...The Truth about the Economy of Cigarettes Christopher Tucker Central Penn College “The Truth about the Economy of Cigarettes” The topic of the production, manufacturing, taxation, advertising, and laws of the tobacco industry in the United States has always been, and will always remain, one of the most controversial industries in the United States of America. It is an industry where spokespeople from both sides have blatantly lied to the American public in order to further achieve their goals and agendas. Unlike our grandparents and great grandparents, we all know that cigarettes are extremely detrimental to one’s health. Though a Surgeon General warning is displayed on each pack of cigarettes, stating that; smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and may complicate pregnancy. There are so many chemicals in a single cigarette, that it is one of the few products on the market that does not display it’s ingredients on the packaging. After viewing the amount of chemicals in cigarettes, I don’t believe they would even be able to fit them on the box if they tried There are two sides to every agenda. There is always some bad with any good. There are always faults where there is success. Yes, cigarettes are extremely unhealthy for the American public, but it is one of the few remaining markets of production that the United States ranks as one of the top producers in the entire world. It is “Tobacco Season” in our area of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. If you were to...
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...Facebook & Yelp: A Platform for Redemption Blake Brown Arizona University Facebook & Yelp: A Platform for Redemption Introduction In 2004, private-equity firm Elevation Partners launched amid the fanfare of having U2’s Bono as a co-owner and a $1.9 billion investment fund. Bad bets on companies coupled with the high turnovers between some of the firm’s initial six founders, left Elevation Partners in a far too precarious of a state for their investors. Elevation initially promised their investors they would have their money back after ten years along with annual returns starting at 8%. 2010 saw the firm only able to return $8 million in profits to investors, but 2012 is an entirely different story. Elevation is hoping that investments in Facebook and Yelp will make their investors forget about the several missteps they have endured along the way. Analysis Backed by technology-industry veterans and the front man of the world’s most successful rock group, Elevate is in the process of raising $1 billion for a new investment fund. Attempting to rise from the ashes after investments in Palm Smartphones, Forbes Media LLC, and other companies left Elevation’s investor’s pockets far less deep then they had been promised. Despite rival private-equity funds questioning the stability of the management of the two funds, Elevation’s luck seems to be changing. Their lottery tickets of sorts lies in the performance of two social media titans, Facebook and Yelp. After...
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...Topic: Yelp and Bad Reviews Section One: Problems/ Issues Identification: Central Facts: A lady, Jane Perez, from Virginia is being sued for $750, 000 in defamation charges by a contractor, Christopher Dietz, after posting negative reviews about work that his company did on her house. Since she was unhappy with the work that Dietz’s Company, Dietz’s Development LLC did on her house; Perez allegedly took to the web and stated that the company did damage to her house and that jewelry that was in her home had disappeared. A judge in Fairfax Country Virginia ruled in the preliminary injunction that certain accusations made by Perez about Dietz’s company be deleted. Perez’s comments, according to abcnews.go.com are no longer viewable on Yelp’s page for Dietz’s company. Actual online review websites, such as Yelp, Tripadvisor, Angie’s list, etc. are protected from lawsuits by the Communication Decency Act of 1996. Section 230 of the law, according to abcnews.go.com, protects online service providers from liability based on actions of third parties (also known as, users). However claims made by the reviewer can be subject to defamation charges, which varies based on state laws. In Virginia, where Dietz is bring the lawsuit, the state says that someone can be found guilty of defamation charges if he or she makes or implies statements that are not factual and that harm a person or businesses’ reputation. In 2011, a study done by Harvard Business School found a link between an...
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...“extends one single sense in high definition, the state of being well filled with data” (22) . In this case, people hardly put their own effort in getting the information but receive the information by visual or oral means. On the other hand, “cool” mediums are “high in participation or completion by the audience” (23), requiring much involvement from different sensories. Reviewers on Yelp go to the place, taste the foods, sense the aura of the restaurant, and especially put their thoughts into words. The combination of these different actions shows that Yelp is an example of a predominantly “cool” medium. Yelp puts the role of the authority on the customers, given that customers control their own discoveries of the local businesses, by means of touching, writing, and seeing. The sense of affiliation is reflected on the way users touch the screen, scroll up and down the screen to read different reviews and see their photos. All these gestures of finding information on Yelp are far more active than sitting at places to absorb information through means of “hot media” such as radios or televisions. Yelp exemplifies another important idea of McLuhan’s which states...
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...Yelp Review - Sci Fi City We wanted to shower those we had crushes on with pelts of imaginary animals, make a catwalk from the bones of our enemies; we didn’t learn fast enough that love is not a throat you slit. Yelp Review - The Courtyard at Lake Lucerne Here, we are songs that hide our intentions rather than finding the words to lay them out like a flight of stairs or an empty elevator shaft. We pretend to be gorgeous so we can look back at our frozen selves and ask: fire or scissors. Yelp Review - The Lakeland Center Your shoulder dares you to play it as an instrument against the ring of bodies. Remember the notes as they form welts. Remind yourself what you recorded will lure no one into your backseat. Yelp Review - Cash America Ask the...
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...paper I am going to be talking about yelp and an even that questioned the ethics of the company. Yelp is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California. It develops, hosts and markets Yelp.com and the Yelp mobile app, which publish crowd source reviews about local businesses.” While watching the video attached to the article I see that people use yelp for everything to finding a restaurant to eat but also to find places to shop in my opinion it seems pretty interesting to use. In this article yelp has basically threated companies to pay them in order to get reviews to bring customers but if business would refuse then a business would get a lot of bad reviews and lose customers and mess their business up and business are saying that the situations is like blackmailing them out of money. They have filtered reviews which means that they personally edit reviews which give them opportunity to blackmail the business pay them in order to keep the customers coming when they don’t have to. Some evidence I found about communication to the public would be when yelp decided to use the filtered reviews that gets to the public because of the fact that people use yelp to find places to eat and shop and when a place has a bad review then people don’t shop there because it’s on a website that people would believe is reliable. It was very effective for some restaurants because some refused to pay because of the fact because yelp is free and it’s a crowd source review...
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...To Pay or Not To Pay: Zagat’s Dilemma Source: Laudon, KC & Laudon, JP 2013, Essentials of Management Information Systems, 10th Edition, Prentice Hall, New Jersey Founded by Tim and Nina Zagat, the Zagat Survey has collected and published ratings of restaurants by diners since 1979. Zagat publishes surveys for restaurants, hotels and nightlife in 70 major cities. Today, as more people use their smartphones for information on the go, Zagat is moving its content online and onto the mobile platform. It has been a struggle. Zagat has come a long way from its roots in the early 1980s when the food loving Zagats started compiling lists of their favourite restaurants for personal use and to share with their closest friends. To generate the first survey, the Zagats polled 200 people and increased that number over time. Executives, tourists and New York foodies alike found the list to be indispensable. Spurred by this success, the Zagats decided to publish a book with their survey themselves. The few booksellers that took a risk in stocking the book were rewarded with sales so robust that the Zagat Surveys became best sellers. The pair also published similar lists for other major cities, including Chicago, San Francisco and Washington DC. In addition to print books, Zagat opened a unit that creates custom guides for corporate clients, like the ones at Citibank. For a long time, this business model was sufficient to ensure that Zagat Survey was successful and profitable...
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...positive. Where would you like to eat tonight? Be daring and try the new bistro that just opened down the street or play it safe and go to Applebee’s? This could be one of the most daunting decisions someone may have to make throughout their day. When it comes to where one would like to spend their hard earned dollar on a meal 45% of consumers turn to leading social media sites like Yelp for recommendations (Pann). 57% of consumers rely on the reviews from these sites on restaurants to determine where they will dine that night (Pann). But how reliable are these reviews that consumers are putting such high importance when it comes to their dining experiences? When it comes to the reviews on websites such as Yelp, a recent study by Gartner a tech research company has determined by 2014 that 10% to 15% of reviews found on these sites are falsified (Pann). These falsified reviews are hurting the reputation of social media review sites because if consumers are not able to trust the information found on these websites then there is no value in the reviews and these sites. For a company like Yelp who has stated on their home page “Real People. Real Reviews” this goes against everything...
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...Measuring the Effectiveness of Business Practice Laws Jennifer Torres Fuentes DeVry University Measuring the Effectiveness of Business Practice Laws In the world of business, laws that are intended to protect and ensure fairness amongst competitors and consumers have their ups and downs when it comes to how effective they really are. There are various policies and procedures that are put in place in an attempt to promote fair, balanced and competitive business practices, whose effectiveness suffers because of a lack of enforcement to their terms. Until society as a whole owns up to how badly we have reverted into unethical and demoralized behavior, the effectiveness of laws put into place to encourage us to practice socially responsible behavior will not be effective. When the needs of the many supersedes the needs of the few, only then will these laws, policies and procedures put in place to encourage socially responsible behavior being to have any real effect. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces federal consumer protection laws that prevent fraud, deception and unfair business practices. The Commission also enforces federal antitrust laws that prohibit anticompetitive mergers and other business practices that could lead to higher prices, fewer choices, or less innovation. The Commission has enforcement or administrative responsibilities under more than 70 laws. They are grouped in three categories: (a) Statutes relating to both the competition and consumer...
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...Case 4: To Pay or Not to Pay: Zagat’s Dilemma 1. Substitute Products and Services: There are several substitute services to that of Zagat including Groupon, Google Places and Yelp. Yelp proved to be the most popular substitute of Zagat with growing popularity with 26 million users as opposed to Zagat with 269,000 visitors in January 2011. Customers: Zagat’s brand is recognized and used by food-lovers, travelers and restaurateurs. New Market Entrants: Zagat is a new market entrant into the online and mobile platform industry. Zagat is trying to enter the market as more consumers take advantage of online and mobile technologies. As they transition into the online and mobile platforms Zagat is facing opposition from current companies who offer free reviews content to consumers. Zagat implemented certain primary and secondary activities as they continued to expand their consumer base and move forward to online and mobile platforms. Some of those primary activities include establishing a pay wall to place their content relying on consumers to purchase the service for full online access, the fact that Zagat provides clear and concise impressions of restaurants as opposed to their Yelp competitor, re-launching their website in February 2011 with more free content to compete with other free online providers and developing smartphone applications for several mobile platforms. Some secondary activities include establishing integration with other social media outlets in their...
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...Develop an online business expansion proposal 1. Viability of product or service Netta’s Style by Design (http://nettasstylebydesign.com/) is a brick and mortar salon located at 38 Franklin Street in Martinsville, VA. Established by Cynthia Hairston in August 2006 with the aspiration being for her business is to provide upscale hair and skin service. The key being luxurious styling is in all of us, we just need someone to help guide us in the right direction. There are only two high end salons in the area. Netta’s will set itself apart from the rest by providing exceptional customer service. The index of expanding online would be to 1) Give prominence to the skincare services 2) Secure a 20% boost in sales 3) Increase brand awareness. The business could benefit greatly from growing its online presence especially during this vulnerable time from the recession. Online marketing would make it much easier and more conservational to reach a growing customer base whose online focal point continues to increase. Promoting more intermingling between the customers, Cynthia and her staff will provide perfect occasions for improvements in matching personality characteristics with the products and services being offered. This is especially important because Netta’s accommodates several small towns in the surrounding area known as Henry County (e.g. Bassett, Fieldale, Collinsville, Stanleytown, Villa Heights, and Ridgeway). There are currently over 52,000 residents in Henry County (United...
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...Competitive Google’s most notable recent acquisitions and initiatives are Google Play which are a recently launched entertainment application for music, television, and movies, Google Fiber where a fiber optic Internet network capable of reaching connection speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps and Google Drive is a cloud-storage and group collaboration workspace integrated with Gmail and Google Docs. Google’s acquisition with Motorola Mobility be the centerpiece of the company’s push into mobile and communications hardware. Motorola Mobility will be run as a separate company whose wares are intended to complement the Google’s Android platform. Google had been in talks to acquire Yelp in late 2009, but those discussions fell apart and Yelp walked away from some $500 million. Since then, the relationship between Google and Yelp has been tenuous, as Google borrowed liberally from Yelp’s database of reviews to flesh out its Google Places pages. However On September 2011, Google Inc paid $151 million in cash for the Zagat Survey. Google bought the Zagat Survey to counter the popularity of Yelp's business rating service. Google’s annual report shows that it already acquisitions of 57 companies. Google's vice president of Local, Maps and Location Services, Marissa Mayer stated that Zagat will be a cornerstone of Google local offering and delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary experiences around the corner...
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...Q 1. What seems to be the business’ goal with their social media marketing? Plated was founded on the belief that “Individuals want better, more nutritious, less greasy food, and they’re willing to put in 20-30 minutes of work in order to get it-if given the choice.” Plated’s unique outlook on creating time and budget friendly meals for all of it’s customers every night paired with a dynamic social media campaign covering mediums such as Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook create an experience for its customers unparalled by many other companies in America. Plated strategically uses its social media campaigns in order to create brand awareness across the internet, engage its customers through the sharing of personal takes on recipes, recipes success and failures, and the asking of questions to the chef whom designed a specific recipe, explore untapped consumer markets through social media analytics, build brand loyalty and drive sales. Plated successfully uses social media to gain fan feedback and suggestions, create discussions that engage consumers about their food related opinions, for creating brand engagement and loyalty, and to embrace the consumer and position its brand. Plated is able to successfully gain critical insights into its target audiences wants, needs, likes, dislikes, which in turn enables Plated to adapt its company to its target audience thus increasing customer satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue. In terms of what Plated could improve on, the company’s...
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...September 14, 2014 Clark, Patrick. (2014, August 06). How Now to Handle a Bad Yelp Review. BusinessWeek. Retrieved September 14,2014 from http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-06/what-to-do-about-a-bad-yelp-review Article summary When you are an owner or manager of a company your ethics and values are a huge role in how you represent your title and your company. That is one of the jobs you take when accepting a position as a manager or owner. What you say or do could affect your company in a positive or negative way. To be a good manager you always take the route that will satisfy your customers. When, Chris Wagoner, owner of the Union Street Guest House in Hudson, New York wrote a clause in his guest book for his customers he did not get positive feedback from individuals. The clause in the guest book stated that if any guest wrote a bad review on Yelp the hotel could charge you $500. Once this news got out on other websites many individuals got offended even individuals who had never stayed at this hotel. When word got out to Wagner about the rage individuals had towards his clause he issued a comment to say the policy was a joke however this comment did not satisfy the customers they were still offended. To ensure this does not happen again Yelps website now deletes comments that do not follow their guidelines. Clark states that about 3,000 reviews for the United Street Guest House have been erased. Relevance to the Material This article is relevant to chapter...
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...April 13 2014 Mr.David Morris Owner Dynamic Shine 8828 Heather St Vancouver BC, V6P 3S8 Dear Mr. Morris: We would first like to thank you for your cooperation and involvement in the development of your Digital and Social Media marketing plan. As per our first meeting we have included requested analysis of various aspects of Dynamic Shine. Dynamic Shine Prepared for: David Morris Prepared by: CT Consulting This report is consistent with our signed Academic Integrity Form on file with the instructor Trevor Burns Cameron Knowles CT Consulting ENTR 3311 S10 April 13 2014 Executive Summary David Morris took control of Dynamic Shine in 2010 and has since then grown the business to three profitable locations, with plans for more growth in the future. This report has analyzed the business for the purpose of making recommendation to increase online brand awareness and overall social media presence. The main advantage we found Dynamic Shine has over their competition is the quality of the service being provided. A detailed competitive analysis was done to determine which online activities the competition is partaking in and how this is directly impacting their company success. It was found that the competition was on the following digital platforms: twitter, instagram and facebook. Dynamic Shine must also partake in similar activities on all the most popular social media platforms. In respect to Dynamic Shine’s current website which we have concluded to be...
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