The Gap free essay sample

An analysis of the marketing strategy of clothes retailer, The Gap. The Gap is among the most successful retailers in the North American market, with sales of over $13.8 billion in 2001 and close to 4,500 stores worldwide. This paper provides a historical picture of The Gaps marketing strategy over the years, analyzes the strengths, weaknesses and outcomes of the approach, and describes recommendations for improvement. The Gap has had a number of innovative successful advertising campaigns. The 1988 Individuals of Style image campaign was extremely successful (Sommers, et.al., 1998) in promoting its basic clothing and illustrating how individuals could personalize the merchandise. This campaign featured black-and-white photos in print and outdoor ads. This campaign was replicated in 2001, but did not receive the degree of popularity and media attention that the earlier version received. The 1997 Khakis Swing campaign provided another successful advertising endeavor through television ads that were complemented by print ads in a similar style. We will write a custom essay sample on The Gap or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page According to a USA Today poll (n.d.), approximately one-third of all respondents polled gave the campaign the highest possible rating for likability and effectiveness, ten percentage points higher than the average. The Gap free essay sample The sun barely shines through the dense leaves; the old tree filled up as much space as the apartment buildings allowed. It grew as tall as the buildings and sat leisurely on a raised platform. There was a huge gap between its concrete walled planter and the road. As I sat on my bike I stared at the gap and paused, I thought to myself you can make it. My hands tightly gripped the handle bar; without another thought I raced down the street. Gameboy, a popular gaming device, is the dream of any eight year old Chinese boy. However, I lived with my grandparents, and when it comes to the word â€Å"popular†, grandparents are not the most updated. With a limited allowance to buy snacks, I never had my hands on one of them. Instead, I had my modest collection of airsoft guns, roller blades, and my bike. Rather than sitting insipidly in front of a screen, I spent most of my childhood jumping over gaps with my bike and climbing outside the window of a ten story apartment. We will write a custom essay sample on The Gap or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Yet, no â€Å"gap† was bigger than my move to America. It wasn’t anything but a casual phone call between my mom and me that decided my emigration. My mom lived in Switzerland for as long as I can remember; when she decided to move to America she asked me to go with her. For me it was not a big deal except that I had to learn a new language and make entirely new friends. Though when the plane took off, the irreversible nature of the situation sneaked its way into my mind. Growing up with four different homes, I experienced educational diversity. While my grandmother raised my social awareness, my grandfather showed me the importance of knowledge. However, when it came to my aunt, discipline was the most important. Although I discovered the cuisines of France through hours of television, I was introduced to a dramatically new culture for the first time during my trip to Europe at a young age. Not only was I able to taste the creamy and delicious Swiss Chocolate, but I also witnessed the exquisite Mona Lisa in Louvre. To me, these adventures have never meant anything but excitements and new possibilities, and that is exactly how I looked at America. The communication difficulties in a foreign country was a fair price to pay for the much less amount of homework I had to do in school. Though I had to constantly struggle to understand my favorite cartoons on Cartoon Network I knew soon I’ll be reading books like The Art of War in English. I told myself to always keep an open mind. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t able to pronounce the word zucchini, because I know that I will say it right next time. Nor did I feel embarrassed for asking what a piece of cake meant, because I knew I would not learn otherwise. It never occurred to me that something is impossible; it was only a matter of time. I am no longer afraid of difficulties. I know that the only thing of importance is to keep a positive outlook, and just like the day I jumped the gap with my bike, I will not be intimidated but instead to strive, with patience, for the best.

The Meaning and Origin of the Last Name Ramirez

The Meaning and Origin of the Last Name Ramirez Ramirez is a patronymic name meaning son of Ramon or son of Ramiro, a given name meaning wise protector,  from the Germanic elements ragin, meaning counsel and mari, meri,  meaning fame. The name is said to have originated with the   Visigoths, a Germanic goth tribe that settled in the Iberian Peninsula (present-day Spain and Portugal) during the 5th century. Ramirez is the 42nd most popular surname in the United States, the 10th most common surname in Mexico and the 28th most common surname in Spain. Surname Origin:  Spanish, Portuguese Alternate Surname Spellings:  RAMIRES, REINMER, REMER, REIJMERS, REYMERS, REMIREZ Famous People With the Last Name Ramirez Sancho Ramà ­rez  - King of Aragon (1063–1094) and King of Navarre (1076–1094)ngel de Saavedra y Ramà ­rez de Baquedano  - Spanish poet and politicianAramis Ramà ­rez - Dominican former MLB professional baseball playerJosà © Ramà ­rez - founder of  Ramà ­rez GuitarsManny Ramirez  - Dominican American former MLB professional baseball playerLuis Ramà ­rez de Lucena - 16th-century Spanish chess grandmaster Where Do People With the Ramirez Surname Live? The surname distribution data at  Forebears  ranks Ramirez as the 140th most common surname in the world, identifying it as most prevalent in Mexico and with the highest density in Costa Rica. The Ramirez surname is the 7th most common last name found in Colombia, 8th in Costa Rica, 9th in Mexico and Guatemala, and 10th in Paraguay. The Ramires spelling is much less common, ranking 10,317th in the world, and is most prevalent in Portugal and Brazil. Within Europe, Ramirez is most frequently found in Spain, according to  WorldNames PublicProfiler, especially in the Canary Islands and the southern provinces of  Cdiz,  Mlaga,  Jaà ©n, and Sevilla in the Andalucia region. Genealogy Resources for the Surname Ramirez 100 Most Common U.S. Surnames Their MeaningsSmith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, Brown... Are you one of the millions of Americans sporting one of these top 100 common last names from the 2000 census? 100 Most Common Spanish SurnamesHave you ever wondered about your Spanish last name and how it came to be? This article describes common Spanish naming patterns and explores the meaning and origins of 100 common Spanish surnames. How to Research Hispanic HeritageLearn how to get started researching  your Hispanic ancestors, including the basics of family tree research and country-specific organizations, genealogical records, and resources for Spain, Latin America, Mexico, Brazil, the Caribbean and other Spanish speaking countries. Ramirez Family Crest - Its Not What You ThinkContrary to what you may hear, there is no such thing as a Ramirez family crest or coat of arms for the Ramirez surname.  Coats of arms are granted to individuals, not families, and may rightfully be used only by the uninterrupted male-line descendants of the person to whom the coat of arms was originally granted.   Ramirez Family Genealogy ForumSearch this popular genealogy forum for the Ramirez surname to find others who might be researching your ancestors, or post your own Ramirez query. FamilySearch - RAMIREZ GenealogyAccess over 5.8 million free historical records and lineage-linked family trees posted for the Ramirez surname and its variations on this free genealogy website hosted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. RAMIREZ Surname Family Mailing ListsThis free mailing list for researchers of the Ramirez surname and its variations includes subscription details and a searchable archive of past messages. DistantCousin.com - RAMIREZ Genealogy Family HistoryExplore free databases and genealogy links for the last name Ramirez. The Ramirez Genealogy and Family Tree PageBrowse family trees and links to genealogical and historical records for individuals with the last name Ramirez from the website of Genealogy Today. Sources Cottle, Basil.  Penguin Dictionary of Surnames. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1967. Dorward, David.  Scottish Surnames. Collins Celtic (Pocket edition), 1998. Fucilla, Joseph.  Our Italian Surnames. Genealogical Publishing Company, 2003. Hanks, Patrick and Flavia Hodges.  A Dictionary of Surnames. Oxford University Press, 1989. Hanks, Patrick.  Dictionary of American Family Names. Oxford University Press, 2003. Reaney, P.H.  A Dictionary of English Surnames. Oxford University Press, 1997. Smith, Elsdon C.  American Surnames. Genealogical Publishing Company, 1997.

Has Wikipedia influenced the way we gather information Research Paper

Has Wikipedia influenced the way we gather information - Research Paper Example These changes have helped us to get better and better. Mobile phone can be claimed to be the icon of Information Technology as today globally there are over 6 billion mobile connections and around 4 billion of these belong to unique consumers, it can be implied that two out of three people on earth have cell phone. The cell phone subscribers are increasing rapidly. SMS is a very popular service that cell phone users avail, in 2012, 2.19 trillion SMS were sent and received by the American population (Wireless Federation, 2013). In the course of communicating through short messages a surprising phenomenon has surfaced. It is that SMS - supposedly the cheapest mode of communication as a result of which this modality of communication is most popular amongst young subscribers, especially students. An extract from a school girl’s SMS is: "My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kids FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc." [3] †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.(BBC, 2003) It may be c hallenging for a sexagenarian to comprehend this message, few may take it as an output from a web based transliteration tool. A closer look at the text being exchanged by students comprise of shortcuts, homophones, omissions, emoticons, typos, native language, initials, acronyms, simpler tenses as well as verbs and the punctuation has been used in a different form. In this information age, this new choice of communication has come up and it has many names, like txt talk, txtese, txto, chatspeak, txt lingo, SMSish, txtslang etc. The young children and students use a different type of language while texting, the fact is visible from the above cited text. Accordingly, numerous academicians, experts and others have echoed their concerns about the possibility of language deterioration. Extant peer-reviewed literature published on research carried out by researchers in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia posits that textese is popular not only in developed countries but it is equally popular i n developing countries (Ahmad, Nurullah & Sarkar, 2010) (Aziz, Shamim , Aziz & Priya , 2013) (Jungesj, 2011). Textese is gradually showing up as a disruptive medium, it has not only entered the social networking domain but is starting to topple email writing. With the kind of acceptance and extent of adoption, linguists are intrigued at the way the communication through texts is impacting the language of the users. As per linguists, textese has a convention but it is not structured and it is less sophisticated. The reason that language in textese has evolved is that because the convention is very user friendly, to the extent that typing a textese appears to be as east as talking. Another good reason for the popularity of textese could be that a user can key in the message at very high speed. In other words, because of the stipulated length of text that is 160 characters – a user can pack lot more information when compared with grammatically correct English. Furthermore, a dee per analysis of textese indicates that it has numerous short-forms like LOL – Laugh Out Loud, ROTFL – Rolling On The Floor Laughing. A specific website lists over 1100 smileys and acronyms those form a part of textese. Expressions like LOL can be seen as a marker of accommodation, some call these as pragmatic particles as they are

Arimount Marketing Plan Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Arimount Marketing Plan - Assignment Example Therefore, it would be the role of the manager to look gather information on the quality of goods the company produces, sales of the product being sold may also speak a lot as demand is high the supply would also be high increasing the sale of his product. A researcher in a company would be to come up with better ideas, which would boost the sales to increase the sale or products or better ways to market their products to be appealing to the customer (Kotler, 2010) It is a company’s role to ensure that the company has reached the potential customers in the shortest time possible and use a convenient way possible. The company should ensure that through advertising their product the customer is enthusiastic to see the products that re being sold by the company. The customer should consider why he should choose the product over another. It is the role of the company to ensure that the customer is satisfied with the production. The company’s role is to ensure that the packaging of the product is appealing to the customers who is willing to purchase the product or a customer who are testing the product for the first time. The item should be widely acceptable to the area or region of sale in that it has what the consumer requires. After the customer has used the product, e.g. the standards should remain if they are of high standards and should be improved if they are of low standards. The product should have a unique character that other consumer products do not have so that the product would be preferred to the other products this will retain the customers loyalty (Kotler, 2010). The company should be able to market the products of consumption everywhere in the shortest time possible. The company can market its products in any segment that it believe that it is more profitable to the company. The segments should be

Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Case Study Example So, he measured high on the self awareness. Other than that, he did not control his emotions, so his score on self management is very low. He lost all hope for building his career in the company, and therefore took the extreme steps which speaks of his low score on self motivation. He did not understand Marilyn’s reason for disapproving his promotion, so he measured low on empathy. He took actions against the peers because of poor social skills which earned him bad name in the company. 2. Alex needs to improve his emotional intelligence particularly on the dimensions of empathy and social skills. He should have realized how abrupt he used to talk on the phone, and how often he refused to provide answers through emails when he was required to do so by his peers. He should make a written note of apology to the company’s owners and all of the management and peers. 3. Alex’s suspension and recommendation for his termination is very justified given his misconduct and lack of consideration for the reputation of the company.

Critical Self Reflection Of Social Work

Critical Self Reflection Of Social Work As feminist writer Starhawk said, Only when we know how we have been shaped by the structures of power in which we live can we become shapers (Staehawk, 1988) It is essential for every participant of social activity to know our own complex social locations, social position, and identities. By acknowledge how these factors are processed, we could understand what privilege we has hold and what oppression we are involve in order to improve our capacity for social work and practice anti-oppressively in our daily life. Features of Social Locations Our memberships are interactional, they are come into existence in and through relation to one another. (Ringrose, 2002) Knowing what futures of our social locations are and how they are consolidated and changed by each other could improve the depth of our self-awareness and warning us be critical. People usually ask me questions about my nationality, location of hometown, and my occupation when we start a conversation. Therefore, most of time I am identified as a female student who comes from a developing country of Southeast Asia. Broadly speaking, the reason why these questions have been asked commonly during our communication is because of these social location have a same feature which has a huge impact on our behaviors, accents, appearances. In the other words, they are visible and audible for people to recognized and identify. However, compare with these social locations, my political affiliations, religion are more difficult for others to indentify due to the abstraction of these social locations that make them relatively invisible and inaudible. The influence of these social locations are ideological. They have constructed our ideology, social norm and even have shaped our identity. My social locations are various, I am an oppressor while I am oppressed by others. Unde rstanding these features of my social locations could help me to aware the privileges, powers, and injustice that these social locations have been bought to me and to avoid these unfair privilege, power over and subjective feelings of injustice , in order to share power with others and practice anti-oppressively in daily life. Message of Identity from Society As Aristotle has pointed out in his book Politics, Man is by nature a social animal, (Stagiritis, 2000) human being always has demand to connect with others in order to gain a sense of belonging in society. They have been self-locating, identifying others and being identified base on their experience, education, religion, race, gender and more elements of society during their connection which means that our complex identity have been constructed by these elements. As an individual with multi-dimensional identity, I have been received various societal message in my daily life. Some of these messages are relate to my cultural background while some messages relate to other elements. I moved to a capital city which named Kunming from Shilin (a small town of southwest China) when I was young, for the first few days in my new school I wear the traditional Yi costume as what I did in my previous school in Shilin as an Yi people. However, my new classmates gave me a hard time because of I wear a dress with embroidered totem instead of wearing a normal dress as they did; my teacher punished me to stand on a chair with arms extended upwards in front of the entire school because I refused to take off my bracelet on the weekly assembly. Although I spoke fluently Mandarin and had been raised in an urban intellectual family as majority had, most of students even teachers in my new school shown their unwillingness to communicate with me and used your people to separated me from them. In my understanding, the difficulty to fell a sense of belonging and acceptance (James, 1991) causes the feeling of being isolation, it was a societal message about my identity at that time. The message are conveyed to me by isolating me physically and psychologically from the majority. After receiving the message I started to refuse to wear any Yi clothes and accessories to school because the painfulness from being isolated from normal people was unbearable for me as a teenager. During that time, my identity had been adjusted by following the process which has been pointed out by Smith, moving from unawareness and lack of differentiation to ethnic awareness and self-identification (Smith, 1991). Power and Privilege Our society is diverse in many aspects, such as gender, religion, age etc. These differentiations cause(s) fear, mistrust, and hatred (Uvic, 2004 ) and bring us advantage and disadvantage in our life. What is more, these differentiations have been used as justification for holding belief in the superiority of one way of being over another (Uvic, 2004) . We need to understand what type of power has been embedded in our social locations in order to practice anti-oppressively when we face the inequality and unjustice. Being a twenty-one year-old heterosexual female, I have been experienced power-from-within and power-with due to my complex social locations. As being defined as a young people, there are various resources and opportunities out there for me when I need them such as entertainment resources ,education opportunity etc. These elements provide me materially and emotionally supports to help me increase personal power in order to against the oppression from society. However, I should not feel happy with this unequal advantages because this institutionalized ageism does not provide equally opportunity for elder to take part in meaningful social activity or exercise their capacities in socially defined and recognized ways (Muallaly, 2002) . In order to resist privilege and unearned advantage, I have been participated in a volunteer group which works with elder and to power connect with them in order decrease the influences of institutionalized ageism on elder. Meanwhile, as being a heterosexu al female I have holding many invisible and visible privileges. For example, I will not be judged by people if I hand in hand and walk on street with my boyfriend; my sexual orientation will not be treated as immoral or abnormal. There are many social constructions are built base on the assumption that every individuals sexual attractions are to someone of opposite sex. Instead of seeing these privilege as advantage, we should not only see them as social resistances and avoid power-over in our practice, but also respect and support all non-transitional forms of sexuality (Uvic, 2004 ) by following Queer Theory. These unfair and unearned advantages will resist our society to develop comprehensively, humanely and justly and we definitely have the responsibility to be aware of diversity and never assume people around us. Purpose of Social Work It is essential for social worker to know the purposes of this profession because these purposes are the direction for us and provide clients with a constructive solution when we work with them. When I began this course, in my understanding the purpose of social work was improving the physical environment of individual as in a micro level and promote the justice of society as in a macro level. As my learning about this profession has been processing, my ideas of social work purpose have expanded. According to purpose for this profession which is defined by The National Association of Social Workers, the mission is promote or restore a mutually beneficial interaction between individuals and society in order to improve the quality of life for everyone (Dubois, 2004), this profession assists individuals to create a supportive social system that help clients to achieve their personal goals. Dubois and Krogsrud have mentioned about social work purpose in their book Social Work: An Empowering Profession, they said social workers strived to release human power in order to ensure the well performance for individual and to release social power in order to promote social injustice. ( Dubois, 2004) More specifically, the purpose in Micro level is to enhance clients ability for social functioning and to match individuals with favorable resources. From a macro perspective, the purpose is to stimulate the development of social justice. These purposes are leading entire profession to strive to create an better society. Social Justice Social justice is a key point to promote the fairness and equity in our social environment. Depending on the concept of this course, there are some elements which are necessary for social justice to exist. These elements are: acknowledgment of the connections between social with politic and economy (Uvic, 2004 ), awareness of social injustice, action and movement, fairness of policy, and equality of social opportunity. In order to promote the justice of social construction, I have positioned myself as a participant of social activity who has desire to against injustice and have responsibility to think critically, act anti-oppressively with belief in that everyone has right to share equal physical resources and to be benefited from comprehensive policy. However, there are might resistances stand in my way when I involve activities to fight for political justice and economic redistribution. These resistances could be lack of resources and effect of bureaucratization. In order to avoid the resistance from these two dimensions, I should not be afraid to question the policy and speak out to let government know what is needed by people. Also think and act critically instead of working hidebound. Bridget used her action to examine that everyone has ability to make difference in our society. We shall never give up our goal for working to promote justice in social system. As American social critic James Baldwin said, according to the way people see it, and if you can alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change the world. About This Profession Social Work is a profession which attempts to demonstrated the interconnectedness between individual changes and social changes (Uvic,2004). To some extent, the primary purposes could include unpacking the complicity both in societal structure and individual life. This profession should not position itself as an caring and help institution and stay in this image, this profession should stand out to reconnect the political with social (Uvic, 2004 ) and involve the economic redistrubution in order to ensure that everyone has equal worth, opportunity, and dignity in society. There are two questions I need to be answered, first question is how to act anti-bureaucratically in workplace and the second one is what can I do when there is no matching resources for clients. To practice efficiency, I need to get spiritual and technical supports from myself and co-worker, and people around me to point out what I did wrong. This activity from Art Journal helps me to understand myself better and h elp me to know why I choose this profession, it also help me to know what is boundary when I work with clients. Our society is not perfect, to some degree its awareness for diversity, injustice government policy and inequality distribution of physical resources are resisting the promotion of social justice. we have responsibility to understand clearly what our ideology perspective is and what power we have due to our social locations and identities. These could release human power and social power in order to enhance social functioning and social policy. Sometimes it is not easy to have the visible effect for promoting the quality of life to entire society, but it worth us to strive for and fight for. As a Chinese old saying goes: No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

The Greatest Literary Emblem of the Middle Ages Essay -- Literary Anal

In order to study the troubadours, it is of high importance to understand the context in which they flourished and developed, which was the Medieval Era. The Middle Ages is the period of European history that goes from the collapse of the Roman civilization to the beginning of the Renaissance, and it extends from about 500 to 1500 ca. (â€Å"Middle Ages†). This period is called the â€Å"Dark Ages† since it is regarded by the Renaissance scholars as a long interval of superstition, ignorance, barbarism, and social oppression due to the fact that the Medieval era was a fight to establish a new society independent from the Roman standards and philosophy. However, it is now acknowledged that it was a dynamic period, in which Europe built a new distinct cultural unit. Moreover, it profoundly reorganized the European political, social, economic, and most importantly cultural structures (â€Å"History of Europe†), but its effects greatly differ from country to countr y, and one of the most influenced countries was France, mainly because of its cultural, artistic (painting, architecture, literature), and philosophical enhancement. The main characteristic of the Middle Ages in France was the development of love and romance, mainly in the literary aspect. Nevertheless, only certain high-class and educated people could have this privilege, and the main representatives of this love and romance literary expansion, despite coming from all kind of social classes, were the troubadours because of their poetry, origin, and values. To begin with, it is important to remember that during the Middle Ages, the great majority of population was not educated, and some people could not even read and write, so nobody was able to produce literary works. Consequently, Ga... ...Britannica. Encyclopà ¦dia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopà ¦dia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 14 Mar. 2012. . "Bernard de Ventadour." Encyclopà ¦dia Britannica. Encyclopà ¦dia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopà ¦dia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 14 Mar. 2012. . Maccarone, Christian E. "Les troubadours: au-delà   des chansons d'amour." sssstrinakria.org. Centro Studi Storico-Sociali Sicilani. Web. 14 Mar. 2012. . "Chivalry." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6Th Edition (2011): 1. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 16 Mar. 2012. .