Southwest vs. Jetblue Airlines Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Southwest vs. Jetblue Airlines - Essay Example Southwest Airlines was first incorporated as Air Southwest Company on 15, March 1967. Its mission is to provide air transport to passengers within Texas State. However, Southwest Airline is currently operating in six states. It is serving over seventy cities, which enables the airline to make about three thousand three hundred flights daily. The porter’s five forces of the Airline industry with reference to Southwest Airline The first factor is the new entrant’s factor. Air industry is critical to economic growth and development. It is critical in any economy. Therefore, it is an industry perceived by many as highly lucrative. However, huge amount of capital is required to start air transport business and industry is riddled with high level risks. The industry also experiences complicated licensing, certification and regulations procedures, which makes it hard to penetrate. Furthermore, increasing cost of fuel makes it difficult for many people to venture it. The second factor is threats of substitutes. The substitutes to air transport are road, rail and water. Southwest Airline faces competition from road because most (80%) of its customers are domestic customers. If road transport improves, the airline may lose bulk of its domestic customers. Southwest Airline has been lobbying against the introduction of high speed rail transport services in the State of Texas. This is to prevent competition from substitutive high speed train services. Third factor to consider is the bargaining power of customers. Customers do not have a strong bargaining power in the air industry. As a result, they do not have a collective bargaining power to influence air prices. The fourth factor is the bargaining power of suppliers. Suppliers of aircrafts and spares are influential to prices making it difficult for operators to bargain. This is due to the standards on aircrafts and its spares that FAA imposes on operators. The operators must purchase genuine parts that are mostly expensive. The suppliers of fuel are few; therefore, they largely influence the prices of fuel. Airline operators do not have powers over the fuel suppliers and are left to develop ways of improving fuel efficiency. For example, Southwest Airlines introduced use of high pressure water to clean the engine, an exercise that improves fuel efficiency by 1.9 percent. The company has also managed to contain its employees through strong team coordination, open communication and promotion of work-life balance. Furthermore, the employees are also supported by top management. This has made employees proud of the company. Fifth factor to consider is the level of rivalry within the industry. This is among the real threats that can bring the industry down. Southwest Airline faces direct competition from JetBlue and AirTran Holdings, which are also low cost carriers. To minimize competition and increase its revenue base, the company acquired Muse Air in 1985, Morris Air in 1993, ATA Airlin es in 2008 and Air Tran Airways in 2011. Acquisitions enabled Southwest Airline to absorb key routes in the Pacific Norwest and acquire operating certificate as well as landing slots in LaGuardia Airport. However, the company failed to acquire Frontier Airlines thus lost Denver market. Strategic valuation method The strategic valuation method that is useful in valuing the company is the shareholder Value Analysis. Shareholder value analysis refers to financial analysis, which estimates the

Catcher in the Rye Essay Example for Free

Catcher in the Rye Essay The story takes place in Manhattan and is about a young boy named Holden Caulfield, it is about the learning experience that takes place and how an immature child tried to come to terms with multiple problems. In J. D. Salinger’s bildungsroman, Catcher in the Rye, Salinger utilizes the symbols, the red hunting hat; Allie’s catching mitt, and the ducks in central park to portray the theme that it is impossible to preserve natural innocence. Salinger utilizes the symbol of the red hunting hat to portray Holden’s loss of innocence and travel into adulthood. Firstly, when Holden is first mentioning the hat, â€Å"It only cost me a buck. I wore it, I swung the old peak way round to the back-very corny, I’ll admit but I liked it that way. † (17) Holden is talking about how he bought the hat and just wears it to express his own personality and recognizes that he likes to wear it in different ways. When he is explaining why he purchased the hat, he is trying to make people understand, he is constantly looking for acceptance from his peers and others, yet at the same time he tries to push people away by wearing the hat. This helps show that Holden is on his path to trying to figure out how he can stop the inevitable loss of innocence. Secondly, while walking down the street in the cold Manhattan weather, â€Å"My ears were nice and warm, though. That hat I bought had earlaps in it. And I put them on-I didn’t give a damn how I looked. Nobody was around anyway. † (53) As Holden is walking down the street, all he cares about is what he is feeling at that moment, just trying to stay warm and comfortable not caring about what others think. One can infer here that Holden doesn’t care too much about what others think, while this could be a facade to what he really feels inside, he tries to portray himself not caring about what others think and just wants to be happy. This continues to portray his path down the loss of innocence because as he starts to realize other people’s thoughts matter, he understands that he must give a little for the acceptance of others. Finally, towards the end of the novel when Holden angers Phoebe, â€Å"She wouldn’t answer me. All she did was, she took off my red hunting hat-the one I gave her- and practically chucked it right in my face. Then she turned her back on me again. It nearly killed me. † (207) Phoebe is angered by Holden’s immaturity and his lack of caring for others and crushes Holden’s last spirits toward innocence. With ties to the last person in the world crumbling, Holden begins to finally question his stance on life and must decide whether or not he is going to try and salvage the last relationship or completely isolate himself. Holden realizes that by his sisters actions and her disregard of the hunting hat, that he must grow up and this starts a chain reaction within him that could be a cause of his breakdown but it is unknown, Holden finally comes to terms with this loss of innocence and realizes that there is nothing that he can do to stop it. Allie’s catching mitt is also used in the portrayal of the loss of innocence in Holden and the characters around him. We are first shown the mitt when Holden is doing the composition on the catchers Mitt, â€Å" He had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere†¦he wrote them on it so that he’d have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up to bat. He’s dead now. † (39) This is the first time the reader sees Holden tear up and let some of his emotions get the best of him, he is talking of his dead brother Allie who meant a lot to him. One can infer that this was one of the more important relationships that Holden had and the loss of this relationship causes Holden to feel a series of symptoms and change the way he interacts with people. With the death of his brother Allie, Holden experiences for the first time, the lost of a loved one, one of the few people that he makes attachments with and this causes him to try and preserve the innocence within other children and even adults that he meets on his journey. The next time we see the glove, Holden is recollecting his past memories of Jane, â€Å"She was the only one, outside my family, that I ever showed Allie’s baseball mitt too, with all the poems written on it. † (77) Jane was another person who Holden allowed himself to get close to; he shows this by showing Jane his brother’s mitt. Holden is trying to get Jane close to him so that he can have someone in his life that is pure and cares about him, by showing her the mitt; he is revealing a part of him that no one outside of his family knows about. He sees the innocence in Jane and wants to try and preserve it; he wants to get close to Jane to keep her out of the adult world and not allow her to be corrupted by the world around her. The final time the glove is mentioned, Holden is having a flashback on when D. B. ants to prove a point, â€Å"â€Å"He made Allie go get his baseball mitt and then asked him who was the best war poet, Rupert Brooke or Emily Dickenson. Allie said Emily Dickenson† (140) This is one of the only times we see Allie alive and the whole family, besides Phoebe, together. Allie’s innocence is portrayed through the glove, when D. B. asks him which WWII author was better, one that was in the war or one that never saw a day in the war, Allie answers with the latter. This can be int erpreted as Allie seeing how the other author was not corrupted in the war and her work was more pure.

Police Force and Discretion :: Public Safety, Police Discretion

The degree of force that officers use is heavily influenced by police discretion in real-world situations rather than espoused by a certain agenda. Discretion can be classified into four different categories where administrators, the community, and the individual police officer exercise differing degrees of influence in decision-making. What is needed to help officer discretion is a central ethos that will guide discretion when all other rules fail to help. Normal force is distinct from legal and brutal force (Hunt, 1985). Legal force is taught in police academy. It pertains to being able to subdue, restrain, and control a suspect if the officer is threatened with great bodily harm. Legal force also encompasses the use of deadly force if justified. Normal force is learned when the officer hits the streets and is conditioned to buy more effective weapons, which produce more damage to the suspect. In the academy recruits are taught not to hit a person on the head or neck because of their vulnerability, but on the street officers must hit the suspect wherever they can to control them. Peer approval further justifies this treatment. Thus, when police use the necessary amount of force they are not held accountable for a needed increase, but in fact will be looked down upon by fellow officers if a rookie does not show the necessary aggression. Police use discretion through weighing the costs and benefits of each situation (Wilson, 1968). The helpfulness of their choice is much more important than obeying their duty or moral. Thus, when normal force is explained it is done under the pretense of justifiably. To recap, normal force is simply the force used under police discretion that is neither legally taught nor brutal (Hunt, 1985). Normal force is justified by taking responsibility for their actions, yet denying they were wrong because of situational or abstract events. At other times officers use excuses for normal force and recognize their use of force as inappropriate. They will recall emotional or psychological states as a reason for such inappropriate actions. Police discretion is structured and controlled by the kind of situation that the police must deal with (Wilson, 1968). Wilson (1968) delineates four different situations. Police-invoked law enforcement, citizen-invoked law enforcement, police-invoked order maintenance, and citizen-invoked order maintenance. In police-invoked law enforcement police initiate action against crimes that usually do not have victims (Wilson, 1968). Police Force and Discretion :: Public Safety, Police Discretion The degree of force that officers use is heavily influenced by police discretion in real-world situations rather than espoused by a certain agenda. Discretion can be classified into four different categories where administrators, the community, and the individual police officer exercise differing degrees of influence in decision-making. What is needed to help officer discretion is a central ethos that will guide discretion when all other rules fail to help. Normal force is distinct from legal and brutal force (Hunt, 1985). Legal force is taught in police academy. It pertains to being able to subdue, restrain, and control a suspect if the officer is threatened with great bodily harm. Legal force also encompasses the use of deadly force if justified. Normal force is learned when the officer hits the streets and is conditioned to buy more effective weapons, which produce more damage to the suspect. In the academy recruits are taught not to hit a person on the head or neck because of their vulnerability, but on the street officers must hit the suspect wherever they can to control them. Peer approval further justifies this treatment. Thus, when police use the necessary amount of force they are not held accountable for a needed increase, but in fact will be looked down upon by fellow officers if a rookie does not show the necessary aggression. Police use discretion through weighing the costs and benefits of each situation (Wilson, 1968). The helpfulness of their choice is much more important than obeying their duty or moral. Thus, when normal force is explained it is done under the pretense of justifiably. To recap, normal force is simply the force used under police discretion that is neither legally taught nor brutal (Hunt, 1985). Normal force is justified by taking responsibility for their actions, yet denying they were wrong because of situational or abstract events. At other times officers use excuses for normal force and recognize their use of force as inappropriate. They will recall emotional or psychological states as a reason for such inappropriate actions. Police discretion is structured and controlled by the kind of situation that the police must deal with (Wilson, 1968). Wilson (1968) delineates four different situations. Police-invoked law enforcement, citizen-invoked law enforcement, police-invoked order maintenance, and citizen-invoked order maintenance. In police-invoked law enforcement police initiate action against crimes that usually do not have victims (Wilson, 1968).

Methodology into preparing a business idea Essay

The aim of my project is to research a potential business venture to see if it would be feasible to open a sandwich shop situated at the bottom of the Station Road facing Wallsend Forum. In the beginning I intend for my sandwich shop to be a small, local business which I will eventually expand on if funds permit it. My business is being situated in Wallsend for many reasons. Firstly, I am from the area and know first hand that similar businesses in the area are extremely successful and I believe that by improving some of the more negative aspects of rival business I can make a success of the business. Secondly, the rent on a premises is a lot more reasonable in Wallsend, alternatively I could have chosen Newcastle City Centre, however after looking into the cost of renting an outlet I finally decided on Wallsend, as a property in Newcastle would cost a minimum of 5 times of what I could have in Wallsend, there would be a lot more business in Newcastle, but I could not afford to rent such an expensive property this early into the venture, however, in future it is something I may consider. I have chosen this area because it has a high population of 213,983, it is also linked to many main roads which has a huge amount of traffic each day which I feel will benefit my business. Wallsend also has a bus terminal and has 3 metro stations within walking distance, I believe this will greatly contribute to my business and generate a healthy custom. I will be able to research this by using methods such as questionnaires, surveys and conducting primary and secondary research into similar businesses in the area to compare them to get a good indication of costs and such. To see if my business venture will be successful I will need to conduct various types of primary and secondary research. This is so I can gather information about my type of business and estimate demand and such. All of this collated information will give me an indication of whether my business will be a success. I will be conducting both primary and secondary research as both of them pose benefits to my market research. Primary research will be beneficial because I can aim my questions specifically at my research objectives, therefore I will only obtain necessary information, there is no risk of having outdated information because all of the information will be current, I could also give my potential customers a preview of what type of products they can expect from my business by providing samples. However, there are also negative aspects of using primary research, for example, they can be very expensive and time consuming, organising samples and getting people to help survey will be costly and also time consuming. In addition, there is always a risk of interviewer and questionnaire bias, questions may be worded so it directs respondents to choose a specific answer, which will make the information collected invalid. Secondary research also has its advantages, it is often inexpensive and can be obtained for free, also if you have enough information from various similar businesses it can give a wide overview of the general market, and it is often based on large samples which is extremely beneficial if you cannot conduct a large enough survey yourself, it also often includes official sales figures. Similar to primary research, it also has its drawbacks, the data may be outdated which makes it irrelevant to the current day market, it is never specific to your business and could only contain a small amount of relevant information, if the information required does require a fee, then it can be very expensive however it will report on different kinds of market, including your own, again only providing a small amount of information relevant to your business. I could conduct my primary research in a variety of ways, I could use a postal survey, where I would deliver a survey through the post and expect the respondents to reply, this can be advantageous because it saves a lot of time and money, delivering a postal survey around the area of my business wouldn’t take as long as some other methods and I could do it myself rather than having to employ people to help. However, the amount of surveys I would receive back would be a small percentage of what I had handed out, which would render the process pointless, however if I stated that respondents would receive a free gift the response would be higher. I could conduct a face to face survey in which I would ask questions on the streets of Wallsend. The benefits of this would be that it would raise awareness of my business and create a curiosity amongst the respondents which is already a form of unintentional promotion, and also let my potential customers get to know information about the business before it opens, in addition, the data is quite simple to analyse and it wouldn’t take long to compile the data. On the other hand, this would be quite time consuming as a lot of people refuse to take part in street surveys, also I would need to employ others to help because I would not be capable of conducting a large enough survey to base any decisions on. Finally I could create a focus group, in which I ask groups of 6-8 consumers questions about their expectations of a sandwich shop and analyse their answers. This would be extremely informative and will give the option of interviewing 6-8 people all at the same time, which saves a lot of time. In contrast, it would be very difficult to organise a group of 6-8 people to discuss products and services and I would perhaps have to reward them for their participation, moreover, if my respondents are in a group they may not air their own opinion and just agree with the general consensus of the group which would make my data inaccurate. I have decided to conduct a face to face survey as I feel it would be the most beneficial to my business. Taking into account that I am a relatively small local business opening in an area which has similar businesses I think it would be extremely beneficial to create an awareness of the sandwich shop in advance of the opening. Moreover, the data can be analysed quickly and almost effortlessly. I have chosen this method over the other 2 I have previously mentioned because I feel it would cost the least, and in the first year of my business, costs are paramount. I need to find out potential customers expectations of a sandwich shop and what people expect to pay and what services they think are essential to the business being a success. My questionnaire will take place in Wallsend town centre, as that is where my business is based. When deciding who I want to take my questionnaire I had to look at sampling, I could conduct a random sample survey in which I question people of all ages, sizes, classes and so forth to ensure that I have covered every possible type of person that could be a potential customer, which will give me a representative conclusion based on the opinion of a wide range of different people rather than targeting a specific type. The disadvantage of this is that it can be very expensive and time consuming to pick people at complete random, for example from a telephone book. It can also be a very slow process, depending on the sample size. Instead of using this method I could use a quota sample, which in essence is interviewing anyone and everyone that comes along, similarly to random sampling in that age, size, classes etc, are irrelevant. This sampling method is extremely cheap and effective way of sampling because I can conduct this when and where I like, it is used by most businesses. The only drawback of this method is that your questionnaire may require a specific type of person to survey (men for sportswear for example) so if that were the case this method would be useless. I have decided to use quota sampling when conducting my survey because it is very cheap and flexible in terms of time consumption, which is a far more suitable solution than random sampling in where it would require a lot more work, manpower and time. In addition, my survey is applicable to everyone, as it is a service that everyone, regardless of characteristics, could use at some point.

Columbine Shooting Essay

Columbine high school was built in 1973 on a dirt road off a larger dirt road way out in horse country. It was named after the flower that blankets section of the Rockies. Hardly anybody lived near the school, but soon enough there were about 100,000 new arrivals that filled one continuous suburb with no town center: no main street, no town hall, town library, or town name. Littleton is what they called this quiet suburb where columbine lied several miles west from. Eric and Dylan called it Judgment Day. Monday, April 19th was the day columbine would erupt with an explosion killing hundreds of students and faculty. Eric read instructions to create bombs from the internet called The Anarchist Cookbook. The first step was to plant a bomb near Eric’s house, three miles from the school. That bomb could kill hundreds of people but was intended for only stones and trees. The attack was to begin with a decoy that would rock the neighborhood and divert police. There plan was separated in three acts. The first act would start with a massive explosion by using two bombs in the commons, which would have about six hundred students killed. The bombs would wipe out most of the lunch crowd and set the school ablaze. The bombs would be set out for maximum killing radius and would be planted near two thick columns supporting the second floor which would collapse after exploding. After the explosion, Eric and Dylan would start firing their weapons at whoever they see in sight. Each had a backpack and duffle bag to carry more weapons and explosives. There next step was to have bombs planted in their own cars in the school parking lot near the school exits that would detonate forty five minutes after the initial blast. The cars were placed near the ideal locations for police command, emergency medical staging, and news vans. The maximum body count they were planning on would be: nearly 2,000 students, plus 150 faculty and staff, plus who knows how many police, paramedics, and journalists. The bombs Eric and Dylan planted in the school had failed to explode, but that didn’t stop them from going in and opening fire. They took pipe bombs and threw them wherever they saw a big crowed and opened fire to anyone they saw. They both had trench coats on and Eric discarded his trench coat at the top of the stairs almost as soon as he began shooting. Dylan kept his on until he got to the library. Each costume change created another shooter that would confuse the students and faculty. Nate was a friend of Eric’s and seen something peculiar. He saw Eric walk into the building from the wrong parking lot at the wrong time, when he should have been walking out. Nate figured Eric and Dylan were up to something since he knew they had both been missing that morning. At this point students were running for their lives and finding classrooms they could hide in. no one really knew who the shooters were and didn’t know why they were doing such an attack. Even though Eric and Dylan were shooting whoever they find in sight, they were mainly looking for people with white hats on. People who wore the white hats at school were the jocks. Eric and Dylan had committed suicide once they saw empty halls and when the school looked abandoned. Before they shot themselves, the officers had discovered files on the boys. The cops had twelve pages from Eric’s website, spewing hate and threatening to kill. Dylan Bennet Klebold was born brilliant. He started school a year early, and by third grade he was enrolled in the CHIPS program which stood for Challenging High Intellectual Potential Students. Even among the brains, Dylan stood out as math prodigy. Tom and Sue were Dylan’s parents. His father couldn’t see his boy as the killer, saying â€Å"this was not my son. † Dylan’s service was done quietly with just fifteen people including, friends, family and clergy. The Klebolds were afraid to bury Dylan because his grave would be defaced. It would become and anit-shrine, so they cremated his body and kept the ashes in the house. Eric Dutro was evolving inside and the changes began to show in his sophomore year. Social status was important to Eric as he always made friends. People described Eric as nice, polite, preppy and a dork, but in sophomore year, he tried an edgier look with combat boots and all black outfits. He was breaking out of his shell and grew boisterous, moody, and aggressive. Eric was neither normal nor insane, he was a psychopath. He killed for two reasons: to demonstrate his superiority and to enjoy it. â€Å"Psychopaths are distinguished by two characteristics. The first is a ruthless disregard for others: they will defraud, maim, or kill for the most trivial personal gain. The second is an astonishing gift for disguising the first. It’s the deception that makes them so dangerous. You never see him coming (it’s usually a him – more than 80 percent are male. ) Don’t look for the oddball creeping you out. Psychopaths don’t act like Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates. They come off like Hugh Grant, in his most adorable role. † (Cullen, 240) Psychopaths take great personal pride in their deceptions and extract tremendous joy from them. Lies become the psychopath’s occupation. The truth does work, but they lie for fun. I have read stories about columbine before but reading this book has really enlightened me on such details that actually happened in this event. I didn’t know that there were bombs involved in this massacre until I read the book. Columbine was organized and well planned by high school students. Eric and Dylan planned this for nearly a year and half so they knew what they were doing. They made home video tapes saying their good-byes to their parents and apologizing to them about the trouble the columbine shooting might cause them. So they knew at some point they were going to either be killed or commit suicide. This impacted me because as it said in the book, the people who do these devastating events can be friends of mine and I wouldn’t even know it. They are people who act good to the public eye, but also have hidden secrets behind closed doors. I can’t imagine someone that is close to me going through this kind of tragedy. The question that was brought to mind was: why would someone do this? Why would two kids want to kill hundreds of people? What was the reason? Was it video games? Was it depression? Was it because they were being bullied and wanted payback? Was it because they were psychotic? I believe they had all of these problems. They were psychotic, Eric did have depression and was taking depression pills for it, and they might have been aiming for jocks because they were bullied by them.

Economic Environment 40 Marker Essay

Economic Environment 40 Marker Essay Economic Environment 40 Marker Essay The external environment in which businesses operate can have a significant effect on their success. To what extent do you think that the external environment in the UK is favourable for businesses at the moment? (40) The UK economy grew by 2.6% last year, the fastest pace since 2007, at which point the country was in a recession. The unemployment rate stands at 5.8% of the adult population. Although this is still high (1.91 million people are unemployed) it is the lowest in six years meaning that generally, consumers now have higher disposable income; this is particularly significant as average earnings including bonuses are now up by 1.8%, with wages rising faster than inflation. Inflation has also fallen to 0.5%, allowing for cheaper purchase of materials/supplies and more cost-effective production. However, the pound has weakened against the dollar and the euro, having implications for imports and exports. It could be argued that the UK environment is favourable for businesses at the moment in terms of Human Resources, as unemployment is high, meaning more people may be willing to work for a minimum wage. This allows businesses to reduce costs in areas such as wages, meaning they are more able to invest in other areas such as expansion in order to encourage growth. This will particularly benefit the economy as growth of businesses means a higher GDP for the UK due to increased output as a result of increased demand. High unemployment means that firms also have access to a wider pool of labour, allowing them to target a more specific demographic during the recruitment process. However, these people may not have the skills required, perhaps affecting productivity as well as quality, as goods may be made faulty or services may be delivered incorrectly. Issues with skills may be particularly significant as Rolls Royce are planning to make redundancies of 2,600 employees as part of a cost c utting programme to compete against bigger rivals such as General Electric. These are likely to have specialist skills, meaning they may struggle to provide skills for vacancies elsewhere. In addition, these people may only be able to take the job in the short term which will mean a business has to go through the recruitment process regularly. This will in the short term prove a cost to the business, something to be avoided during times of low demand as a result of unemployment or inflation. It therefore depends on Government intervention as this could lead to the implementation of education/training programmes for the unemployed, which will determine their skills set and their motivation to stay with a firm for the long term once employed. In turn, this will govern whether the employees are increasing costs for the business more so than they need to be, determining whether the UK environment is favourable for businesses in terms of HRM. The UK economic environment can also be considered favourable in terms of a firms marketing, as increased GDP indicates there is a high demand, allowing firms to market themselves as a brand based on pricing, something firms find difficult to do during a recession as consumers expect prices to be lowered. This could perhaps allow firms to increase profit margins so that profit could either be reinvested or distributed as dividends to shareholders, encouraging further investment. This increased investment could allow some firms to become much more efficient, creating a USP or even acting as a competitive advantage against other firms, which is particularly important in a growing economy as there will be a higher chance of business start-ups being successful. However, it could be argued that the UK environment is not favourable in terms of marketing as it is more expensive to advertise due to higher demand as a result of a higher disposable income. It may also be particularly difficult for businesses to differentiate themselves from other companies as most businesses will be advertising to try and increase

D.H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse Winner” Essays

D.H. Lawrence’s â€Å"The Rocking Horse Winner† Essays D.H. Lawrence’s â€Å"The Rocking Horse Winner† Paper D.H. Lawrence’s â€Å"The Rocking Horse Winner† Paper D.H. Lawrence’s â€Å"The Rocking Horse Winner† The novel â€Å"The Rocking Winner† shows an English woman who had no luck in her life. She was seriously haunted by the feeling of failure since her family was not doing well. For instance, we are told that there is nothing her husband could participate in and come out successful. The woman used to work as a commercial artist and thus, could not earn as much as she wanted. The family lived a high standard lifestyle that was above the income and it was noted that although, they had a high standard of living, anxiety was their companion especially for money. However, the children recognized this tension about money in the house and thus we are shown one child claiming to hear money whispering in the house. The book demonstrates that this English woman pretended to love her children so much, but deep down her heart, she felt nothing for the children. This is because, when she got married, she was after love; unfortunately, that love did not last and skinny kids were the outcome of her love (Lawrence, 1966). Therefore, she felt that those children were just forced on her. Although the neighbors and friends congratulated her for the wonderful care and love she had for her family, only her and her children knew the truth. Paul, the only son in the family, decided to get out of the house so that he could go and find some money because the family did not have enough money to sustain them. Therefore, Paul used his rocking horse to earn some money, which he gave to her mother. However, the thirst for more money within the family continued to be even stronger than before. Therefore, through this book we learn that because of the greedy nature of a mother over money, a child dies. This woman was never satisfied with money because she kept on yearning for more money, which made her son to use his power to find out the names of the winning horses, and thus he collapsed due to mental exhaustion. Within the family, they had a gardener who loved and respected Paul very much. This is because he realized Paul’s talent for picking winners and thus he had to tell it to Paul’s uncle Oscar. Bassett the Gardner was of great help to Paul because he used to work around the horses and racing and thus, he was helpful in giving Paul instructions when it came to placing bets. He also helped in saving Paul’s money safely until when his uncle got involved in the activity of horse racing. He was very interested and later on, he joined and became one of the participants where he could also bet some money particularly on a horse by the name Daffodil. They later earned some good money on this bet and Paul had to make a gift of about five thousand pounds to his mother in a private way through a lawyer. The house was stricken by poverty, and even though Paul tried all his best to know the name of the winning horse, he failed because he was exhausted; he became unconscious with brain fever. Unfortunately, he died after winning about eight thousand pounds for his mother who was never satisfied with money. Therefore, it has been argued that, the author of this book was trying to move away from realism and linking together a wider range of styles and topics. The entire book is concerned on the greedy nature of human beings. Wherever, there is greed and too much ambition, there are always misfortunes. For instance, in the novel, this woman was so greedy that he never realized the pain his son was going through just to satisfy her greed for money. References Lawrence, D. H. (1966). The Rocking Horse Winner. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing.

60 Best Research Paper Topics Great Ideas for Writing a Winning Paper

60 Best Research Paper Topics Great Ideas for Writing a Winning Paper Think over a topic for writing your research paper on? Look through the list of 60 research paper topics to find the idea. If you are looking for a list of good research paper topics, youve come to the right place. We have written some of them for you, just pick the category you like or need to write your research paper on and  choose the topic for yourself. Psychology Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Depression Borderline Personality Disorder in Females Borderline Personality Disorder in Adolescents Bipolar Disorder Anxiety Disorders Substance Use Disorder and Professional Athletes Meditation: What Role Does This Have in Psychology in the Year 2013? 8.Where in the World is Neuropsychology Headed? English and Humanities Religion and Conflict throughout American History The Life of Buddha Compared to the Life of Jesus How Would Shakespeare Be Different if He Were Born in the Year 2000? Mozart and Bach – Their Life and Times How to Write on a Controversial or Sensitive Topic Is That a Colon or Semi-Colon? The Development of Language Discuss Plato and His Theory of the Cave Science The Structure of Cells and Microbes Germs: What They Are and Why We Need Them What Is the Difference between a Medical Doctor and a Psychiatrist? What Is the Difference between a Medical Doctor and a Chiropractor? Is Acupuncture a Viable Alternative Medicine? Yoga and Modern Science What Would Life on a Colony on Mars be Like? Should the Rules of the National Football League Be Changed to Protect Players from Concussions? Is it True that You Can Make Statistics Say What You Want? Einstein Crazy Genius Newton and the Law of Gravity Discuss Why Modern Science is Evaluating Ancient Treatments for Improved Health World History: The French Revolution – What Was It about Marie Antoinette? The Cold War – US vs. Soviet Union Round One Why Did the Warsaw Pact Develop? The Magna Carte The Founding Fathers – Rebels or Freedom Fighters The Vision of the Founding Fathers The Middle East – The Conflicts and Parties 8.The Creation of Israel and How This Affected the Middle East The United Nations and the Security Council – Effective or Ineffective Who Was Galileo and Why Was He Important? Did Leonardo Da Vinci Invent the Airplane? Explain the Relationship between North Korea and South Korea Explain the Relationship between China and Japan What Is the Precipitant Event that Led to World War I? Explain the Rape of Nanking Law: How Does the First Amendment Affect Life in 2013? At Eight Years Old, Should a Child Be Charged with Murder? Drug Trafficking and Narco-States DEA v. FBI What Is the Most Important Recent Supreme Court Ruling? Has the Executive Branch Eclipsed the Judicial Branch? How Did Brown v.  Change The Board of Education in the United States? Texting while Driving – A Misdemeanor? How Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) Changed the Way We View DUI/DWI Should the Speed Limit Go Back to 55MPH? General: How Has the Cell Phone Changed Society? Have Computers Complemented the Office Environment and Led to a Reduced Work Week? How Has the Workplace Evolved since 1980? Performance Enhancing Drugs and Cheating Is the Rate Alcohol Is Absorbed into the Body the Same for a 100-pound Non-Drinker as It Is for a 175-pound Drinker? Why Is the Sand Disappearing on the Beaches of Miami? Great White Shark Attack Clusters – What Is Driving the Predators? Should you need assistance with your research paper writing, we are here to help. Just email your research paper instructions to our support staff and they will be ready to help. Even if you dont see any topic that you like, our writers are able to help you in your order form simply write that you need help with a research paper topic, and our writer will start coming up with different topics. Once you see the topic that you need, let us know and we will assign that specific writer to work on your project. We guarantee that you will enjoy the process. is the service you can trust!

REDBOX Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

REDBOX - Research Paper Example In the year 2009, Coinstar paid the other share holders of Redbox and McDonald’s and solely owned the company. Redbox has increased its kiosks and the locations in the United States from that of 2007. The number of the locations even surpassed Blockbuster, one of the leading companies. Mitch Lowe, the former Co-Founder of Netflix joined Redbox in the year 2003. Initially, he started as consultant for the company and then gradually he progressed as Vice President of purchasing and operation departments. And in the year of 2005, he was introduced as CEO of the company and in 2009 his name was announced as the President of Redbox. The year 2010 is remembered as the year from when the company started to rent Blue Ray movies in most of its kiosks (Redbox, â€Å"The History of Redbox†). Video rental has been attached with the US culture for over 30 years, yet Redbox has been successful in establishing its presence in the market as well as in the industry just within the period of last 5 years. The marketing strategies adopted by Redbox emphasizes mostly on customer acquisition and increasing distribution. Marketers decided on using the color red to attract people’s attention for about a decade since its inception since red is the color which one’s eyes recognize faster. And this has become their signature. They have even focused on keeping the rate of the DVD provided for rent low comparatively and is charged per night basis. Since watching movies are enjoyable to people belonging to different age groups, the target market is huge in size. Redbox has always considered the interest of its customers as high preference, the renting price of the movies is always kept low to accommodate maximum customers from different economical groups. Varieties of DVDs belonging to different genres are another marketing approach of the company to meet the need of the customers. They have always made sure to keep updated videos and recent releases to hold

How Parthian Kingship Evolved and Developed Essay

How Parthian Kingship Evolved and Developed - Essay Example The essay "How Parthian Kingship Evolved and Developed" talks about the royal image of the Parthian kings the study of which has been aided through the study of the coins of the earlier Arsacids in the mid-second century BCE. When it comes to royal identity display, Mithradates used various ways to legitimize their rule through certain identity projection. Dynastic legitimization enabled him to get attached to the former rulers in the Arsacid line. With this regard, Mithridates managed to show that he was rational next in line. Through idolizing his father and not Arsaces I, he was guaranteed of a godly ancestor. Through his usage of the Arsacid name, he managed to position himself in the line of the Parthian empire development. As a result, it gave Mithradates a firm identity as a Parthian, whereas allowing other communication means and culture open. It is viewed that the obverse faced similar way as obverses of the Seleucid faced. The diadem in various cultures had a meaning was adopted by Mithradates connected him with distanced him from the population of the Greek. The symbol of the beard was a vow for victory among the Parthian culture. Parthian coinage transformed from the traditional shape to something meaningful for Seleucid coinage and use of other cultural symbols to appeal to a greater audience. For this to work, certain conditions had to be fulfilled. The cultural elements had to be known by the targeted people and that the occupants of the empire were required to associate with their ruler.

What is good marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

What is good marketing - Essay Example disturbing situation leads to a viable business opportunity, how we can follow up without appearing exploitative?’ (Lears, 1995, p.78) It is only through a satisfactory and conscientious introspection that the often ethically dodgy marketing industry can make amends. According to a leading British management scholar, a good marketing approach would translate to the company â€Å"pursuing the new opportunity carefully and raising awareness of the issue without tying it directly to a sensitive incident. They need to set the stage by building awareness of their overall positioning among a horizontal audience†. (Krebsbach, 2006, p.30) Unless such ethical considerations are catered for, marketers will not be able to achieve good marketing standards. Ethical marketing is a phrase much bandied about, and at one level, it appears a genuine concept. However, skeptics suggest that â€Å"brands seizing on the fad for an ethical bent are merely displaying a selfish reaction to consumer pressure, which, while dressed up in the guise of saving the earth, is simply intended to keep profits flowing† (Campbell, 1999, p.106). But in spite of all the criticism one can attach to the marketing industry as a whole, some corners of the industry is trying in earnest to move towards acceptable marketing standards. However, unless the basic motive of marketers is modified, there won’t be any perceptible change in the prevailing situation. And the term â€Å"good marketing† will continue to remain an oxymoron. What gives hope is the invention of the concept ‘social marketing’. It is defined as â€Å"the application of commercial marketing technologies to the analysis, planning, execution and evaluation of programs designed to influence the voluntary behavior of target audiences in order to improve their personal welfare and that of society†. (Bloom & Novelli, 1981, p.83) Commercial marketing, on the other hand is defined as the understanding, targeting and advertisement of

Positive Accounting Theory Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Positive Accounting Theory - Research Paper Example The predictions of real world situations help small businesses in choosing the appropriate accounting policies that would help them in advancing. The predictions of positive accounting theory with regards to the real world situation go a long way in assisting firms to react positively to new standards of accounting introduced by the legal bodies. Moreover, the overall objective of the positive accounting theory is to enable firms to predict and understand their accounting policies choices. The theory also puts into consideration, the economic consequences of the policies on the firms and the economy in general. Positive Accounting Theory Small businesses organize their operations in an efficient manner using the positive accounting theory, which helps firms in maximizing economic opportunities for growth and survival in the business world. Due to the need for business operations efficiency, firms will need to minimize contract related costs. Ordinarily, contract related costs include negotiation costs, monitoring and renegotiation costs with regards to accounting variables in terms of financial ratios and net income accounting information. Minimization of contract related costs fully relies on the mandate of a firm in choosing the most appropriate accounting policies with regards to its operations. ... environment, appropriate accounting policies and contract related costs minimization may be comprised by the opportunistic interests of the company’s management. Political cost hypothesis The political environment is proved to interfere in business operations in many cases, thus affecting managerial decisions with regards to accounting policies. The more a company faces political costs, the greater the chances that managers of a particular firm will choose accounting policies that alter current reported earnings to future expected earnings. This is mainly because current reported earnings that depict high levels of profits will certainly lead to political interferences that may influence incorporation of new government regulations and tax charges. These interferences are relevant to both small and large businesses though growth and stability of small businesses may be greatly hampered as compared to large entities that are stable. Small Businesses Positive accounting theory ap plications help managers in spearheading growth and development of small businesses, which play an important role of creating employment and growth of Gross Domestic Product. Governments such as the United Kingdom federal government have enacted policies and programs that assist small businesses to develop. Strategies have been outlined by governments of developing countries and trade organizations to facilitate growth of small businesses. Banks have also played a big role in growth and development of enterprises through loans and involvement in policy formulation and innovations. Moreover, best accounting policies that have been practically efficient in spearheading corporate development have been implemented. The existing variations in different economies directly impact on the differences

Talent leadership Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Talent leadership - Essay Example gh performance talent leadership is attained by using the critical roles in talent leadership aiming at success, and in this part experience matters a lot. Members are skilled with the following attributes; good relations with other team members, able to compel clear vision and goals well coordinated roles and relationship, with good accountability. The team tends to have a positive atmosphere, effective methods of communications, good in making the decision, and leaders participate fully. The graph below represents the leadership performance on the y-axis and the leadership potential on the x-axis. Combination of both axis helps in explaining the high performance in an organization when following the leadership talents to maintain his performance. High performance model in an organization is talent leadership. They are much effective where the members have a set goal and knowing their purpose. Leadership talents form the basis of the high performance in an organization or a business . On the other hand, experience contributes a lot in maintaining the performance. In this model, it is a proper to state that, the level of talent leadership in the organization is high, and skills to this are also highly considered since the organization need to prosper and maintain the highest performance from its competitors. In my model, there are more skilled executives from the lower grounds as compared to other models. For instance, a model may only consider Performance of talent leadership in high levels and put less regard on the lower part of it.

IMT Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

IMT - Case Study Example , he was walking in a hornet’s nest and any single approach from the four options he came up with may have had detrimental impact on the performance of the company if not cautiously implemented. In general, he did a great job when it comes to the understanding of the tasks as well as the prevailing environment in the companies. He also strived to be honest with June, his superior, in his feedback and recommendations. CMCI’s statement is not inspiring enough. A mission statement should not come out as an old novel which lacks both sense of direction and purpose (Neto 24). However, after reading Fort Wayne MIS Directions and Objectives Statement, more light is provided on the direction the company was heading to. The latter talks about the company being structured and with some reasonable level of risk taking. Considering the difference in timelines when the two were written, they can both be said to combine well in giving some form of common management tool. The two statements appear to addressing the same issues with the organizational set up. It is worth pointing out that reading Fort Wayne MIS Directions and Objectives Statement maps it out more clearly than CMCI’s statement which has limited vision and is not comprehensive. Over the last five years, CMCI has been experiencing several developments. This is in terms of expansion through acquisitions. In order to reach out to a larger market. The business has acquire several businesses both within and outside USA. In all these entities, the leadership and the management structures have remained decentralized. This expansion and leadership structures will for sure impact on the overall system architecture of the Fort Wayne Plant. Four options were suggested. The first one was the centralized computing. This involved relying on single networks within each of the companies. The advantage of this proposal is that it allows the company to have more control over its operations (Khosrowpour 53). The shortcoming

Talent leadership Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Talent leadership - Essay Example gh performance talent leadership is attained by using the critical roles in talent leadership aiming at success, and in this part experience matters a lot. Members are skilled with the following attributes; good relations with other team members, able to compel clear vision and goals well coordinated roles and relationship, with good accountability. The team tends to have a positive atmosphere, effective methods of communications, good in making the decision, and leaders participate fully. The graph below represents the leadership performance on the y-axis and the leadership potential on the x-axis. Combination of both axis helps in explaining the high performance in an organization when following the leadership talents to maintain his performance. High performance model in an organization is talent leadership. They are much effective where the members have a set goal and knowing their purpose. Leadership talents form the basis of the high performance in an organization or a business . On the other hand, experience contributes a lot in maintaining the performance. In this model, it is a proper to state that, the level of talent leadership in the organization is high, and skills to this are also highly considered since the organization need to prosper and maintain the highest performance from its competitors. In my model, there are more skilled executives from the lower grounds as compared to other models. For instance, a model may only consider Performance of talent leadership in high levels and put less regard on the lower part of it.

Human Karyotyping (Biology) Lab Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Human Karyotyping (Biology) - Lab Report Example Any deviation in the normal pattern could be ruled out as a change that affects health and development of the individual. It is evident that human cells normally contain 23 pairs of chromosomes. Hypothesis: If there is an increase or decrease in the number of chromosomes, the process is called aneuploidy; it directly affects the development of the organism. These changes occur as a result of non disjunction of chromosomes during the process of meiosis. As a result one of the daughter cells receives either extra or insufficient chromosomes. Variables: The common form of aneuploidy is trisomy, which implies the presence of three copies of the chromosome in cells in place of normal two copies. In Klinefelter’s Syndrome where the sex chromosome is present in extra copy resulting in XXY, where as if the trisomy occurs in autosome like in the case of Down Syndrome trisomy of 21st chromosome occur and if this trisomy occur in 13th chromosome then it results in Trisomy 13 Syndrome resulting in cell with 47 chromosomes instead of usual 46. Methods: Cut the homologous chromosomes. Arrange then on construction paper in descending order of their size. Glue them when arranged as in the figure A. any additional chromosome is found match with its homologue to find out which chromosome is having additional copy. Arrange all the pairs of chromosomes with shorter end towards top and longer one towards the bottom. Mark them with the marker pen; rule out the genetic condition of the Karyotype. Raw data: chromosomes condense during the process of cell division and are therefore visible under light microscope. In Karyotype cells are stained with Giemsa dye. Dark and light band pattern is observed. Metacentric chromosomes have centromere in the center or near the central part of the chromosome. Acrocentric: the centromere is near the end of the chromosome. Telocentric: centromere is terminally located. Chromosomes

Healthcare Analysis Essay Example for Free

Healthcare Analysis Essay 1. Differentiate among the terms strategic management,strategic thinking, strategic planning, and managing strategic momentum. Which of these activities is most important in a healthcare organization and why? ANS: Strategic management consists of the analysis, decisions, and actions an organization undertakes in order to create and sustain competitive advantages. strategic management is concerned with the analysis of strategic goals (vision, mission, and strategic objectives) along with the analysis of the internal and external environment of the organization. Next, leaders must make strategic decisions. These decisions, broadly speaking, address two basic questions: What industries should we compete in?How should we compete in those industries? These questions also often involve an organization’s domestic as well as its international operations. And last are the actions that must be taken. Decisions are of little use, of course, unless they are acted on. Firms must take the necessary actions to implement their strategies. This requires leaders to allocate the necessary resources. Strategic thinking is considered a key thought process of strategic management framework; is defined as the generation and application of unique business insights and opportunities, to create competitive advantage for a firm or organisation. It can be done individually, as well as collaboratively among key people who can positively alter an organisations future. Group strategic thinking create more value by enabling a proactive and creative dialogue, where we gain other peoples perspectives on critical and complex issues which is an important benefit in todays highly competitive and fast-changing business landscape. Strategic planning is an organizations process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. In order to determine the direction of the organization, it is necessary to understand its current position and the possible avenues through which it can pursue a particular course of action. Generally, strategic planning deals with several key questions like 1 What do we do? 2 For whom do we do it? 3 How do we excel? Strategic momentum is the tendency to maintain or expand the emphasis and direction of prior strategic actions in current strategic behaviour. The most important role as leader of an organization is strategy. The best way to sustain the momentum is by following the guidelines of the Essentials for Successfully Implementing the Strategic Plan and to continue to deploy the small group of people who share the vision and are engaged in helping you implement it. According to me strategic management is the most important activity in a healthcare organization, because a well-formulated strategy can bring various benefits to the organization in present as well as in future. 1 Strategic management takes into account the future and anticipates for it. 2 A strategy is made on rational and logical manner, thus its efficiency and its success are ensured. 3 Strategic management reduces frustration because it has been planned in such a way that it follows a procedure. 4 It brings growth in the organization because it seeks opportunities. 5 With strategic management organizations can avoid helter skelter and they can work directionally. 6 Strategic management also adds to the reputation of the organization because of consistency that results from organizations success. 7 Often organizations draw to a close because of lack of proper strategy to run it. With strategic management organizations can foresee the events in future and that’s why they can remain stable in the market. 8 Strategic management looks at the threats present in the external environment and thus organizations can either work to get rid of them or else neutralizes the threats in such a way that they become an opportunity for their success. 9 Strategic management focuses on proactive approach which enables organization to grasp every opportunity that is available in the market .2. List, describe, differentiate, and provide examples of the different levels of strategic management. ANS: 1 Corporate level 2 Divisional level 3 Organizational level 4 Unit level Corporate level strategies addresses questions like,†what business should we be in.?† For example if we take Trinity, what business should we do..? Health care, including hospitals, long term care units, hospices etc. The other question would be what other options should Trinity consider like mental health centers. Divisional level strategies are more focused and provide direction for a single business type. For Example Trinity Health, strategies must be developed for separately for hospital division, out patient units, hospice care etc.. how many hospitals are optional .. or what markets are available for new chain of hospitals. Organizational level Strategies includes strategies made at an individual organizational level like each hospital in Trinity’s hospital division may develop their own strategies depending upon the present market conditions. Unit level Strategies support organizational strategies through accomplishing various objectives. Unit operational strategies may be developed within departments of an organizations like a hospital with different units, example Medicine department, Surgery unit or paediatric unit etc

Tracking Developments in Media Industry

Tracking Developments in Media Industry Abstract These days the media business is witnessing the next structural transformation in its business model. Due to the reduction of revenues[1] from printed media and advertisements, industry giants are looking for other ways for penetrating additional revenues. The traditional strategy of cost reduction that was previously widely applied does not seem to be sustainable. On the contrary, most key players in the media world see the biggest opportunity in the invention of new models which will contribute to the boost of revenues. To a large extent media executives agree that monetization of online content is the decision they should go for more insistently[2]. One of the reasons why online monetization is a financially attractive way of growth is that, it has zero marginal cost, and as opposed to print media, revenue increase will not induce proportional increase in costs[3]. Another advantage which online news have compared to the traditional printed media is that they can provide news in r eal time regime which is extremely important in this particular industry as â€Å"news is very costly and at the same time highly perishable product†[4]. So far there have been some attempts of online monetization like the Kindle and micropayments but these strategies cant balance the all the losses that the industry bears because of the before mentioned reasons. Up to date, unfortunately for the industrys decision makers, choosing the right model for online monetization was not the only challenge they had to face. Challenges like search engines, which are generating their content and giving it out to customers for free, are not easy to overcome. In fact, bloggers and social networks like Facebook and Tweeter could be considered as posing similar risks for traditional media companies. However in chapter 4 we will see that the attempts of transforming these risk bearing factors into opportunity and getting some kind of revenues from them has started, which logically should lead us to some type of â€Å"business to business† model which will become beneficial for both parts. In this thesis, because of different reasons[5] I will not claim to have found the ideal model for content monetization, but rather will present several alternative models for monetizing online media content, and whats more important, will discuss the most successful models employed thus far which are applied by leading players in the industry. I will compare their features to each other, analyze their advantages and disadvantages. I will also look empirical data of results of each model to give the reader a better sense of each models financial success and the importance of online content in their business, to have better understanding what role content monetization might mean for these news providers. Besides I will help the reader to have knowledge about the obstacles which should be taken in consideration by stakeholders, if they want to find the best match pay model for their news web-site. 1. Introduction Throughout its history the media business, which is one of the most dynamic and fast-developing industries, has passed through many development cycles, each prone to tremendous changes in terms of strategy, structure and model it operated with. The reasons of these changes in different times were different processes taking place in parallel, e.g. advances of post-delivery system, facilitating transportation and logistics around the world, various technological innovations etc. However, without any doubt, the emergence of the Internet and the subsequent development of digital media is the greatest change of at least last two decades. It has once again revolutionized the whole industry dramatically, more than any previous development. Currently we are witnessing a transformation process which might become a ground for the conceptual change of the whole media industry. â€Å"Due to the reduction of revenues[6] from print media[7] (one of the reasons of this is decreased circulation of print newspapers, Exhibit 1) and online advertisements, industry giants have started to explore new ways to restructure their portfolios of income, and how to make their readers pay for the information they get online†[8]. The latest financial crisis played a role in accelerating this process. The downturn of revenues pushed the media companies to sharpen cost cuttings first of all indicated by the massive layoffs of the staff. However as many industry experts like freelance photojournalist Mike Fox believes, massive layoffs itself is not a sustainable strategy for the future[9]. The same view is shared by management consulting firm Booz Company in their research about the media industry. They admit that cost cutting is an imp ortant tool for managers, but in order to stay capable of growing in the long run, companies cant focus only on the expenditures side of their income statement.[10] Media executives are still optimistic about the future. As the survey in the same research from Booz Company shows, â€Å"most of the respondents (nearly 70%) believe that their companies are financially healthy. The which even higher to 80 percent when it comes to the opinion of integrated players (Exhibits 2), and surprisingly just one forth of the surveyed executives expected they would meet the end of recession with a deteriorated situation (Exhibit 3). Moreover, more than half of media executives (57%) believe that they still hold the wheels to control situation despite financial crisis and think that with structural trends developing in the industry they can outperform the negative results of economic downturn. Print executives are even more optimistic, this opinion is shared by 67 percent of them†. Booz Co sees the future of media companies in their ability to identify the markets where they can compete successfully and the business models which will help them to do s o. In the June of 2009, at the Cable Show[11] in Washington D.C, American News Corps owner Rupert Murdoch gave a speech, which also covered the current challenges of media industry, where he specifically underlined the inevitable need of content monetization. He underlined that times when people where reading news online for free should be over, and thus gave a hint to the whole industry that the process of â€Å"online content monetization† is not only non-reversible process, but indeed it should accelerate whether somebody likes it or not. Murdoch mentioned that only online ads cannot cover media companies costs and named New York Times, as a vivid example of that. NYT has one of the most popular U.S newspaper websites, but still their online ad revenues are not sufficient for cost coverage[12]. The signal form the industry guru was correctly understood by other giant players of media world and many of them like Axel Springer and New York Times[13] already second time, started thinking how to charge their readers for online news in the way not to harm online traffic and ad revenues. Finding the balance among these two will be the biggest challenge for the â€Å"followers of the trend†. In the process of monetizing online media choosing the right type of model which will fit to one or another news providers overall strategy and values is a big deal of question. Currently most news online is free, but there are some existing newspapers successfully charging their readers at least for the part of the information they provide to them. 1 shows the increased consumer spending (black curve) and penetration (grey curve) in online content. The research conducted by Online Publishers Association shows the same trend, that the money spent by consumers on online content in United States increase from 1.31 billion USD in 2002 to 1.78 billion USD in 2004, which meant annual growth rate of 17%. However this growth occurred in the entertainment area such as adult material, music, gaming and sports[14]. Currently, among them most successful in terms of revenues generated from online media content, are American The Wall Street Journal and the British Financial Times. Both of these newspapers are providing financial news and are most direct competitors of each other. Finance is one of those few areas which experts consider possible to monetize. The Booz Co research mentioned before makes focus on prior experiments of publishers who tried to monetize content and boost sales with which such an innovative tools as Kindle (Exhibit 4) sales, multi-title subscriptions and micropayments are, but as the results show these methods cant regain all the revenues lost which the media industry faced in the last two years. It also shows that inevitable steps are needed from the whole industry to look for new business models and as the survey in the same research shows, media executives expect most increase of revenues from the innovations in the digital media, from the new innovative models. (Exhibit 5). Expectations towards online monetization is a great, at least from the side of news providers, however the way on which they will have to go does not seem smooth and easy. There are various challenges monetizing volunteers will have to deal with; on the one hand there is a problem of search engines and bloggers â€Å"stealing† news from their web sites and offering them to readers on aggregate web-sites, and on the other hand there is a psychology of people and understanding their personal motivations, what would make them to pay money in online news. Furthermore, it will not be easy to make people pay for the information which they were used to get for free previously[15]. However despite all challenges and obstacles which is expected for industry players, Booz Co concludes that process of media digitization is on its way and nothing can stop it. Mathias Dà ¶phner comes up with same opinion: â€Å"I do not share this kind of pessimism that content business is dying. The opposite is right. Thats the tremendous opportunity through the digitization.†[16] One more factor which theoretically should give more hope to media magnates is psychological: as various studies about personality drivers during online purchase show, the experience of using internet and reading news online are positively correlated with purchase intention. Once the usage of internet and reading news online is a growing tendency in current reality, and the age of internet usage is also shifting fast, we can say that time works on media companies. In this research I will analyse existing online paying models which successfully operate and give the hope to industry players for the â€Å"brighter† future in that prospect. 2. Review of search methodology The aim of this thesis is to find out the features of existing paid models in online news which are already operating successfully. I will also try to measure their effectiveness/importance by various criteria, both objective such as existing financial and quantitative data, and also more partly-objective, such as different expert opinions[17]. The research will be developed in three main parts: Review of types of content which can be monetized, where people show some willingness to pay money (or are already paying) As related to the previous chapter, analysis of the personality drivers and its importance while consumers conduct online purchase Analysis of existing successful models, their features and their effectiveness in terms of empirical results For the sake of development of this three-pillar structure, the information will be obtained through various sources such as existing literature researches, articles, blogs, expert opinions and the consulting project ran by me and my classmates during our practice project[18]. 2.1. Sources for identifying online-chargeable content and consumers personality drivers The biggest contribution for the author in understanding of this issue were insights from consulting project workshop conducted by the ESMT Practice Project of which the author was a team member[19] in the late 2009. During this project, besides analyzing already available literature regarding topic, the team interviewed different kind of experts and also ran a representative survey among 300 German online readers to understand the areas where customers showed some willingness to pay. According to the results, there are not many areas which can be monetized, but only: Deeper analysis of specific articles as an addition to the more general one Old archives; plus specific interest areas of some readers Local news Online sports events The point is almost completely shared by Mathias Dà ¶phner, the CEO of German media company Axel Springer, who held a discussion around the topic at Monaco Media Forum 2009: â€Å"There are not many areas where people are willing to pay money: 1) This is finance, which is related to power; 2) Plus sports or games 3) Regional environments, people around you; 4) And then we are coming to two existential areas: sex and crime, or love and death. â€Å" â€Å"These are areas where people are generally interested in and why should that change in digital business?† asks Dà ¶phner rhetoric question. The CEO of Axel Springer also commented the fact that currently most news online is free and called this fact a â€Å"structural mistake† which has to be corrected step by step. According to Dà ¶phner there is not need of revolution, once most appropriate rules and procedures in legislation already exist. They just need some moderation and then execution. Continuing on the issue Dà ¶phner summed up with the hope that in the long run, for hundreds of years, people are willing to pay for things they are interested in. â€Å"Commodity news will be for free, but special information, added value services, exclusive information should be charged†. Currently, there are already obvious movements in the industry towards fixing the â€Å"structural mistakes† Mr Dà ¶phner talked about. This will be discussed more detailed in chapter 3.2, named â€Å"challenges†. 2.2. Personality drivers of consumers to purchase online Understanding and analyzing consumer drivers while conducting online purchase, is critical for building prominent, profitable business model. However until today there is no perfect study in the area which could claim on being perfect in identifying and analyzing of all motivators which make consumers to pay money online, and whats more important, all researchers would agree on that claim of this study. One of the best researches in this field conducted by Wang et al claims that the main factors which affect consumers willingness to pay money online and are positively correlated with the one, are consumers perceived convenience, essentiality, added-value and service quality. However another research on the same topic e.g. from Choi, Lee and Soriano focuses on following factors: perceived consequences after purchase of product, easiness of use of internet, social factors such as environment around person, satisfaction of the reader after purchase and existing alternative sources to get the same particular information. As we see on this example two group academics have completely different approach and beliefs towards one topic. These two researches are clear evidence how diverse is different researchers approaches to the issue. To all of these factors I looked also form the prospective of researches which are dedicated to analyzing a bit broader field consumers purchasing drivers in whole online market rather than only in online media. In these researches, some of above mentioned factors are considered to be important but others are doubted. Its hard for someone to persist himself not to criticize some of the factors mentioned above, e.g. the word â€Å"perceived† is already very dubious and at the same time very subjective, however very important one. As Barkhi, Belanger and Hocks claim in their â€Å"model of the determinants of purchasing from virtual stores†, the notion perceived/perception has already enormous importance itself, as it defines consumers later attitude towards whole online purchase procedure. To continue analysis, factor such as social community is neglected in Bosnjiaks research, where he referring to Senecals 2005 research claims that recommendations made from close community make decision making process more complex but it does not affect final choice of consumer. Regarding service-quality we can say that, the word quality itself already induces some confusion because its pretty subjective notion. For different people quality might mean different things. For some people service-quality might mean the urgent delivery of hottest news and the exclusivity of this information, whereas for another person the quality of service might be associated with deeper analysis of the article or the easiness of ways to pay money online. Such an arguing can continue further, but what is more important, arguable are not only factors on which researchers build their different models, but also some general statements which are made by them. For example, the work of Wang et al claim the business model is sustainable if revenue-generating method is accepted by majority of the potential customers. However despite all the respect towards the authors and research itself, such a claim can easily become a reason of discussions, because still, the success of any model depends on the ideal proportion of ad revenues and online subscription revenues and for different newspapers the ideal conversion rate of readers to paid customers might be different. Even this research itself contradicts to its statement when brings an example of Wall Street Journal Online and Hoovers Online telling that they managed to make e-content portal profitable by only 10% of conversion rate. While conducting our consulting project, we also got results th at some high circulated newspapers would make their portals profitable even by 3% conversion ratio. Further more, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, has only 0,8% conversion rate of subscribers on its niche site for hardcore Green Bay Packers fans, making revenues of 600,000 USD annually. In other words, depending on the content offered by particular newspaper, and the number and type of readers they have, the effective proportion of online content and ad revenues should be found. More analysis should be conducted to understand the price of lost customers amount versus converted ones and the ideal balance of subscription revenues versus lost ad revenues. To this issue has dedicated his discussion Jeff Jarvis, on the blog-web BuzzMachine. Jeff Jarvis is an American Journalist, former television critic, editor, publisher and columnist. Among the companies he has been working are: New York Daily News, San Francisco Examiner, New York Times Company, MediaGuardian a supplement of British newspaper The Guardian. Besides he is an associate professor at the City University of New Yorks Graduate School of Journalism directing its new media program. He is also creator of weblog BuzzMachine[20]. Jeff Jarvis in his article about paid content published on Weblog BuzzMachine is more persuasive about the complexity of the issue[21] and based on his vast experience highlights for the readers how many different factors should be taken in consideration for identifying one or another model for particular newspaper. For those who will catch in Jeff Jarvis approach some â€Å"sense and consciousness† will become clear that based only on the analysis of psychological traits of people and their purchasing drivers, it will not be easy to find an ideal model, and that the issue needs rather practical approach. Findings of Jeff Jarvis will be discussed more detailed in the 5.1 chapter named â€Å"Expert opinions and Conclusions†. Before moving to the following chapter, we should conclude the started topic and mention that there is still needed some research in the area of personal motivators for online purchase, in order we could claim by 100% confidence that we are using the best model for identifying the online paid model. 2.3. Discussed models and criteria for their comparison Once we are analyzing the existing models, the criteria for assessment of one or another method is the time of their existence and their results shown throughout their lifetime. Besides looking at the thematic differences in the features of the models both in Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) models, we will look at their financial results, their generated income through online sales and he dynamics in online subscription amount. The biggest attention the author paid was to the models of Financial Times and Wall Street Journal as the most successful financial players in B2C business. In addition, the author took a look at Bloomberg and Reuters as successful players of B2B model. New York Times was an interesting case for the author because it is a case, when after first unsuccessful trial, they are going to try monetizing online content already second time. Taking in consideration their prior experience it should be important to track which model they will choose for the second attempt. Finally, the author took a quick look at some other examples of successful and unsuccessful attempts of monetizing online content so far. Information was gathered from reviews of their websites as well as from articles about these news-providers, and various expert opinions about their models. 3. Possible models which can help to monetize online content Technological advancement has made most news content widely available for free online, which pushed most newspapers to give up subscription fees in the hope of getting more readers and hence by increasing traffic, get more advertisement revenues. However such movements contribute even more to the availability of free content in the web and hence induce decrease in print media circulation and advertisement revenues[22]. Charging for online news is very hard. The biggest risk that media companies face is loosing the visitors, because reduced traffic will induce less interest of advertisement providers on the particular site. Ads are still major source of revenues for most media companies and it will remain so in the nearest future. As Rupert Murdoch commented previously on the example of Wall Street Journal, â€Å"charging online content is not bad but still its not a gold mine†[23]. However, recently after presenting the idea at WSJ to impose premium paid model, Murdoch Justified their decision with telling that, in their case, ad revenues are no any more critical part in revenues and they pay more attention to subscription based revenues[24]. The high risk of loosing switching is easily explainable for SearchDNA founder John Straw, who admits that he himself would never pay for online content if he could get it somewhere else[25]. 3.1. Findings from consulting project While working on our consulting project[26], our group consisting from four MBA participants, I and my three classmates, identified four different types of models which could imposed during presenting the pay wall. The consulting project itself and its results is based on the basis of numerous articles and literature about previous experience, industry expert interviews and representative survey conducted among 299 German media readers. In column 1, table 1 explains four different pay-wall models which are possible to impose on online content in different situation, and column 2 explains the situations in which these different models would have chance to work â€Å"keeping other conditions constant†. Table 1: Types of models applicable in monetized online media[27] Types of Possible Models Situation explaining the feasibility of model Locking down the whole content Really unique content Locking down selected articles Unique content should be part of broader content Limiting the number of customers Very high overall quality, breadth of content offering Locking down the niche articles Want to monetize only highly specific â€Å"hidden† articles Source: consulting PP final draft Its upon news providers which type of model they will choose to match with the content they want to lock down. As we already discussed, there are few things which would motivate people to pay money online for, in other words online readers show at least some willingness to pay in following areas: * Deeper analysis of specific articles as an addition to the more general one * Old archives; plus specific interest areas of some readers * Local news * Online sports events Here we can provide some examples of successfully using some of these methods of pay-wall. The method of locking down selected articles is used by Wall Street Journal. In this case most daily news including political are considered as commodity information and they are given out for free, however if some specific interest area, e.g. finance, have deeper expert analysis, which you cant meet in other newspapers, the articles are locked down in this case. The method of limiting the number f articles is successfully used by Financial Times. New York Times decided to go on the same way from 2011. A good example of locking down niche content is Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and its Packer Insider: The journal locks down specific information, deep content about football club Green Bay Packers, for its fans. In deep content in this case is counted e.g. chat sessions with players. As the same Practice project showed, locking down whole content, â€Å"keeping other conditions equal†, is p ossible if the whole content is really unique. Here we have also to mention that during consulting project about online content monetization, we had some more interesting insights about the factors which increase readers willingness to pay: To our surprise content is not always the thing which might make readers to pay online: 35% of surveyed 299 German readers named following three factors as the possible motivators in increasing willingness to pay: Promotions/ Give-aways Customization Specific additional content As a conclusion of this chapter we should say many experts predict for the future that, free content will be used primarily as a marketing ploy: a complementary trial period is strictly used for purposes of enticing customers to subscribe to a service or buy a product online. (Wang et al). Alternatively some sites attract customers by offering a limited amount of free content. They then hope to convince their customers to shift to a variety of â€Å"premium†, fee-based content (Outing 2002). (Wang et al) 3.2. Challenges Innovative online ways of distributing news like news aggregate sites, blogs, social networks (Facebook, Tweeter, etc.) which are free to access, become more and more of a threat for media companies, because news is a costly product to produce, as well as it its distribution in traditional way. But distribution of news in online has zero marginal cost, as it takes nothing to the person to copy and paste a particular article or link it to the other page (Exhibit 6). Traditional media companies demand from these innovative producers of news â€Å"fair ways of playing†, which means either they should produce their own information or they should pay to original producers some fees for utilizing their articles. In his interview, Mathias Dà ¶phner mentioned that they are not demanding banning of these alternative sources. â€Å"We understand that future is mixed model, mutual existence of both of us declared Dà ¶phner. We also do not request something new and innovative. We just need fairness, respecting each other, respecting copyright rules, paying royalties as it is supposed to be done and for of all this playing rules are already there, we just need to make them better and then follow to†. Rupert Murdoch went even further and called search engine Google stealers, as they take others information without permission and put it on their pages. Regarding this phenomenon, Axel Springer CEO Dà ¶phner told very appropriate example to the Huffington Post co-founder. â€Å"If you want to give others your beer for free, please brew your own beer and then you are welcomed to do so, but please stop taking my costly beer and then giving it to others for free†. Recently there is a clear evidence of starting changes in this regard: Google agreed with several news-provider companies to restrict their articles readerships through Google to maximum amount of five. Another web-site YouTube started removing from their site unlicensed videos. In other words, Mathias Dà ¶phners prediction that the current reality would start changing step by step has obviously started to become true. Thus in nearest future we should anticipate emergence of new pay-models, when media companies will have to think, how to share the cake with news aggregate web-sites, social networks and bloggers. We are witnessing enormous changes not only because of monetization, but because of establishment new type of relationships between industry participants, which ideally should bring in new opportunities. (Exhibit 9) 4. Existing paying models, analysis Studies claim[28] that in order managers found ideal subscription business model for online monetization they need to understand their subscribers personality drivers, their perceptions and attitudes, what makes them purchase news online? In fact there is not breadth of information about consumers personality drivers, indeed the researchers actively continue investigating this area and thus provide us with new and new models. Non-existence of ideal model in this area is one of the reasons why we cant predict ideal online pay model. The other reasons are â€Å"closer† to business. Referring to Jeff Jarvis argumentation in his article about paid content models, there are plenty of criteria which determine the success of one or another model. Once these criteria are individual and very specific for each newspaper, no one can/should claim yet, on identifying one general ideal model which will fit to all news-providers. As director of Association of online publishers, Lee Baker commented in News Media, half of their members already charge for online content and another 19% is going to do so in the nearest 12 months. â€Å"Paid content modelling is important to our members†, continues Mr. Baker. â€Å"Our members are trying to penetrate new areas such as mobile apps. More than half of them express desire to create paid-for apps†. Despite we cant claim on building the ideal model as a proxy for the future, we can cover the most successful news providers and their models which are currently successfully used, both in B2C and B2B business. 4.1. Financial Times VS The Wall Street Journal Currently the most distributed B2C pay models in online media are two: one is Financial Times way restricting the definite amount of free articles for subscribers and then charge the readers if they exceed this amount, and another is Wall Street Journals way offering readers only one or two paragraph for reading and making available the rest only for subscribers[29]. To compare these two models in more details lets take a more detailed look at the ways which they are used by their most successful implementers. Of course there is some room for deviations and different news providers can apply to some minor changes, e.g. in the amount of text which should be given out for free, but the concept remains the same. Table 2 below shows clear distinctions between the features of these two models in the case of FT and WSJ. The essence of difference of these two models is the amount of information provided for free and the ways how it is done: The Wall Street Journal makes clear distinction between commodity and high-value content. The so ca Tracking Developments in Media Industry Tracking Developments in Media Industry Abstract These days the media business is witnessing the next structural transformation in its business model. Due to the reduction of revenues[1] from printed media and advertisements, industry giants are looking for other ways for penetrating additional revenues. The traditional strategy of cost reduction that was previously widely applied does not seem to be sustainable. On the contrary, most key players in the media world see the biggest opportunity in the invention of new models which will contribute to the boost of revenues. To a large extent media executives agree that monetization of online content is the decision they should go for more insistently[2]. One of the reasons why online monetization is a financially attractive way of growth is that, it has zero marginal cost, and as opposed to print media, revenue increase will not induce proportional increase in costs[3]. Another advantage which online news have compared to the traditional printed media is that they can provide news in r eal time regime which is extremely important in this particular industry as â€Å"news is very costly and at the same time highly perishable product†[4]. So far there have been some attempts of online monetization like the Kindle and micropayments but these strategies cant balance the all the losses that the industry bears because of the before mentioned reasons. Up to date, unfortunately for the industrys decision makers, choosing the right model for online monetization was not the only challenge they had to face. Challenges like search engines, which are generating their content and giving it out to customers for free, are not easy to overcome. In fact, bloggers and social networks like Facebook and Tweeter could be considered as posing similar risks for traditional media companies. However in chapter 4 we will see that the attempts of transforming these risk bearing factors into opportunity and getting some kind of revenues from them has started, which logically should lead us to some type of â€Å"business to business† model which will become beneficial for both parts. In this thesis, because of different reasons[5] I will not claim to have found the ideal model for content monetization, but rather will present several alternative models for monetizing online media content, and whats more important, will discuss the most successful models employed thus far which are applied by leading players in the industry. I will compare their features to each other, analyze their advantages and disadvantages. I will also look empirical data of results of each model to give the reader a better sense of each models financial success and the importance of online content in their business, to have better understanding what role content monetization might mean for these news providers. Besides I will help the reader to have knowledge about the obstacles which should be taken in consideration by stakeholders, if they want to find the best match pay model for their news web-site. 1. Introduction Throughout its history the media business, which is one of the most dynamic and fast-developing industries, has passed through many development cycles, each prone to tremendous changes in terms of strategy, structure and model it operated with. The reasons of these changes in different times were different processes taking place in parallel, e.g. advances of post-delivery system, facilitating transportation and logistics around the world, various technological innovations etc. However, without any doubt, the emergence of the Internet and the subsequent development of digital media is the greatest change of at least last two decades. It has once again revolutionized the whole industry dramatically, more than any previous development. Currently we are witnessing a transformation process which might become a ground for the conceptual change of the whole media industry. â€Å"Due to the reduction of revenues[6] from print media[7] (one of the reasons of this is decreased circulation of print newspapers, Exhibit 1) and online advertisements, industry giants have started to explore new ways to restructure their portfolios of income, and how to make their readers pay for the information they get online†[8]. The latest financial crisis played a role in accelerating this process. The downturn of revenues pushed the media companies to sharpen cost cuttings first of all indicated by the massive layoffs of the staff. However as many industry experts like freelance photojournalist Mike Fox believes, massive layoffs itself is not a sustainable strategy for the future[9]. The same view is shared by management consulting firm Booz Company in their research about the media industry. They admit that cost cutting is an imp ortant tool for managers, but in order to stay capable of growing in the long run, companies cant focus only on the expenditures side of their income statement.[10] Media executives are still optimistic about the future. As the survey in the same research from Booz Company shows, â€Å"most of the respondents (nearly 70%) believe that their companies are financially healthy. The which even higher to 80 percent when it comes to the opinion of integrated players (Exhibits 2), and surprisingly just one forth of the surveyed executives expected they would meet the end of recession with a deteriorated situation (Exhibit 3). Moreover, more than half of media executives (57%) believe that they still hold the wheels to control situation despite financial crisis and think that with structural trends developing in the industry they can outperform the negative results of economic downturn. Print executives are even more optimistic, this opinion is shared by 67 percent of them†. Booz Co sees the future of media companies in their ability to identify the markets where they can compete successfully and the business models which will help them to do s o. In the June of 2009, at the Cable Show[11] in Washington D.C, American News Corps owner Rupert Murdoch gave a speech, which also covered the current challenges of media industry, where he specifically underlined the inevitable need of content monetization. He underlined that times when people where reading news online for free should be over, and thus gave a hint to the whole industry that the process of â€Å"online content monetization† is not only non-reversible process, but indeed it should accelerate whether somebody likes it or not. Murdoch mentioned that only online ads cannot cover media companies costs and named New York Times, as a vivid example of that. NYT has one of the most popular U.S newspaper websites, but still their online ad revenues are not sufficient for cost coverage[12]. The signal form the industry guru was correctly understood by other giant players of media world and many of them like Axel Springer and New York Times[13] already second time, started thinking how to charge their readers for online news in the way not to harm online traffic and ad revenues. Finding the balance among these two will be the biggest challenge for the â€Å"followers of the trend†. In the process of monetizing online media choosing the right type of model which will fit to one or another news providers overall strategy and values is a big deal of question. Currently most news online is free, but there are some existing newspapers successfully charging their readers at least for the part of the information they provide to them. 1 shows the increased consumer spending (black curve) and penetration (grey curve) in online content. The research conducted by Online Publishers Association shows the same trend, that the money spent by consumers on online content in United States increase from 1.31 billion USD in 2002 to 1.78 billion USD in 2004, which meant annual growth rate of 17%. However this growth occurred in the entertainment area such as adult material, music, gaming and sports[14]. Currently, among them most successful in terms of revenues generated from online media content, are American The Wall Street Journal and the British Financial Times. Both of these newspapers are providing financial news and are most direct competitors of each other. Finance is one of those few areas which experts consider possible to monetize. The Booz Co research mentioned before makes focus on prior experiments of publishers who tried to monetize content and boost sales with which such an innovative tools as Kindle (Exhibit 4) sales, multi-title subscriptions and micropayments are, but as the results show these methods cant regain all the revenues lost which the media industry faced in the last two years. It also shows that inevitable steps are needed from the whole industry to look for new business models and as the survey in the same research shows, media executives expect most increase of revenues from the innovations in the digital media, from the new innovative models. (Exhibit 5). Expectations towards online monetization is a great, at least from the side of news providers, however the way on which they will have to go does not seem smooth and easy. There are various challenges monetizing volunteers will have to deal with; on the one hand there is a problem of search engines and bloggers â€Å"stealing† news from their web sites and offering them to readers on aggregate web-sites, and on the other hand there is a psychology of people and understanding their personal motivations, what would make them to pay money in online news. Furthermore, it will not be easy to make people pay for the information which they were used to get for free previously[15]. However despite all challenges and obstacles which is expected for industry players, Booz Co concludes that process of media digitization is on its way and nothing can stop it. Mathias Dà ¶phner comes up with same opinion: â€Å"I do not share this kind of pessimism that content business is dying. The opposite is right. Thats the tremendous opportunity through the digitization.†[16] One more factor which theoretically should give more hope to media magnates is psychological: as various studies about personality drivers during online purchase show, the experience of using internet and reading news online are positively correlated with purchase intention. Once the usage of internet and reading news online is a growing tendency in current reality, and the age of internet usage is also shifting fast, we can say that time works on media companies. In this research I will analyse existing online paying models which successfully operate and give the hope to industry players for the â€Å"brighter† future in that prospect. 2. Review of search methodology The aim of this thesis is to find out the features of existing paid models in online news which are already operating successfully. I will also try to measure their effectiveness/importance by various criteria, both objective such as existing financial and quantitative data, and also more partly-objective, such as different expert opinions[17]. The research will be developed in three main parts: Review of types of content which can be monetized, where people show some willingness to pay money (or are already paying) As related to the previous chapter, analysis of the personality drivers and its importance while consumers conduct online purchase Analysis of existing successful models, their features and their effectiveness in terms of empirical results For the sake of development of this three-pillar structure, the information will be obtained through various sources such as existing literature researches, articles, blogs, expert opinions and the consulting project ran by me and my classmates during our practice project[18]. 2.1. Sources for identifying online-chargeable content and consumers personality drivers The biggest contribution for the author in understanding of this issue were insights from consulting project workshop conducted by the ESMT Practice Project of which the author was a team member[19] in the late 2009. During this project, besides analyzing already available literature regarding topic, the team interviewed different kind of experts and also ran a representative survey among 300 German online readers to understand the areas where customers showed some willingness to pay. According to the results, there are not many areas which can be monetized, but only: Deeper analysis of specific articles as an addition to the more general one Old archives; plus specific interest areas of some readers Local news Online sports events The point is almost completely shared by Mathias Dà ¶phner, the CEO of German media company Axel Springer, who held a discussion around the topic at Monaco Media Forum 2009: â€Å"There are not many areas where people are willing to pay money: 1) This is finance, which is related to power; 2) Plus sports or games 3) Regional environments, people around you; 4) And then we are coming to two existential areas: sex and crime, or love and death. â€Å" â€Å"These are areas where people are generally interested in and why should that change in digital business?† asks Dà ¶phner rhetoric question. The CEO of Axel Springer also commented the fact that currently most news online is free and called this fact a â€Å"structural mistake† which has to be corrected step by step. According to Dà ¶phner there is not need of revolution, once most appropriate rules and procedures in legislation already exist. They just need some moderation and then execution. Continuing on the issue Dà ¶phner summed up with the hope that in the long run, for hundreds of years, people are willing to pay for things they are interested in. â€Å"Commodity news will be for free, but special information, added value services, exclusive information should be charged†. Currently, there are already obvious movements in the industry towards fixing the â€Å"structural mistakes† Mr Dà ¶phner talked about. This will be discussed more detailed in chapter 3.2, named â€Å"challenges†. 2.2. Personality drivers of consumers to purchase online Understanding and analyzing consumer drivers while conducting online purchase, is critical for building prominent, profitable business model. However until today there is no perfect study in the area which could claim on being perfect in identifying and analyzing of all motivators which make consumers to pay money online, and whats more important, all researchers would agree on that claim of this study. One of the best researches in this field conducted by Wang et al claims that the main factors which affect consumers willingness to pay money online and are positively correlated with the one, are consumers perceived convenience, essentiality, added-value and service quality. However another research on the same topic e.g. from Choi, Lee and Soriano focuses on following factors: perceived consequences after purchase of product, easiness of use of internet, social factors such as environment around person, satisfaction of the reader after purchase and existing alternative sources to get the same particular information. As we see on this example two group academics have completely different approach and beliefs towards one topic. These two researches are clear evidence how diverse is different researchers approaches to the issue. To all of these factors I looked also form the prospective of researches which are dedicated to analyzing a bit broader field consumers purchasing drivers in whole online market rather than only in online media. In these researches, some of above mentioned factors are considered to be important but others are doubted. Its hard for someone to persist himself not to criticize some of the factors mentioned above, e.g. the word â€Å"perceived† is already very dubious and at the same time very subjective, however very important one. As Barkhi, Belanger and Hocks claim in their â€Å"model of the determinants of purchasing from virtual stores†, the notion perceived/perception has already enormous importance itself, as it defines consumers later attitude towards whole online purchase procedure. To continue analysis, factor such as social community is neglected in Bosnjiaks research, where he referring to Senecals 2005 research claims that recommendations made from close community make decision making process more complex but it does not affect final choice of consumer. Regarding service-quality we can say that, the word quality itself already induces some confusion because its pretty subjective notion. For different people quality might mean different things. For some people service-quality might mean the urgent delivery of hottest news and the exclusivity of this information, whereas for another person the quality of service might be associated with deeper analysis of the article or the easiness of ways to pay money online. Such an arguing can continue further, but what is more important, arguable are not only factors on which researchers build their different models, but also some general statements which are made by them. For example, the work of Wang et al claim the business model is sustainable if revenue-generating method is accepted by majority of the potential customers. However despite all the respect towards the authors and research itself, such a claim can easily become a reason of discussions, because still, the success of any model depends on the ideal proportion of ad revenues and online subscription revenues and for different newspapers the ideal conversion rate of readers to paid customers might be different. Even this research itself contradicts to its statement when brings an example of Wall Street Journal Online and Hoovers Online telling that they managed to make e-content portal profitable by only 10% of conversion rate. While conducting our consulting project, we also got results th at some high circulated newspapers would make their portals profitable even by 3% conversion ratio. Further more, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, has only 0,8% conversion rate of subscribers on its niche site for hardcore Green Bay Packers fans, making revenues of 600,000 USD annually. In other words, depending on the content offered by particular newspaper, and the number and type of readers they have, the effective proportion of online content and ad revenues should be found. More analysis should be conducted to understand the price of lost customers amount versus converted ones and the ideal balance of subscription revenues versus lost ad revenues. To this issue has dedicated his discussion Jeff Jarvis, on the blog-web BuzzMachine. Jeff Jarvis is an American Journalist, former television critic, editor, publisher and columnist. Among the companies he has been working are: New York Daily News, San Francisco Examiner, New York Times Company, MediaGuardian a supplement of British newspaper The Guardian. Besides he is an associate professor at the City University of New Yorks Graduate School of Journalism directing its new media program. He is also creator of weblog BuzzMachine[20]. Jeff Jarvis in his article about paid content published on Weblog BuzzMachine is more persuasive about the complexity of the issue[21] and based on his vast experience highlights for the readers how many different factors should be taken in consideration for identifying one or another model for particular newspaper. For those who will catch in Jeff Jarvis approach some â€Å"sense and consciousness† will become clear that based only on the analysis of psychological traits of people and their purchasing drivers, it will not be easy to find an ideal model, and that the issue needs rather practical approach. Findings of Jeff Jarvis will be discussed more detailed in the 5.1 chapter named â€Å"Expert opinions and Conclusions†. Before moving to the following chapter, we should conclude the started topic and mention that there is still needed some research in the area of personal motivators for online purchase, in order we could claim by 100% confidence that we are using the best model for identifying the online paid model. 2.3. Discussed models and criteria for their comparison Once we are analyzing the existing models, the criteria for assessment of one or another method is the time of their existence and their results shown throughout their lifetime. Besides looking at the thematic differences in the features of the models both in Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) models, we will look at their financial results, their generated income through online sales and he dynamics in online subscription amount. The biggest attention the author paid was to the models of Financial Times and Wall Street Journal as the most successful financial players in B2C business. In addition, the author took a look at Bloomberg and Reuters as successful players of B2B model. New York Times was an interesting case for the author because it is a case, when after first unsuccessful trial, they are going to try monetizing online content already second time. Taking in consideration their prior experience it should be important to track which model they will choose for the second attempt. Finally, the author took a quick look at some other examples of successful and unsuccessful attempts of monetizing online content so far. Information was gathered from reviews of their websites as well as from articles about these news-providers, and various expert opinions about their models. 3. Possible models which can help to monetize online content Technological advancement has made most news content widely available for free online, which pushed most newspapers to give up subscription fees in the hope of getting more readers and hence by increasing traffic, get more advertisement revenues. However such movements contribute even more to the availability of free content in the web and hence induce decrease in print media circulation and advertisement revenues[22]. Charging for online news is very hard. The biggest risk that media companies face is loosing the visitors, because reduced traffic will induce less interest of advertisement providers on the particular site. Ads are still major source of revenues for most media companies and it will remain so in the nearest future. As Rupert Murdoch commented previously on the example of Wall Street Journal, â€Å"charging online content is not bad but still its not a gold mine†[23]. However, recently after presenting the idea at WSJ to impose premium paid model, Murdoch Justified their decision with telling that, in their case, ad revenues are no any more critical part in revenues and they pay more attention to subscription based revenues[24]. The high risk of loosing switching is easily explainable for SearchDNA founder John Straw, who admits that he himself would never pay for online content if he could get it somewhere else[25]. 3.1. Findings from consulting project While working on our consulting project[26], our group consisting from four MBA participants, I and my three classmates, identified four different types of models which could imposed during presenting the pay wall. The consulting project itself and its results is based on the basis of numerous articles and literature about previous experience, industry expert interviews and representative survey conducted among 299 German media readers. In column 1, table 1 explains four different pay-wall models which are possible to impose on online content in different situation, and column 2 explains the situations in which these different models would have chance to work â€Å"keeping other conditions constant†. Table 1: Types of models applicable in monetized online media[27] Types of Possible Models Situation explaining the feasibility of model Locking down the whole content Really unique content Locking down selected articles Unique content should be part of broader content Limiting the number of customers Very high overall quality, breadth of content offering Locking down the niche articles Want to monetize only highly specific â€Å"hidden† articles Source: consulting PP final draft Its upon news providers which type of model they will choose to match with the content they want to lock down. As we already discussed, there are few things which would motivate people to pay money online for, in other words online readers show at least some willingness to pay in following areas: * Deeper analysis of specific articles as an addition to the more general one * Old archives; plus specific interest areas of some readers * Local news * Online sports events Here we can provide some examples of successfully using some of these methods of pay-wall. The method of locking down selected articles is used by Wall Street Journal. In this case most daily news including political are considered as commodity information and they are given out for free, however if some specific interest area, e.g. finance, have deeper expert analysis, which you cant meet in other newspapers, the articles are locked down in this case. The method of limiting the number f articles is successfully used by Financial Times. New York Times decided to go on the same way from 2011. A good example of locking down niche content is Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and its Packer Insider: The journal locks down specific information, deep content about football club Green Bay Packers, for its fans. In deep content in this case is counted e.g. chat sessions with players. As the same Practice project showed, locking down whole content, â€Å"keeping other conditions equal†, is p ossible if the whole content is really unique. Here we have also to mention that during consulting project about online content monetization, we had some more interesting insights about the factors which increase readers willingness to pay: To our surprise content is not always the thing which might make readers to pay online: 35% of surveyed 299 German readers named following three factors as the possible motivators in increasing willingness to pay: Promotions/ Give-aways Customization Specific additional content As a conclusion of this chapter we should say many experts predict for the future that, free content will be used primarily as a marketing ploy: a complementary trial period is strictly used for purposes of enticing customers to subscribe to a service or buy a product online. (Wang et al). Alternatively some sites attract customers by offering a limited amount of free content. They then hope to convince their customers to shift to a variety of â€Å"premium†, fee-based content (Outing 2002). (Wang et al) 3.2. Challenges Innovative online ways of distributing news like news aggregate sites, blogs, social networks (Facebook, Tweeter, etc.) which are free to access, become more and more of a threat for media companies, because news is a costly product to produce, as well as it its distribution in traditional way. But distribution of news in online has zero marginal cost, as it takes nothing to the person to copy and paste a particular article or link it to the other page (Exhibit 6). Traditional media companies demand from these innovative producers of news â€Å"fair ways of playing†, which means either they should produce their own information or they should pay to original producers some fees for utilizing their articles. In his interview, Mathias Dà ¶phner mentioned that they are not demanding banning of these alternative sources. â€Å"We understand that future is mixed model, mutual existence of both of us declared Dà ¶phner. We also do not request something new and innovative. We just need fairness, respecting each other, respecting copyright rules, paying royalties as it is supposed to be done and for of all this playing rules are already there, we just need to make them better and then follow to†. Rupert Murdoch went even further and called search engine Google stealers, as they take others information without permission and put it on their pages. Regarding this phenomenon, Axel Springer CEO Dà ¶phner told very appropriate example to the Huffington Post co-founder. â€Å"If you want to give others your beer for free, please brew your own beer and then you are welcomed to do so, but please stop taking my costly beer and then giving it to others for free†. Recently there is a clear evidence of starting changes in this regard: Google agreed with several news-provider companies to restrict their articles readerships through Google to maximum amount of five. Another web-site YouTube started removing from their site unlicensed videos. In other words, Mathias Dà ¶phners prediction that the current reality would start changing step by step has obviously started to become true. Thus in nearest future we should anticipate emergence of new pay-models, when media companies will have to think, how to share the cake with news aggregate web-sites, social networks and bloggers. We are witnessing enormous changes not only because of monetization, but because of establishment new type of relationships between industry participants, which ideally should bring in new opportunities. (Exhibit 9) 4. Existing paying models, analysis Studies claim[28] that in order managers found ideal subscription business model for online monetization they need to understand their subscribers personality drivers, their perceptions and attitudes, what makes them purchase news online? In fact there is not breadth of information about consumers personality drivers, indeed the researchers actively continue investigating this area and thus provide us with new and new models. Non-existence of ideal model in this area is one of the reasons why we cant predict ideal online pay model. The other reasons are â€Å"closer† to business. Referring to Jeff Jarvis argumentation in his article about paid content models, there are plenty of criteria which determine the success of one or another model. Once these criteria are individual and very specific for each newspaper, no one can/should claim yet, on identifying one general ideal model which will fit to all news-providers. As director of Association of online publishers, Lee Baker commented in News Media, half of their members already charge for online content and another 19% is going to do so in the nearest 12 months. â€Å"Paid content modelling is important to our members†, continues Mr. Baker. â€Å"Our members are trying to penetrate new areas such as mobile apps. More than half of them express desire to create paid-for apps†. Despite we cant claim on building the ideal model as a proxy for the future, we can cover the most successful news providers and their models which are currently successfully used, both in B2C and B2B business. 4.1. Financial Times VS The Wall Street Journal Currently the most distributed B2C pay models in online media are two: one is Financial Times way restricting the definite amount of free articles for subscribers and then charge the readers if they exceed this amount, and another is Wall Street Journals way offering readers only one or two paragraph for reading and making available the rest only for subscribers[29]. To compare these two models in more details lets take a more detailed look at the ways which they are used by their most successful implementers. Of course there is some room for deviations and different news providers can apply to some minor changes, e.g. in the amount of text which should be given out for free, but the concept remains the same. Table 2 below shows clear distinctions between the features of these two models in the case of FT and WSJ. The essence of difference of these two models is the amount of information provided for free and the ways how it is done: The Wall Street Journal makes clear distinction between commodity and high-value content. The so ca