcelona to an unprecedented 6 trophies last season, and were the top scorer in the Champions League. His work rate is high, his brilliance of controlling the ball is just mesmerizing and what else can I say? He had been praised by some of the world’s best footballing legends, Diego Maradonna being one of them. And he had been dubbed as one of the best if not, the best in the business. Amir : It’s true that Messi is just spectacular when wearing the Barcelona shirt. But when he donned on the national jersey, he just could not find the form that he showed with Barcelona. Don’t get me wrong, he still scored some important goals that helped the Argentina team to qualify for the World Cup, but for a footballer by his standards, he could have done better, much better. Argentina only qualified by the skin of their teeth. They only secured their place with virtually the last game of the group stages and occupied the last automatic qualifications spot. And I just could not see that Messi will shine in the World Cup by the way things are going. Syafadzil : Amir certainly gave us something to think about. But, who do you have in mind, Amir? Amir : I’m definitely going with Fernando Torres. He’s right up there with Messi, and can perform brilliantly both in club and international level. Even though he was pampered with injuries this season, he still can come back and immediately give a marvelous performance. By my opinion, he is better than Messi, but because of his injuries, he fell short every time. His skills are amazing, his reading of the ball is just spectacular, and he can pop out from anywhere and score. He truly is one of the best in this era. Syafadzil : Thanks for that, both of you. Let’s wrap up this forum then. 32 teams, with everything to play for, vying for the most coveted trophy in sports history. All will be unveiled in this upcoming summer. Do not miss it for the world.

Presidential Election 2004 essays

Presidential Election 2004 essays There are many issues that will play an important role in the upcoming Presidential election. The state of the economy, the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign nations, the creation of new jobs here in the United States, and the threat of terrorism are all important concerns to the American people. However, many say that the issue that will play the greatest role in deciding the American Presidential election of 2004 is the continuing conflict in Iraq. In the news each day there are stories of the conflict in Iraq. Although the war was declared over a year ago, more American soldiers have been killed after Bush declared the war over, then during the active combat phase. President Bush alluded to military intelligence that pointed to weapons of mass destruction being manufactured and stock- piled in Iraq. The President tried to convince the American public that invading Iraq would help keep America safe from an immediate threat from Saddam Hussein as well as aid the U.S. and the world in the war against terrorism. Right from the beginning there was opposition to the war by many of Americas allies. France, Germany, and Russia made it clear from the beginning that they would not participate in this endeavor. Although Tony Blair, Prime Minister of England, allied his country with the U.S., almost three quarters of the people of Britain did not support military action against Iraq. Donald Rumsfield, Secretary of Defense, informed the allies not aligned with the United States, that we had little interest in their opinions and their willingness to assist in this war. He made it clear that the United States would go into Iraq alone if necessary, with the implication that the allies would be dragged along. The assumption by the U.S. political regime in power was that these nations would be forced to join in because of their historical deference to the United States. Initially, the Iraqi people saw the U...

вHector and Andromache

After examining the encounter between Hector and Andromache, I gained a better understanding of the relations between men and women in Homeric Greece. On the surface, it seems as though there is nothing unusual about their marriage or the way they interact under the given circumstances. However, after scrutinizing the scene several more times, I was able to infer even more about their relationship. It is clear that Hector and Andromache care very much for each other. From Andromache's perspective, her response to the situation seems natural and justifiable. Even by today's standards, no wife wants to see her husband go off to war. For that reason, it shows that she loves Hector, and even expresses that she needs him, by begging him not to join the front lines in battle. She explains how he is "everything" to her, and that if he were to die, that she and their child would be left with nothing. If Andromache's actions epitomize the role of women in Homeric Greece, then it can be argued that women very much respected and cared for their husbands and loved ones, and felt pain when they lost them. Hector fulfills the male role in this scene by replacing major priorities such as family and love with honor and glory. As Andromache states, Hector is a man possessed by courage, which will only kill him in the end. While he obviously cares for his wife and son, and worries about what will happen to them once he dies, he is still the "protector" above all else. Ironically, fighting and dying with his fellow Trojans seems more important to him than actually staying back with his family to protect them. His courage and fate on the battlefield take precedence over his duty as husband and father at home. This was probably a major characteristic of most men in that society. The scene described in The Iliad is actually very common in present day society. We see this type of situation illuminated every day in real life and in t...

Psychological and cultural insights Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Psychological and cultural insights - Essay Example The binary nature of the ethnic perception has created two distinct cultural segments â€Å"the east and the west†. The segments are not only geographically separated by political borders but are also diversified in terms of psychographic nature of the residing people ((Luo, 2008). On a geographical perspective, the western countries include the nations like the UK, USA, France, Germany, etc and on contrary the eastern countries encompasses Mainland China, India, UAE, Thailand, etc. Although the geographic distinction is quite apparent, however, that is not the only rationale for diversity of perception. According to The Hofstede Centre (2015), the cultural practices vary largely across national borders. The people bear different psychological profile and engage in different social practices, which is a clear reflection of psychographic diversity.Eng and Bogaert, (2010) mentioned that the psychographic profile of an individual largely influences his perception of a particular stimulus. To put it simply, two individuals belonging from different cultural background is most likely to react differently to a same stimulus. This theory stands corrected in the Watson and Wright’s (2000) study of ethnocentric consumer behaviour. A consumer’s perception of a particular brand is largely influenced by his ethnicity. His country of origin and his cultural background plays a major role in deciding the perceived value of a brand. This is mostly because of the fact that an individual designs his perception based on his surroundings.

Scaling the Height of Patriarchy. Tambu in the Novel Nervous Research Paper

Scaling the Height of Patriarchy. Tambu in the Novel Nervous Conditions Faat Kine in Kine and Marcia in Dancehall Queen - Research Paper Example Women of Africa and the African diaspora have been through many challenges that include biased cultural practices, gender discrimination, sexism, racism, economic dependency, among others. Their problems always seem to stem from the fact that they are women. This research aims at exploring the condition of Women of Africa and the Africa diaspora and address some of the challenges that these women face and how they managed to pull through. The research focuses on three women: Tambu from Zimbabwe in the Novel Nervous Conditions (1988), Faat Kine from Senegal in the film Kine (1999) and Marcia in the film Dancehall Queen (1997). The research traces their lives and challenges that they have gone through as women and how their determination enabled them to overcome these challenges in a male dominated society. I will use literary and historical texts, articles, journals, critical essays, books/book chapters, newspapers, interviews, films, and news reports to show that although women have been oppressed based on their gender, some of them did not relent. Through the exploration of the struggles and achievements of these women, my research will address the growing concern about the role of women in social, political and economic spheres and greatly contribute to the campaign of empowering women.