Describe Some Difficulties You Face

When studying a particular language, it seems that everyone has to carefully prepare for many things, such as many grammatical terms, new words, as well as sentence structures. In fact, as time passed people will deeply comprehend why a language has to follow several rules and some exceptions. Most people just think a language only contains few aspects such as grammar or words, which is so easy for learners to understand. In fact, there are a lot of burdens as well as difficulties which one will run into when he or she really wants to fully have a clear picture.Take English as a prime example. Obviously, English is more and more spoken around the world. In fact, there are many English levels in which one needs to realize when studying English. For example, in beginner or pre-intermediate levels, English seems to be easy for most people, because people just gain some basic words and most time they use English for only communicative purposes. However, far beyond these levels, learners will enter a much tougher level of English-studying, especially English uesed in many academic domains or many literary purposes.Thus, in these fields, English is no longer something easy; people have to meticulously understand how to precisely use English both in words and many grammatical points. For one thing, it is very easy to use English in many informal contexts, people feel free to express their ideas, talk about what they think and so on†¦ Nevertheless, in some formal situations, particularly in academic writings, it is very difficult for us to determine who will be readers. In practice, the audiences may be our friends, professors or someone else.Therefore, we have to devise a formal essay which not only shows our respects to readers, also give them impression of what we wrote. A problem here is how we can know or have an idea whether the way we are writing is formal. Moreover, how formal we can make to give a clear picture for the readers or too many formalities can cause confusion to out audiences. To solve this problem effectively, we have to practice writing as much as we can to see our weaknesses and learn many important lessons from previous mistakes.In addition, we can also read several English books to have a grip on how many native English write to model ourselves on the way they think and write. Another point is the usage of words. Apparently, there is no doubt that we will write what we think. However, what if there are many same words in just one passage. Readers will be bored because there is no attraction, emphasis to highlight main points. Hence, learning new words is particularly essential when studying English. But the difficulty is how we can use a word in a right context. To better illustrate, think about the two words â€Å"tall† and â€Å"high†.Obviously, these two words are used to measure a length of an object. Tall will be used to talk about height of a person or tree. But it cannot be used to mention qualit y, size or degree. No one says â€Å"a tall temperature or speed†. As a result when learning a new word besides remembering its meaning we need to have a very good idea of how we can apply it in right contexts. To conclusion, there are many vital aspects that we need to consider when learning a language. Keep practice using language regularly is the best way which we can use it perfectly.

Gender Roles in “Their Eyes Were Watching God” Essay

During the 1900’s, women, specifically black women, were considered to be property of men in the United States, especially down south, in states such as Florida and Georgia. Legally, women had no voice. For example, if a woman was abused by her husband, the court system would not acknowledge it even if it did really happen. In the article â€Å"Sexism in the Early 1900’s†, Becca Woltemath states that â€Å"†¦a woman’s job is to take care of the house and to bear children. She’s no good for anything else. She’s just a simple thinker.† Women were forced into submission and there was nothing they could do about it. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston shows the issue of gender roles through the story of a young woman named Janie, who struggles through an arranged marriage. Through multiple characters, as well as the plot, sexism comes to the surface. As soon as the novel begins, it is evident the roles of men and women play a very big part in this novel: â€Å"Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever†¦Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget† (Hurston 1). In this opening paragraph of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston compares the wishes and dreams of men and women in a particularly interesting way. By using the sea as a symbol, she is saying that men can never really control their dreams, just wait for them to come true. While women on the other hand, can take their dreams into their own hands, molding them as they see fit. Making this comparison establishes the theme of gender difference throughout the novel, and ultimately foreshadows the fact that Janie is going to struggle, yet will stop at nothing to achieve what she sets her mind to. After first setting the tone, Nanny is introduced. Her traditional values of womanly roles such as cooking and cleaning lead us to believe that Janie will be the same way. But when Janie kisses Johnny Taylor, her view of men changes after seeing â€Å"a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to  behold a revelation† (Hurston 11). This paragraph is one of the most important, if not the most, in the whole book. Comparing love to the relationship between a bee and its flower, Janie suddenly craves, love, passion, and above all, someone she can consider her equal. Unfortunately, though, equality was a foreign concept during this time period. Men were seen as â€Å"all-powerful†, considered the sole providers and the only ones allowed to hold any sort of office or high-status job. Women, on the other hand, were the complete opposite. In an article written by Dorothy W. Hartman, a historian, she states: Women’s God-given role, it stated, was as wife and mother, keeper of the household â€Å"Women’s God-given role, it stated, was as wife and mother, keeper of the household†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Many people, including blacks, believed in this sort of household: the men being on top, with the women considered far inferior. In Janie’s first relationship, it is clear this is not the equality she has hoped for. Logan Killicks- an elderly, black man her grandmother has arranged for her to marry- treats Janie like a servant and not like a wife at all. There is no love present, and every day is a chore. Even though Nanny knows Janie is not happy, she insists the marriage is a good one: â€Å"’Heah yo is wid de onliest organ in town, amonst colored folks, in yo’ parlow. Got a house bought and paid for and sixty acres uh land right on de big road†¦Lawd have mussy! Dat’s de very prong all us black women gits hung on’† (Hurston 23). In Nanny’s speech, Hurston is trying to emphasize that the female’s only role is to marry and look good, and let the man do all the work. Also in her article, Hartman says that â€Å"†¦due to the fact that the man was almost always working, little room was left to develop a connection between husband and wife; love was a foreign concept.†, which describes what Janie and Logan have together exactly. Despite being given all she should want, Janie seeks more. When Joe â€Å"Jody† Starks appears out of nowhere, Janie feels like her dreams have finally come true. But after a while, the marriage turns out to be little more than the stint with Killicks. Starks, like Killicks, treats her as property and not as someone he actually loves. One example is how Jody makes Janie put her hair up in a wrap while working in the store, rather  than leave it down. Another is when he publicly criticizes her appearance, saying she is starting to show her age, when he is clearly at least ten years older: â€Å"’ You ain’t no young courtin’ gal. You’se uh old woman, nearly fourty’† (Hurston 79). Joe feels the need to tear down Janie, in order to make himself feel more important, which was an important part of being a man during this time. By reading the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, one could immediately pick up on the difference gender played during the late 1800’s and into the early 1900’s. While women were expected to stay at home and clean and take care of children, men worked to provide for their families and were considered far superior. While these prejudices have slowly gotten better over time, most of them still exist to a small extent in today’s society. Through the characters’ attitudes and narratives, especially Janie’s relationships, and the society’s feelings as a whole, Their Eyes Were Watching God clearly displays the social issues of sexism and gender roles. Works Cited Hartman, Dorothy W. â€Å"Women’s Roles in the Late 19th Century.† Conner Prairie Interactive History Park. Conner Prairie, n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2013. Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Perennial Library, 1990. Print. Woltemath, Becca. â€Å"Sexism in the Early 1900s.†Worldbook Encyclopedia. Worldbook, 11 Dec. 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.

Corporal Punishment: an Effective Tool in Child Discipline Essay

â€Å"For every action, there’s a reaction†, states Newton’s law of motion. This obvious truth doesn’t apply to just physics alone. It can also be applied to the human personality. When applying it to a child’s behavior, especially from a very early age, children need to be taught that their actions will have consequences. Being the sponges that they are, sometimes they absorb bad behaviors. Since they are inexperienced and need guidance throughout their life, there are different methods of discipline that can help correct their bad behaviors and actions. One way that is often effective is by explaining to the child why certain behaviors are not acceptable. But when a simple explanation isn’t enough, or when the child refuses to apply counsel, parents do have one last resort: corporal punishment. When parents do in fact use corporal punishment on their children, it normally is done after other forms of discipline have lacked effectiveness. For example, what if little Johnny has started hitting his young sister when she plays with his toys because he is not fond of sharing? We all know that sharing is one of the first principles that should be taught to children since it teaches them not to be selfish human beings. The first form of discipline that a parent might try is sitting down with little Johnny to explain to him that he needs to learn how to share and that hitting his sister is not appropriate. However, on a second occasion, Johnny hits his younger sister again for the same reason of not wanting to share. This time, the parent gives him a warning which results in Johnny remembering what was explained to him and stopping the wrong behavior, but with a pout. Once again, Johnny hits his sister for taking his toys, but instead of explaining or giving warnings, the parent now takes matters to the next level and decides to spank Johnny on his bottom. This third act of discipline, although still legal in all 50 of the United States, has been under much debate. The main argument that experts have as to why spanking should not be used is that it has negative psychological effects on children which can result in depression or even suicide. (Gershoff). Dr. Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff, PhD, of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University analyzed 62 years worth of data that looked into the â€Å"positive and negative behaviors in children that were associated with corporal punishment†. She defined corporal punishment as ‘physical force used with the intention to cause pain, but not injury, in order to correct or control a child’s behavior’, but this action turns into abuse when it is taken to the extent of â€Å"punching, beating, kicking, biting, burning, shaking, yanking hair, twisting ears, and making a child stand in the same place for a long time, even if no injury results† (The Spanking Debate). In her study she found that the use of corporal punishment â€Å"increased child aggression and antisocial behavior†. But one main thing she pointed out about her findings is that the negative effects on the child were seen in association with the use of corporal punishment to the extent of physical abuse to the child (Gershoff). Dr. Gershoff herself admits that the results of her findings are not concrete evidence as to why corporal punishment should not be used because â€Å"they almost never record whether the punishment was deliberate or impulsive, or if it was a first resort or a last resort† (The Spanking Debate). This last admission about her own results shows how different discipline techniques gives different results. Corporal punishment that is administered lovingly should not be expected to provide the same results that abusive corporal punishment will obviously show. Most of the results taken from Dr. Gershoff’s study, although said to support the argument of how corporal punishment should not be used, lacks to explain the different results obtained if corporal punishment where administered in a loving way with the intent to guide children in the right direction and to help them develop the correct principles in order to become good citizens in today’s society. The fact that different parents administer corporal discipline at two completely different extremes is a major factor that needs to be more profoundly investigated. Although Dr. Gershoff’s analysis did contain both of those extremes, the results from the type of discipline used also gave different results. With these two variables being a part of Dr. Gershoff’s equation, it is argued that although severe forms of corporal unishment do exist, the positive effects of when it is correctly applied by means of a moderate and occasional spanking by parents who continuously convey their love for their child and explain the reasons for their actions, result in huge benefits for the child that overshadow the temporary pain that they may encounter because of the appropriately administered corporal punishment (The Spanking Debate). Robert Larzelere, a psychologist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, reviewed 38 studies in relation to corporal punishment and came to the conclusion that when moderate and un-abusive spanking was administered, it reduced misbehavior in children without having the negative psychological effects that some psychologist claim that corporal punishment has. According to Larzelere, not only did that type of discipline work, â€Å"but it also reinforced milder forms of discipline, so that children are more apt to respond without spanking the next time† (Time). Edward Ledezma, who had been a single parent for about 7 to 8 years, recalls having to spank his daughter on two different occasions because his five year old daughter, Lilly, was continuously not listening to his instructions. That was the first and only time he had to use that type of discipline, and it was only after trying to explain to her first why she needed to listen to him. Now that she’s nine, there’s is no indication that she has psychological problems. On the contrary, she’s at the top of her forth grade class, is a well behaved girl, has he utmost respect for her dad, and loves him unconditionally. The loving corporal punishment that Edward had administered four years ago had served its purpose and he did not need to use it again. It shouldn’t be a surprise that such a debate on corporal punishment continues. On one side there are experts that say that abusive corporal punishment is wrong because of the negative psychological effects and who would doubt that it would. On the other hand, parents can reap the benefits with administering corporal discipline in a loving way. The argument should not be whether to administer corporal punishment but rather parents need to be taught that although it works, the only way they can sow the benefits from it is if they administer it within limits and only as a last resort.

The IOM Future of Nursing report related to the nursing workforce Essay

The IOM Future of Nursing report related to the nursing workforce - Essay Example Importance of the IOM â€Å"Future of Nursing† Report Nurses practice in various settings such as schools, retail health clinics, battlefields, public health centers, long-term care facilities, homes, and hospitals. They have differing levels of competencies and education in the entire nursing sector. The committee put into consideration nurses at all levels including their settings, education levels, and roles in an attempt to envision the profession’s future (Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, 2011). The Future of Nursing report is very important since it addresses some of issues facing nurses such as differing education and competency levels. Several barriers obstruct the nurses from responding effectively to the rapidly transforming health settings as well as the evolving health care system. The barriers have to be overcome to make sure that nurses are in a good position to advance health and lead change. Apart from seeking to remove these barriers, the report recommends the improvement of the nursing education system. This is because patients’ needs are becoming more sophisticated and thus, the nurses have to attain requisite competencies in order to deliver care that is of high quality (Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, 2011). ... Some of the main issues raised by the report are that nurses should practice to the greatest extent considering their training and eductaion; and that the education system that is in place to train nurses should be improved so as to encourage higher training and education of nurses for better servieces(Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, 2011). In this respect, the report recommends that varous boards, government bodies, accrediting societies and healthcare organizations should support nurses during their residency once they have successfully completed the prerequisite courses or when they are taking new areas related to clinical pratice. In addition, the report recommends that the proportion of nurses holding a baccalaureate degree should be inreased from 50% to 80% and the number of nurses with a doctorate dregree doubled by 2020 (Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, 2011). In order to achieve this goal, academic nurse leaders should join forces and partner with other organizations to establish a workforce that is responsive to the diverse healthcare needs of the population. Furthermore, the report notes that nurses should participate fully in redisigning the country’s health care. Yet again, the report notes that better information collection and infrustructure is valuable if effective policies have to be made and the workforce properly planned. The Intent of the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action The Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action represents an exceptional initiative to tackle the elevated demands for care by using all the talents, experience, skills, and knowledge of nurses. The main aim of the Campaign for Action is to manage the implementation of the IOM landmark report recommendations. The campaign

Calvin Geneva and His Influence on European Reformation Essay

Calvin Geneva and His Influence on European Reformation - Essay Example According to George (pp. 23-25) in 1536, Calvin went to Geneva, where he was a reform led by Guillaume Farel well under way. In the light of the opinion of Cottret (pp. 78-81) Calvin was persuaded to stay in Geneva and helped manage the second major wave of Protestantism. In their ordinances of 1541, he gave a new organization to pastors, doctors, the elderly, and those who were deacons of the church. Its institutes of the Christian religion (1536) had great influence in France, Scotland (where John Knox led the reform of Calvinist), and among the Puritans in England. Geneva became the center of a large company that reached missionary in France, where the Huguenots became so influential that a synod met in Paris in 1559 for ordering a church at the national level of about 2,000 congregations reformed. As a result of the French wars of religion, the party of Huguenot was controlled and kept the French monarchy Catholic kingdom (Hpfl, pp. 90-98). It could be claimed that Calvin has exerted an enormous influence in the realms of economics and politics through his famous teaching on "predestination" (Kingdon, pp. 231-233) which he developed from the New Testament letters of Paul and writings of Augustine. This doctrine mentions that God has the complete right to choose whom he will for salvation, which, while ruling out human endeavor or goodness as a factor in the equation, can lead - as Max Weber notably argued - to concerned individuals seeking from God signs of their having been selected (McGrath, pp. 78-84). These most clearly take the form of economic success, rewards for tough graft and sound investment, and although Calvin himself aimed to be wary of commercial activity, placing in high regard the life of poverty, the great economic revolution of much of Europe and the United States in subsequent centuries was led by people claiming allegiance to his ideas. Prestwich (pp. 78-79) Calvin saw the world, including the realm of history, as "the theater of God's glory," and he urged Christian scholars to peruse the past in order to discover patterns of divine providence and spiritual blessing. Calvin advocated a kind of historical scholarship that was both critical and providentialist (Prestwich, pp. 78-79), one in which the line between sacred and secular history was intentionally blurred. He wrote: "It is not enough to have our eyes open and to note well and mark what God does during our lives, but we must profit from ancient histories. In fact, this is why our Lord has wanted us to have some notable judgments left in writing, so that the memory of them would remain forever. And we should not only profit from what is contained in Holy Scripture, but when we hear what is spoken by the histories written by the pagans, we should also have the prudence to apply to ourselves what God has done" (Badertscher, pp. 67-71). It appears that Calvin's reforming project in Geneva coincided almost exactly with the Council of Trent and reassertion of Catholicism after the blow dealt it by the popularity of Luther's ideas. Philosophy of religion the theological teaching and political views developed by the French theologian and church

Evidence Based Monthly Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Evidence Based Monthly Report - Essay Example The primary stakeholders of the program will be the students of Pine Ridge Middle School. Apparently noted, a huge figure of students is unable to use various facilities of Google in the context of education. Thus, we desire to improve the ability of the students towards using Google more efficiently. The other important stakeholders of the program will be the librarians and the teachers. The program will also help them to better manage the library resources and the procedure of information sharing. The program ‘Getting the Most out of Google’ will play an imperative role in enhancing the learning and literacy level of the students. Through this program, it is anticipated that students can access their required books or specific chapters of books within the campus. It is worth mentioning that ‘Getting the Most out of Google’ program will not only help the students in searching books, but will also prove to be quite useful for searching various images from the university library on varied subjects of interests (University of New England, â€Å"Getting the Most out of Google†). One of the key services of ‘Getting the Most out of Google’ program will be interlibrary services. Through this service, students can borrow books, articles and other educational resources provided by Pine Ridge Middle School. The other interlibrary service, which will be provided by the above discussed program include viewing articles as well as books easily. Students can always view variety of articles, books and educational resources that will certainly enhance their ability to learn and also literacy level at large. Furthermore, the students of Pine Ridge Middle School can also place request for a specific article. Apart from these, students can also have a discussion with the librarians regarding any information of books or reading materials. The interlibrary

Pornography criminalization Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Pornography criminalization - Essay Example The CNN article is just one of many that are published each year about pornography within the United States. 1. Fully Criminalize Pornography. Outlawing pornography would mean removing pornographic material from computers, TVs, magazines, sexy videos and posters; Outlawing pornography is speculated to increase the incidents of sex crimes. The pornographic material and production would go underground and the production of the material might be done by "much nastier people than those who run it now" (Micklethwait, p1). Pornography has been deemed by many as dangerous to women because it promotes sexual violence against women (Corbin, 1-5). Outlawing pornography is argued to help women regain control over their bodies. Pornography that contains fantasies of rape may lead to the fantasy being acted out in the form of an actual rape. This may bring an unintended message that "sex is bad and only men should be interested in it" (Corbin, 3). The negative aspects of pornography are many. There has been "mounting evidence from teachers, social workers, probation officers, doctorsthat there is a link between scenes of violence depicted on TV, Video, and films, and human behavior."(Munday, 1) According to Munday many people feel that "freedom of expression has gone to0 far" (Munday, 1). The desire to have pornography banned has been met with opposition that asserts that banning it would a violation of the first amendment right to free speech. On the other hand it has been argued that pornography violates a woman's civil rights (MacKinnon, 1). MacKinnon further argues that "pornography is a political practice of power and powerlessness" (MacKinnon, 2). Conservatives continue to argue that pornography degrades women and uses them only as sexual objects that need to be controlled (Pornography and Ethics, 3). Some would argue that the viewing of pornography does little or no harm but one only need recall recent news that reported a young American boy who hung himself after viewing the execution of Saddam Hussein over and over on national TV. "We're theorising he tried to experiment or mimic the behaviour and it got out of control" (CNN, January 5, 2007 - 7:49AM) People are affected by what they see in what ever format it appears. Their behavior is a result of their environment and what they are exposed to. When is comes to pornography, where is the line drawn that protects our freedoms and does no harm. 2. Fully Legalize Pornography. Some liberals argue that pornography is mostly low value content designed to produce sexual arousal and contains speech of little value intellectually and does not need protecting (Pornography and Censorship, 5). Proponents of legalized pornography argue that to further censure pornography would have chilling repercussions in the publication or showing of other materials such as valued literary, artistic, and political works. They question how to define pornography and argue that any definition would also exclude other materials as stated above. Criminalizing pornography would act to suppress future works because the artists, writers, etc who "would fear that their works would be construed as pornography and thus not publish out of fear they would be prosecuted" (Pornography and Censorship, 8-9). The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) president

Top paper Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Top - Research Paper Example enic activities such as burning of fossil fuels and emission of green house gases have been said to be the prime suspects many conservative scientists still believe that Global warming is a natural phenomenon and not a man-made one. After the Earth’s origin the temperature of the earth has changed continuously throughout the geologic time period. As a matter of fact global warming is an important phenomenon that is important for survival of life on Earth without which the earth’s temperature would drop drastically. Conservatives believe that till date there is no credible or reliable information about the phenomenon of Global warming. A thorough study of the Geologic time scale would reveal that instances of global warming has even occurred in the past with temperatures of Earth exceeding than what it is today. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is one of the most recent cases of Global warming said to have occurred almost 56 million years ago (Bowen et al, 2004, p.495). This not only caused warm temperature conditions but also caused release of almost 2000 x 109 metric tons of carbon  into the ocean waters causing ocean acidification, a phenomenon which can be seen today (Zachos et al, 2005, p.1611). Today rapid acidification is attributed to global warming however such acidification is known to occur thousands of years ago when man’s harmful anthropogenic activities did not exists. Global warming is known to be the major cause of melting of ice caps and rising of the water level. However, recent studies of the polar ice caps have shown that in most areas of the Arctic the ice caps have thickened. GIS images have shown that in 2012 polar ice-caps covered almost 3.91 square kilometers whereas as of 2014 the polar ice-caps cover almost 5.62 million square kilometers which is in contrast to the global warming model (Rose, 2014). If man’s activities were to be the cause of global warming then such a phenomenon would not have occurred since Man

Accounting Changes Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Accounting Changes - Assignment Example Michael Ramos (2008) professional opined the primary reason for restatement is to present a more realistic picture of the company’s financial statement reports in compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and accounting standards. The company’s plan to restate the financial statements generated a corresponding -35% decline in its sales figure. The company has been desperately using all its collection expertise to force one of its major clients, Sinovel Wind Group, to pay for its long overdue liabilities to American Superconductor. Sinovel is strategically located Chinese company. The financial statements were restated to reflect the adjustments on American Semiconductor’s results of business operations for the year 2010. The financial statement restatement precipitated to the reduction of the company’s revenues from U.S. $ 215.7 million to only U.S. $ 74.7 million for the year 2010. The restatement precipitated to the reduction of its 2011 1st quarter financial statement revenue from $360 million to only $307 million.... The restatement was overdue because the financial statements were originally prepared to present projected data that had to be adjusted. Specifically, American Superconductor had booked its sales before the revenues were received. Question 3. There are changes that American Superconductor is expected to introduce related to the company’s internal control and accounting principles as a result of the need to restate the company’s balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows. Orice Williams (2007) reiterated the changes are needed to comply with the stock exchange policy of ensuring public confidence is not reduced. The change includes the implementation of the new accounting data as a basis for the preparation of the next accounting period’s financial statements. The next accounting period will no longer take into consideration data which had not been included in the restated financial statements. The auditing and accounting officers must adopt the restated financial statement accounts for all future financial statements accounts in compliance with the financial accounting principle of consistency and understanding. Consistently prepared financial statements enable the users of the financial statements to compare and contrast financial statement data between two accounting periods. Management must explain the reason for accounting change as well as the effects of the accounting change to dispel any doubts among the financial statement users. For example, the users can scrutinize the difference in the revenues for 2010 and 2011. Question 4. John Tracy emphasized (2009) the restatement of the company’s leadership will cast doubts on the need to restate the financial statements. The trustworthiness

Smiths Clothing Essay Example for Free

Smiths Clothing Essay Smith’s Clothing Store has remained profitable but not to the companies expectations. Over the past â€Å"10 years a set of five or six aggressive, high-fashion into or within Bayview† (Bayview is Smith’s primary store territory) (Marketing Research, 9th Edition, Aaker/Kimar/Day, pg. 343). Due to this new accessibility to trendy fashions, Smith Clothing Store is looking to assess if it’s current business model of traditional upper class clothing fashion needed an upgrade to keep it’s edge in the Bayview market. Through research they hope to gain a better understanding of who their customer is, and what they want. What is the customer’s image of Smith’s Clothing store, whom is there customer, and how do they differ from Smith’s competitors? In performing this research they will gain a better understanding of their current clientele as well as the potential customer. The current customer of Smith Clothing Store is perceived as an upper class classic design female. Due to the recent growth of the current trend market in the Bayview area, the store has not seen the growth expected from their current client base. Through an at home survey they hope to gain a better knowledge of their current and potential customers needs and if they are currently being met. If this research shows that they still hold a majority of the upper class female market in Bayview for classical dress, then they can continue the road they are on. However, if the research shows that their current and potential customer is craving the new and trendy designs, they need to adjust to meet their client and potential clients need to show growth to compete in their market. An in-home, self-administered questioner appears to be the research tool that Simpson Research feels would best gain insight to what the high-fashion customer in that area. Specifically, on Smith’s current customers age, where they shopped, their fashion preferences, and their purchase profile. The uncertainty of the accuracy of such a questionnaire was that it was to address a finical bracket that was above median income. Once the data is collected it is then to be analyzed using data-processing steps leading up to an analysis. Simpson Research will then inspect the questionnaires for completeness and reasonableness of responses. These responses to each question are to be coded to ensure standardized entry into a computer. The data from the questionnaires is to be stored in computers and analyzed using various statistical techniques. Simpson Research will then interpret the results and conclusions based on those results will be made. A documented and written report of the findings of the questionnaire and the conclusion Simpson Research has drawn will be presented to Jim Andres, the president of Smith’s Clothing. This report will contain the specific research question that were asked, the method of approach, research design, data collection, data analysis and present the results and major findings.

Effect of Branding on the Consumer

Effect of Branding on the Consumer Branding: How It Inspires People To Purchase A Particular Brand Abstract This research is done with the suitable research methods to describe how the people attempt to match their characteristics with a particular brand. A firm or company’s primary target is to make and preserve customers. They use various plans which include several research methods in order to discover the best way to make profits. For the companies, the saying, consumer is god, is crucial for a successful their business. Observing the customer’s purchasing behaviour is the initial step in the direction of successful understanding of customers. Branding is a crucial marketing strategy which inspires customer’s viewpoint and purchasing behaviour every time. Understanding customer buying behaviours will give marketers a close look into how significance for the marketers is to know the basic association the consumer has with the brand. So, for this reason, the research splits these issues into number of dimensions to consider that there is any connection between consum er purchasing behaviour. In other words, it permits one to see if branding can actually inspire consumer purchasing process. The research concentrates on the individual purchasing behaviour and branding associations. The sample is collected from the United Kingdom to overlook the culture impact and moreover to get rid of racial, religion and geographic issue for suitable sampling. The importance of this research is to explain how branding have an effect on different buyers behaviours build upon four kinds of complicated purchasing behaviour, conflict-reducing purchasing behaviour, habitual purchasing behaviour, and variety-seeking purchasing behaviour that are further talked about in this paper. By assessing commodity products, investigation of different approaches from these different consumer purchasing behaviour groups towards brand effects is done. The findings showed in the end reveals a strong positive association that can guide companies to concentrate more on strategies of branding according to the customers purchasing attitude towards branding. Introduction Today, in this fast moving environment, marketing depends upon the consumer’s behaviour and response to the product, price, promotion, place, physical layout, process and people (Gronroos, 1997; Kotler and et al., 1999; Egan, 2002) because today marketing is more consumers oriented than never before and due to the increasing value of service sector. For the development and survival of a firm, it requires exact facts about customers like their approach of buying, what they purchase, from which place they purchase and most essentially quantity they buy. Marketing has accepted the behavioural sciences basically sociology and social psychology to study and understand the process of consumer behaviour and decision making. While doing this, marketers are able to get explanations and forecasts build on these disciplines to figure their market offerings. To the extent that marketers are investigating the consumers psychological background in order to their establish factors that affect consumer choice in terms of cognition, perception, learning and attitude – all of which affect his buyer behaviour. A current day market trend has been the increasing similarity of products with little real functional difference between competing products. This is primarily due to intensive competitive rivalry and the existence of efficient production, transport, communication and financial systems. Under such circumstances technological innovations are quite quickly imitated by competitors and can no longer offer previous levels of sustainable competitive advantage and product differentiation (Levitt, 1983; Gronroos, 1997; Kotler, 2000). Therefore a significant feature of contemporary marketing research and practice concerns the emergence of brands as key organisational assets and a major issue in product strategy (Kotler, 2000). Firms have pla ced a heavy emphasis on adding symbolic values associated with brand names as the basis for product differentiation. The winner will eventually be the one whose strategy entails a mix conducive to the customers purchase behaviour, while doing so more effectively than its competitors. Objective Of The Study The primary goal of this research is to display branding value, functions and most important thing, its part in the consumer buying decision. This research examines the process and attributes that direct towards the customers’ evaluation of brands. This research will concentrate on the assessment of questionnaires filled by the public. Other objectives are like explanation of how the present customers attempts to match the individual identity with the identity that they relate to the brand, to prove that is there any correlation between individual purchasing behaviour and branding, and to evaluate how branding have an effect on different purchaser behaviours. Literature Review This study provides a foundation for the value and uses of branding as a vital marketing activity having an important impact on the consumer purchase decision. This research relates to a basic theory which has yet to be verified which says that as the difference among similar available products in the market is reducing, the chances that customers will buy through extrinsic signals, i.e. brand name associations is rising (Murphy, 1992). So, as customers’ ability to distinguish same kind of product declines, it is likely that the awareness of familiarity of a particular brand will push them to buy their particular choice of brand. Branding Let us define a ‘product’ before defining a brand, according to Baker (2000) a product is like anything that meets the needs of consumers. He says that it is the ability of the product to meet these needs that gives it value. The needs or problems can be psychological, economic or functional. In a competitive environment there are several companies offering opponent products that meet the customer’s needs. It is important to consider the fact that the brand can also allow companies to overcome the need to compete at a functional level, and can be used to help a company to compete on any level it is by applying its main capabilities (Hamel and Prahalad, 1994). It is the brand that distinguishes and identifies their offerings (Levitt, 1983). Like, most valuable possession is its brand name. They may be referred to as invisible assets of a lot of corporations around the world. Branding at present is increasingly concerned with bringing together and maintaining a mix of values, both tangible as well as intangible, which are relevant to the consumers and which properly differentiate one’s brand from that of another (Muehling and Laczniak, 1991; Hankinson and Cowking, 1993; Kapferer, 1995; Kotler et al., 1999). There are many tools other then the brand name to distinguish products and invest them with personality. Leading among them are advertising, promotion and packaging, other ways to differentiate from the competition may be product formulation, delivery systems, sizes, colour, smell, shape and so on. On the other hand, all these elements are put together with an appropriate and protected name with which the primary attributes of the product or service ultimately reside give the product its brand identity. This combination of messages within the structure of a brand name is a foundation to the development of brand personality (Graham, 2001; Holt, 2002). From the consumers point of view, brand names are as important as the product itsel f in the sense they make purchasing process easier, guarantee quality and at times form as a basis of self-expression. As said by Kotler (1997), any company can produce cold drinks, but only Pepsi Co. can produce 7UP. Talking about branding purpose and benefits, branding facilitates and makes the customers selection process more effective, people are loaded with lots of decisions in their day to day lives, and they are flooded with limitless products and messages contesting for attention. People look for shortcuts to make the decisions easier, a shorter way is to depend on habit, this shows of purchasing products that have shown good results in the past. This is in particular a case of less involvement purchases. This is further shown by a model of habitual buying behaviour (Assael, 1993), stating that reasonable past consumption behaviour leads to benefit association, which is a idea means the tendency of the consumer to relate the positive rewards to a particular brand, this relation between positive rewards towards a certain brand restricts the customers need for looking information and strengthen the likelihood that the identification of a need will lead the customer to straight buy a particul ar brand. And from the retailer’s point of view, branding can help differentiation. According to (Adcock. et al., 1998), differentiation is an action of modelling a set of meaningful differences to differentiate the companys offering from the opponent’s offerings. Competition with fast pace can follow development in technology and product formulation. An opponent will quickly able to make a replica, example, a cigarette brand, though they will not be able to copy the personality that use the brand name, like Marlboro. Porter (1980) says that differentiation is a source of competitive advantage. Using a differential advantage companies are in a position to distinguish their offer from competitors in the same segment. According to Porter (1980), the main need for gaining a competitive advantage is by creating such differentiation. Differentiation, in this case, refers to a company’s ability to be exclusive in its product sold and service offered. This individuality must be of a value to the consumer and can thus be sold at a premium over its competitor’s price. The more valuable this exclusivity is, the higher the differentiation, leading to the higher premium. Differentiation however comes with a cost, so for differentiation to have a competitive advantage, the cost of differentiating must be significantly lower than the premium earned. Therefore, in the perfect market with perfect competition, this premium allows the company to make a higher profit margin than its competitors. In a market segment with no differential advantage held by anyone, consumers might opt purely on the basis of price, and perfect competition which confirms that profits are pushed to zero (Porter, 1980; Foxall and Goldsmith, 1994; Baker, 2000). The differential advantage above can be gained by obtaining any element of the marketing mix. But studies have shown that the best possible plan is to focus on brand differentiation, rather than cost and price as a way of building profitability and growth (East, 1997; Diaz de Rada, 1998; Fankel, 2002). The Significance of Brand Loyalty According to (Meenaghan, 1995; Quester and Smart, 1998), branding can be related to the increasing value of brand loyalty. Loyalty can be termed as a total commitment towards a particular brand. Building loyalty depends on satisfying the needs of the consumers better than other opponents (Oliver, 1999) and the stage of loyalty that can be reached depends on the aimed consumers. According to (Quester and Smart, 1998), people all over the globe develop irrational connection with different products. Though (Levitt, 1983), came with the structure to understand how booming brands are made and claimed that consumers are not irrational to select them. The core of all brands consists of key product attributes, which allow the consumers to distinguish the product, as an answer to their needs; the attributes describe the products performance and usefulness. Adjoining this main product there is a group of attributes that enable the consumer to distinguish the product from other products of different brands. These characteristics take the shape of the products appearance, design, packaging, and identification. If these attributes would not been there, the only differentiation would be based on its reasonable pricing. According to Doyle, the brand name permits for a sustainable differential advantage. In the end, it is the external shell of the product that has been described by Doyle as, whatever thing that possibly can be done to create customer inclination and loyalty (cited Baker, 2000). According to (Alreck and Settle, 1999,) marketer’s basic aim is to make good relationship with buyers, rather just selling. The core of a relationship is a powerful bond between the brand and the buyer. If successful there will be present a loyalty that keeps out the opponents. A strong brand name should have a consumer franchise that will develop when enough number of customers wants that brand and reject other alternatives, still if the price is less. A brand with a powerful consumer franchise is protected from competitors (Kotler and Cox, 1980; Cheratony, 1993; Cowley, 1996). The brand loyal customers, whether they purchase same brand every time which can be an act of trust, habit or outcome of less participation and product availability, the clear assumption is that they push high profits for the company. Thakor and Kohli (1996) says that it costs six times more to succeed over new buyers then to hold present ones, because of the fact that it results in more expenditure li nked to adverts, promotions and sales. So loyal consumers make brand equity the main asset underlying brand equity is buyers’ equity (Machleit, 1993; Kotler, 1999). It is vital to make loyalty and settled base of customers who are fixed and loyal purchasers of a brand, which negates change and churn from the company’s’ products. For every business it is costly to increase new customers and cheaper to keep present one. Therefore, a settled customer base has the customer acquisition investment mainly in its past (Gwinner and Eaton, 1999). Contemporary marketing recommends obtaining data about customers as much as possible, anywhere it is to widen the understanding of customer wants, standard of living, attitude and purchasing behaviour (Chisnall, 1995; Davis et al., 1996; Dun, 1997; Chevron, 1998). This allows a company to modify the brand offering, to shift from the usual to an unexpected level of service actually delighting the customer, make sure the future loyalty and commitment. Generally, a brand’s value to a company is mainly created by the customer loyalty it controls (Aaker, 1996). Brand Equity Brands might differ in terms of the amount of dominance they have in the market. Many brands are unfamiliar whereas others have great consumer awareness, and moreover some brands have a great amount of consumer brand inclination. A strong brand can be said to have great brand equity. This can be explained as a brand which enjoys great brand loyalty, awareness, powerful brand associations, perceive quality and other benefits like trademarks, exclusive rights and channel relationships (Chay, 1991). The idea behind brand equity relates to the importance of a brand, value to the marketer as well as the buyer. With the marketers’ viewpoint, brand equity is a big market share therefore better cash flows and profit. From the consumer viewpoint, brand equity relates to a powerful positive brand attitude through a promising assessment of the brand, which is build upon consistent meanings and values that are simply accessible in the buyers’ memory (Lewis, 1993; Keller, 1998). With substantial effort has been put in measuring and defining the concept of brand equity there has been limited empirical research aimed at understanding the importance of the brand name associations in product differentiation (Aaker, 1991). One of the main objectives of Marketing is to get the products offered in a particular category to be distinct. Muehling, Stoltman and Mishra (1989), have found consumers to be less brand loyal, more price sensitive and less receptive to marketplace information in the absence of perceived differences between the alternatives. Brand Image Marketers understand that brands summon up symbolic pictures which are more significant to success of a product than its real natural characteristics (Meenaghan, 1995; Feltham, 1998). For products which are recognized with a brand, Davis (1995) has performed a research by splitting the customer assessment in two factors. Assessment which is linked to product characteristics (tangible) and assessment linked to the brand name (intangible). The consumers power to assess the performance abilities of the product and view about its value for money, usage effectiveness, reliability and availability develops the inherent advantage of the product, matching to product’s characteristics. The external benefits are at the emotional stage where, the symbolic assessment of the brand is taken into account. Here consumers make use of their personal reasons normally matching the brand name related attributes. With the growing variety of standardized products, consumers give more importance to t he image of products to make the assessment of different options easier. Meenaghan (1995) tells that consumers display an inclination towards symbolic rather than purely functional features of products. Therefore, they usually ask for social reliability and loyalty from firms and, in general, symbolic associations have their origin mostly in brand name perception instead of product perception (Meenaghan, 1995). Marketers have tried to employ behavioural theories to clarify and recognize useful relations involving consumer’s personality and their buying behaviour. Kamakura and Russell (1993) have spotted such theory stating that individuals have a definite self-image build on who they believe they are ideal self-concept build on who they believe they would like to be. Howard and Sheth (1969) have explained self-image as an individual thoughts and feelings about their own selves in relation to other objects in a socially determined frame of reference. By self-concept or self-image model, individuals will perform in a way that sustain and improve thei r self-image. One way is through the products they buy and use. The Effect of Branding on Consumer Purchase Behaviour The function of brand values is highlighted in the literature above, and in particular the significance of the brand to get distinctive benefit has been documented in depth. The reason behind the study to understand the consumer purchasing behaviour in light of the literature discussed so far. In order to do this consumer decision-making models will be organized. The hypothesis will be assumed as the derivation of the tests that will be conducted in the primary research. Marketing and ecological stimuli penetrate the buyer’s perception, the definition of consumer buying behaviour can be comprehended as buyer’s purchasing decision process. Four types of consumer buying behaviours, based on the degree of buyer contribution and the degree of differences among brands (Kotler, 2000). These four types are complex buying behaviour, habitual buying behaviour, variety-seeking buying behaviour, and dissonance-reducing buying behaviour. In complex buying behaviour the consumer is aware of the brands and gets too involved in the buying by analysing the product thoroughly. The customer is highly involved in buying the product in dissonance-reducing behaviour but doesn’t get too involved in the brands. Some buying situations are characterised by low involvement but significant brand differences. Consumer’s often do a lot of brand switching for variety-seekers. They are only according to the information in advertisement and television. The buying process begins with brand beliefs in habitual buying behaviour. The brand plays most important role in consumers’ purchase decision to purchase a particular product from another. Various attributes that merge to make the consumer behaviour in particular fashion during his purchase decision but also inducing any pre-purchase and post purchase activities. As (Engle et al., 1995) has defined consumer behaviour as consisting all those acts of individuals which are directly involved in obtaining, using and disposing of economic goods and services, including the decision process that precede and determine these acts. It is important factor to consider that influence the consumers’ buyer behaviour and study wishes to incorporate the Howard-sheth model of decision making. The theory of the model is that buyer behaviour is in general component firm by how consumer thinks and develops in order. (Howard and Sheth, 1969). It supports the fact that cognitive decision making which eventually determine the choice of brand and purchasing decision. The brand impact motivate the buyer and changes the behaviour , perception, learning and attitude are examined in terms of how each is affected by this impact on branding. Perception Here brand perception is based on individual personal experience of their own beliefs, needs and values. People receive and understand the sensory from their five senses they are sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste) in their own ways. Engel at el have defined perception as â€Å" the process whereby stimuli are received and interpreted by the individual and translated into a response† (Foxall, 1980,p.29). Primarily the social and psychological meaning of a product gets conveyed by two factors which determine the idea of stimuli, also known as stimulus discrimination and stimulus generalisation. Stimulus discrimination the question that hits in mind is whether the consumer can actually discriminate between differences in stimuli. Consumers become conscious of brands through packages, advertisements, promotions, and word of mouth they may be involved at some point in decision making process. Once customers became aware of brands through learning their purchase decision are then guided by their perceptions of their brands formed from the information they get about the brands characteristics (Foxall and Goldsmith, 1994). The marketers will first provide the similar brands and provide same information about the product and they position better way and discriminate between characteristics of the brands. The marketing information which will discriminate based on the brand name information provided with and it will be derived from brand name or the perception of the brand. It has been concluded (kotler et al, 1999) that consumers depend on reputation of the brand name to believe t he quality of the product. Brand name is someone who creates the image and some cases provide perception of the quality in a product and that shows the involvement of low level buyers. The main part of brand impact where the customer experiences the service they provide and class they maintain it guide through the purchasing behaviour. Chernatony (1993) explained four factors that attract them to change a particular brand and to understand their provided framework of their successful brands . 1. Quality is the pre-eminent factor that through time can lead buyers to learn to trust a brand which leads to priority position in the evoked set and repeat purchasing activity. 2. Build superior service can not only endorse product quality, but also prove post purchase problem solving. For instance, digital camera consumers would select an international brand for its global service and technological support. 3. The most common means of building an outstanding brand is being the first into the mind consumer. It is much easier to build a strong brand in the consumer’s mind than in the market, characterised by the intense level of competition. 4. In building brands the principle is to invest in markets which are highly differential or where such differentiation can be created. Mostly, the differentiation is why the brand is different from others. Brand provides consumer with lower search costs for products internally and externally. Brand reduces the risk in product decisions and Keller (1998) identifies six types of risk in consumers view. 1. Functional risk- product expectations 2.physical risk- friendly user or not 3. Financial risk- product should fit in the budget and it should be worth 4. Psychological risk- the product affects the mental well-being of the user 6. Time risk- failure of the product leads to find the other product. Brands have a personally of their own which consumers want to associate with, would like to reflect their own behaviour or aspirations and want to have an experience with. A brand, therefore, adds value to a functional product providing it offers clear differentiation in the market in which it competes. â€Å"Branding is short, transforms the actual experience of using the product and thereby adds to its value (Chevron, 1998). Learning So far it has been highlighted how extrinsic cues of a product namely the brand name can affect the consumers perception. Learning refers to any change in behaviour that comes about as a result from past experience. Dodds (1991) refers to learning as changes in a consumer’s behaviour caused by information and experience. Consumers store information in their memory in the form of associations, which links the brand name of a product with a variety of other attributes of the brand, like its price, packaging, colour, size and benefits as well as how the consumer feels about it in terms of its quality and emotions it evokes. These associations are the ones that form the information base from where the consumer makes his ultimately decisions (Foxall and Goldsmith, 1994). Most of this information consumers have stored in their memory comes from the process of learning that is what they think, feel or know about brands. Conoway (1994), claims that the subjective personal meanings of psycho-social consequences are represented by consumers’ cognitive systems. Since these consequences are experienced by consumers they are likely to trigger responses such as emotions, feelings and evaluations. Learning will be examined as a result of the marketing efforts, in terms of how information from the external communication environment is registered with the consumers long term memory from where it is extracted and used during his purchasing decision and also examine the way learning takes place in the form of changes in the consumers behaviour as a result of experience. At its simplest form learning occurs when consumers are repeatedly exposed to information such as brand names, slogans and jingles. Through this forms of learning consumers may form a weakly held belief that a particular brand is desirable due to an advertisement where the spokesperson repeats this claim over and over again. On the other hand, learning vicariously occurs when a consumer imitates the behaviours of others. Bandure (1977) stated that vicarious learning describes the way in which a consumer learns pattern of behaviour by watching other behave and applying the same lessons to his/her life. Brand images are created through advertisements, marketers use celebrities and famous sportsmen for this purpose, as it are the case with major retailing brands of Sainsburys and ASDA or Nike and Puma. Advertisements conjure upon a image for the brand through the use of models living a certain lifestyle that might be in tune with the consumers aspirations this will allow for favourable information about the brand to be processes by the consumers learning process. For marketers the learning theory is one of significance and of practical importance, as it allows them to build up demand for their brands by associating them to strong drives, motivation cues and thereby enabling positive reinforcements. Attitude A person’s overall evaluation of a concept may be defined as his or her attitude (Carpernter and Nakamopto, 1989). Consumers’ attitudes towards brands are reflected by their tendency to evaluate brands in a consistently favourable or unfavourable fashion. While behaviour and attitude are related and each may uinfluene each other, it si not necessary for them to be entirely consistent (Briggs and Cheek, 1986). General logic claims that if a consumer prefers or favours a brand there is greater likelihood of him to purchase it. thereby a positive trend in consumers attitude towards a particular brand may result in an increase in sales forecast. It is no wonder that testing or measuring attitude provides the bulk of marketing research work (Foxall and Goldsmith, 1994). Researching consumer attitudes are functionally useful for the marketer in directing consumers toward brands they find useful in satisfying needs, wants and aspirations. Chay (1991) claims that advertisements influence attitudes towards the add, which is an importance predecessor of brand attitude. While Cheratony (1989) and Muehling (1987) go on saying that the influence of attitudes towards the ad on brand attitudes has been found to be even more significant under low-involvement conditions and emotionally based advertising. While in some cases even though the consumer has a favourable attitude towards a brand due to an advertisement he might have enjoyed, after having watched the advertisement if his purchase action is postponed the effect of the advertisement will wear off resulting in the favourable attitude towards the brand fading away. Furthermore even if the purchase action is not delayed there is the possibility of variables such as price that rule out the consistency between attitude and behaviour (Belk, 1975). Motivation is another mental factor that influences the underlying emotions and attitudes towards brands and the purchasing decision. Freud (Vecchio, 1992) claims that people are mostly unconscious of the real psychological forces shaping their behaviour. He suggests that a person does not fully understand his/her motivation. He states that as people grow up they repress many urges, and these urges are never really eliminated or under perfect control. An applied example could be in terms of Pepsi adverting campaign during 1989 to 1992, with slogan such as Pepsi the choice of a new generation and Pepsi Gotta Have It (Alison, 1992). David Novak, Pepsis vice president of marketing explains that the campaign represents the Pepsi attitude for people who think young and want to celebrate his life. The implication here would be for a young adult who purchases the Pepsi with the underlying motive to quench his thirst or purchase a beverage. At a deeper leave he might have purchase the Pepsi to feel or show that he is young and alive (Alison, 1992). There is a possibility for the brand to be a reflection of the consumers perception of his image or self-presentation. Carpernter and Nakamopto (1989) and Chisnall (1995) have defined image as a function of social interaction. Thereby consumption can be an act of self-presentation. The consumer tries to link himself with a desired image, or the ideal social self-image. Conclusion Through the literature reviewed the significance and importance of branding as a marketing tool has been highlighted, while providing sufficient evidence as to why a company should brand its products. Product differentiation has been made difficult due to immense competition and improvements in technology, allowing products to be quickly imitated. In this way firms have placed a heavy emphasis on adding symbolic values as the basis for product differentiation. Therefore, while evaluating products the consumer will tend to consider the image aspect of the product to simplify the evaluation of different alternatives. Additionally the review suggested that consumers have a self-concept that have a crucial effect on their purchase decisions. This means that consumer might evaluate brands on the basis of the congruence between the brands image and their own self-image. Moreover, when the consumer has little or no experience with the product or has a lack of information about the product, consumers will use brand names to evaluate products, some consumers even when provided with information will avoid spending time to investigate the products intrin Effect of Branding on the Consumer Effect of Branding on the Consumer Branding: How It Inspires People To Purchase A Particular Brand Abstract This research is done with the suitable research methods to describe how the people attempt to match their characteristics with a particular brand. A firm or company’s primary target is to make and preserve customers. They use various plans which include several research methods in order to discover the best way to make profits. For the companies, the saying, consumer is god, is crucial for a successful their business. Observing the customer’s purchasing behaviour is the initial step in the direction of successful understanding of customers. Branding is a crucial marketing strategy which inspires customer’s viewpoint and purchasing behaviour every time. Understanding customer buying behaviours will give marketers a close look into how significance for the marketers is to know the basic association the consumer has with the brand. So, for this reason, the research splits these issues into number of dimensions to consider that there is any connection between consum er purchasing behaviour. In other words, it permits one to see if branding can actually inspire consumer purchasing process. The research concentrates on the individual purchasing behaviour and branding associations. The sample is collected from the United Kingdom to overlook the culture impact and moreover to get rid of racial, religion and geographic issue for suitable sampling. The importance of this research is to explain how branding have an effect on different buyers behaviours build upon four kinds of complicated purchasing behaviour, conflict-reducing purchasing behaviour, habitual purchasing behaviour, and variety-seeking purchasing behaviour that are further talked about in this paper. By assessing commodity products, investigation of different approaches from these different consumer purchasing behaviour groups towards brand effects is done. The findings showed in the end reveals a strong positive association that can guide companies to concentrate more on strategies of branding according to the customers purchasing attitude towards branding. Introduction Today, in this fast moving environment, marketing depends upon the consumer’s behaviour and response to the product, price, promotion, place, physical layout, process and people (Gronroos, 1997; Kotler and et al., 1999; Egan, 2002) because today marketing is more consumers oriented than never before and due to the increasing value of service sector. For the development and survival of a firm, it requires exact facts about customers like their approach of buying, what they purchase, from which place they purchase and most essentially quantity they buy. Marketing has accepted the behavioural sciences basically sociology and social psychology to study and understand the process of consumer behaviour and decision making. While doing this, marketers are able to get explanations and forecasts build on these disciplines to figure their market offerings. To the extent that marketers are investigating the consumers psychological background in order to their establish factors that affect consumer choice in terms of cognition, perception, learning and attitude – all of which affect his buyer behaviour. A current day market trend has been the increasing similarity of products with little real functional difference between competing products. This is primarily due to intensive competitive rivalry and the existence of efficient production, transport, communication and financial systems. Under such circumstances technological innovations are quite quickly imitated by competitors and can no longer offer previous levels of sustainable competitive advantage and product differentiation (Levitt, 1983; Gronroos, 1997; Kotler, 2000). Therefore a significant feature of contemporary marketing research and practice concerns the emergence of brands as key organisational assets and a major issue in product strategy (Kotler, 2000). Firms have pla ced a heavy emphasis on adding symbolic values associated with brand names as the basis for product differentiation. The winner will eventually be the one whose strategy entails a mix conducive to the customers purchase behaviour, while doing so more effectively than its competitors. Objective Of The Study The primary goal of this research is to display branding value, functions and most important thing, its part in the consumer buying decision. This research examines the process and attributes that direct towards the customers’ evaluation of brands. This research will concentrate on the assessment of questionnaires filled by the public. Other objectives are like explanation of how the present customers attempts to match the individual identity with the identity that they relate to the brand, to prove that is there any correlation between individual purchasing behaviour and branding, and to evaluate how branding have an effect on different purchaser behaviours. Literature Review This study provides a foundation for the value and uses of branding as a vital marketing activity having an important impact on the consumer purchase decision. This research relates to a basic theory which has yet to be verified which says that as the difference among similar available products in the market is reducing, the chances that customers will buy through extrinsic signals, i.e. brand name associations is rising (Murphy, 1992). So, as customers’ ability to distinguish same kind of product declines, it is likely that the awareness of familiarity of a particular brand will push them to buy their particular choice of brand. Branding Let us define a ‘product’ before defining a brand, according to Baker (2000) a product is like anything that meets the needs of consumers. He says that it is the ability of the product to meet these needs that gives it value. The needs or problems can be psychological, economic or functional. In a competitive environment there are several companies offering opponent products that meet the customer’s needs. It is important to consider the fact that the brand can also allow companies to overcome the need to compete at a functional level, and can be used to help a company to compete on any level it is by applying its main capabilities (Hamel and Prahalad, 1994). It is the brand that distinguishes and identifies their offerings (Levitt, 1983). Like, most valuable possession is its brand name. They may be referred to as invisible assets of a lot of corporations around the world. Branding at present is increasingly concerned with bringing together and maintaining a mix of values, both tangible as well as intangible, which are relevant to the consumers and which properly differentiate one’s brand from that of another (Muehling and Laczniak, 1991; Hankinson and Cowking, 1993; Kapferer, 1995; Kotler et al., 1999). There are many tools other then the brand name to distinguish products and invest them with personality. Leading among them are advertising, promotion and packaging, other ways to differentiate from the competition may be product formulation, delivery systems, sizes, colour, smell, shape and so on. On the other hand, all these elements are put together with an appropriate and protected name with which the primary attributes of the product or service ultimately reside give the product its brand identity. This combination of messages within the structure of a brand name is a foundation to the development of brand personality (Graham, 2001; Holt, 2002). From the consumers point of view, brand names are as important as the product itsel f in the sense they make purchasing process easier, guarantee quality and at times form as a basis of self-expression. As said by Kotler (1997), any company can produce cold drinks, but only Pepsi Co. can produce 7UP. Talking about branding purpose and benefits, branding facilitates and makes the customers selection process more effective, people are loaded with lots of decisions in their day to day lives, and they are flooded with limitless products and messages contesting for attention. People look for shortcuts to make the decisions easier, a shorter way is to depend on habit, this shows of purchasing products that have shown good results in the past. This is in particular a case of less involvement purchases. This is further shown by a model of habitual buying behaviour (Assael, 1993), stating that reasonable past consumption behaviour leads to benefit association, which is a idea means the tendency of the consumer to relate the positive rewards to a particular brand, this relation between positive rewards towards a certain brand restricts the customers need for looking information and strengthen the likelihood that the identification of a need will lead the customer to straight buy a particul ar brand. And from the retailer’s point of view, branding can help differentiation. According to (Adcock. et al., 1998), differentiation is an action of modelling a set of meaningful differences to differentiate the companys offering from the opponent’s offerings. Competition with fast pace can follow development in technology and product formulation. An opponent will quickly able to make a replica, example, a cigarette brand, though they will not be able to copy the personality that use the brand name, like Marlboro. Porter (1980) says that differentiation is a source of competitive advantage. Using a differential advantage companies are in a position to distinguish their offer from competitors in the same segment. According to Porter (1980), the main need for gaining a competitive advantage is by creating such differentiation. Differentiation, in this case, refers to a company’s ability to be exclusive in its product sold and service offered. This individuality must be of a value to the consumer and can thus be sold at a premium over its competitor’s price. The more valuable this exclusivity is, the higher the differentiation, leading to the higher premium. Differentiation however comes with a cost, so for differentiation to have a competitive advantage, the cost of differentiating must be significantly lower than the premium earned. Therefore, in the perfect market with perfect competition, this premium allows the company to make a higher profit margin than its competitors. In a market segment with no differential advantage held by anyone, consumers might opt purely on the basis of price, and perfect competition which confirms that profits are pushed to zero (Porter, 1980; Foxall and Goldsmith, 1994; Baker, 2000). The differential advantage above can be gained by obtaining any element of the marketing mix. But studies have shown that the best possible plan is to focus on brand differentiation, rather than cost and price as a way of building profitability and growth (East, 1997; Diaz de Rada, 1998; Fankel, 2002). The Significance of Brand Loyalty According to (Meenaghan, 1995; Quester and Smart, 1998), branding can be related to the increasing value of brand loyalty. Loyalty can be termed as a total commitment towards a particular brand. Building loyalty depends on satisfying the needs of the consumers better than other opponents (Oliver, 1999) and the stage of loyalty that can be reached depends on the aimed consumers. According to (Quester and Smart, 1998), people all over the globe develop irrational connection with different products. Though (Levitt, 1983), came with the structure to understand how booming brands are made and claimed that consumers are not irrational to select them. The core of all brands consists of key product attributes, which allow the consumers to distinguish the product, as an answer to their needs; the attributes describe the products performance and usefulness. Adjoining this main product there is a group of attributes that enable the consumer to distinguish the product from other products of different brands. These characteristics take the shape of the products appearance, design, packaging, and identification. If these attributes would not been there, the only differentiation would be based on its reasonable pricing. According to Doyle, the brand name permits for a sustainable differential advantage. In the end, it is the external shell of the product that has been described by Doyle as, whatever thing that possibly can be done to create customer inclination and loyalty (cited Baker, 2000). According to (Alreck and Settle, 1999,) marketer’s basic aim is to make good relationship with buyers, rather just selling. The core of a relationship is a powerful bond between the brand and the buyer. If successful there will be present a loyalty that keeps out the opponents. A strong brand name should have a consumer franchise that will develop when enough number of customers wants that brand and reject other alternatives, still if the price is less. A brand with a powerful consumer franchise is protected from competitors (Kotler and Cox, 1980; Cheratony, 1993; Cowley, 1996). The brand loyal customers, whether they purchase same brand every time which can be an act of trust, habit or outcome of less participation and product availability, the clear assumption is that they push high profits for the company. Thakor and Kohli (1996) says that it costs six times more to succeed over new buyers then to hold present ones, because of the fact that it results in more expenditure li nked to adverts, promotions and sales. So loyal consumers make brand equity the main asset underlying brand equity is buyers’ equity (Machleit, 1993; Kotler, 1999). It is vital to make loyalty and settled base of customers who are fixed and loyal purchasers of a brand, which negates change and churn from the company’s’ products. For every business it is costly to increase new customers and cheaper to keep present one. Therefore, a settled customer base has the customer acquisition investment mainly in its past (Gwinner and Eaton, 1999). Contemporary marketing recommends obtaining data about customers as much as possible, anywhere it is to widen the understanding of customer wants, standard of living, attitude and purchasing behaviour (Chisnall, 1995; Davis et al., 1996; Dun, 1997; Chevron, 1998). This allows a company to modify the brand offering, to shift from the usual to an unexpected level of service actually delighting the customer, make sure the future loyalty and commitment. Generally, a brand’s value to a company is mainly created by the customer loyalty it controls (Aaker, 1996). Brand Equity Brands might differ in terms of the amount of dominance they have in the market. Many brands are unfamiliar whereas others have great consumer awareness, and moreover some brands have a great amount of consumer brand inclination. A strong brand can be said to have great brand equity. This can be explained as a brand which enjoys great brand loyalty, awareness, powerful brand associations, perceive quality and other benefits like trademarks, exclusive rights and channel relationships (Chay, 1991). The idea behind brand equity relates to the importance of a brand, value to the marketer as well as the buyer. With the marketers’ viewpoint, brand equity is a big market share therefore better cash flows and profit. From the consumer viewpoint, brand equity relates to a powerful positive brand attitude through a promising assessment of the brand, which is build upon consistent meanings and values that are simply accessible in the buyers’ memory (Lewis, 1993; Keller, 1998). With substantial effort has been put in measuring and defining the concept of brand equity there has been limited empirical research aimed at understanding the importance of the brand name associations in product differentiation (Aaker, 1991). One of the main objectives of Marketing is to get the products offered in a particular category to be distinct. Muehling, Stoltman and Mishra (1989), have found consumers to be less brand loyal, more price sensitive and less receptive to marketplace information in the absence of perceived differences between the alternatives. Brand Image Marketers understand that brands summon up symbolic pictures which are more significant to success of a product than its real natural characteristics (Meenaghan, 1995; Feltham, 1998). For products which are recognized with a brand, Davis (1995) has performed a research by splitting the customer assessment in two factors. Assessment which is linked to product characteristics (tangible) and assessment linked to the brand name (intangible). The consumers power to assess the performance abilities of the product and view about its value for money, usage effectiveness, reliability and availability develops the inherent advantage of the product, matching to product’s characteristics. The external benefits are at the emotional stage where, the symbolic assessment of the brand is taken into account. Here consumers make use of their personal reasons normally matching the brand name related attributes. With the growing variety of standardized products, consumers give more importance to t he image of products to make the assessment of different options easier. Meenaghan (1995) tells that consumers display an inclination towards symbolic rather than purely functional features of products. Therefore, they usually ask for social reliability and loyalty from firms and, in general, symbolic associations have their origin mostly in brand name perception instead of product perception (Meenaghan, 1995). Marketers have tried to employ behavioural theories to clarify and recognize useful relations involving consumer’s personality and their buying behaviour. Kamakura and Russell (1993) have spotted such theory stating that individuals have a definite self-image build on who they believe they are ideal self-concept build on who they believe they would like to be. Howard and Sheth (1969) have explained self-image as an individual thoughts and feelings about their own selves in relation to other objects in a socially determined frame of reference. By self-concept or self-image model, individuals will perform in a way that sustain and improve thei r self-image. One way is through the products they buy and use. The Effect of Branding on Consumer Purchase Behaviour The function of brand values is highlighted in the literature above, and in particular the significance of the brand to get distinctive benefit has been documented in depth. The reason behind the study to understand the consumer purchasing behaviour in light of the literature discussed so far. In order to do this consumer decision-making models will be organized. The hypothesis will be assumed as the derivation of the tests that will be conducted in the primary research. Marketing and ecological stimuli penetrate the buyer’s perception, the definition of consumer buying behaviour can be comprehended as buyer’s purchasing decision process. Four types of consumer buying behaviours, based on the degree of buyer contribution and the degree of differences among brands (Kotler, 2000). These four types are complex buying behaviour, habitual buying behaviour, variety-seeking buying behaviour, and dissonance-reducing buying behaviour. In complex buying behaviour the consumer is aware of the brands and gets too involved in the buying by analysing the product thoroughly. The customer is highly involved in buying the product in dissonance-reducing behaviour but doesn’t get too involved in the brands. Some buying situations are characterised by low involvement but significant brand differences. Consumer’s often do a lot of brand switching for variety-seekers. They are only according to the information in advertisement and television. The buying process begins with brand beliefs in habitual buying behaviour. The brand plays most important role in consumers’ purchase decision to purchase a particular product from another. Various attributes that merge to make the consumer behaviour in particular fashion during his purchase decision but also inducing any pre-purchase and post purchase activities. As (Engle et al., 1995) has defined consumer behaviour as consisting all those acts of individuals which are directly involved in obtaining, using and disposing of economic goods and services, including the decision process that precede and determine these acts. It is important factor to consider that influence the consumers’ buyer behaviour and study wishes to incorporate the Howard-sheth model of decision making. The theory of the model is that buyer behaviour is in general component firm by how consumer thinks and develops in order. (Howard and Sheth, 1969). It supports the fact that cognitive decision making which eventually determine the choice of brand and purchasing decision. The brand impact motivate the buyer and changes the behaviour , perception, learning and attitude are examined in terms of how each is affected by this impact on branding. Perception Here brand perception is based on individual personal experience of their own beliefs, needs and values. People receive and understand the sensory from their five senses they are sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste) in their own ways. Engel at el have defined perception as â€Å" the process whereby stimuli are received and interpreted by the individual and translated into a response† (Foxall, 1980,p.29). Primarily the social and psychological meaning of a product gets conveyed by two factors which determine the idea of stimuli, also known as stimulus discrimination and stimulus generalisation. Stimulus discrimination the question that hits in mind is whether the consumer can actually discriminate between differences in stimuli. Consumers become conscious of brands through packages, advertisements, promotions, and word of mouth they may be involved at some point in decision making process. Once customers became aware of brands through learning their purchase decision are then guided by their perceptions of their brands formed from the information they get about the brands characteristics (Foxall and Goldsmith, 1994). The marketers will first provide the similar brands and provide same information about the product and they position better way and discriminate between characteristics of the brands. The marketing information which will discriminate based on the brand name information provided with and it will be derived from brand name or the perception of the brand. It has been concluded (kotler et al, 1999) that consumers depend on reputation of the brand name to believe t he quality of the product. Brand name is someone who creates the image and some cases provide perception of the quality in a product and that shows the involvement of low level buyers. The main part of brand impact where the customer experiences the service they provide and class they maintain it guide through the purchasing behaviour. Chernatony (1993) explained four factors that attract them to change a particular brand and to understand their provided framework of their successful brands . 1. Quality is the pre-eminent factor that through time can lead buyers to learn to trust a brand which leads to priority position in the evoked set and repeat purchasing activity. 2. Build superior service can not only endorse product quality, but also prove post purchase problem solving. For instance, digital camera consumers would select an international brand for its global service and technological support. 3. The most common means of building an outstanding brand is being the first into the mind consumer. It is much easier to build a strong brand in the consumer’s mind than in the market, characterised by the intense level of competition. 4. In building brands the principle is to invest in markets which are highly differential or where such differentiation can be created. Mostly, the differentiation is why the brand is different from others. Brand provides consumer with lower search costs for products internally and externally. Brand reduces the risk in product decisions and Keller (1998) identifies six types of risk in consumers view. 1. Functional risk- product expectations 2.physical risk- friendly user or not 3. Financial risk- product should fit in the budget and it should be worth 4. Psychological risk- the product affects the mental well-being of the user 6. Time risk- failure of the product leads to find the other product. Brands have a personally of their own which consumers want to associate with, would like to reflect their own behaviour or aspirations and want to have an experience with. A brand, therefore, adds value to a functional product providing it offers clear differentiation in the market in which it competes. â€Å"Branding is short, transforms the actual experience of using the product and thereby adds to its value (Chevron, 1998). Learning So far it has been highlighted how extrinsic cues of a product namely the brand name can affect the consumers perception. Learning refers to any change in behaviour that comes about as a result from past experience. Dodds (1991) refers to learning as changes in a consumer’s behaviour caused by information and experience. Consumers store information in their memory in the form of associations, which links the brand name of a product with a variety of other attributes of the brand, like its price, packaging, colour, size and benefits as well as how the consumer feels about it in terms of its quality and emotions it evokes. These associations are the ones that form the information base from where the consumer makes his ultimately decisions (Foxall and Goldsmith, 1994). Most of this information consumers have stored in their memory comes from the process of learning that is what they think, feel or know about brands. Conoway (1994), claims that the subjective personal meanings of psycho-social consequences are represented by consumers’ cognitive systems. Since these consequences are experienced by consumers they are likely to trigger responses such as emotions, feelings and evaluations. Learning will be examined as a result of the marketing efforts, in terms of how information from the external communication environment is registered with the consumers long term memory from where it is extracted and used during his purchasing decision and also examine the way learning takes place in the form of changes in the consumers behaviour as a result of experience. At its simplest form learning occurs when consumers are repeatedly exposed to information such as brand names, slogans and jingles. Through this forms of learning consumers may form a weakly held belief that a particular brand is desirable due to an advertisement where the spokesperson repeats this claim over and over again. On the other hand, learning vicariously occurs when a consumer imitates the behaviours of others. Bandure (1977) stated that vicarious learning describes the way in which a consumer learns pattern of behaviour by watching other behave and applying the same lessons to his/her life. Brand images are created through advertisements, marketers use celebrities and famous sportsmen for this purpose, as it are the case with major retailing brands of Sainsburys and ASDA or Nike and Puma. Advertisements conjure upon a image for the brand through the use of models living a certain lifestyle that might be in tune with the consumers aspirations this will allow for favourable information about the brand to be processes by the consumers learning process. For marketers the learning theory is one of significance and of practical importance, as it allows them to build up demand for their brands by associating them to strong drives, motivation cues and thereby enabling positive reinforcements. Attitude A person’s overall evaluation of a concept may be defined as his or her attitude (Carpernter and Nakamopto, 1989). Consumers’ attitudes towards brands are reflected by their tendency to evaluate brands in a consistently favourable or unfavourable fashion. While behaviour and attitude are related and each may uinfluene each other, it si not necessary for them to be entirely consistent (Briggs and Cheek, 1986). General logic claims that if a consumer prefers or favours a brand there is greater likelihood of him to purchase it. thereby a positive trend in consumers attitude towards a particular brand may result in an increase in sales forecast. It is no wonder that testing or measuring attitude provides the bulk of marketing research work (Foxall and Goldsmith, 1994). Researching consumer attitudes are functionally useful for the marketer in directing consumers toward brands they find useful in satisfying needs, wants and aspirations. Chay (1991) claims that advertisements influence attitudes towards the add, which is an importance predecessor of brand attitude. While Cheratony (1989) and Muehling (1987) go on saying that the influence of attitudes towards the ad on brand attitudes has been found to be even more significant under low-involvement conditions and emotionally based advertising. While in some cases even though the consumer has a favourable attitude towards a brand due to an advertisement he might have enjoyed, after having watched the advertisement if his purchase action is postponed the effect of the advertisement will wear off resulting in the favourable attitude towards the brand fading away. Furthermore even if the purchase action is not delayed there is the possibility of variables such as price that rule out the consistency between attitude and behaviour (Belk, 1975). Motivation is another mental factor that influences the underlying emotions and attitudes towards brands and the purchasing decision. Freud (Vecchio, 1992) claims that people are mostly unconscious of the real psychological forces shaping their behaviour. He suggests that a person does not fully understand his/her motivation. He states that as people grow up they repress many urges, and these urges are never really eliminated or under perfect control. An applied example could be in terms of Pepsi adverting campaign during 1989 to 1992, with slogan such as Pepsi the choice of a new generation and Pepsi Gotta Have It (Alison, 1992). David Novak, Pepsis vice president of marketing explains that the campaign represents the Pepsi attitude for people who think young and want to celebrate his life. The implication here would be for a young adult who purchases the Pepsi with the underlying motive to quench his thirst or purchase a beverage. At a deeper leave he might have purchase the Pepsi to feel or show that he is young and alive (Alison, 1992). There is a possibility for the brand to be a reflection of the consumers perception of his image or self-presentation. Carpernter and Nakamopto (1989) and Chisnall (1995) have defined image as a function of social interaction. Thereby consumption can be an act of self-presentation. The consumer tries to link himself with a desired image, or the ideal social self-image. Conclusion Through the literature reviewed the significance and importance of branding as a marketing tool has been highlighted, while providing sufficient evidence as to why a company should brand its products. Product differentiation has been made difficult due to immense competition and improvements in technology, allowing products to be quickly imitated. In this way firms have placed a heavy emphasis on adding symbolic values as the basis for product differentiation. Therefore, while evaluating products the consumer will tend to consider the image aspect of the product to simplify the evaluation of different alternatives. Additionally the review suggested that consumers have a self-concept that have a crucial effect on their purchase decisions. This means that consumer might evaluate brands on the basis of the congruence between the brands image and their own self-image. Moreover, when the consumer has little or no experience with the product or has a lack of information about the product, consumers will use brand names to evaluate products, some consumers even when provided with information will avoid spending time to investigate the products intrin