Five Force Model For Woodland

Nike Brief HistoryNike has one mission statement: To carry out the legacy of innovative thinking left by the founding members by developing products that enable athletes of all abilities to maximize their potential while beating competition and creating value for shareholders. Nikes headquarters are located in Beaverton, Oregon in Portland and the company operates in more than 160 countries all over the world with more than 30,000 employees across all six continents (Nike 2011). Nike TodayNike today is the largest manufacturer of athletic footwear, clothing and equipment globally by sales with 2011 revenues of more than US $23billion ahead of closest rivals Adidas, Puma, K-Swiss and Under Armour which it competes with in the sportswear market. Nike has been steadily increasing its market share of the sportswear market from an initial 3.7% in 2006 to 4.6% in 2011, even though this declined in 2009. Many analysts expect this market share to reach about 6.3% by 2017. The company also ex pects to make big gains from the London 2012 Olympics for its footwear division (MSN money 2012) Figure 1: Nike Apparel Market ShareFigure 2: Nike Footwear Market ShareHowever even though Nike is expected to attain big gains from the London 2012 Olympics, its competitors are not sitting still and letting Nike take any such gains. Adidas, which is one of main rivals of Nike, has invested more than  £100million in the Olympics to not only boost its profile, but also close the market share gap with Nike. Adidas has already posted better sales and profit results in 2012 compared to Nike. In fact, Adidas, also the second largest apparel manufacturer in the world after Nike, has been outperforming Nike since 2006 (Torry 2012). Below, we will do an industry analysis using Porters 5 Forces of Competition Framework to help us understand the various variables influencing competition and profitability for Nike within the sectors in which it is competing.Porter’s Five Forces of Competi tion Framework According to Grant (2005), there are many features of an industry in which a company competes that determines the level of competition it will face and the profits it will get. The most famous classification was done by Michael Porter, known as Porters Five Forces framework which can help a company determine its potential profits by looking at five sources of competitive pressure. The five sources of competition are 1) competition from entrants 2) competition from substitutes 3) competition from established rivals 4) bargaining power of suppliers and 5) bargaining power of buyers. Threat of entry/Barriers to entryThe threat of entry is highest in the apparel market due to the relatively lower costs of manufacturing apparel compared to the footwear market where the biggest threat posed is basically from current rivals already established in the market e.g Adidas and Puma, who although behind in market share, are currently implementing strategies that are helping them c lose the gap on Nike. Adidas has especially been gaining ground on Nike boosted by its strong presence in sponsoring the European soccer tournament where it sponsored eventual winners Spain (Torry 2012). According to Marketing Weekly News (2012), Adidas is also planning on moving into the more fashion-aligned market of teenagers which could see it improve global market share.NEO, a fast fashion adidas sub-brand aimed at teenagers is Adidas’ attempts to enter new apparel segments that will even pit it against the likes of H&M and Zara in an effort to gain market share and squeeze more profits out of mature industries. Another threat of entry is posed by Under Armour Inc. an established company in the athletic sportswear in the USA which in 2009 decided to enter the U.S athletic footwear market creating competition in a market which had been dominated by a few players like Nike and Adidas.Recently the US sports brand has started entering markets which have been traditionally fo ught over by Nike and Adidas. For example, Under Armour is using its sponsorship of Tottenham Hotspur in an â€Å"aggressive† digital marketing drive which it views as part of a wider strategy to steal market share from Nike and Adidas in the apparel category in Europe. This is the firms first foray into professional football, which have been areas where Nike and Adidas traditionally dominated and performed well in but are now  having to brace for new competition from Under Armour (Sebastian 2012).Threat of substitutesSubstitutes in the footwear category can include any other types of shoes that consumers can choose to serve similar purposes. Substitutes here therefore include the likes of sandals, which can act as substitutes, even though they may not fulfill exact same purpose. It is difficult to think of other substitutes that can fulfill the same purpose as athletic shoes from the footwear industry since this an industry that has something very specific to offer to a ta rgeted market. This means that it is not meant to appeal to the general population and everybody.Thus consumers who are looking for shoes to run in will not look for boots as substitutes simply because boots are cheaper substitutes. This is due to the specialization of running shoes that makes substitutes hard to come by. But while athletic footwear has little substitutes, sportswear apparel can have substitutes that include normal everyday clothing which can be used for athletic purposes if necessary. For example, some consumers may choose to wear tight fitting t shirts to exercise in instead of using Nikes sportswear, making normal clothing from high street brands substitutes. Rivalry between firms (Industry structure)Adidas: Although Adidas is currently not able to outcompete Nike in terms of sales and market share, it has been outperforming Nike and gaining market share since 2006 while Nike has been losing market share since 1998 when it still had more than 47 percent of the ma rket, which has been cut back to 32 percent (MSN money 2011). Adidas is also still the second biggest competitor to Nike competing for market share and has plans in the pipeline that it is trying to implement in order to grow.One of them is heavy sponsorship of football tournaments all over the globe since football has the highest fan support with more than 2billion people who follow it, with Basketball behind it with 1.2 billion followers. One such plan has been paying off when Spain, the team it sponsored at the 2012 Euro championships, won the tournament in style (Torry 2012). Puma: Puma is another rival to Nike that has been having a bad time with financial figures not going according to expectation. Although the firm has been sponsoring some very famous names (it sponsored  the Italian football team who reached the final of Euro 2012), while Usain Bolt wore the firm’s kit when he competed in the 100m at the London 2012 Olympic Games, Puma has served up a profit warning . It said that net earnings for the first quarter of 2012 were expected to be 13 percent below the 115m Euros reported during the same period last year.Puma is also expect to take a EURO 100m restructuring charge showing that the firm is doing not as well as expected so Nike has little worry from this rival. According to the Financial Times (2012), the main problem with Puma does not lie on the sporting field but in the stands. Puma's recovery over the past decade was driven mainly by its popularity with fashion-conscious youngsters. So it is not helping Puma that many youth are unemployed in the Eurozone. Puma generates more than 45 per cent of sales from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, so the fall in spending power has been hurting it badly, as does rising competition in the sports lifestyle market. The company is also hurt by its dependence on shoes, which account for about half of sales. Under Armour: As stated previously, Under Armour has been the one company that has gaine d the most from any slip ups from both Nike, Adidas and Puma as it has been going strong for the last few years.Power of SuppliersThe footwear market is one of those industry categories where the demand is always there. Retailers have to buy whatever the big brands like Nike make whether they like it or not therefore this also means that suppliers like Nike and Adidas have a lot of power compared to other industries. One of the biggest factors that contribute to this is the fact shoes such as Nikes are made very cheaply but sold at very expensive prices making them very desirable for retailers, which gives suppliers like Nike power. It is one of reasons why Nike has always been famous for sweatshop prices (Forbes 2012)Power of BuyersHighly Competitive market due to market saturation and slowdown in the sales industry worldwide, buyers more intellectual, have specific wants and needs and know where to get discounts and deals. As seen with the problems in the Eurozone experiencing hig h rates of unemployment as seen with the problems with Puma, many consumers have more discretion to choose what to buy and  what not to buy as the world economies suffer.ConclusionNow that we have looked at Nike and the competitive pressures it faces in the industry as it tries to make profits and stay competitive, it is upto the company to find ways around some of these pressures, fully analysing what is driving the industry in general. Michael Porter did offer some suggestions to companies trying to sustain a competitive advantage with three strategies which were focus, cost leadership or differentiation (Grant 2005). So depending on which strategy Nike chooses, it could choose to innovate better shoes by investing in R&D, focus on marketing or simply reduce prices to become the lost cost leader in its industry like Walmart.

Factors Affecting Lexical Access Time Essay

Words are known as the building blocks of language, as they help us to understand both written and spoken language. Word recognition and lexical access are known to be bottom up processes, meaning that we can identify what something is by learning its parameters and building our ideas upwards. Lexical accessing is the act of accessing our mental lexicon and obtaining all information about a word, such as its meaning, sound and appearance (Harley, 2010). Lexical processing consists of 3 main components, identifying, naming, and understanding. Identifying a word consists of simply deciding if the letter string is or is not a word. Understanding a word is the ability to access a words meaning. Naming a word consists of accessing the sound of a word (Harley, 2010). Psycholinguists are very interested in investigating word processing, thus the lexical decision task was introduced. This task consists of timing how long a participant takes to identify whether a word is familiar or not when they are presented with a string of letters that may be a real word, an impossible non-words or a possible. Whereas real words are words of English that follow phonotactic constraints and have meaning, possible non-words obey phonotactic constraints but lack meaning, and impossible non-words violate phonotactic constraints and lack meaning. During this lexical decision process, many factors will affect how long the participant will take to identify if the letter string is a word or not. To name a few, the frequency effect states that the more common or frequently used a word is, the easier it is to recognize as a word (Harley, 2010). Age of acquisition, is an effect that states that the earlier in life that a word is acquired, that the word will be easily recognized (Harley, 2010). Lastly, word concreteness and imagery has an affect as abstract words evoke less imagery than concrete words, in turn, high imagery words have better memory recall (Howell, 2010). Method In the present experiment, the experimenter is simultaneously the participant. The participant was provided with two set lists of letter strings. Each list of letter strings consisted of 20 letter strings that were either words, non-words or arbitrary strings of letters, in which the participant was instructed to complete a lexical decision task based on these letter strings. First, the participant was instructed to read the first list of letter strings, and say aloud to themselves â€Å"yes† if they decided the letter string was a word, and â€Å"no† if they decided the letter string was not a word. The participant was instructed to time and record how long it took for them to complete the list. The first list of letter strings is the following: tlat, revery, voitle, chard, wefe, cratily, decoy, zner, raflot, oriole, voluble, boovle, mrock, awry, signet, trave, crock, cryptic, ewe, himpola. Next, the participant was instructed to perform the same task using the second set list of letter strings, also timing and recording how long it took to complete this list. The second list of words is the following: mulvow, clock, bank, tuglety, gare, relief, ruftily, history, pindle, develop, norve, busy, effort, garvola, match, sard, pleasant, coin, maisle. Results The participant completed the lexical decision task of list 1 in 28.3 seconds and completed list 2 in 23.7 seconds. The following table shows the decisions made by the participant for each word. List 1| List 2| tlat: norevery: novoitle: nochard: yeswefe: nocratily: nodecoy: yes| zner: noraflot: nooriole: yes voluble: yesboovle: nomrock: noawry: yes| signet: notrave: nocrock: no cryptic: yesewe: nohimpola: no| mulvow: noclock: yesbank: yestuglety: nogare: norelief: yesruftily: no| history: nopindle: nodevelop: yes gardot: nonorve: nobusy: yes effort: yes| garvola: nomatch: yessard: nopleasant: yescoin: yesmaisle: no| Discussion In evaluating the results of this experiment, many factors come into action that effect the participant’s lexical access. Firstly, it is key to note the differences between the two set lists of letter strings. List 1 consists of both words, possible non-words and impossible non-words, while list 2 only consists of words and possible non-words. Due to the fact that impossible non-words are easily recognizable as a string of letters that is not in the English language, list 1 automatically decreases its total decision time, as both â€Å"tlat† and â€Å"mrock† both violate phonotactic constraints of the English language. This is because it was noted that impossible non-words are rejected more quickly than possible non-words (Howell, 2012). Aside from these two impossible non-words, one can see both set lists of words contain all possible words of English, which then causes the participant to go beyond the identifying stage in lexical processing and advance to the n ext stage, understanding. In the understanding stage, the words meaning is attempted to be accessed to aid in determining whether the string of letters is or is not a word. The frequency effect comes into play in this stage, as frequent words have a much shorter reaction time in the lexical decision task because they are familiar. Therefore, words such as â€Å"decoy† and â€Å"cryptic† in list 1 and â€Å"clock†, â€Å"bank†, â€Å"relief†, â€Å"history†, â€Å"develop†, â€Å"effort†, â€Å"match†, â€Å"pleasant† and â€Å"coin† in list 2, which are frequent to the participant, are quickly decided as words. Due to the frequency effect ultimately because of the familiarity of the words, the meaning of these words does not need to be accessed. This is because high frequency words are accessed faster than low frequency words (Forster & Chambers, 1973). However, when possible non-words are at hand, the understanding stage is entered, to aid in this decision. When the participant does not immediately access a meaning for the letter string, the word deems to be given the status of â€Å"no†. Consequently, this causes a longer reaction time in determining whether a possible non-word is or is not a word. As one can see list 1 has many more possible words than list 2, which ultimately causes list 1 to take longer to complete in the decision task. The factor of age of acquisition is also seen as an effect in this experiment as when dealing with the real words, those that were acquired at a younger age such as â€Å"clock†, â€Å"coin†, and â€Å"bank† were also identified quicker than other real words such as â€Å"relief†, â€Å"pleasant† and â€Å"develop†. Along with this point, the separation between the words acquired at a younger age and those acquired later, is that the words acquired at a younger age are concrete words rather than the other words being abstract words. This is because abstract words evoke less imagery than concrete words do, and high imagery words actually have better memory recall, thus affecting the speed of lexical access (Howell, 2012). Conclusion In addressing the differences of performance between the two lists of word strings, it is clear that the participant took longer to decide if a possible word was a word or not due to the fact that it was necessary to advance to the next stage of lexical processing, understanding, to search their mental lexicon for a meaning. Highly frequent words as well as low frequent were easily recognized, as a meaning was instantly accessed, causing the participant to remain in the identification stage. While impossible words were also equally recognized and dismissed due to their obvious violation of the phonotactic constraints of English. After evaluating these factors that specifically affect the lexical access time, one can clearly see why the first word list would take the participant longer to complete due to it having more possible words than real words or impossible words. References Forster, K. & Chambers, S. (1973). Lexical access and naming time. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour 12, 627-635 Harley, T.A. (2010). Talking the talk: Language, psychology, and science. Hove, England: Psychology Press. Howell, J. (oral communication, Lecture 5: Meaning. October 16th , 2012).

Full IPAD vehicle intergation (as dispaly for monitoring the speed , Essay

Full IPAD vehicle intergation (as dispaly for monitoring the speed , pertrol consumption , and controlling the AC ..etc) - Essay Example However, I have written the assignment exactly according to your specifications. You are however free to contact me through the message board if you have any concerns about the assignment and I shall respond to you accordingly. Thank you – Isaac. ANSWER According to the Management.About.Com, â€Å"barriers to entry are those things that make it difficult for a new company to compete against companies already established in the field.† This is to say that even though the possibility to enter the market and achieve success even over existing companies is not a fallacy, there are some challenges and hurdles that new companies would have to overcome in order to achieve these successes. The first and most outstanding barrier to entry will be the stiff competition that our company would have to engage in with market pioneers. BMW, an automobile brand giant has already introduced iSO Integration and iPad dock; an iPad vehicle integration system that â€Å"give drivers the cap ability to access text messages, memos, emails from their iOS and Blackberry devices† (Thacker, 2010).

The Politics of Global Communications Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Politics of Global Communications - Essay Example Globalization of communication dates back to the 1920s where initially it was spurred by international trade, expansion of media companies as well as colonialism. Politics in this era were characterized by the official opening of the US global communication policy. As noted by Kamalipour', ), information and communication technologies such as internet, mobile phones, satellite radio and television are used by political power houses to meet their propaganda all over the world. Global communication has changed the way politics are done by encouraging revolutionalization, for instance in global economy and ecology .Globalization allows politics to take a vast growth worldwide through non-governmental organizations, other integrated schemes and also through global movements. Of the most important technology in politics is telecommunication which is a process through which information is transferred. Telecommunication gives people options, especially to chose the ideologies to buy and the ones to discard (Kamalipour, 2002).Global communication has a great positive impact on politics because it helps in spreading politics across boarders through its' instruments such as radios, televisions, telegraphs among others. These can generally be termed as political instruments. Kamalipour (2002), highlights the political aspects of communication as vital in the global politics. Politics of global communication have contributed to the deterioration of diplomacy and often are responsible for many wars fought. Taking the example of the First World War; communication in form of wide coverage of radio, as well as heightened and increased public awareness something which resulted into public pressure on governments, coalitions. With the media reaching more people than ever before, and the general public turning into media for news on progress of wars, the way they perceive the outcome of war usually has a meaningful bearing in the destiny of whole societies. All the above results in the political interest of by the political elites in controlling flow of news. With ICT now virtually under control of political leaders the issue of security in regard to telecommunications, results into the design of communications strategy, communications intelligence, and cryptography which are important and decisive tools in times of war. This was evident as early as during the first and second World Wars. Since technological advancements have increased the speed of communications between nations of the world, this has had an effect of increased importance to governments. The fact that knowledge is power means that, always, governments seek to capitalize on the improved speed and availability of communications, basically to advance their control of power as well as to influence of their political adversaries. Therefore emergence of new trends which influence the political aspects of the not so new concept of global communications network in the period preceding the twentieth century is to blame for many wars fought in the 19th century. When critically examined, the evolution of technology resulted into fast and reliable communication over long distances in the form of electric telegraph in the late 19th century and internet in the 21st century. Although having internal networks is viable and less risky, network communications

Surrealist Elements in Contemporary Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Surrealist Elements in Contemporary Art - Essay Example According to the essay "Surrealist Elements in Contemporary Art" findings, Burgert’s piece reveals the aftermath of an urban incident, the multiple incidents within the painting creating a narrative that tells a multitude of stories, similar to the Bosch piece, but creates the colorful story that is similar to Nash. The nature of the event is not realistic, which places the narrative and the depicted events. The piece by Nash was created at the beginning of the Surrealism movement, his work depicting fairly realistic events in an unrealistic manner. The term Surrealism was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917, placing the work of Nash occurring within that next year. However, much of Burgert’ pieces can be seen to be related to other works of the Surrealist period. The work of Burgert â€Å"seems to be the drama of the new world order†. The work is created with a sense of theater, the pieces staged to have a narrative that is dramatic and with a poignancy that is both explicit and realistic, but set in a world of color and arrangements of size, shape, and elements that come straight from the dream plane. The work consists of elements that depict the human form as it is stressed, and grotesque. The use of it stretched to the limits of the macabre in order to express the nature of a world gone mad within its own mechanizations. Burgert’s piece Vorkampfer, 2004 presents the image of a monkey with smaller skeletons that appear to cling as children to the image. The creature has a flag in his hand.

Performance Measurement and Management Assignment

Performance Measurement and Management - Assignment Example This is also ensures that transparency is achieved because stakeholders are informed on the choices the organization intends to take. In addition, it assists an organization to monitor its progress towards its set objectives and standards of performance (Lichiello and Turnock, 2010). In addition, Myer (2005) highlights that performance management is the coordination of activities, which ensures that organizational goals are effectively achieved. It is also the use of performance measures and standards by an organization to ensure that the desired results are met Lichiello and Turnluck, 2010). In performance management, an organization matches its resources, systems and workforce towards desired objectives. Employees, organizations departments and processes in the organization can be the basis of performance management (Lichiello and Turnock, 2010). Myer (2005) also highlights that the benefits of performance management include; reduced costs by decreasing the time of achieving goals and reducing project overruns, motivation of employees by using incentive plans for goals achieved, improved engagement and transparency, and lastly, improved control of organization activities through proper data relationships. This paper will highlight and describe in detail the va rious performance measures that can be used by Allulite Windows and Joinery in measuring performance, and it will emphasize on the balanced score card approach and why it is favorable for the company than any other methods. In general, the metrics of measuring performance in an organization can be broadly classified into financial and nonfinancial measures. Some of the financial measures include the Return on Investment (ROI), Residual income (RI) and discounted cash flow methods such as the NPV method. On the other hand, the nonfinancial performance measures include

Vision and Rationale Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Vision and Rationale - Assignment Example They do not achieve the core objective of cleaning the teeth, which is performed by the tooth paste and the tooth brush. Therefore, due to the lack of substitute products for this purpose, it is eminent that the market for this product is existent and sustainable. Tooth brushes were first invented in China, where the Chinese used the soft pig hair on the neck to make tooth brush bristles (Segrave, 2010). In Europe, the use of tooth brush started in France in the early eighteenth century. However, tooth brush was first patented in America by H. N. Wadsworth in 1885, after which many American companies embarked on the production of tooth brushes (Jones, 2010). The bare facts is that, tooth brushing in America and many other countries was not a common phenomena, until the soldiers who had gone to fight in world war II came back having adapted this habit. The same happened with tooth paste, which was not used until the 1800s, although the Chinese and the Indians had different substance t hat they used as tooth paste (Segrave, 2010). Rationale for selecting the product Tooth paste and tooth brush have become a necessity for man since a century ago, owing to the health dangers posed by unclean teeth to an individual. Thus, this product comes in the market to serve a basic need that the society has had for decades, only that, it has become increasingly inconvenient for people to pack a box of tooth brush and another one for tooth paste whenever they want to travel. Therefore, the introduction of this new product, which seeks to function both as a tooth brush and a tooth paste dispenser, could not have come at a better time. It will solve the incontinences people have, through allowing them to travel with only one product, which will dispense tooth paste and brush their teeth too. On top of serving as a duo product, this new product will also ensure the maintenance of high health standards, through ensuring that an individual does not use more or less tooth paste while brushing his/teeth. This is because; the product will be designed such that, through a single twist of the base of the brush, the recommended amount of tooth paste will be dispensed. Therefore, there is no way in which individuals will use more or less of the tooth paste, unless they twist the base of the brush more than once, since each single twist dispenses the recommended amount of the tooth paste. Company goals The goals of the company is to solve the problem that the society has, which is that of inconveniencies, associated with the use of tooth brush and tooth paste dispense as different products. Therefore, the company’s goals are: Meet the market need for a teeth cleaning product, which combines the functions of dispensing tooth paste and brushing the teeth. Provide the markets with a convenient product, which is packed singly, yet serving duo functions, for the ease of travel. Saving the people valuable time, through providing the market with an exclusive product th at saves the time used in using the tooth paste and the tooth brush as different products. Strategies to achieve the goals The strategies to achieve the goals will be to design the product such that it has a section that hold tooth paste, at the base of the brush, a lock which prevents the tooth brush from being dispensed accidentally and a dispensing tunnel, through which the tooth paste is dispensed from the base of