Manipulation in Oscar Wildes The Picture of Dorian Gray Essay

Manipulation in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray  Ã‚        Ã‚  "I do not think that one person influences another, nor do I think there is any bad influence in the world," Oscar Wilde uttered when under trial (Hyde 353). Although this statement may be true, one of Wilde's most famous works shows a great deal of the effects of people shaping one another, causing one to wonder about Wilde's sincerity in that statement. The Picture of Dorian Gray shows variations on the existence and purposes of influence, displaying two types of personal influence: obvious manipulations such as that of Lord Henry upon Dorian and that of Dorian over Sybil Vane, and those that are more often overlooked such as the more subtle manipulation of Dorian over Basil, of Dorian over Lord Henry, and in the interaction between Dorian and his portrait. Wilde demonstrates the many possible impacts made in these two categories, proving that there is more to a relationship than an outside viewer may perceive, and eventually leading the reader to the unavoidable morbid end ing of the book, in which the characters meet their own pathetic ends, with Dorian Gray committing what could be considered a ghastly suicide. Taking into account Wilde?s own life of controversial relationships, this book is especially poignant in its autobiographical suggestions. Dorian Gray is first described as a naà ¯ve and attractive young boy, with a striking resemblance to Adonis, having the physical description of a Greek god. The beauty and innocence of youth cause him to be quite attractive, and the fact that he is unaware of the power of this beauty is even more appealing. Dorian?s beauty is the source of Basil Hallward?s obsession, which peaks in the act of Hallward painting Do... ...rinceton University Press, 1967. Twentieth Century Criticism, Volume 41. Pages 353-60. Shewan, Rodney. Oscar Wilde: Art and Egotism. The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1977. Excerpted in Twentieth Century Criticism, Volume 41. Pages 374-84. Spivey, Ted. R. "Oscar Wilde and the Tragedy of Symbolism," The Journey Beyond Tragedy: A Study of Myth and Modern Fiction. Copyright 1980, Board of Regents of the State of Florida, University Presses of Florida, 1980. Twentieth Century Criticism, Volume 41. Pages 501-2. Summers, Claude J. "In Such Surrender There May Be Gain: Oscar Wilde and the Beginnings of Gay Fiction, " Gay Fiction: Wilde to Stonewall, Studies in Male Homosexual Literacy Tradition, Continuum, 1990. Excerpted in Twentieth Century Criticism, Volume 41. Pages 398-401. Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oxford University Press, New York. 1994

Competition :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Two best friends are torn apart. A man meticulously plots revenge on the person who got the job he was dying for. A nation is full of rage and fear because another country beat them in the race to walk on the moon. Sadly, all of these situations were caused by one thing, competition. In Alfie Kohn’s essay, â€Å"Competition Is Destructive†, he describes competition as having a â€Å"toxic effect on our relationships†(11). Although competition has many positive effects in this world, when talking specifically about relationships, whether it be between best friends, two strangers, or even entire nations, it fuels negative feelings and attitudes that transform people into monsters. Close relationships often have their ups and downs. When one spends enough time with a person it is inevitable that they will have an argument. Best friends, for example, share everything with each other. They laugh together, cry together and trust one another completely. Yet throw a boy that they are both interested in into the picture and they are lying and backstabbing their way into his arms. Or perhaps they are both dying to play Juliet. Suddenly they view each other as enemies who will stop at nothing for the part. One might spread rumors about the other or sabotage her audition. Even something as innocent as grades can turn into a knockdown, drag-out, fight to the finish. They resort to cheating, or anything that will give them a leg up from the other. These crazy situations are just a few of the many examples that show how competition can create feelings of resentment, bitterness and even hatred between people who at one point were inseparable. Competition between good friends is not the only instance in which negative feelings can occur. Surprisingly, the exact same feelings of resentment and hostility can happen between two perfect strangers. With no valid reason, children and adults alike can work up an enormous grudge against a person that they have never spoken to, or possibly never even seen. Take for instance a boy on a high school football team. Off the field he is a respectable student who is always considerate of others. Yet the second he steps on that field he transforms into a monster who is out to â€Å"get† the other team, to â€Å"show them who’s boss.† He has never met these people before and has no reason to feel such anger towards them other than the fact that they are standing in the way of his team winning the game.

Web Analytics

The explosive growth in the amount of smartness and tablets marked we have fully entered the RA of mobile computing. There are more and more people prefer to buy the products or services they desired online. The company who can success overnight must be the one who can better understand the demands of customers. For those who have no Idea of the power of Internet marketing, Axiom Technology can be a good example. It has been established since August 2010 and there are no any offline franchised stores ever opened. The only channel for customers to get their products is ordering from their online store.This is totally an Internet marketing model and no one knows what will happen to this company in the future. Now only four years have passed Axiom Technology has overtaken Samsung to become the biggest seller of smartness in China and the company valuations has approaching 40 billions dollars (BBC, http://www. BBC. Com/news/business-28684581). The success of Axiom is not accidental but u sing tons of techniques to analyses customers and trying to understand their needs. Behind this web analytics is the most important tool to achieve this in Internet marketing.What web analytics does Is the study of visitor, navigation, and traffic patterns to determine the success of a given web site then through the objective tracking, collection, measurement, porting, and analysis of quantitative Internet data to optimism websites and Internet marketing initiatives (Web Analytics Association, http:. ‘/ indicators could tell us the operation performance of a website. Such as the sources of the visitors (where our visitors come from), the conversion rates of the visitors (includes the registration rates, opportunities to sale and other conversion rates we setup to monitor).Knowing these indicators is the basis of Internet marketing initiatives. In short, web analytics is a tool to help us optimism our website and align our resources to fit the Internet marketing strategies. Th is could be divided into several aspects. I will explain them one by one in this article. Monitoring the Operation Status of the Website This is the most basic function of web analytics. Web analytics tool like Google Analytics can collect the data which provided by the website such as slipstream data, user experience data and operational data then generate different kinds of statements through analyses the collected data.These statements can give a overview of the website and tell us whether it is healthy or not. The variation trend of clicks, umber of visits, number of users and other data like this can help marketers maintain the website from different aspects. However, for those non-technical specialist stakeholders web analytics tool can be an important tool to translate the professional terms such as page views, average time per visit and conversion rates to readable information. Monthly summary is one of the most common reports that web analytics tool can generate for a compa ny to monitor its website.The information contained in the summary is of a relatively basic level. The monthly summary shows page views, visits ND visitors, as well as average time per visit and average page views per visit. The main purpose of the monthly summary is to inform key stakeholders about the level of activity on the website throughout each month (A. Phone, et al. , 2004). Figure 1 is a typical monthly summary. There are also other reports such as monthly dashboard which allow users to compare the activity on the website over a year, because of the limited words it is not possible to detail here.Figure 1. A Typical Monthly Summary The operators of the website will be panic without the support of different kinds of data. Because it means they have lost the perception to the status of the website. They have no idea how many visits today, thousands or none, will be a mystery. Without the direction of data, the operators will lost their target and path for Internet marketing. Evaluate the Efficiency of the Promotion Campaigns Like offline business processes, Internet marketing also needs promotion campaigns to acquire customers, improve brand image and customer perception.However, without web analytics we can not measure the help that the promotions bring to our websites Kips and we even can not know whether the growing Kips are profit from With web analytics we can track the sources of our visits then identify whether they are visiting through our promotions such as pay-per-click ads or banner ads. Moreover, we can further analyses the conversion rates relate to registration and order placing then find out the efficiency of our promotions and to what extent they can improve our Kips.Finally, according to the analysis we can adjust the Internet marketing strategies about the promotions. For example, to measure the efficiency of a banner ads we can easily calculate cost per acquisition to find out that: Cost per acquisition = Advertising and promotional cost/Number of click-troughs. Promote the Website Effectively Search Engine Optimization (SEE) and Search Engine Marketing (SEEM) SEE and SEEM are two vital parts in web analytics because they are the most important way for a website to fetch visits. Search engines are a key part of any company's acquisition portfolio.For good reason, citizens of the Internet use search to find everything they are looking for. The business impact of this customer behavior is that we all pour a lot of resources into optimizing our websites to show up optimally in search engines for relevant queries (Vanish Sushi, 2010). There are several indexes for us to analyses SEE such as related keywords ranking, the click through rate (CTR) of the search terms and the number of invalid pages of the website in the search results. The traffic level is the foundation of a website.So it is necessary for us to know how good our website performing on SEE and SEEM clearly (Eric Eng, et al. , 2012). Precision Marketing SEE and SEEM can improve the web exposure of the website so the users can find our website more easily. But sometimes it is also necessary to push our website to some specific users directly so called online promotions. Online promotion included customer segmentation, source segmentation and target market segmentation. Customer segmentation which based on customer behaviors can reveal the customer types our website attracts.The search terms based on source and affiliated websites analysis can let us know which parts on our website were cared about by our users and how our users found us. This analysis could direct us for our online promotion. We will know which groups of users we should send them e-mails. Moreover, web analytics can also help us find suitable places to do the online promotions. For example, the most related website we should put the advertisements on if we want to issue a product or organize an activity or the frequently searched keywords to do the sponsored links and SEE.So it can help us avoid the inefficiency promotions which will waste our operating costs. Through eliminating low efficiency costs and increase the ratio of high efficiency costs we could keep the budgets constant but have a better publicity. In the meantime, we can also find out which websites have more relevance with us then we can improve our how to organize the contents we want to promote. Optimizing the Customer Experience of the Website Simple and Effective Interactive Process The simple and easy-to-use interactive process will help the users achieve their targets and operations better.And the users are tend to visit the website which have more friendly interface that can let them surf on it without any troubles. Help the Users to Find What They Interested Recommend the contents which the users may interested are far more better than let themselves find what they want. Many websites like Amazon, eBay now have recommendation function based on the analysis of users behav iors, this function will elf on keep customers and let them browse more contents or use the services provided by the websites.Listen to the Users Web analytics is more than tons of daily statements of the websites. Actually, survey, lab usability testing and site visits are all belong to web analytics. Vanish Sushi were sorted them as the qualitative analysis in web analytics. These methods can let us listen to our users' heart. With the results of these surveys we can do better on our website includes the design of function, interactive and navigation. All of these are aimed at enhancing the user experience of the website.In a word, the websites are living for traffic level, all what we do above can be concluded as three stages: monitoring the traffic, attract the traffic and keep the traffic. The traffic level can be easily translated to users, and the users are the only core for the websites. Part 2: http://www. Activation. Co. UK/ is a local company. You are required to: Identif y its main line of business and its online marketing strategy, Critically evaluate its website designing and its online marketing strategy, and Make recommendations for improving the effectiveness of its website and online marketing strategy.Main Line of Business Active Alton is a local company operating a variety of sports and leisure facilities in Alton and it claimed itself as a non-profit organization. It currently operates 7 leisure and activity centers including Dell Farm, Inspire: Alton Sports Village, Lessee Sports Park, Highpoint Community Sports & Arts Centre, Lea Manor Recreation Centre, Stockroom Park Golf Centre and Stockroom Park Athletics Centre & Health Club.The main business that Active Alton run are the fitness and leisure events. Rely on the activity centers Active Alton provides its own brands covered a wide range of ports and services such as Profiles Health & Fitness, Hydra Swim, Active Golf, Kid Around, Active Education, Active Communities, Active Training & D evelopment and people will enjoy a discount price to access the facilities through Join the membership and this is also the main sources of income to the organization.Online Marketing Strategy As a local organization who have held so many sports centers and leisure facilities, Active Alton seems has no intention to invest vast amount of time and money in online marketing because people are ultimately prefer to choose a fitness centre by sitting it not by Just browsing it online. The website of Active Alton are more like a exhibition not an online franchise store. I have drawn a structure chart of the website below and will analyses the online market strategy by using it. Through the structure chart we can have a general understanding of the whole website of Active Alton.As I state before, the website is consist by the introduction of the sports centers and leisure facilities. The only entrance for customers to checkout is in the membership page and will be shown after click ‘s ign up online'. And there is o any online customer service but only two forms in the feedback and contact us pages. Because the organization possesses venues and stadiums and only provide very limited online transactions channel and customer service (the digital channels complementary is relatively low), the e-commerce business mode could be defined as between ‘Bricks and mortar' and ‘Bricks and clicks' refer to Figure 2.Figure 2. Three Business Modes in E-commerce In conclusion, the online marketing strategy should have objectives for online contribution in percent which means sales, service, profitability should drive the strategy. From the structure of the website I did not see much of elements which can bring extra incomes for the organization. Because of the products the organization provides is fitness and leisure services it is not possible to exploit new geographic markets. So the website has communicate benefits of existing products to existing penetration strat egy (H.Igor Anions, 2007). Figure 3. Nations Product-Market Growth Matrix Website Designing There are eight most important factors in successful e-commerce site design (Lauded and Travel, 2009), in this part I will use this figure to evaluate the designing of the Bessie. Figure 4. The Eight Most Important Factors in Successful E-commerce Site Design All functions of the website are working normally during my test but it has no obvious funnel which can guide visitors to the checkout system and finally become customers.In general, there must be a button or link to purchase the product when we click into the introduction page of a product but for this website there is not. What instead of is a sign up online button which is in membership page so we can not see it directly. This will largely reduce the conversion rates and lower the functionality of the website. The information provided by the website are quite rich, from the introduction of the organization to the details of every venu es and brands. And they have been placed in landing page so they are full accessible.But the customer service is a short slab of the website. There are only two forms provided in the contact us and feedback pages. According to Lauded and Tracer's research it will annoy 75. 1% visitors if a website has no contact information available. Figure 5. E-commerce Website Features that Annoy Customers For other aspects in the figure 4, the layout and design of Active Lotto's website are happily integrated style, both aesthetically and functionally. It has a dominant hue which is blue and the color is not been abused everywhere.The text are legible enough and the graphics are simple therefore the visitors will not be distracted. To sum up, the website is easy to use but lack of functionality and it need to be improved. Recommendations For the Web Designing To improve the effectiveness of the website can be translate to improve the user experience of it. First and the most important thing is t o add a purchase button with the corresponding price table in every introduction page of the stadiums, this will increase the conversion rates and lead to a higher incomes which is the fundamental goals of e-commerce.And for the customer service, add at least one contact information (landlines, e-mail or both) to contact us page that visitors can use it to contact the organization actively. If the visitors are confused about some descriptions the conversion rates indirectly because people will not purchase anything if they are confusing about it. For the Online Marketing Strategy According to the organization's conditions I did a SOOT analysis for it. Active Alton Strengths – S 1. Well-known brand 2.Abundant Resources 3. Extensive Services Weaknesses – W 1. Internet channel using 2. Web technologies 3. Online customer service Opportunities – O 1 . New customer segment 2. Co-branding promotion 3. Cross-selling SO strategies Integrate the services and trying to at tract new customers through cross-selling and co-branding promotion WOW strategies Improve the user experience of the website and introduce new services to attract new customers Threats – T 1 . Other competitors who have advanced technologies 2.Customer choice 3. New entrants SST strategies Attract competitor's customers by provide better services and hardware WET strategies Improve the user experience of the website and build a thorough customer relationship management system Figure 6. A Internet-specific SOOT Analysis for Active Alton Active Alton is an organization who has possessed a lot of resources including stadiums and parks. So the products and services it can provide can be varied if introduce cross-selling method.The growth point of the business is to attract new customers through new products and services and better user experience of the website. In this circumstance I would like to recommend WOW strategies for the organization. This kind of online marketing stra tegy is focused on improving the effectiveness of the website and develop new products that fit the e- commerce business such as special offers which people can only get from the online store.

Business and ethics essayEssay Writing Service

Business and ethics essayEssay Writing Service Business and ethics essay Business and ethics essayBusiness and ethics often turn out to be antagonistic concepts. Even though business ethics is one of the milestone concepts of the contemporary business but it is rather the formal, illusionary concept which has little to do with the real world. In this regard, the film Glengarry Glen Ross and the book Good Faith attempt to reveal the true nature of business and business relations to uncover their immoral ground. At the same time, the film and the book show that one of the main problems of the business and contemporary society are immoral agents that drove others to immoral acts and act immorally themselves. In such a way, James Foley, the director of Glengarry Glen Ross, and Jane Smiley, the author of Good Faith, show the destructive impact of egoism as the milestone of one’s personal philosophy on individuals, including not only moral agents driven by egoism but also their social environment because they influence other people and make them egoisti c too. In such a way, both the film and the book warn the audience against the immoral nature of business grounded on norms and principles of egoism, when individuals cares only about their personal well-being and neglect interests and needs of others.Glengarry Glen Ross attempts to justify the immoral in its essence actions of some of the main characters. In this regard, Levene seems to be the most deceitful and immoral person, who always tries to find his way out of any situation even at cost of his partners, colleagues and other persons, whom he is ready to deceive, betray or ruin as long as he knows that he can gain some benefits from it. He is trying to pursue his own benefits in the situation, when his colleagues face the risk of losing their job. In such a situation, the means he chooses to reach his goal, to stay in the company, are disgusting from the moral standpoint since he tries everything from flattery to bribery.On the other hand, the chronically ill daughter is the m ain driver that actually forces him to commit all his immoral acts, starting from his attempt to bribe Blake to make him stay Levene in the company to his decision to break into the office to still the leads. In this regard, the illness of his daughter turns out to be a strong motivator for Levene’s illegal actions. In a way, the illness of his daughter justifies in a way his actions and changes the attitude of the audience to the character.Therefore, Levene turns out to be not absolutely immoral person as it may seem to be. At any rate, he has a strong motive, the urgent need for money to treat his daughter, while others act out of sheer greed and desire of retaining their position in the company. In this regard, Moss is probably the most immoral person, who acts out of sheer egoism, as he plans to steal the leads and at first tries to persuade Aaronow to steal the leads and later involves Levene, who has no choice but to agree upon the crime.In this regard, the behavior of Aaronow is also unethical because he was aware of the plan of Moss but he has never informed neither Blake about the preparing crime nor the police after the crime have been committed. Instead, he preferred just to stay aside of the ‘business’ because he was afraid of being involved somehow in the crime. The indifference is probably even more dangerous than the proactive position that Levene has eventually taken. Aaronow is the person, who knew about the plan elaborated by Moss and he apparently understood, who was behind the crime, as soon as he learned about the crime. However, he has never tried to prevent the crime or help to investigate the crime. Such people are probably the most dangerous and morally degraded since they stay silent and indifferent, when they witness the most terrible crimes occurring right in front of them.Such behavior of Aaronow is another manifestation of egoism as the major ethical framework within the main characters of Glengarry Glen Ross o perate. Just like Ross, who is concerned with his personal interests and position, Aaronow is also concerned with his position in the company and his future. This is why he prefers not to assist the investigation rather than prevent the crime or help to uncover the criminal.In such a situation, Roma seems to be quite different from his subordinates since almost all the time he stays behind the desperate struggle for survival. At any rate, he has never been involved in any crime. However, egoism is also the attribute of Roma just as it is the attribute of Aaronow and Moss. Roma is a pragmatic person and, when he realizes that he has uncertain future in the company, he decides to start up his own business and offers partnership to Levene, being unaware of his crime.However, his offer is not a manifestation of his friendship or desire to help Levene to tackle his problems and earn some money to treat his chronically ill daughter. On the contrary, this act is the act of sheer egoism aga in, like was the case of other characters pursuing their own interests and well-being. Roma is just aware of Levene’s prospects as a good partner, whom he can use effectively in his new business. This is why he makes the offer.In this regard, Levene is probably the only character that is driven not by his egoism or, to put it more precisely, not only by his egoism but also and mainly by his concerns about the health and well-being of his daughter. He is probably a good person, in essence since he never tries to act absolutely immorally and illegally from the start. For instance, at first, he just wants to talk and persuade Blake that he is worth staying in the company but, when it never works, he tries to bribe Blake. When his bribe attempt does not work either, he finally slips to the crime as the only way to gain some benefits from the deal being aware of the high risk of losing his position in the company.At the same time, the characters of the film may be roughly divided into two groups. On the one hand, there are puppeteers, like Moss or Roma, while, on the other hand, there are puppets, like Levene and Aaronow. In this regard, Moss is probably the most immoral character. The milestone of his personal philosophy and ethics is egoism. He is just pursuing wealth and wants to rip off maximum benefits for himself. He schemes the crime, even though he is not in such a desperate position as Levene is and the loss of job is not related to the end of life issues as is the case of Levene. Nevertheless, it is Moss, who inspires the crime and, first, tries to force Aaronow to commit the crime, but, eventually, talks in Levene to become his puppet, who breaks into the office and steals the leads.In this regard, the book Good Faith’s characters are, to a significant extent similar to characters of the film and so are their actions. In this regard, it is possible to distinguish Marcus as the evil genius, who plans and schemes to meet his egoistic goals as is the case of the main characters of the film.Business and ethics   essay part 2

Isolationist Debate Essay example

Isolationist Debate Essay example Isolationist Debate Essay example Hibbah Ali January 29, 2014 History 4 Isolationist vs Internationalist Debate Opening Statement: America should not be involved in World War Two in any way. The First World War had devastating implications on our country and it would be unwise to go through that again. Many lives were lost and a great deal of money went to aiding other countries. After America helped Great Britain in World War One, we were bombed by Germany. This should be evidence that the United States should not assist Britain again or we run the risk of getting attacked. It is more beneficial for our economy and safer for our people to distance ourselves as much as possible from World War Two. Argument: In ww1 we were bombed by Germany when helping Great Britain. In the bombing of Lusitania 1,198 were killed and 128 of those passengers were Americans. We don't need a repeat of what happened. George Washington said that we should â€Å"avoid entangling alliances† and that â€Å"The Great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little as possible.† Also after ww1, the Kellogg-Briand Pact was written to mesh the idea of non-intervention with that of the post-Versailles desire to end all wars. This shows that they didn't want to fight anymore and wanted what was best for everyone. Also the Special Committee thought â€Å"the intense competition among European and American munitions companies†¦ tends to create a corrupt officialdom, and thereby weaken the remaining democracies of the world†¦Ã¢â‚¬  This would not be only hurting us but other countries as well. The Special Committee also found that by giving munition â€Å"there is a considerable threat to the peace and the civic progress of other nations† and that even if good sales were produced, the â€Å"effect of such sales is to produce fear and hostility†¦ culminating in economic strain and collapse or war.† Rebuttal: "The security of America depends on supporting/joining the war" This is not a fact, we are nowhere close in proximity to the conflict and there has not been any sign of an imminent threat towards our country from those engaged in the war since we have not been involved. What is a fact however, is that if our country does not remain neutral in this war, lives will definitely be lost no matter what. Though we still may be

Genius

Genius Genius Genius By Maeve Maddox A reader has asked for a post on the word genius, commenting, Its part of the word engineering but, in French, engineering is genie, which I associate with Aladdins lamp. Then, there is the genius spirit that ancient Romans associated with places. This comment offers much to address. I’ll begin with the Latin origin of the word. In classical religious belief, every human being was allotted a personal spirit at birth. This guiding spirit was called a genius, plural, genii. The role of the genius was to govern a person’s fortunes, determine his character, and to conduct him out of the world at death. The Latin word comes from a Greek verb meaning â€Å"to be born, to come into being.† This quotation from the OED show the word used in the sense of â€Å"guardian spirit†: Let their Guardian Genii still be watchful. N. Rowe Ambitious Step-mother. In addition to the kind of genii assigned to individual human beings, there was the genius loci, â€Å"genius of the place.† This spirit presided over a particular place: Watchd by the Genius of this Royal place. Dryden To Dr. Charleton in W. Charleton Chorea Gigantum. The â€Å"emperor worship† that the early Christians objected to involved burning a bit of incense not to the emperor, but to the emperor’s genius: Christianswho would die rather than fling into the altar-flame a pinch of incense to the Genius of the Emperors. F. W. Farrar Witness of Hist.   Ã‚   Genius in the sense of a guiding spirit is applied to abstract nouns and to periods of history. One may speak of â€Å"the genius of Democracy† and â€Å"the Genius of the Age.† Nowadays the word genius is often replaced by the word spirit. We’ve all seen cartoons showing a character being tempted: on one shoulder sits a little angel trying to restrain him, while on the other, a little red devil eggs him on. This depiction reflects the idea that people have not one, but two guiding genii: (a persons) good, evil genius: the two mutually opposed spirits (in Christian language angels) by whom every person was supposed to be attended throughout his life. Hence applied to a person who powerfully influences for good or evil the character, conduct, or fortunes of another. Genie and genii came to be used for demons or spiritual beings in general. Arabic jinn, the word for a class of spirits that may be good or evil, came to be spelled genii in English; singular genie became the word for one of these spirits, for example, one that might be imprisoned in a bottle. The use of genius as adjective meaning â€Å"intellectually superior† and a noun meaning â€Å"an intellectually superior person† developed in the 18th century as art critics began using genius to describe â€Å"native endowment† contrasted with â€Å"aptitudes that can be acquired by study.† This question on a homework site illustrates how this use of genius has obscured the word’s earlier meanings: If Hitler killed so many people, why is he called a genius? The youngster asking this question has no doubt seen Hitler referred to as â€Å"an evil genius† by someone who did not understand the meaning of the term. The answer given to the student’s question reflects the same confusion: You can say Hitler was a genius because he was so good at manipulating people.   He was able to get people to go along with his ideas even when they seemed to be completely crazy.  Because he was able to do this, you would have to say he was a genius.   Sadly, he used his great talents for one of the most evil goals ever. Hitler might be seen as the evil genius who influenced German doctors and prison camp directors to do abominable things, but labeling him â€Å"an evil genius† without reference to another person or persons is meaningless. The term â€Å"evil genius† refers to any personof whatever degree of intellectwho influences another person to do evil: The evil genius of the second half of Hitlers career was Goebbels. Ernst Hanfstaengel, Hitler: The Missing Years (1957). Finally, gà ©nie is the French word for engineering, but not because it has anything to do with the word genius. French gà ©nie means the same things that English genius does. The fact that the French word for engineering is also spelled gà ©nie is a coincidence: it’s a homonym derived from Middle French engigneour, â€Å"person who designs and constructs military works for attack and defense.† Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:20 Words with More Than One Spelling50 Idioms About Fruits and VegetablesUlterior and Alterior

The Process of Market Segmentation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The Process of Market Segmentation - Essay Example This research will begin with the statement that the business environment is highly competitive in the 21st century, as thousands of firms have emerged offering services and products to consumers. Some firms attract their customers through cost-effectiveness or price differentiation, while others aim to grasp their market through providing a unique product/service. While the strategies of firms may differ, the target group that firms are aiming to attract may be similar. All firms must ensure that the product/service that they are offering is different from their competitors in some aspect. In this era, there is no such thing as a standardized product which is suitable for use by all people. Hence, no firm seeks to target the whole market at large and it is highly difficult to target a large potential market with the same product and the same marketing strategies. No products except maybe staple foods such as fruits, vegetables, bread, butter, and other important dietary supplements are aimed at targeting the whole population of consumers and are standardized products. All other products or services are differentiated and conformed to the needs and wants of various target groups. Differentiation refers to adapting the characteristics and marketing of your product/service to fulfill the needs and wants of a particular target market. In order to select the target market for product/ service, a firm must indulge in the process of market segmentation.... This prevents duplication of resources and enables the business to directly target the segment that is more likely to be interested in their product/service offering rather than wasting time and resources upon targeting a massive market that may not be interested in the product/service at all (Yankelovich, 1964, pg. 75-77). Market segmentation allows the business to see the characteristics of its potential customers so that it can create its products according to their needs. For example, after segmenting the market according to the variables of age and gender, a certain cosmetics company found that the most potential lied within the segment of females aged 18-25. This would enable them to customize their products in order to suit the needs of this segment more adequately (Anthanpolusso, 1999, pp. 56-58). Moreover, once markets are segmented, different segments can be made differing offers according to their needs. There may be some segments which may be willing to pay a higher price while others may be price sensitive. Identifying the segments that would be willing to pay a higher price would enable the business to increase its profits. In the same manner, providing the price sensitive segments with initiatives to buy the product might increase the sales and result in more profits for the business (Barnett, 1965, pp. 45-47). Segmenting also allows more opportunities for growth as the same segments can be targeted in different manners. The various customer segments can be given incentives according to the offerings made to them previously. Such schemes include loyalty cards, bonus cards, and other factors. Market Segmentation allows the firm to target the most profitable market segments rather than focusing on less attractive markets. Moreover, it may also allow