Rape of nanking outline

The Rape of Nanking was a mass murder and war rape the all occurred in the period of six weeks. The Japanese e saw themselves as the superior race compared to the Chinese. There were approve intimately 500,000 people living in Nan king when the Japanese attacked. Over 300,000 CIA villains were killed by the Japanese in brutal ways that even the Nazis living in Anion g at the time were horrified.The Japanese had a long standing contempt for the Chine SE as a people. Being an island nation in the shadow of the much larger China for so much of its history bred a healthy balance offer and nationalism. The Rape of Nanking occurred in just a few weeks late in 1937 to early 1938. When people are asked to describe the Nanking Massacre the most co moon response is â€Å"six weeks of hell. † The Japanese army began to zero in on Nanjing The the the official dates of the war were December 9 , 1937 and lasted tell January 17 1938.The Japanese believed they were superior to all races. Ther efore what atrocity they committed in Nanking were justified to them. The direct cause was the impanel Army took Nanking and wanted to â€Å"celebrate† by raping and murdering thus ands of civilians. During which an estimated 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians we re killed, and 20,000 women were raped. The Japanese had troops pushing down from the north while a troop was way ting for them down south. Inside Nanjing was about 70,000 troops and a quarter lion civilians.The troops would begin bringing their own trucks through the city an d not long after that the troops were seen loading people into the trucks by dozens. Nevertheless, most of the Japanese have remembered what happened to the Asian nations including to the people in Nanjing, and the Japanese has lived as a pep useful nation, from the reflection to the war. Being an island nation in the shadow of the much larger for so much of its history bred a healthy balance of fear and nationalism.

Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas Concept of â€Å"predacity† as related to class topics: The concept of â€Å"predacity†, in my opinion, is related to so many of the topics discussed in class. The most formidable connection would be that of human on human. In regards to race, class and gender, â€Å"predcaity† fits the system in which the American culture has been designed around. Rich white men have been the predators of poor minorities and women since the creation of the United States. Minorities and women have been discriminated against since the pilgrims set sail and the revolutionaries first wrote the declaration of independence.What followed was a constitution that, in theory, gave only white men the freedom of life, liberty and property. Women and blacks couldn’t own property nor did they have the same liberty white men had. To this day women and minorities are still discriminated against in a predator like way. Predacity could even be taken to the extent of harming wom en and races that weren’t white. The Native American Indians were murdered for their land, Africans were enslaved, killed and tortured at the crack of their masters whip. The vicious truth of human nature is one of animal like â€Å"Predator vs Prey† approach.The one actor said a couple times throughout the movie that â€Å"those who are weak are meat, those who are strong will eat. † Rich white men have preyed on the economical and social gain of others for millennium. What we’ve discussed in class shows predacity like examples in current systems we have in the United States today. The way corporations prey on those who will work or are forced to work for cheap or no labor in over sea workshops and brothel like set-ups gives more verification to human predacity in modern times. Recurrence as a theme and preventing predacity from recurring:The theme of recurring in the movie happened with every different time and environment. People preying on people, com panies preying on companies and groups preying on groups were all part of the theme of the movie. Examples like the oil company hoping the nuclear building failed and killed as many lives as possible was a form of predacity. The cannibal hunters that continued to attack Tom Hanks village was a form of predacity and the Asian women being used as a tool for economic gain was a form of human on human predacity.What was clear was the failure of some individuals to change the path of recurring predacity. The way in which predacity was prevented from recurring was an individual’s love for another. It was the love for another person that forced change within the individual that created a change from the recurring theme. We saw examples of this when the man who helped the African on the sail boat and decided not to deal with slave owners and move east to help the abolitionists, Tom Hanks when he didn’t kill or stop Halle Berry when she told him that what he believed in was act ually false and incorrect.In order to change the recurring theme the individuals within the environment must change first. This is one of the fundamental ideas we have discussed throughout course discussions. I personally loved this movie. It was arguably one of the best movies I’ve seen in some time and was highly enjoyable. It showed the power of love for people and the way an individual can change the course of predcaity. I gave it an A+.

The Journal of Social Psychology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The Journal of Social Psychology - Essay Example Also, people are more likely to notice consistent feedback more than inconsistent feedback and to interpret ambiguous feedback as consistent with their own self-conceptions. However, sometimes people receive self-inconsistent feedback. According to Self-Verification Theory (Swann 1987, as cited by Collins and Stukas), people are likely to reject such feedback. Nevertheless, there are some situations in which self-change is promoted and self-inconsistent feedback is meant to be taken seriously and scrutinized. In particular, the therapeutic clinic is a context for such change, which is often set in motion by the delivery of self-inconsistent feedback. However, Self-Verification Theory had already demonstrated that people in need of therapeutic change (e.g., depressed people) may show a preference for negative (self-consistent) feedback over positive (self-inconsistent) feedback. Indeed, in the setting of therapy, clients may be more willing to accept self-inconsistent feedback, althou gh other factors--such as therapists' statuses and clients' attitudes toward therapy--may moderate acceptance. This is why Collins and Stukas (2006) tried to study the effects of experimentally manipulated personality feedback that they--in the guise of therapists--e-mailed to participants on the degree of their acceptance of the feedback. Consistent with Self-Verification Theory (Swann, 1987), participants accepted feedback that was consistent with their self-views more readily than they did feedback that was inconsistent with their self-views. What they did was to randomly assign participants in receiving self-inconsistent or self-consistent feedback, and they simply returned their evaluations of the feedback to us by e-mail. Collins and Stukas (June 2006) hypothesized that (a) participants would be more willing to accept self-consistent feedback than self-inconsistent feedback, (b) participants would be more willing to accept self-inconsistent feedback from a high-status therapist than from a low-status therapist, and (c) participants with positive attitudes toward therapy would be more w illing to accept self-inconsistent feedback than would participants with negative attitudes toward therapy. Although Collins and Stukas (June, 2006) obtained results that are consistent with past researches, the thing is that they chose a very minimal operationalization of the therapeutic context, one that allowed us to manipulate both therapist status and feedback without concern for the potential influence of other variables that are normally found in this setting (e.g., dynamics of an actual interaction, appearance of the therapist and therapist's office, actual psychopathology of the clients). They also used a very short measure to assess participants' self-concepts. This reductionistic approach worked well from both a practical standpoint and an ethical one, but doing research in the real setting might prove more difficult. This research from Collins and Stukas (June 2006) might be helpful in terms of the modern methodologies used in this study. We could use similar approach in determining Self-Feedbacks by electronic mail to our respondents. Schmitt, D.P. and Allik, J. (2005, October). Simultaneous Administration of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale in 53 Nations: Exploring the Universal and Culture-Specific Features of Global Self-Esteem, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 89(4): 623-642. In Schmitt and Allik's study

Personal statement. Application essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Personal statement. Application - Essay Example I enjoy helping them learn and I derive much joy in understanding how they discover new things in what adults find ordinary and boring. Like every primary school teacher I know, one of the greatest sources of happiness and fulfilment is to see the eyes and faces of children light up when they discover something new. It is like a lamp being switched on inside their minds. I am also at peace whenever I am with children, and I enjoy the noise and chaos that accompany them, a clear sign of their joy of life and of each one's infinite future possibilities. I see the world's future in each one, and I like it when they are noisy and active, eager to enjoy each other's company. I know how to make them quiet through a calm personal presence that adds to their enthusiasm. When I am in front of children, I know how to act according to what the situation demands and steer us all towards learning goals. I know how to motivate children and exercise patience when needed.

Communication, Ethics, and Society Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 4

Communication, Ethics, and Society - Assignment Example According to Forbes, in the last few years, GoDaddy.com has been a target for several unethical practices. One issue was when a CEO killed a wild elephant in Africa in 2011. Again, in 2011, GoDaddy underwent scrutiny by offering support for SOPA which was an example of people not being able to exercise a freedom of speech or what they wanted to do while online. GoDaddy pulled its support because people were going to boycott the company (Clay, K. 2012). The advertisement was simply controversial because it portrayed women as sex symbols, showing them partying in the workplace. It was an issue of sexism and since it was shown during the Super Bowl, it was a direct attempt at men that is the general demographic of people that watch football. Instead of offering an intelligent response, the company still maintains to show sexism in their ads, with one of their sexiest ads ever to appear during the 2013 Super Bowl where a â€Å"hot† model was in a deep lip lock with a nerdy man. This advertisement increased sales for GoDaddy.com tremendously (Huffington Post, 2013). It was uncomfortable to watch and still continued to use women as sexual objects that could use control over men to get what they want. In my opinion, viewers ignore it and find it humorous though the underlying message is disgusting. GoDaddy has not learned its lesson at all and seem proud to offend others. The public is desensitized to seeing women as sex symbols a nd it is a role that is reinforced through other companies such as Victoria’s Secret and Hooters. Feminists should be livid over these companies that use these examples and though Victoria’s Secret is geared at women to buy lingerie, every single one of these examples should issue an apology to women everywhere for depicting them as

SURROGATING BODIES, EMBODIMENT OF THEORIES Essay

SURROGATING BODIES, EMBODIMENT OF THEORIES - Essay Example For instance, Hollywood serves as being a good laboratory for social scientists in order to discuss key elements, phenomena and possibilities or potentials of modern society. Similarly we will conduct an extensive analysis and hold relevant discussion especially through Surrogates and at the same time touching to some core concepts of Foucault, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Agamben and Zizek. The study sociology or social sciences particularly in theory form through popular culture is something familiar for the recent history of intellectual production. However, in conjunction with the above mentioned names on a topic regarding body, life and power, it is entirely new in the ground of popular culture and it can cause a productive / fruitful discussion and thinking process if it is taken in an inter-active and trans-disciplinary academic approach. The Surrogates is one Hollywood movie directed by Jonathan Mostow, based on a comic book written by Robert Venditti and drawn by Brett Weldele (Ven ditti and Weldele, 2006). It provides us the opportunity to discuss several sociological-philosophical concepts of critical thinkers in the West.in the same film the near future of the world and society is discussed in the film.at first the film was designed for military equipment and later it became readily available and affordable to members of the public. The technology enabled people to get involve in social life without limit and the users were kept safe from communicable diseases, crimes as well as discrimination, war among others. It was called as â€Å"a revolution in how we live.† Where people could remain their home and vicariously interacted with the real world through their robotic duplicates in other words their Surrogates and regardless of who you are, you could be anybody with these human-like machines. In power and politics, Michael Foucault has inspired critical thinkers and social movements especially from the second half of 20th century until now by showing critical thinkers in the modern sense that power is a biological process and has deep connections on social constructions of â€Å"body†. He further went on by clarifying that body is not â€Å"individual† at all and in modern times it is marked and socialized through complicated and intertwined ways of domination. Reality in the 21stcentury philosopher Jean Baudrillard explained the meaning of reality. His concept was based on accession of real rather than its destruction. He also criticized consumer society and the theory of body and politics. He claimed that, all contradictory currents are integrated in some circuits and transcription. He went further by accepting surrogates ideas by saying that bodies of people have become technical apparatuses themselves. In the invisibility of â€Å"real body† robots have taken places of real bodies, and in his words, they turned into the reality, or there is no reality apart from them. The â€Å"thing† we call bod y today has become a huge brain / mind and the bedroom turned into the skull.In the case of Surrogates, physical body operating in the society is separated from inside entirely and all real or biological body became â€Å"inside† as a closed and invisible unity. This time technologies and their applications do not seem so â€Å"irreversible† at the first sight. The movie Surrogates is maybe a further expression of this

Insolvency Law and Capitalism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Insolvency Law and Capitalism - Essay Example Capitalism is a form of economic organization, whose main goal is to make profits. In order to achieve this, and sustain the capitalist system, capitalists must carry on the entrepreneurial spirit and continuously involve themselves in investing and re-investing capital into the economy (Schumpeter, 405-6). However, with limited capital, they must resort to other ways of financing their endeavors. One such way is through borrowed money. As Joseph Schumpeter writes, " . . . [C]apitalism is that form of private property economy in which innovations are carried out by means of borrowed money . . . " (179). Consequently, most business endeavors begin with debts. However, with the existence of risks and uncertainties present in investments such as competition, accidents, or even problems caused by financial crises, business failures and bankruptcies, which are usually followed by disputes over a company or individual's financial arrangements, become commonplace. Such occurrences threaten the very fuel that drives capitalism: it threatens the value of a business' much needed capital and it threatens the smooth flow of economic activity. In order to avoid such problems, institutions were built in the form of insolvency laws. Insolvency laws facilitate the liquidation of assets or possible reorganization of a bankrupt firm. It is meant to ensure that the process is smoothly executed, avoiding and solving conflicts, salvaging the company's capital, ensuring that all involved parties are treated fairly, and avoiding as much distortions in the economy as possible (Industry Canada). Thus, insolvency laws play a crucial role in the capitalist economy - it keeps valuable capital safe and it resolves conflicts, which are detrimental to continuous economic activity. Aside from its role in the liquidation of assets, insolvency laws also provide capitalism a crucial benefit - it keeps the "entrepreneurial spirit" alive. According to Schumpeter, entrepreneurs are crucial to a capitalist society because "without entrepreneurial achievement, no capitalist returns . . . " (405-6), and consequently, no capitalism. However, the possibility of bankruptcy, or the legal and economic burdens that plague bankrupt businessmen, poses a great deterrent for entrepreneurs to engage in economic activity because of the high risks involved. Insolvency laws solve this problem by providing not only protection for entrepreneurs in the face of bankruptcy, but also the possibility of "economic rebirth" - freedom from the clutches of bankruptcy and c chance to start anew - for bankrupt proprietors. Hence, in sustaining the capitalist system, insolvency laws become a necessary institution among capitalist societies. Unfortunately, it became a necessary evil as well because while sustaining capitalism, it created further problems that complicate the economic and social conditions within a society. As Edward J. Balleisen writes in his book "Navigating Failure," the American response to bankruptcy, in the form of insolvency law, has created two opposing elements in American capitalist society - the risk taking culture of capital entrepreneurs and the reluctant attitude of wage-earning laborers towards them (21). Before the existence of insolvency laws, entrepreneurs

The Religion of Ancient Egypt Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Religion of Ancient Egypt - Essay Example Ra was one of the main gods in Ancient Egypt. The Egyptian people worshiped Ra because the Sun (Ra symbolized the Sun) was concerned as the main source of life in Ancient Egypt; Ra was known as the ancestor of pharaohs, and the worship of Ra and a pharaoh as his son was sacred for ancient Egyptians; Ra was concerned as a founder of life on the Earth, so Egyptians worshiped Ra as one of the main gods among many others. This paper will support these three causes of the Sun God Ra worship. . The Sun (Ra symbolized the Sun) was concerned as the main source of life in Ancient Egypt: â€Å"The daily cycle, as the sun rose, then set only to rise again the next morning, symbolized renewal and so Re was seen as the paramount force of creation and master of life† (Ra). Ra symbolized eternal life cycle for ancient Egyptians; sunrise, zenith and sunset were associated with birth, life and death. Ra always was given birth in the morning (as a scarab beetle), rode on his boat across the sky in the day, and died in the evening: â€Å"At sunset, he is swallowed by the goddess Nut, who gives birth to him each morning again as Khepri. Therefore, the cycle continued with birth, life and death† (Ra).... .Ra was said, in fact, to be the direct ancestor of the kings of Egypt, and in certain hymns was even addressed as a dead king" (Egyptian religion). In honor of pharaohs such giant architectural masterpieces as pyramids were erected, and the worship of pharaohs was directly connected with that of the Sun God Ra. Pharaoh was the earth embodiment of Ra who provided his power over the nature: "While the king ruled earth, Re was the master of the universe so they were of the same nature and were in effect a mirror image of each other" (Ra). Egyptian pharaohs erected pyramids and temples in honor of Ra - they tried to underline their connection with Ra. The cult of Ra was transforming through the Egyptian history, but it was always associated with pharaohs: "Beginning with the Middle Kingdom (2134-1668 BC), Ra worship acquired the status of a state religion, and the god was gradually fused with Amon during the Theban dynasties, becoming the supreme god Amon-Ra" (Ancient Egyptian Religions ). Heliopolis was the main center of Ra worship during the New Kingdom - it was the time of the greatest development of Ancient Egypt and the cult of Ra as the main god of Egypt. So, ancient Egyptians worshiped Ra as the symbol of king power, and the highest development of the state was associated with the power of pharaoh and Ra as his embodiment. Ra was concerned as a founder of life on the Earth, so Egyptians worshiped Ra as one of the main gods among many others. Cosmological views of ancient Egyptians gave Ra one of the leading places in the pantheon of gods "The early Egyptians believed that he created the world, and the rising sun was, for them, the symbol of creation" (Ra). They believed that Ra created the Earth, haven and all creations on the planet. 3. As was

Economics Assessment Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Economics Assessment - Assignment Example For the purpose of this study we have used a product as a guinea pig. In order to understand the impact of the product in its related market and the impact of the market on the product, we have carried out further analysis using the established theories of economics about the future viability of the product. Here for the sake of this analysis we have used the potato chips product manufactured by the Coca Cola Company called LAYS. (Lipsey and Chrystal, 2002) The price elasticity of demand is defined as the magnitude of the proportionate change in demand and the proportionate change in price of the product. Therefore, elasticity is the measure of responsiveness. Price elasticity of demand is a very important concept that is related to the pricing decisions of a product. If an organization wants to generate the maximum amount of revenue from its products and it is unable to determine how much increase in the price can be made by them so that the overall demand of the product does not reduce. This decision is taken on the basis of the analysis of price elasticity of demand. The price elasticity of demand can be described as the rate of response of quantity demanded due to a price change. This means that if a unit change in the price of the produc

INDIVIDUAL COURSEWORK Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

INDIVIDUAL - Coursework Example ‘Blaak’ brands are much accommodative since they can go hand in hand with most colours and blaak simply was for the transformative quality of the colour. BLAAK has spread its geographical brand to Asia, US, Oceanic with new markets emerging in Africa. BLAAK philosophy remains but the visions has widened and now include other creation with colours other than black, and with the combination of innovation and imagination to create the new and unique style to bring believe to the market. These have lead to designs like the Cropped Tracksuit Trouser, Cropped shirt, Denim jackets and much more. Blaak developed inspirational men’s shirt with traditions of old U.K. embedded with English roses, and using English techniques that have been a tradition, with the detached collar, one can wear a tie or can go informal with half collar. BLAAK has sourced internationally to countries like France, US and many more countries. Strength Weakness Opportunity Threats Black colour Varie ty fashion designs Market niche   Ã‚  Geographic area   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Patent   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Strong brand name over dependence of one market niche high cost structure brilliant designers technological advancements cheap products from competitors -shift in consumer tastes Strength Black colour: - the dependence of the black colour which very much interacts with most   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  colours and fits in all spectra of lifestyle gives black the upper edge its brand. Variety fashion designs:-with the brilliant expertise in the field of design, blaak has an   Ã‚  Ã‚  upper advantage of giving the best to the consumers Market niche:-with a market niche of states and continents, Blaak has a market niche that is enough for growth and expansion which gives it upper hand in making profits only if geographic, physiographic and demographic segmentation is taken into conside ration. Patent: - patent is strength that blaak has considering it is a patent that bears a name of the ‘root material colour’ Weakness Over dependence of one market niche:-With the dependence of Britain as its main market, putting less emphasis in other markets, blaak has a weakness in that it has a growth opportunity but does not exploit fully. High cost structure: - the cost structure for maintaining and manufacturing its designs is higher compared if growth would have been expanded to other emerging markets which can offer cheaper production cost. Opportunities Emerging economies: - it pose a great opportunity to blaak, with these conditions of growing markets and population increase; investors may serve these markets profitably by adaptation of their strategies considering the local context. For example, groups with low income are prudent to be served with cost efficient mass products, with the emphasis on economies of scale and profits being earned by the large sa le volumes Brilliant designers: - With the designer’s brilliance in design, blaak has the best opportunity to provide for the changing consumer preference therefore satisfying the consumer’s needs and preference. Technological advancements: - with the advancement blaak technologically, blaak has the potential to produce more products that are advance and cheap due to technological advancement therefore meeting the market demand. Threats Threats from other competitors: - the

Work From Home Essay Example for Free

Work From Home Essay Are you tired of the common grind you must deal with on a daily basis? Does you current job leave you with limited career and salary opportunities? If so, have you thought of going into business for yourself and working from home? Now, some may assume that such an option is really not possible and that all those advertised work from home pitches are gimmicks and scams. Well, the reality of the matter is that working from home is the wave of the self-employed future and it brings with it a number of opportunities to earn significant income. One of the best resources for earning additional income working from home is Poly Promotions ProfitableJobs. com as it provides a multitude of ideas for wealth creation. Often, many of the ideas offered by ProfitableJobs. com are relatively simply concepts that are often overlooked, but are also consistently successful. In todays day an age, there are a number of options that are available to people that previously did not exist prior. Because of the great expansion of the internet and other forms of communication the ability to work from home has become a reality. Of society has shifted many times over the past centuries as it has gone from an agricultural based society to an industrial based society and now to a technological based society. In the past, there were no home computers, notebooks or iPods. Today, because we have such great access to a number of technological/communicative devices the ability to work from home differs very little from heading into the office to work. This has opened a plethora of financial opportunities for an individual to take advantage. Every week after initially signing up, ProfitableJobs. com will send you a series of email tips for work at home money making opportunities. Most of these opportunities involve very little start up money and are not complex ventures to take part in. As such, there is no reason not to take advantage of these opportunities as they bring a variety of benefits not the least of which may be financial independence.

Eli Whitney Essay Example for Free

Eli Whitney Essay Eli Whitney (1765-1825) was a mechanical wizard. While travelling in the south, he became acquainted with the problem of removing the seeds from cotton. Enormous numbers of slaves were employed pulling the seeds out by hand. Eli Whitney spent a whole two weeks on this challenge and invented the cotton gin. He patented the invention and went on to capitalize on his invention by opening a factory to make cotton gins. It ended in bankruptcy. The failure of Eli Whitney to make his fortune on the cotton gin was due primarily to the very simplicity of the design of the machine. Once the initial shipments of Whitneys cotton gin arrived on the cotton plantations of the South, entrepreneurial individuals pried off the top and peered inside. What they saw was eminently copiableand copy they did. The Patent Office in Washington wasnt eager to send agents into the South to enforce Eli Whitneys patent rights, and he couldnt obtain legal redress in the court system, so he eventually walked away from his invention. Business students, in common with all students, are told not to copy. Copying is dishonourable and deserving of dismissal. They graduate and enter a world in which copying is endemic. A new idea is not the property of its originator because everyone copies in all areas of business. If a firm discovers a more efficient way of doing something, it will be copied. If a firm discovers a more effective way of marketing a product, it will be copied. If a firm discovers a more efficacious way of financing its expansion, it will be copied. Copying is critical in understanding the nature of the business cycle. Copying contributes to the ups and downs of the business cycle by directing larger investments into new areas than would occur if copying were not so endemic. The building of a greater number of factories than is necessary is a consequence of copying that helps to keep the good times good. (Randall Bartlett, 1998). On the other side of the coin, copying can cause businesses to dedicate too much productive capacity to new products. When all the investments are completed and the combined productive capacity of a thousand and one copyists is brought to bear on the market, all the copyists have for their efforts are huge unsold inventories and excessive productive capacity. Then they copy one another again by collectively slashing production to try to keep inventories in line with sales. This type of copying helps to turn good times into bad. One might expect that patent protection should limit copying. However, if what is being copied is a strategy for marketing or making financial deals, there is no patent infringement because an idea cannot be patented. Even copyrights on computer software have been difficult to enforce because a program can be essentially copied by rewriting it with minor editorial changes, such as calling something X that was called Y in the original program. Patents on products and processes are enforceable within a given nation, but they are more difficult to enforce in the international arena. Thus, a firm can spend millions to develop a new product and find itself in the position of not being able to recoup its research and development expenditures because copies are being imported from foreign copiers that do not have to price the goods on the basis of recouping the initial RD expense. The globalization of manufacturing facilities and free trade has proved to be a boon for copyists. The simplicity of the cotton gin, the ease of copying it, and Whitneys sad return on his investment in his invention are of interest in understanding the role of copying in the business cycle. But the real point of this discussion is Eli Whitney on the comeback trail. Whitney obtained a government contract to make ten thousand muskets. The contract presumed that he would make the muskets in the way that all muskets, and everything else, were made. In the cottage industry of the day, a musket was assembled by an individual who made a barrel, a stock, a flintlock, a trigger, and the other mechanical parts. As each part was made, it was filed to fit the rest of the components making up the musket. The result of this mode of production was that each particular part of a musket was unique. A flintlock made for a musket could not be removed and interchanged with the flintlock of another musket and be expected to work. The parts were not interchangeable without further filing because they were not uniform in design and would not fit together properly. Each musket was, in effect, tailor made to its own set of specifications. (David Burner, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Virginia Bernhard, 1991). To fill his contract with the government, Eli Whitney built a factory near New Haven, Connecticut, in 1798, that was unique in several respects. Water-powered machines were designed to replace human effort as much as possible. The machines were dedicated to the manufacture of the individual component parts of a specified design, rather than each part being individually handmade. In other words, Eli Whitney was substituting machine labour for manual labour, thereby increasing the productivity of labour. In Whitneys factory, the parts produced were of sufficiently close tolerances to be interchangeable. Quality control was introduced to ensure that the flintlock of one musket would be interchangeable with the flintlock of another with no additional filing. Eli Whitneys uniformity system had at its core the idea of manufacturing ten thousand barrels, ten thousand stocks, ten thousand flintlocks, ten thousand trigger mechanisms, ten thousand whatever, all of sufficiently close tolerances to be interchangeable without additional filing. The parts were manufactured first, and the completed musket was assembled later. Whitneys uniformity system was the forerunner of todays assembly line. Eli Whitney gave to modern society the most productive means of manufacture known to mankind. There are those who can point to the fact that he did not originate the idea, that it had antecedents in Europe. That is true and bears about as much weight as the fact that Christopher Columbus was not the first European to discover America. Leif Ericsson may, or may not, have been first. Even if Ericsson was first, what does that do to take away from Columbus achievement? It was the discovery of America by Columbus that counts. The nations of North and South America owe their existence to Columbus explorations, not to Ericssons. The same holds true for Whitneys uniformity system. More than any other individual, he popularized the idea of Adam Smiths specialization of labour. Eli Whitney vastly increased the productivity of his specialized labour force by replacing tools with machines and by introducing quality control measures to ensure that the interchangeable parts were indeed interchangeable. His water-powered factory in New Haven was the progenitor of many such plants in the northern states. Daniel A. Wren, Ronald G. Greenwood, 1999). Eli Whitney affected the course of the development of the United States in two quite unintentional ways. The removal of the cotton seeds by the cotton gin rather than by a slaves fingers had a dramatic impact on the profitability of growing cotton in the South. One might conclude that the price of slaves would fall with the invention of the cotton gin because the labour required to remove the seeds from the cotton was nearly eliminated. Was there no other impact that might have turned out to be true? But the cotton gin made cotton growing much more profitable because the slaves could dedicate more of their time to planting and harvesting the cotton rather than to removing its seeds. Nothing did more to spread the growing of cotton in the South than did the cotton gin. As new areas of the South were brought under cultivation, there was a greater demand for slaves. The price of slaves increased, and the institution of slavery, which was actually waning at the time of the invention of the cotton gin, was given new life. The South embarked on a path of agriculture based on slave labour. In the North, just the opposite occurred. Whitneys factory in New Haven was a cause of the Norths embarking on a path of industrialization, based, as some would assert, on wage-slave labour. As in the South, Eli Whitney himself had no pretensions of embarking on anything. He invented the cotton gin and tried to make a buck from his invention. When that failed, he devised the uniformity system to make a buck out of a government contract. Nevertheless, the social repercussions of his contributions to technology had a significant impact on the history of the nation. (John G. Blair, 1988).

Mau Mau Rebellion And The British Response History Essay

Mau Mau Rebellion And The British Response History Essay In this essay I intend to explain the rise of the Mau Mau and the resulting British response from a socio political stand point. I will show that in response to the uprising the Colonial authorities perpetuated the myth of the Mau Mau in order to serve their own interests and provide international justification for their actions. In effect the myth was a product of wilful acceptance to prominent racial and ethnocentric views of the time. The British in fact went on to perpetuate these already prominent views imbedded in the western social consciousness and in doing so provided justification for the barbaric actions to follow, as well as igniting already prominent divides among the native people throughout the colony. This prevailing attitude spread amongst the heads of the colonial project and even to local loyalist people creating a detrimental social consciousness and ironically this myth did not diminish the cause of the Mau Mau fighters as intended, but it antagonised both sides of the divide, the myth took on a life of its own culminating in detrimental effects to both sides; in effect this turned into a war fuelled by resentment and revenge. To show this I will firstly, give a brief overview of the political backdrop of the Kikuyu people during colonial times. Secondly, I will examine the evolution of the myth of Mau Mau looking to its origins, academic justification and response to it. Thirdly, I will work through the resulting conflict showing how the myth contributed to the already multitude of divides and social misconceptions as play within the conflict; with reference to the Lari massacre and Project Anvil. Finally, to conclude I will give mention to recent events and challenges to the British courts from elderly Mau Mau fighters and show that if it was not for racial attitudes and stereotypes and with a little more intelligent thought and acceptance this violent oppressive war could and should have never happened. Origins political backdrop Over three decades leading up to the Mau Mau rebellion, Africans voiced plangent political concerns despite the obstruction of an unsympathetic colonial state.  [1]  Four issues of contention arose to be the main issues of political debate. Two of these were: low level African wages and the abolition of the kipande. European settlers wished to remain competitive in their agricultural production, which was rather less profitable than the extraction of natural resources, this meant tightening of wages for the local Kikuyu people. The kipande was an identity card enforced by the British; essentially it was used for altogether oppressive means relating to mobilization and employment. Two further deep-rooted issues arose from mid-1930 onwards. Firstly, the need to secure effective, elected African representation; previously attempts to manage politics had been utilised by way of, nominated and salaried chiefs who were effectively under the influence of European missionaries, who were by way of the chiefs effectively the voice of the Kenyan people.  [2]  Secondly, the issue of land appropriation and distribution, this had in fact been a bone of contention since the beginning of colonial rule, however, this was exacerbated by restricted migration of peoples and enforcement of land segregation due to tightening economic constraints on the European powers in the post-WWII period, making this the most contested argument and division in Kenya, especially amongst the Kikuyu people. By 1950 these political contentions had evolved into three distinct political movements: Conservatives, Moderate Nationalists and Militant Nationalists. The Conservative block, comprising of: Chiefs, headmen, and senior Christian elders, their authority had been built up and greatly consolidated through association with the colonial project. These people were a product of Social conditioning; western education carried out by Christian missionaries, dogmatising a new breed of Kenyans.  [3]  The Moderate Nationalists emerged from the early 1920s, previously educated mission boys, developed westernised attitudes and prevailing Christian beliefs again by way of colonial conditioning. The old conservative chiefs were viewed as a barrier to progress and modernisation, a step away from traditional values and cultural politics.  [4]  A materialist rivalry fuelled and intensified their political struggles; in a battle for power the difference in agendas at first was not entirely clear . Koinange Wa Mbiya, the most distinguished chief of the colonial era, became disillusioned with the colonial regime, originally a stanch conservative supporter his views shifted dramatically over the issue of land appropriation.  [5]  The land reserves were diminishing and population was growing rapidly, people succumbed to hunger and even starvation, which spread rapidly amongst the native people. In a passionate speech Koinange appealed to the colonial land commission for the return of his peoples lost lands, his appeal fell on death ears, the colonial powers had another agenda and his appeal was rejected.  [6]  Consequently, he joined the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) an organisation he was previously vehemently opposed to. He even went as far as donating his own land and giving financial support to the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association, successfully challenging the Christian missions monopoly of primary education for the children of Kenya; an important factor in ra ising free thinking Kenyans free of dogmatism and colonial conditioning, these newly educated children would go on to fuel the rise of nationalism.  [7]   The British thought that they had drawn a line under the issue, demanding compliance form their colonial subjects. However, this was just the beginning of the problem; as the white settler population grew and mechanisation aided the efficiency of the production, less and less workers were needed resulting in more repatriation to the reserves. This was exacerbated further by the Chieftains, with western ideologies of their own, believing in progress and modernity, they developed their own aspirations for wealth and power, further alienating the local Kikuyu population. Origins of Mau Mau and creation of a myth The origins of the Mau Mau contrary to the beliefs of the west and colonial governments within Kenya were heralded on very much peaceful beginnings, this can be view in contrast to Britains greater colonial empire particularly, India, the jewel in the crown, where Gandhis vision of non-violence had now seemed to transgress continents; for it was indeed this stance that the rebel Mau Mau organisation began. The first signs of integration or the population to Mau Mau sympathies arose, as we have seen, out of opposition of their own self-mastery. This choice first entailed a rejection of the leadership of many patrons, particularly the chiefs who, as one vernacular newspaper article argued in January 1948, should know that to be respected through fear is not as good as respect through love. Initial protests were intentionally carried out and lead by educated Africans with emphasis on strong discipline and unity.  [8]  Even moral boosting songs proclaimed, we dont want war we want ju stice. The newspaper Mumenyereri observed, Africans have no weapons, but their weapon is to speak the truth and to be honest.  [9]   The United Kingdom, conversely, sought to popularise a very different interpretation, and largely succeeded. This was that the troubles were a small unpopular, easily controllable, savage tribal uprising, perhaps the symptom of some form of mass psychosis, the result of the Kikuyu tribes inability to cope with the modern world.  [10]  The British depiction and the official colonial/western view of Mau Mau were of a savage, violent, and depraved tribal cult, who expressed unrestrained emotion rather than reason. It sought to turn the Kikuyu people back to the bad old days before enlightened British rule had brought the blessings of modern civilization and development.  [11]  Government intelligence reports dwelt on the insane frenzy and fanatical discipline of Mau Mau adherents.  [12]  It had been deliberately organized, according to the government, by cynical and unprincipled leaders, seeking only to satisfy their own lust for power. Depraved, murderous, and wholly evil, Mau Mau had to be totally destroyed; this view was backed up by leading academics of the time.  [13]  This is not to say that a brilliant lie was devised, but merely that one particular version of events (which was perhaps no further from the truth than many of the other interpretations) was publicised because it cause the British less problems when trying to justify their African policies to those international neighbours to whom they had to pay heed, above all Americans. It blunted criticisms, stifled debate, and exonerated the British response.  [14]  In reality, the myth was more sophisticated and wider and served more tangible purpose than this would suggest. It must be recognised that not all was myth, and that Mau Mau was far from a standard anti-colonial uprising, if such a creature indeed exists.  [15]   By the Mid-1960s this interpretation began to be challenged by a revisionist version of Mau Mau which depicted it as an essential, if radical, component of nationalism in Kenya. First, memoirs of the Emergency by some of those active in Mau Mau began to be published, notably by J. M. Kariuki and Waruhiu Itote:  [16]  both who insisted that Mau Mau was a modern, rational, and nationalist political movement, not tribalist reaction. These publications set the way for two hugely influential works which would reshape academic opinion; the first, Mau Mau from Within by Karari Njama;  [17]  the second, the Myth of Mau Mau: Nationalism in Kenya by John Nottingham and Carl Rosberg.  [18]  Nottingham and Rosberg concluded that interpretations of Mau Mau as savage and atavistic tribalism is subject to penetrating analysis as a myth of the Mau Mau grounded in European racism and ethnocentrism.  [19]   This wilful propagating and demonising antagonised an already deeper problem of racial and ethnocentric social views. The cultural misconceptions already prelevant in the social consciousness of Europeans were evident with racial and barbarian attitudes shown towards Africans, it was this that the British government could influence, the myth they propagated further cemented these misconceptions, the colonial administration seeking advantage to pursue its own ends at state level. This attitude is clearly seen in a book by Christopher Wilson, Kenyas Warning; throughout the book he writes clearly engulfed by a misconceived social consciousness. In a chapter on the Mau Mau leaders he goes on to discredit the causes of support for the Mau Mau. He tackles the legitimacy of aggravations caused by lack of land for cultivation, lack of money on account of low wages, and denial of legitimate political claims; siding in each case with the colonial project.  [20]  He demeans the intentions o f the Mau Mau leaders as acting in their own interests, having no interest in the welfare of the masses, deluding them with promises [the masses]. Essentially the non-conformity with western ideas is seen as backward, primitive and uneducated.  [21]  Mau Mau supporters were belittled by loyalists as impoverished criminal delinquents and so, it was believed, morally ill-equipped to lead political action or participate in debate: When you kill your fellow men because of foolishness, I tell you that you are far from becoming a leader of any sort. (Letter E. Munene to editor, 30th Jan 1954)  [22]  Mau Mau forest fighters were frequently derided by loyalists as wild animals and in particular hyenas.  [23]   The British response- In October 1952w, the new colonial administrator took an altogether more decisive approach to the situation in hand; opting for a more heavy handed approach and military response the Mau Mau rebellion, to be implemented immediately. A State of Emergency was declared and the British colonial government of Kenya waged a violent counter-insurgency campaign against the Mau Mau rebels. In this effort the regime was assisted by collaborators, known as loyalists, drawn from the same communities as the insurgents. This created an ambiguity of allegiances of which were influenced by propaganda and events on both sides of the divide; loyalism in fact seems to have been a product of the same intellectual debates that had spanned the Mau Mau insurgency itself.  [24]  Francis Gatheru was a stanch supporter of the loyalist and colonial cause during the state of emergency, his reasoning for standing opposed to his fellow was ironically deduced for the very same reasons from which the Mau Mau so ught revolution. Gatheru dismissed the idea that oaths of allegiance to the Mau Mau were taken by way of ritualistic nature, and it was the threat of supernatural punishment that compelled most to pledge their support to the insurgents. Admitting this this was a factor, but exaggerated by the British; who propagated this demonised dark nature of the local people. Instead Gatheru points to the Mau Maus promise to deliver freedom, land and every good thing we wished to have that primarily won over the hearts and minds of the local people. This suggests that contrary to the British claims that the majority of people were oathed voluntarily. Proclaiming ithaka na wiathi meaning self-mastery through land, it is clear that the militant Mau Mau leaders had utilised the primary contention that could unite the people against the colonial regime.  [25]  What followed was in effect a civil war, more than 90 per cent of the 13,000 officially acknowledged casualties of the anti-colonial and internecine violence were Kikuyu, Embu or Meru; most of which were killed by their fellow inhabitants of Kenyas Central Highlands. Gatheru now disillusioned and horrified by the conflict, saw his people no closer to self-mastery, they were fighting an unwinnable war; up against the full force and technological advancement of the British Empire. What Gatheru realised as did much of the native population that we are not to get any ware by prolonging the situation, if we are getting the opposite of what the Mau Mau promised us when we were taking the oath, why then à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ shouldnt we do the contrary of what we promised? The divide was widening, the British played the natives against one another; in an already divided population with a huge number of grievances and contentions it was easy to mobilize support on either side. On the loyalist side: demonising propaganda, colonial education/westernisation, Christian indoctrination, material superiority, non-violence, political ends and even monetary incentive and bribes. On the Mau Mau side: land contentions, living/working conditions, land hunger, wage levels, material divides as well as traditional and cultural issues all played apart. Most strikingly as the contention between the sides intensified revenge was a clear motive on both sides in the ambiguity of allegiances. Fuelled by principles of modernisation, progress and westernisation, old moderate leaders now in control of the Mau Mau organisation, looked to oust not only the colonial powers but also the stooge chiefs, who according to them were holding back the nation and not radical enough in the ir western attitudes. These leaders utilised the grievances of the peasants, primarily issues relating to land appropriation, to add to the numbers of the Mau Mau fighters/militants. Other kikuyu people saw the war as unwinnable and tended towards loyalist persuasion along with other settlers who had benefited from colonial education/conditioning and Christian dogmatising; their political attitude to the war was one of non-violence. When the violence inevitably did start propaganda further divided the two camps, the freedom fight became embroiled in a fight between Kikuyu interests and developed into a vendetta of revenge not freedom. Lari massacare The Lari massacre was the wars iconographic moment. The attack on Lari had been carefully planned and was not as reported an indiscriminate act of violence, the homesteads attacked had in fact been very carefully chosen. All of the victims were the families of local chiefs, ex-chiefs, headmen, councillors and prominent Home Guard. What followed was not planned or strategic in any manner whatsoever, purely an act of enraged revenge; a second massacre took place at Lari that night. It was perpetuated by the Home Guard, later joined by other elements of the security services, who took revenge on any persons in the location they could lay their hands on whom they suspected of Mau Mau sympathies. Propaganda and spin followed the inevitable cover up, mopping-up operations.  [26]  This tragedy not only was a catalyst for events to come but epitomised the war, Kikuyu fighting Kikuyu, in essence a civil war perpetuated by myth blatant cultural misunderstanding as well as prominent racial and ethnocentric attitudes. Project Anvil When dawn broke on the morning of 24 April 1954, Nairobis citizens woke to find their city under siege. Over the previous four months an elaborate scheme had been worked out to systematically search the city and to screen every African.  [27]  This rigorous process left nothing unturned all documentation had to be present and correct, with even the slightest discrepancy cause for suspicion. African were hustled out of their houses and herded into barbed-wire compounds, where they waited for the cogs of colonial bureaucracy to turn. A crude system of classification was put in place, highlighting the racial problems stirringly, of the Africans screened they were classified as white, grey or black; black used to connote danger and allegiances to Mau Mau; and white used to connote not a threat to society and to be repatriated; highlighting the prominent racial attitudes of the time. The legal basis of the screening and detention camps was set up by a Delegated Detention Order, where by under the emergency law, suspects could be detained without trial simply by a signature of any officer of the rank district officer or above. Nothing more was needed to condemn a man to incarceration for two years or more. Suspicion that man had taken an oath, or even that he was thought to be in sympathy of the Mau Mau, was sufficient for detention without trial. Accusations made by others, such as the hooded loyalist informants (gikunia) used at Langata, needed no corroboration; their silent and anonymous testimonies would condemn many men to the detention camps. The use of elders brought from the reserve in the screening of men was intended at act as a check against any possible victimization, but it was impossible to prevent score-settling or personal vendettas.  [28]  In the morass of Operation Anvil, there were masses of cases of mistaken identity, and once labelled it was exceedingly difficult to challenge a detention order, bureaucratic procedure had taken over from c ommon sense: with these numbers, what did it matter if one more kikuyu was detained? And if in any doubt, it was surely better to detain the man than let him go? By 26 May, when Anvil finally came to an end, the numbers screened had climbed about 50,000; nearly half the total number Kikuyu in the city and been imprisoned, by the end of 1954 one-third of all Kikuyu men were said to be in prison, these detainees had not been convicted of any crime and were all held without trial.  [29]  Special Branch reckoned that 700 of these were hard-core Mau Mau, a measly 3 per cent of the total detainees; with the evidence against the majority being nothing more than pretty slight, but no one seemed concerned by this alarming statistic, to job had been done.  [30]   By late June, Morrison, the General Secretary of the Christian Council of Kenya, wrote to the governor, Sir Frederick Crawford, about more than sixty Kikuyu Christians who had been rounded up in Operation Anvil. The loyalty of these men was above question; yet it appeared they had been swept away into the detention camps as Mau Mau suspects. Effort were made to locate the men, however, Morrison reports, We are informed either that persons cannot be traced, or that they must be re-screened, or that they cannot return to Nairobi because they were self-employed, or some other reason is given which prevents or delays release. The government was in danger of alienating the one group among the Kikuyu on whose support they must ultimately rely as a nucleus for influencing the rest.  [31]   Archdeacon Peter Bostock, of the Anglican Church, visited Langata in person twice during the June in an effort to identify the missing men. He was shocked and disturbed by the experience. He described the conditions as grossly overcrowded and stated that the home guard were only barely in control, it seemed as is the camps were a law unto themselves.  [32]   In January 1955 the Church of Scotland moderator in Kenya, David Steel, startled his Presbyterian congregation with an impassioned attack from the pulpit against the arbitrary callousness of government policies, taking Operation Anvil as his principle case. Steel described how the government had alienated Christian support through its heavy-handedness, summarily throwing the innocent into detention, where they were contaminated by the wicked, and failing to protect decent people from the abuse of those whom the government armed as their protectors, the Home Guard. Carelessness, an utter disregard for the rights of Africans had resulted in many honest, law-abiding citizens beings incarcerated during anvil. Steel also referred to more sinister forces at work; citing false accusations that had been deliberate and calculated, heavily criticising the system of informants branding it far from infallible and suggesting that this had happened more frequently than the security forces were pre pared to concede.  [33]   The army fought against Mau Maus military confusions. These were very different from those which haunted the liberal myth of modernization; a contrast between modernisation, progress and capitalist attitudes with an eerie respect to the shared experience of war, based on strategy, respect, loyalty, and noble attitudes.  [34]  They rose above the prominent racial attitudes, fighting together, side by side with Africans during the war had instilled respect and honour amongst the troops and even the generals. General Erskine, commander during the critical first part of the war, took a simple soldierly view of the oaths which so disturbed the understanding of most observers. He recognised that Mau Mau had grievances and an aim, to eject Europeans. The connexion between strategic end and nauseating means was crisply rational.  [35]  The colonial secretary, Oliver Lyttelton, was struck by a nobler likeness between forest fighter and British soldier. A veteran of the Great War, he r espected men who, contrary to their tribal reputation, had more than once pressed home attacks against wire, and in the face of hot fire, and heavy casualties. He had asked no more of his Grenadiers. If Mau Mau gallantry was explained by dutch courage à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ doped with hemp, had he not too, like others in this war, braced himself with rum before battle? Such recognition of equivalence, so contrary both to the racialism which denied a common humanity and the liberalism which pitied dupes, was politically important. Even Churchill commander and chief himself was held to have thought the fibre, ability and steel of the Kikuyu deserved to be acknowledged by on offer of terms.  [36]  After sixty-eight hours of interrogating the captured General China, superintendent Ian Henderson, the boys own hero of the settlers war, concluded that his prisoner was a complete fanatic. Was he then mentally ill? Not at all. China had a good brain and a remarkable memory. He knew why he was f ighting; his sole with was to expound his political testament before Legislative Council and walk to the gallows without trial. It took the tragedy of Hola camp, where eleven hard core detainees were beaten to death in the name of modernisation, to bring the British government round to the military view. As Margery Perham put it, the hard core were determined to prove that they were not in the grip of some remedial obsession but pursuing logical and irrevocable political aims. The detainees might have put it differently. The immediate issue was work and it refusal. Their case was simple. They were political prisoners, not criminals. To work to order would be to admit to wrong. Work was a proper demonstration of responsibility for free men; under any other condition it was slavery.  [37]  Britain could not continue to remake Kenya by force when other European powers were abandoning attempts to remodel colonial rule for the moral high ground of informal empire. A political war must be ended by political means. Civilization had to gamble on concession and agreement, not enforced by the tyranny of good intent ions and warders truncheons. Within months of Hola came Lancaster House and the prospect of majority rule.  [38]  Only international and metropolitan pressures could compel the United Kingdom to decolonise, and so the myth of Mau Mau served the useful purpose of forestalling any concerted international effort to redirect United Kingdom policy and of blunting the criticisms emanating from those countries to whom the British were obliged to pay heed. By dissociating the uprising from the global forces of nationalism and communism, by stressing its violent and uncompromising nature, and by constantly asserting the ease which it would be defeated, it succeeded in this aim, as any reading of the United Nations records for the period will testify.  [39]   Conclusion

Private Foreign Capital in India :: essays research papers

"Private Foreign Capital in India"-Macro Economics Problem: Has Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) contributed to the growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of India? Null Hypothesis (Ho): There is no significant increase in growth of GDP due to FDI inflow in India. Alternative Hypothesis (H1): There is significant increase in growth of GDP due to FDI inflow in India. Project Prà ©cis: Definition: FDI: The acquisition abroad of physical assets such as plant and equipment, with operating control residing in the parent corporation. GDP: The sum total of all final goods and services produced within a country in a specified period of time. Foreign direct investment is an important source of capital, complements domestic private investment, and is usually associated with new job opportunities, enhancement of technology and boosts economic growth in host countries. Therefore foreign direct investment flows are increasingly looked as a panacea for all the development needs of developing countries. So, there is an increasingly intense competition among countries to attract FDI inflows so much so that governments see the magnitudes of FDI received as indicators of their success. Preliminary Literature Survey: Recent literature has shown that some may bring valuable benefits to their host economies, others may crowd-out domestic enterprises and actually reduce host country welfare. Studies have also shown that host government policies such as screening mechanisms, performance requirements, incentives and pro-active promotion play an important role in determining the quality of FDI inflows. Although FDI inflows into India have increased considerably since1991, its share would appear too small, especially if it is compared with that of other countries in the region such as China. India has been receiving FDI inflows of about $3 to 4 billion a year that represent a marginal under 2 per cent of total inflows attracted by developing countries. In contrast, China has been receiving over $45 billion of inflows representing nearly a quarter of total developing country FDI inflows. Particulars China India FDI Confidence Index score*(January 2000) 1.45 1.14 FDI Inflow (US $ billions, 1998) 45.5 2.3 FDI Stock (US $ billions, 1998) 261.1 13.2 GDP (nominal US $ billions, 1999 estimate) 993 468.4 * The FDI confidence index tracks the impact of likely political, economic and regulatory changes on the foreign direct investment intentions and preferences of the leaders of some of the world’s leading companies. Two parameters i.e. Attractiveness and Current are considered for probable FDI inflow. From the diagram it is evident that India is average on Attractiveness and average on Current too. India scores well above countries like Indonesia, Thailand etc in terms of the parameters.

Shakespeares Much Ado About Nothing and Renaissance Italy Essay

Shakespeare's play "Much Ado About Nothing" takes place in Messina, a city-state of Renaissance Italy. The Renaissance was a period in European history believed to have been between AD 1300 and AD 1600 with a feudal society of agricultural economy and church dominated culture. It was during the Renaissance that Europe was transformed into a society dominated by central political institutions with education, arts and music heavily influenced by the Christian religion. In Italy, cities such as Florence, Ferrara, Milan, and Venice flourished. These cities were able to finance cultural achievements. Medieval Italian merchants developed commercial and financial techniques such as bookkeeping and bills of exchange. Italian city-states were transformed from communes into territorial states, each of which wanted to expand at the expense of others. Diplomacy was established when the Italian city-states began embassies in foreign courts. In general, the Italian Renaissance was a time of flo urishing ideas and prosperity. "Much Ado About Nothing" is a play intertwining two love stories. One story follows the romance of a young woman Hero (daughter of Leonato, governor of Messina) and a young officer Claudio. When Claudio returns from war, he realizes he's deeply in love with Hero. With the help of his commander, Don Pedro, Claudio proposes to her. The other is a less likely couple, Beatrice (Hero's cousin) and Bene*censored* (another officer). Both being witty, strong-willed and outspoken, the two seem to bare distaste for each other. However, when their friends arrange for them to overhear conversations revealing how much each is loved by the other, it doesn't take long before they declare their love for one another. Meanwhile, self... ...ce of Aragon, Don Pedro. The political systems are also shown by the fact Don John was denied claim to his family's wealth because he was born outside of marriage. Secondly, I learned about household positions in Renaissance Italy. As displayed by the play, a noble household was headed by a man (Leonato) with daughters waiting to be courted (Hero/Beatrice), and maidservants (Margaret/Ursula). A third lesson was in medieval courtship. In those times, the girls were to be wooed and events such as the dance in "Much Ado About Nothing" were thrown to do so. When a man wished to marry her, he would ask her father for permission, just as Claudio does for Hero. In conclusion, Shakespeare's play "Much Ado about Nothing" intertwines two love stories in Renaissance Italy. Through its characters, it portrays the political and household lifestyles of the Renaissance times.

Research on Food Allergies Essay -- Allergy Allergic Food Essays

Research on Food Allergies True food allergies are not as common as many people believe and do in fact only affect about 2% of children. However, they are more common in younger children (affecting about 5-8% of younger children). Fortunately, most younger children will outgrow these food allergies by the time that they are three years old. Symptoms of a food allergies can often include wheezing and difficulty in breathing, along with itchy skin rashes, including hives, vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, abdominal pain and swelling around the mouth and in the throat (common with nut allergies). These symptoms usually develop fairly quickly after a child ingests the food that they are allergic to, often within minutes and within anything up to an hour or so. Nasal symptoms by themselves, such as congestion or a runny nose, are usually not caused by food allergies as such. Symptoms for food allergies can be both mild or very severe, depending up on how much of the food the child ingested and how allergic they are to the food. A severe reaction can include anaphylaxis, with difficulty breathing, swelling in the mouth and throat, decreased blood pressure, shock and in the more sever cases, even death. More common than food allergies are intolerances to certain foods, which can cause vomiting, diarrhoea, spitting up, and skin rashes. An example of such a reaction occurs in children with lactose intolerance, which occurs because of a deficiency of the enzyme lactase, which normally breaks down the sugar lactose in the bosy. Children without this enzyme or who have a decreased amount of the enzyme, develop symptoms after drinking lactos... ...does not improve with these interventions or if they have had a severe allergic reaction, then they should consider having them see an allergy specialist for testing to figure out what foods they are allergic to and to possibly start allergy injections. * Children with severe allergic reactions or anaphylaxis should wear a medical alert bracelet to notify others of their condition and should carry an epinephrine auto-injector (such as the Epi Pen JR) to ensure rapid treatment during an allergic reaction. * Most importantly, learn to read food labels and look for ingredients that a child may be allergic to and practice strict avoidance of those foods. If parents don't know what an ingredient is, then call the manufacturer before giving it to the child to be safe.

American Express: Branding Financial Services – Essay

American Express: Branding Financial Services Introduction American Express is known worldwide for its charge cards, travelers’ services, and financial services. It is one of the best-known and most-respected global brands. As it grew from a 19th Centurynineteenth- express company into a travel services expert by the mid-1900s, American Express (AMEXAMEX) became associated in the minds of consumers with prestige, security, service, international acceptability, and leisure.Advertising for the company, which began in earnest in the 1960s, reinforced these associations. For example, the now-famous taglinetag line â€Å"Don’t leave home without it† was created to convey the essentiality of owning an American Express cardAmerican Express Card. As the company grew, it expanded into a variety of financial categories, including brokerages, banking, and insurance, and by the late 1980s, American Express was the largest diversified financial services firm in the world.The difficulty the company encountered integrating these broad financial services, combined with increased competition from Visa and MasterCard, compelled AMEXAMEX to divest many of its financial holdings in the early 1990s and focus on its core competencies of travel and cards. The company weathered a decrease in cardholdercardholders at this time by greatly increasing the number of merchants that accepted American Express cardAmerican Express Cards and developing new card offerings, including co-branded cards and a genuine credit card that allowed customers to carry over the monthly balance.By the end of the 1990s, American Express was again seeking to broaden its brand to include select financial services in order to achieve growth. Beyond the challenge of integrating these services, AMEXAmerican Express faced a number of issues in the 2000s, including a highly- competitive credit card industry, a slowing economy, and a subdued travel industry. American Express Builds a Financial Emp ire Early History of American Express The American Express Company was formed in 1850 when two competing express companies merged.The express business, which was less than two decades old, specialized in shipping packages that were smaller than the bulk freight that railroads handled but were over the U. S. Postal Service size limits. Before express companies began operating, stagecoach drivers and even civilian travelers were recruited to deliver packages. Express companies also carried packages that required special handling or were particularly valuable. Bank transactions involving cash, securities, and goldGold gave express companies much of their business. In response to losing business to express companies, the U. S.Postal Service created the money order, which allowed people to send a cash equivalent through the mail that could only be cashed only by a specified recipient. The cash delivery service was traditionally the domain of express companies, since because postal worker s would often steal cash sent through regular mail. To counter the Postal Service’s move into financial services, American Express created its own money order in 1881. The American Express money orders were easier to use than the Post Office money orders, and AMEXAMEX extended the line to include orders in foreign currency that could be cashed internationally.The money order was a great success, selling 250,000 in its first year and more than half a million the next. In the late 1880’s, AMEXAMEX president J. C. Fargo returned from a trip complaining about how difficult it was to use his letter of credit, used to obtain cash abroad, at foreign banks. To solve the problem of obtaining credit abroad, in 1890 American Express employee Marcellus F. Berry designed the â€Å"Travelers Cheque,† intentionally using the British spelling of check to give it an international flair.The Travelers Cheque used the same signature security system still in use today and had exchan ge rates guaranteed by AMEXAMEX printed on the front. AMEXAMEX also gave foreign merchants commissions to encourage them to accept the check. Aided by the network of international financial relationships established for support of the AMEXAMEX money order, sales of the Travelers Cheque quickly took off. From 1882 to 1896, Travelers Cheque sales quadrupled as travelers all over the world were using AMEXAMEX products more and more to make their journeys easier. In the meantime, AMEXAMEX’s express business was growing overseas.Federal antitrust regulation led to the separation American Express’s express business from its financial services and tourism businesses. By that time, however, AMEXAMEX was already booking tours, hotel stays, and steamship and railway tickets. Money orders were still popular and tTravelers check Cheque sales were constantly increasing. AMEXAMEX had also been investing the float – —the money that remains in the company’s accoun t during the interval between when Travelers Cheques are bought and when they are cashed – —and earning millions of dollars in interest.The Travelers Cheque was AMEXAMEX’s flagship product. The travelers Travelers check Cheque fees and its float investments were responsible for most of AMEXAMEX’s earnings and almost all of their profits. History of the Charge Card In 1914, Western Union, another express company, issued the first â€Å"charge card† in the form of a metal plate given to preferred customers that enabled them to defer payment for services. Charge cards required that the balance be paid in full at regular intervals, but did not charge interest on the balance.Soon, many different companies from department stores to oil companies issued charge cards that customers could use to purchase goods and services from the issuing company. In the 1940s, several U. S. banks began issuing a paper document – —similar to a letter of credi t – —that customers could use like cash in local stores. Diner’s Club introduced the first modern charge card in 1950, when it issued a â€Å"travel Travel and entertainmentEntertainment† card designed for use by business travelers. The card was accepted by a large variety of merchants, who paid a fee to Diner’s Club in compensation for the added business.The first bank card was issued by Franklin National Bank in Long Island, New York. The bank-issued card was accepted by local merchants only, unlike the Diner’s Club card. Shortly after Franklin National Bank debuted its credit card, several other banks across the United States. S. issued credit cards to their customers. â€Å"The Card† AMEXAMEX actually had considered issuing a charge card on several occasions before Diner’s Club unveiled its card in 1950. AMEXAMEX management discussed issuing a charge card as early as 1947, but then-president Ralph T.Reed refused because of security problems given the possibility of fraud. In 1956, when DinersDiner’s Clubs’ card charges began to cut into AMEXAMEX travelers Travelers check Cheque sales, AMEXAMEX initiated negotiations to buy Diner’s Club. Talks lasted for two years, but Reed ultimately declined, citing concern about the dilution of AMEXAMEX’s prestige. In late 1957, AMEXAMEX leadership decided that the company would issue its own card. The public clamored to possess an AMEXAMEX charge card. Even before the card was officially available, thousands of customers had written in or visited AMEXAMEX offices to apply early.By the launch date of October 1, 1958, AMEXAMEX had issued over more than 250,000 cards and signed on 17,500 merchants that would accept the cards. The American Express cardAmerican Express Card required the cardholdercardholder to pay off his or her entire balance monthly. The company also charged a six dollar annual fee, which was one dollar greater than the Din er’s Club fee, â€Å"for prestige. †Ã¢â‚¬ [1] AMEXAMEX’s worldwide network of offices, travel agents, and associated banks helped it build the card’s membership rapidly.Since Because the American Express CardAmerican Express Card was initially designed for the travel and entertainment expenses of businessmen and the upper class, it was known as a Travel and Entertainment (T&E) card. This classification puts it in a category with such cards as Diner’s Club and Carte Blanche. In 1958, Bank of America issued the first modern credit card, called the BankAmericard. The key feature of the BankAmericard and other credit cards was a â€Å"revolving† credit line, which allowed cardholdercardholders to pay their account balance in installments, with interest assessed on the remaining balance.The BankAmericard originally served the state State of California, but within a decade Bank of America was licensing its card services to banks throughout the co untry. While American Express earned most of its card revenue from annual fees and merchant discounts (the percentage of a dollar transaction the merchant was required to pay to American Express in compensation for the business brought in by the card), credit cards earned revenues from interest charges and a lower merchant discount. Another mportant difference was that AMEXAMEX issued its own cards while individual banks issued cards under license agreements from credit card companies. Neither AMEXAMEX management nor the accounting department had any experience with charge card operations. Rather than creating a separate accounting function for the card division, Reed had assigned AMEXAMEX’s existing comptroller’s office to handle all of the card transactions. This proved an overwhelming amount of paperwork, and within a few months of the introduction, the comptroller’s office was flooded with unprocessed transactions.Compounding the internal problems was the fa ct that customers were not paying on time, while AMEXAMEX was required to pay merchants within 10 ten days after a transaction. The card division had lost over more than $4 million dollars in its first two years and an additional $14 million by 1962. One of the Howard L. Clark’s first moves after becoming AMEXAMEX president in 1960 was to try to sell the card division, ironically enough, to DinersDiner’s Club. The negotiations failed because of antitrust issues and so AMEXAMEX kept its card. In spite of the card problems, though, AMEXAMEX as a whole was financially stable, with 1959 profits of $8. million from $69. 6 million in revenue and Travelers Cheque sales of over more than $1 billion. Clark instituted measures to help the ailing card division, such as requiring cardholdercardholders to pay their balance within thirty days, raising the annual fee to ten dollars, raising the discount fee (the percentage merchants had to pay AMEXAMEX every time the card was used at their business), and imposing stricter credit requirements for cards issuance. The card division finally achieved profitability in 1962. By 1967, the card business yielded a net income of $6. 5 million, or one-third of the company’s total profit.The American Express CardAmerican Express Card had surpassed the Travelers Cheque to become the most visible symbol of American Express. Marketing Strategy and Advertising The first AMEXAMEX President president to place a high priority on advertising was Howard L. Clark. Before he took office in 1960, AMEXAMEX’s annual advertising budget was only $1 million. Clark increased it every year thereafter and in 1962 replaced their ad agency, Benton & Bowles, with Ogilvy, Benson, and & Mather. The new agency designed AMEXAMEX’s first modern ad campaign with the slogan â€Å"The Company for people who travel. This tag line promoted AMEXAMEX’s travel and card products in a single campaign that conveyed AMEXAMEX’s one-stop travel shopping expertise. Campaigns The now-famous tag line, â€Å"Don’t leave home without it,† was developed by Ogilvy & Mather in the early 1970s. AMEXAMEX wanted a â€Å"synergy tag line† like the other Ogilvy-produced line: â€Å"The company for people who travel. † Ogilvy came up with â€Å"Don’t leave home without them† for the AMEXAMEX Travelers Cheque, â€Å"Don’t leave home without us† for AMEXAMEX travel services, and the â€Å"Don’t leave home without it† tag line for the American Express CardCard.Ads for the Travelers Cheques featuring screen actor Karl Malden speaking the taglinetag line ran for 21 years. In 1974, AMEXAMEX debuted its now-familiar â€Å"blue-box logo,† on which the words â€Å"American Express† are printed in white outline over a square blue background. Ogilvy & Mather tried several conceptual approaches to use with this tag line for the card, and eventually h it upon the idea of replacing everyday and unknown actors in the ads with endorsers whose names were famous, but whose faces were not as familiar. This was referred to as the â€Å"Do You Know Me? campaign. The ads typically began by showing the face of a moderately well-known celebrity, as with Neil Simon, and then showing a close-up of his or her American Express CardAmerican Express Card to reveal their his or her identity. The ads implied that using an American Express card Card would get the cardholdercardholder â€Å"recognized. † This was an obvious example of marketing the card as a status symbol. Acquisitions In the 1970s, American Express executives looked for ways to grow the business beyond Travelers Cheques and credit cards.The fact that Master Charge and the BankAamericard (later to become Visa) were already issuing cards themselves suggested that AMEXAMEX would soon lose market share of its Travelers Cheques and that the growth of its cardholdercardholder base would slow. AMEXAMEX also had been worried for some time that the company’s small size and high profits made it an attractive takeover target. A large acquisition would make a takeover less likely and give AMEXAMEX a new source of income. Clark chose a company three times the size of AMEXAMEX with the 1968 acquisition of Fund America Group, based in Novato, CACA.It included Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company and four mutual funds that were later sold off. Other relatively small changes by Clark included the acquisition of the magazine which was later of US Camera magazine (later renamed Travel & Leisure) and the creation of the Travel Related Services (TRS) division in 1971, which pooled the travelers Travelers checkCheque, the card, and other travel and tourism businesses. AMEXAMEX also organized its banking operations under the renamed American Express International Bank Corporation (AEIBC).The year 1977, in which Clark left as president, saw AMEXAMEX with $250 millio n in profits and 8 million cards generating $10 billion in charge volume. The American Express Company. had three divisions when James D. Robinson took over for Clark as CEO in 1977: Travel Related Services (TRS), American Express International Bank Corporation (AEIBC), and Fireman’s Fund (FF). Robinson pursued an aggressive acquisition strategy. In 1979, he purchased fifty 50 percent of a cable TV equipment and programming partnership with Warner Communications for $175 million with the idea of selling financial products through cable television.A few months later in 1980, American Express bought First Data Resources for $50 million. First Data was a computerized billing operation that processed Visa and MasterCard transactions for banks. This was only a warm-up for Robinson, and in 1981 AMEXAMEX merged with Shearson Loeb Rhoades Inc. , the second largest public brokerage firm in the country behind Merrill Lynch. AMEXAMEX continued its expansion into a financial conglomerate by purchasing two additional brokerage houses and a real estate company. The international investment bank Trade Development Bank Holdings S.A. (TDB) was acquired in 1983 for $520 million to shore up AEIBC and focus its operations on trade finance and international private banking. That same year, AMEXAMEX purchased Investors Diversified Services (IDS) for $773 million, a Minneapolis- based company that offered mutual funds, life insurance, annuities, and financial planning to middle- income consumers. The investment bank Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb Inc. was acquired in 1984 for $360 million, and AMEXAMEX again added to its brokerage cache by acquiring E. F. Hutton & Co. n 1987 for almost $1 billion. Marketing Strategy and Advertising American Express advertising conveyed the prestige associated with tthe he cards. CardholderCardholders are called â€Å"card members,† and the year they became members is on their card – —signaling membership to a club. American Ex press cards Cards were perceived by many as status symbols, signifying success and achievement. AMEXAMEX sought to maintain this elusive image through advertising, impeccable service, promotions, bonuses, special events, and so on.The introduction of goldGold and platinumPlatinum cards to the credit card industry further enhanced their special cachet. By 1985, AMEXAMEX was spending $500 million a year in marketing. â€Å"Marketing is our number one priority,† said Robinson. [2] Service Customer service was a key element of American Express’s marketing program. One of James D. Robinson’s favorite sayings was â€Å"Quality is our only form of patent protection. †[3] Before he became CEO, he Robinson developed a comprehensive system for measuring AMEXAMEX’s service quality.His goal was to have customer service employees handling more than 99 percent of the requests without any mistakes. AMEXAMEX measured the time it took a customer service representat ive to answer the phone and the time it took for a replacement card to arrive. The company established a Quality University in Phoenix, AZ, where customer service representatives and their managers were trained to deliver excellent service. In addition, AMEXAMEX set up a committee of managers from throughout the corporation that who met to discuss new ways of measuring and improving quality. â€Å"Quality Conferences† were even held to disseminate and implement quality initiatives throughout the organization. Besides the internal monitoring, AMEXAMEX constantly surveys surveyed its customers and merchants by mail and by phone to ensure that the level of service remains remained consistent. AMEXAMEX developed a database system, which was was updated weekly, of customer information that tracks tracked spending patterns, age, and 450 other characteristics. This database enabled enabled the company to target specific marketing efforts to the customer segments most likely to respo nd.AMEXAMEX also useds this system to recruit new merchants by demonstrating what AMEXAMEX can could do for their businesses using real customer data, not projections. For example, a customer that who shopped at a certain store might receive a discount for shopping there again based on an agreement between the merchant and AMEXAMEX. Throughout its lengthy history, American Express has earned a reputation for the highest level of customer service. One representative personally delivered a card in the middle of the night to a stranded cardholdercardholder at Boston’s Logan airport.Another case involved an AMEXAMEX representative in New Delhi who arranged for another representative’s brother (a military helicopter pilot stationed close to the caller) to deliver cash to an AMEXAMEX Gold Gold cardholder cardholder who was stranded in a remote village in the Himalayas. One Enterprise Robinson and his top executives envisioned a transformed company structure called â€Å"One Enterprise. † The One Enterprise vision would make AMEXAmerican Express a one-stop financial and travel services powerhouse with each division cross-marketing its products to the others.The cardholdercardholders could obtain travel services from TRS; property & and casualty, flight and travel, and life insurance from Fireman’s Fund; financial advice and other products from IDS; and brokerage and investment banking services from Shearson Lehman Hutton; while the wealthier international clientele would be pampered by AEIBC (renamed American Express Bank Ltd. or AEB in 1986). Each division would in turn push American Express CardAmerican Express Cards to any of their customers who weren’t already cardholdercardholders or higher- end goldGold or platinumPlatinum cards to those who were.Advertising in the 1980s The â€Å"Do you know me? † campaign was targeted at older successful, affluent businessmen that who traveled a lot. The campaign’s nine years h ad seen these cardholdercardholders quadruple to 12 million, a full 40 percent of that market segment. Fearing that growth in this segment would soon level off, AMEXAMEX looked to stimulate growth in other segments. In the 1980s, women were attaining more powerful business positions in large numbers. AMEXAMEX wished to target this segment of the population with ads tailored towards young urban professional women. In 1983, women comprised only 2. million of current AMEXAmerican Express card holders, only 20 percent of the women the company thought were eligible for the card. Testing had shown that women did not respond positively to the older ad campaign. Marketing data from the early 1980s showed that consumers thought that status and prestige came not necessarily from huge wealth or success, but from a varied and exciting life. Ogilvy & Mather came up with the â€Å"Interesting Lives† campaign. It aimed to position AMEXAmerican Express cards Cards as symbols of people with i nteresting and multifaceted lives, people with unusual hobbies or who have had unconventional careers.The AMEXAmerican Express cardCard, the ads indicated, gave these holders the opportunity to indulge in their varied interests, to be spontaneous by going to the Australian Outback or climb a mountain, for example. Rather than featuring celebrities, the ads showed confident independent women using the American Express cardAmerican Express Card to take their husband to dinner or their kids to lunch, bantering with a flirtatious man in a bookstore, or leaving a sporting goods store with a briefcase and a lacrosse stick. â€Å"The American Express cardAmerican Express Card,† the tag line says, â€Å"It’s part of a lot of interesting lives. The ad campaign included and featured women in ads, and soon the volume of female applicants doubled the number of men who applied for the card. By 1984, 27 percent of AMEX cardAmerican Express holdercardholders were women compared to t en 10 percent in the late 1970s. The â€Å"Interesting Lives† campaign also had an unanticipated, but positive, side effect: young men also started applying for the card in large numbers. This convinced AMEXAMEX to tailor some of the ads specifically towards them. One such ad was titled â€Å"Young Lawyer. It showed a father talking to his son over lunch about his decision not to join the family firm. The father was disappointed until the son got a job at the District district Attorney’s attorney’s office. The sons pays with the American Express cardAmerican Express Card and the father says, â€Å"The pay must be getting better over at City city Hallhall. † Even though these campaigns did very well, AMEXAMEX’s marketing strategy for their core potential cardholdercardholders had become stale. They dropped the â€Å"Do you know me? † TV ads in 1987 and Ogilvy & Mather devised a new series of print ads called â€Å"Portraits. Renowned photog rapher Annie Liebovitz was recruited to photograph celebrities rarely shown in advertisements. The ads showed these celebrities in a more intimate, playful light, without the pomp and circumstance that celebrity ads usually employed. America’s Cup yachtsman Dennis Connor played with a sailboat in his bathtub in one shot, while in another basketball center Wilt Chamberlain and jockey Willie Shoemaker were shown standing back to back wearing identical white suits. Another shot showed Christian rock singer Amy Grant walking on water while in yet another Tip O’Neill was shown at the beach under an umbrella.The only text was their names, the date they became â€Å"members,† and the taglinetag line that was to become one of AMEXAMEX’s most enduring: â€Å"Membership Has Its Privileges. † The ads received much praise for their ingenuity and quirkiness. That same year, AMEXAMEX unveiled its first major TV campaign for its goldGold card. The goldGold card a dvertising was handled by McCann-Erickson, and their ads for this campaign focused on showing successful businessmen in lavish surroundings. One businessman lounged in a jacuzzi complaining about an award acceptance speech he had to give.His wife told him to just enjoy the honor. Another ad featured a successful businessman taking time from his busy schedule to learn the piano. These ads were the subject of criticism for their celebration of the opulence and free-spending attitudes of the decade. A year and a half later they gave the goldGold card account to Chiat/Day. This agency’s approach was over the top compared to McCann’s more subtle ads. Chiat targeted a younger, more affluent clientele by touting excessive spending. One ad in particular showed a man in a Jjaguar, sprawled with his legs dangling over the side.A voice says, â€Å"For when you finally run into that 1953 XK120. † The phrase â€Å"Worth its wait† flashed on the screen while a sax play ed sensually in the background. The ads were supposed to increase the goldGold card base by targeting younger wealthy men. By 1989, AMEXAMEX was spending $250 million annually on advertising, more than twice as much as Visa’s and MasterCard’s budgets combined. This expenditure reflected the numerous marketing initiatives underway to expand the company’s cardholdercardholder base, including efforts to attract more women, students, senior citizens, and small companies.Additionally, the company developed a major ad campaign to get cardholdercardholders to use their cards at retail shops, not just fine restaurants and boutiques. Research showed that the majority of card purchases were made with other credits cards while only high-ticket items were charged to AMEX cardAmerican Express Cards. This campaign was developed by Chiat/Day, which in 1991 won the green Green card and Optima accounts from Ogilvy & Mather, AMEXAMEX’s agency of record for 30 thirty years. Chiat/Day immediately developed a new taglinetag line for the company: â€Å"The Card.The American Express CardAmerican Express Card. † The initial ads developed by Chiat/Day sought to convey the iconic status of the card, by superimposing oversized flagship green Green cards into images of a restaurant, a golf course, the tail of a Concorde jet, and the Easter Island monoliths. Cause Marketing Since 1981, AMEXAMEX has also embarked on many cause-related advertising campaigns where a percentage of the proceeds were donated to a specific charity. In fact, the company is credited with coining the phrase â€Å"cause-related marketing. Between 1981 and 1984, Amercian Express donated to more than 45 different charitable organizations. Most of these donation drives occurred at the local level, such as when American Express donated two cents to the San Francisco Arts Festival each time Bay Area card members used their cards. By encouraging card members to spend more to support the cause, AMEXAMEX profited from increased card usage. Similar campaigns around the country generated total donations in the tens of millions of dollars and increased card usage in locations where a cause-related marketing campaign was active by an average of 25 percent.The company’s first national cause-related marketing campaign was organized in 1983 to raise money for the Statue of Liberty Restoration Fund. To build awareness for the program, American Express developed an $4 million advertising campaign that included print, radio, and television advertising. Each time a card member used his or her card, a one cent donation was made to the fund. For every new account opened, AMEXAMEX donated one dollar to the fund. Donations were also made for Travelers Cheques and travel purchases. Between September and December 1983, American Express gave $1. 7 million to the Statue of Liberty Restoration Fund.Card usage rose 28 percent nationally in the first month compared with the previo us year, while new card applications increased 45 percent. [i] . 1 Following its early success with cause-related marketing campaigns, AMEXAMEX developed more than 90 ninety programs in 17 seventeen countries. One of AMEXAMEX’s best-known campaigns was the â€Å"Charge Against Hunger. † The Charge Against Hunger, begun in 1993, was a charity effort in which the company donated a certain amount of money to hunger relief agency Share our Our Strength every time a cardholdercardholder used an AMEX cardAmerican Express Card to make a purchase during the holiday season.The 1993 Charge Against Hunger raised $5. 3 million. To raise awareness for the campaign, AMEXAMEX produced a series of advertisements featuring information about the charity and detailing the specifics of the program. Between 1993 and the last year of the program in 1996, the Charge Against Hunger campaign raised more than $21 million. AMEXAMEX Success Due to the acquisition-based growth and cross-marketing concepts, which were fashionable corporate strategies in the 1980s, Robinson was hailed as a savvy CEO in building up AMEXAMEX in this fashion.By the end of 1984, AMEXAMEX had developed $61 billion in assets and posted annual revenues of $13 million. The TRS division, which supplied AMEXAMEX with almost three-quarters of its earnings, was selling $13 billion worth of travelers checksTravelers Cheques, while 20 million cards were generating $45 billion in charges. AMEXAMEX had name recognition of 75 percent and its services were used by 14 percent of the population, more than any other financial company. Credit Card Competition Heats Up By 1985, AMEXAMEX had issued over more than 20 million cards that were producing more than $47 billion in billings.That compared with Visa’s 115 million cards with $82 billion in billings and MasterCard’s 103 million with $62 billion in billings. About 3. 3 million of AMEXAMEX’s cards were GoldGold cards (first offered in 1966) an d about 60,000 were PlatinumPlatinum (introduced in 1984). Visa had 3 million higher- end â€Å"Premier Visa† cards and MasterCard had 2. 5 million â€Å"Preferred Customer† cards (both began issuing them in 1982) with annual fees of $55. In spite of their similar numbers, AMEXAMEX still had a clear advantage in the high-end market with GoldGold card charges totaling $13 billion while Visa and MasterCard only had only $7. billion combined. While Although most credit cards had features similar to AMEXAMEX’s charge cards, prestige still seemed to win people over in wanting AMEXAMEX’s cards and in using them for their more expensive items. One analyst said, â€Å"If you want to buy an expensive car, you tend to buy a Mercedes or a Cadillac, not a souped-up Honda. † For AMEXAMEX customers, the fact that MasterCard and Visa were accepted at over more than 4 million sites while AMEXAMEX was only accepted at only 1 million sites was mitigated by the fact that only AMEXAMEX had offices in many remote locations capable of handling almost any travel emergency.Indeed, prestige seemed to be so important to consumers that they signed up at twice the expected rate for AMEXAMEX’s $250 annual fee PlatinumPlatinum card Card and eventually numbered six times what AMEXAMEX expected. In the 1980s, the standard American Express Green card had an annual fee of $35 and offered $1,000 check cashing at representative banks and AMEXAMEX travel offices, the ability to withdraw $500 from ATM’s, and $100,000 travel accident insurance. For a $65 annual fee, GoldGold cCard members upgraded to $2,000 in checks cashed and a credit line of $2,000.The PlatinumPlatinum card Card allows members to cash up to $10,000 in checks, get $1,000 from ATM’s, $500,000 in travel insurance, and nonresident privileges in over more than 25 private clubs around the world. AMEXAMEX offered these cards to only about 5 percent of its American cardholdercardho lders who charged more than $10,000 a year and hadve good payment histories. Higher-end credit cards (e. g. , goldGold, platinumPlatinum) proliferated in the mid-1980s as the market for standard cards became relatively saturated.Credit card delinquency rates were increasing due to banks’ efforts to shore up profits by signing up more cardholdercardholders. The average cardholdercardholder possessed seven cards, so banks had to find other ways to compete. Many consumers were frustrated with banks because they maintained high interest rates on their cards (around 19 percent) in spite of the fact that the prime lending rate had dropped 14 points since 1982. The banks defended their card rates, citing the cost of processing millions of card transactions every week.In order to appease their customers, banks offered special perks like such as bonus points and cash back offers. They also began issuing goldGold and platinumPlatinum cards to attract more customers. These â€Å"eliteà ¢â‚¬  cards were used 50 percent more often than regular cards, and the average purchase with them was 150 percent greater than with a normal card. Visa and MasterCard gained enough GoldGold cCard members, 12 and 11 million, to beat AMEXAMEX’s 6 million. Optima Unveiled AMEXAMEX responded to the increasing popularity of credit cards by issuing its own credit card, called Optima, late in 1987.Not only would it compete head-to-head with the revolving credit bank-issued cards, but also it would do so with a much lower interest rate of 13. 5 percent. Even the annual fee was lower, priced about half what other credit cards charged at $15. Optima also allowed AMEXAMEX to greatly expand its card base without damaging its upscale image since because it was a separate card. AMEXAMEX only offered Optima initially to its 8 – to 9 million current AMEX cardAmerican Express holdercardholders. Since Because these customers were accustomed to paying their balance monthly, they were c onsidered the lowest-risk segment.Banks were worried that Optima cardholdercardholders would use the new credit card for regular purchases and the AMEXAMEX charge cards for their T&E expenses, dropping regular and high- end bank cards in the process. Citicorp, the nation’s largest issuer of bank cards with close to 15 million, countered AMEXAMEX’s new card by lowering its rates to â€Å"preferred customers† to 16. 8 percent from 19. 8 percent. Visa USA Inc. even urged its issuing banks to stop selling American Express Travelers Cheques in protest.AMEXAMEX replied with a Travelers Cheque ad that told consumers, â€Å"If your bank doesn’t sell them, go to one that does! † In order to compete, most of the charge and credit cards furiously began cutting prices and offering special incentives. Co-branded cards also became very popular. Visa had 768 affinity programs approved by the end of 1987. Most MasterCard and Visa silver Silver and goldGold cardhol dercardholders also got rebates on hotels and plane fare in addition to rental car discounts. WhileAlthough AMEXAMEX did not offer any affinity cards, it did continue to offer benefits and special offers.In addition to its Buyer’s Assurance program, which doubled the manufacturer’s warranty up to a year on items purchased with its cards, AMEXAMEX also began its Purchase Protection program, which insured these items for 90 ninety days against theft, loss, fire, or accidental damage up to $50,000. AMEXAMEX also offered its GoldGold and PlatinumPlatinum members free rental car insurance. By the end of 1988, after being out for only 18 months, Optima ranked as one of the top ten credit cards in terms of cardholdercardholder volume.Optima had 2 million cardholdercardholders with over more than $3 billion in outstanding balances. The interest and fees for Optima was were nearly pure profit sincebecause AMEXAMEX spent so little, only $100 million, in starting it. American Exp ress had the advantage of an established cardholdercardholder base to offer it to and merchants already willing to accept it. Thanks to Optima and improved marketing to young men, women, and students, AMEXAMEX’s domestic share of the card market increased to ten 10 percent by 1989, totaling 22 million cards (30 million worldwide).AMEXAMEX’s charge volume also increased to 27 percent or $69 billion, which lead all card issuers. Visa meanwhile had 52 percent cards hare with 115 million cards, and MasterCard had 38 percent with 84 million. The remainder was primarily Sears’ Discover card, which had about 28 million cards outstanding. Sears issued Discover in 1985 using its existing customer credit base of 40 million accounts, low interest, no fee, and a cash- back program as advantages. AMEXAMEX had signed up over more than 2. 5 million merchants to accept its card, compared to Visa’s almost 7 million merchants.Nevertheless, AMEXAMEX maintained that because consumers only charged only 15 percent of the possibley number of items that could be charged, its main competition was not the other card companies, but rather, cash. AMEXAMEX Applauded Success continued through the late 1980’s. Revenue and profits grew in every division and earnings topped the $1 billion mark in 1986. In 1989 AMEXAMEX grossed over more than $26 billion and netted $1. 2 billion with a travelers checkTravelers Cheque float of over more than $4 billion to invest.Compounded earnings and sales over the last decade had risen nine 9 percent and 13 percent every year, and AMEXAMEX had a return on shareholder equity of more than 15 percent a year. Their direct marketing department was the fifth largest in the nation selling electronics, furniture, jewelry, luggage, mutual funds, and insurance. AMEXAMEX’s publishing arm included â€Å"Travel & Leisure† and â€Å"Food & Wine† magazines, with having a combined circulation of over more than 2 millio n, and they planned on acquiring or creating more than ten more magazine titlespublications.Overall, analysts were recommending AMEXAMEX stock, saying it was undervalued based on its future earnings potential with AMEXAMEX being called â€Å"one of the great success stories of the last twenty years. †[4] AMEXAMEX STUMBLES Problems in Iits Subsidiaries James Robinson III had spent a total of $3. 5 billion in acquiring Shearson, IDS, TDB, Lehman, and E. F. Hutton, and in the process had built American Express into what was one of the most respected and well-known companies in the USUnited States. AMEXAMEX was rated by one poll as among the top three brands in America behind only Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.In the late 1980s, AMEXAMEX was the largest diversified financial services company in the world. But Ddespite the apparent success, however, signs of future troubles appeared as early as the early 1980s. In the latter years of that decade, the financial empire slowly bega n to crumble. While Although each subsidiary had its share of problems, consensus seemed to be that AMEXAMEX had expanded too rapidly without enough attention as onto how all the parts would fit together and so could not manage itself efficiently. AMEXAMEX’s first big problem with a subsidiary came in 1983.An insurance industry price war had caused Fireman’s Fund (FF) to lower its policy prices and add business. A surprisingly large number of claims on these policies caused AMEXAMEX to have to add $230 million to FF reserves causing a $141 million fourth quarter loss for the unit and a $22 million loss for AMEXAMEX. AMEXAMEX managers said they were blindsided by the losses while FF managers said they had tried to warn their superiors at AMEXAMEX but were ignored. AMEXAMEX profits dropped 11 percent in 1983 due to FF losses, breaking the much hallowed 35- year earnings record.AMEXAMEX later sold off Fireman’s Fund to the public, keeping the life insurance divisio n, but retaining only 27 percent of the property and casualty business. In spite of their magnitude, the problems at Fireman’s Fund had little impact on AMEXAMEX as a whole. They did, however, draw attention to AMEXAMEX’s management style and what impact it might have on the other divisions. Shearson Lehman Hutton, the nation’s second largest securities firm, was probably the biggest disappointment of all.After the acquisition, Shearson imposed its existing no no-bbonus onus policy for clerical employees at the investment bank where everyone was up to that point used accustomed to annual bonuses. Shearson also imposed its much less generous medical benefits plan on Lehman employees and even made them take lie detector tests. Most job openings after the acquisition were filled with Lehman employees in an attempt to appease them, but this wound up alienating Shearson employees. Lehman also lost many top clients after the acquisition including ABC, Chase Manhattan, and Uniroyal.Big M & A deals, the reason Lehman was acquired in the first place, never materialized. The loss of clients and internal talent was too big to overcome and only a trickle of small deals and its brokerage operations kept the unit going. Even with 1988 revenues of $10. 5 billion (same as Merrill Lynch), the unit’s earnings had dropped to 81 eighty-one cents from $4. 34 two years earlier. Robinson admitted he wanted to sell Shearson, but couldn’t because he wouldn’t get the price he wanted. Card CompetitionIn 1991,, AMEXAMEX debuted its â€Å"Membership Miles† loyalty program, which gave customers one point for every dollar spent on the card. These points could be exchanged for credit in frequent flier airline miles. The program had the dual benefits of attracting more customers and increasing the spending volume of customers who wanted airline miles. The success of this program’s introduction was offset, however, by problems with the Op tima card. Though Optima made the company one of the ten largest credit card issuer issuers worldwide, AMEXAMEX’s first offering in the credit card category was fraught with problems.The company’s decision to offer the card only to existing cardholdercardholders, who were accustomed to paying their entire balances monthly, led to millions of dollars in bad debt. AMEXAMEX failed to account for the fact that a significant portion of charges on their classic cards were business expenses for which the cardholdercardholder was reimbursed. Therefore, the majority of Optima cardholdercardholders used that card strictly as a credit device, and as a result only five 5 percent of Optima accounts paid the full monthly balance.The resulting losses rose to 10 percent of outstanding balances in 1992, which was double the industry average. In its first three years, Optima cost American Express $2. 3 billion. The company was forced to re-evaluate its Optima portfolio, and relaunched t he card in 1992 with a slightly different payment structure. In 1994, the company pared the number of Optima cardholdercardholders to 3 million from about 3. 5 million. By 1996, Optima’s 5. 2 percent annual loss rate was only marginally higher than the 4. 6 percent industry average.Other card companies were able to make up enormous ground on the American Express by offering bonuses, service benefits, and cheaper fees to both merchants and consumers. Bank cards certainly lacked the prestige factor, but, as one analyst noted, â€Å"Prestige is less of a Nineties concept than an Eighties concept. †[ii]2 AMEXAMEX’s traditional points of difference were service and prestige, but 1990s’ consumers appeared to place greater value on â€Å"function [and] utility. †[iii] Compounding problems was the launch of Visa’s brilliant ad campaign, â€Å"Visa.It†s Everywhere You Want to Be. † That campaign highlighted desirable locations, resorts, events, restaurants, etc. – none of which would take American Express. AMEXAMEX was under siege from a number of new competitors, such as Capital One, which in 1991 was the first company to issue so-called â€Å"teaser rate† cards with introductory rates well below the standard 19 percent. Other sources of competition came from co-branded or â€Å"affinity† cards, which were becoming increasingly popular with consumers seeking added value in the form of additional goods or services.AMEXAMEX had the opportunity to issue one of the first co-branded cards back in 1985, when American Airlines approached the company with a proposal for a joint credit card that would offer frequent flier miles for dollars spent on the card. AMEXAMEX rejected the offer and American Airlines inked a deal with Citibank instead, which that attracted 4 million cardholdercardholders within a decade and set off a co-branding trend. AMEXAMEX similarly declined to enter into a co-branding agre ement with AT&T in 1990.Within five years, the AT&T card had more than 11 million cardholdercardholders. Many corporations began to issue co-branded credit cards, including General Motors, Shell, all major airlines, and Sony. Other entities with co-branded cards included NBA basketball teams, the University of Alabama Alumni Association, Star Trek, and the National Wildlife Federation. Between 1990 and 1992, the number of American Express cardAmerican Express Cards in circulation dropped by 1. 6 million, or six 6 percent. The company was in danger of seeing its competitive advantage disappear.Attempts to diversify into financial services had largely failed, and the company’s flagship card business was faltering. â€Å"We were losing relevance with our customers,† said current CEO Kenneth Chenault. â€Å"We were trying to be all things to all people with a few products. †[iv] This developments led AMEXAMEX’s board to force James Robinson to resign as CEO i n 1993. AMEXAMEX FOCUSES ON ITS CORE BUSINESS Divestiture After forcing Robinson’s resignation, American Express selected Harvey Golub to succeed him as chairman and CEO in February 1993.Golub was a nine-year veteran of the company, having come to the IDS division from McKinsey & Co. consulting firm. He immediately initiated a series of divestitures to reduce AMEXAMEX’s holdings. Golub negotiated the sale of the Shearson brokerage operation and the Lehman Brothers investment bank. These sales, combined with other profit-saving cutbacks, eliminated 50,000 of the company’s 114,000 workers. Following these moves, the now-leaner company was in a position to focus on its core competencies: charge and credit cards, Travelers Cheques and travel services, and select banking and financial services.In the midst of these cutbacks, Golub pursued aggressive plans for high growth in the card sector. In mid-1994, he announced plans to introduce up to 15 fifteen different credi t cards. Ready to improve on the company’s first credit card offering – —Optima – —AMEXAMEX introduced its next card, called Optima True Grace, in August 1994. The Optima True Grace card Card featured a low introductory rate of 7. 9 percent and came with an automatic â€Å"grace period† of 25 twenty-five days after a purchase, during which time no interest would be charged to the cardholdercardholder.Additionally, the company would waive the annual fee for cardholdercardholders who used Optima True Grace at least three times per year. These features came as a result of a year-long research effort that included 4,000 consumer interviews. The Optima True Grace launch was accompanied by a $40 million marketing campaign starring lifestyle maven Martha Stewart. In its first year, Optima True Grace was selected by about 1. 4 million users, a figure that doubled the company’s membership predictions.The flexibility of Optima True Grace marked a departure from AMEX cardAmerican Express Card policies of the past. As bank-issued cards exploded in the 1980s by enticing customers with low annual fees, cash back offers, partnerships, points bonuses, and other special offers, AMEXAMEX continued to charge high annual fees and flatly refused to partner with other corporations despite offers from companies such as American Airlines. The gap in market share between AMEXAMEX and Visa and Mastercard only widened, and Golub reflected in 1995, â€Å"We should have seen what was happening. . . We were inflexible. We were arrogant. We were dreaming. †[v] To spur growth in the card category, Golub sought to greatly increase merchant acceptance of American Express cardAmerican Express Cards. In October, responding to the requests of over more than 14,000 card members, AMEXAMEX inked a deal with Wal-Mart stores to have its cards accepted at over more than 2,300 Wal-Mart locations. During 1995, other retailers such as Laura Ashley, S hopRite, Service Merchandise, and Vons Supermarkets signed on to accept AMEX cardAmerican Express Cards. That year, research by the ompany showed that based on card member purchasing patterns, AMEXAMEX customers charged 86 percent of their spending to AMEX cardAmerican Express Cards. Said CEO Kenneth Chenault, â€Å"If our customer wants to use the American Express cardAmerican Express Card at a hot dog stand, we want to be there. †[vi] In addition to adding merchants that would accept the cards, Golub worked to improve relations with the existing merchant roster. In the past, AMEXAMEX was able to demonstrate to merchants that its cardholdercardholders charged a higher volume with their cards.For many merchants, this mitigated the fact that AMEXAMEX’s merchant discount was considerably higher than Visa or MasterCard’s. Purchases by AMEX cardAmerican Express holdercardholders carried discount fees of over more than 3. 5 percent, compared to merchant discounts low er than 2 percent for Visa and Mastercard. By 1991, however, the case for accepting American Express was not as compelling. Not only were there a greater number of Visa and MasterCard goldGold cardholdercardholders, but also nearly 90 percent of all AMEXAMEX customers carried bank cards as well.AMEXAMEX needed to retain as many merchants as possible, since overbecause more than half of its annual revenues came from merchant discounts. The turning point came in 1991, with the so-called â€Å"Boston Fee Party. † A group of Boston restaurant owners coordinated a boycott of the American Express cardAmerican Express Card because they believed the discount rate to be too high. American Express worked rapidly to repair relationships with these and other merchants. By 1996, the discount rate for AMEXAMEX purchases was below less than 3 percent and all the Boston Fee Party boycotters had been re-signed.Golub also attempted to better relations with current cardholdercardholders. In Oct ober 1995, the company expanded its Membership Miles program to include points bonuses for retail merchandise and gourmet gifts, as well as more travel offerings such as car- rentals, hotel stays, and vacation packages. This revised program was named Membership Rewards, and points earned through the program had no limit or expiration date. The renewed focus on American Express’s core business led to the first new campaign for American Express Travelers Cheques in twenty years.Though still dominating the Travelers Cheques category with $64 billion in annual worldwide sales and a 45 percent market share, AMEXAMEX was looking to protect its lead against competitors like Visa. In 1994, a new $15 million advertising campaign updated the classic Travelers Cheques commercial, which traditionally featured hapless travelers falling prey to criminals while abroad and then experiencing firsthand the safety and security features of the Travelers Cheques. The new crop of ads focused on th e â€Å"Cheques for two† feature, which enabled the same checks to be shared between two parties.Instead of getting stolen, the Travelers Cheques in the new ads were only lost, and features featured lost-and-found employees in travel destinations describing the quirky items they encountered in the line of duty. The ads were intended to illustrate in a more lighthearted fashion the benefits of AMEXAMEX Travelers Cheques. In 1995, the company renamed its IDS division â€Å"American Express Financial Advisors† (AEFA) in an effort to provide with a more uniform image to its customers.AEFA, which provided financial and estate planning, annuities, mutual funds, life insurance, pension plans, 401(k) plans, and loans and accounting services to businesses and individuals, was part of the â€Å"select financial services† that contributed to AMEXAMEX’s core competencies. A One-third of AMEXAMEX’s net income in 1996 came from AEFA, which controlled $130 billio n in assets. After firing Chiat-/Day, AMEXAMEX re-hired Ogilvy- & Mather, who introduced a corporate ad campaign themed, â€Å"Do More. † This global ad campaign extended the company’s advertising to include financial services and travel in addition to its card businesses.The purpose of the campaign was to underscore the transformation that had taken place at American Express during the previous several years, given that the company had: 1)Sold or spun off subsidiaries and refocused on businesses operating under the American Express brand; 2)Broadened its traditional charge card business to include revolving credit, co-branded cards and other products aimed at specific customer segments, such as students and senior citizens; 3)Expanded its global travel network; )Begun a major expansion of its financial services businesses; and 5)Introduced new products to its corporate services customers. â€Å"For much of our history, our company’s brand was defined by our ca rd and Travelers Cheques businesses,† said John Hayes, executive vice president of Global Advertising. â€Å"Now we are extending our brand to a variety of other products and services to mirror both where our company is and where it is going. What will remain consistent is our vision— — to become the world’s most respected service brand. The new advertising campaign was designed to capitalize on several of American Express’s historical brand attributes: trust, customer focus, travel, and financial insight. â€Å"American Express is one of the very few global brands in the financial services arena,† Hayes added. â€Å"All over the world, people’s experiences with our travel services, card products, and financial advice have defined our brand’s characteristics, reflecting the reasons that both corporations and consumers are loyal to American Express. Themed, â€Å" American Express Helps You Do More,† the campaign attempt ed to bridge both the company’s historic strengths and, as well as its newer initiatives. The pool of advertisements included commercials that featured a range of American Express products and services, as well as those designed to focus on individual businesses, such as American Express Financial Advisors. It also included ads for the American Express charge cards, â€Å"Our advertising used to be about a limited number of products and services, and was often defined by the people who used them.This campaign stresses our growing number of services and what American Express can do for you,† Hayes said. The television spots will ruran on network, cable, and spot television, supported by newspaper and magazine ads in a variety of publications including USA Today, tThe Wall Street Journal, The the New York Times, Time, and Newsweek. Card Wars American Express launched its first co-branded card in 1995 with Delta Air Lines. The airline miles card was called the Delta SkyMi les Optima, and within two years of its introduction it was the number-two airline affinity card with over more than 1 million cardholdercardholders.American Express forged co-branding relationships with other partners, including Hilton Hotels, ITT Sheraton, and the New York Knicks. Beginning in 1992, American Express used comedian Jerry Seinfeld in advertising that emphasized the card’s flexibility and added humor to the personality of the brand. In 1997, as part of the â€Å"Do More†Ã¢â‚¬â€œ themed campaign, American Express used ads featuring Seinfeld to emphasize the card’s acceptability in locations such as supermarkets and gas stations. In one ad, Seinfeld stops at a gas station to fill up.The premise is that he aims to put an even dollar amount into the car, presumably so he can pay with cash without breaking change. Upon reaching the target amount, he gives the pump an extra squeeze that pushes the total a few cents over. Onlookers gasp in dismay, until he pulls out his American Express cardAmerican Express Card in dramatic fashion and pays at the pump. Another ad starred Seinfeld and an animated Superman. The unlikely duo were depicted walking along a city block, when Superman spotted Lois Lane in peril at the front of a grocery store line.When the two come to her rescue, Lois informs them that she has forgotten her wallet. Superman pats his suit where pockets normally would be located and sighs, â€Å"I can’t carry money in this. I’m powerless. † Seinfeld exclaims, â€Å"I’m not! † and begins spinning around in a blur brandishing an American Express cardAmerican Express Card. Again in dramatic fashion, he swipes the card and pays for the groceries. American Express signed one of the leading athletes in the world in 1997 when it inked a five-year, $30 million endorsement contract with Tiger Woods.That year, Woods appeared in print ads and television commercials that promoted American Express Fina ncial Advisors. In one television spot titled â€Å"Tiger Wants,† the phenom golfer discusses discussed personal aspirations, which included â€Å"tak[ing] care of the ones who took care of me† and â€Å"help[ing] people who need help. † The campaign also featured Tiger’s father, Earl, who explaineds that with the help of an American Express Financial Advisor, he was able to retire early and dedicate himself to helping Tiger reach his goals.John Hayes characterized the endorsement deal as follows: The appeal of Tiger Woods – —and, indeed, of his father, Earl – —transcends the world of golf. While Tiger’s tenacity, work ethic, and abilities are outstanding, we also recognize him as a person whose achievements are the result of perseverance and an incredible focus on a goal. That kind of earned success is a hallmark of financial success as well. [vii] In appraising AMEXAMEX’s position, Hayes also noted: The market b ecame very segmented, and we needed to catch up with that to become more relevant to more segments.So now we’ve gone from a brand that was basically represented by one card product to one that has 25 products. That’s a drastic change. [viii] Our toughest balancing act is not to lose our traditional core customers and our reputation for premium quality and service while we enact new initiatives to expand against other segments. We’re tracking that on a quarterly basis to make sure we don’t go too far in one direction or the other. [ix] Marketing and Advertising In 1999, American Express unveiled the biggest new card launch since Optima, with the â€Å"smart smart cardcard† Blue.Blue, which was launched with a $45 million advertising campaign, was considered a smart card because it contained an embedded chip that enhanced security for Internet purchases using a home-encryption system. American Express issued Blue cardholdercardholders a home card car d-swiper free of charge, which could be used for Internet transactions. The card targeted the 25 percent of Americans that owned computers and used sophisticated consumer technology, as well as another 25 percent of the population learning to use such technology. Unlike other American Express cardAmerican Express Cards, Blue carried no annual fee.One perceived risk of the Blue marketing campaign was the implication that the other American Express cardAmerican Express Cards were not secure for use with Internet purchases. Said Alfred Kelly, president of the American Express Consumer Card Services Group, â€Å"I would rather be cannibalizing myself than have the competition do it. †[x] Launch advertising involved television, print, and subway advertising, as well as event marketing. The introductory television ads focused on the technology aspect of Blue. One ad showed a sea of amoeba dancing and multiplying over a rock-and-roll soundtrack.This ad was intended to demonstrate th e â€Å"evolving credit† aspect of the card, which meant that Blue would improve as the company added new functions features to it. Another ad emphasized Blue’s payment flexibility – —unlike other American Express cardAmerican Express Cards, monthly balances could be carried into the next month – —by showing the card bent, pulled, and reshaped by robotic arms to the sounds of a classical score. In addition to major network broadcasts, these ads ran during television programs targeting young people, such as Fox’s â€Å"The X-Files† and â€Å"Futurama. Print ads appeared in newspapers and magazines, as well as in sports clubs and on restaurant table-top menus. The ads did not use the familiar Roman Centurion soldier logo associated with other cards, choosing a new look that suggested a compact disc with blue concentric circles bordered by white. American Express also sponsored a concert in New York called â€Å"Central Park in Blue. † The concert was promoted by a â€Å"street team† of sharply- dressed scooter riders, who used handheld swipers to enable cardholdercardholders to pick up free tickets at nearby Blue information kiosks.These marketing activities were designed to give the card â€Å"a different, modern, more hip feel,† said Alfred Kelly. â€Å"We wanted to break out. †[xi] American Express continued to market cards based on prestige. In 1998, it introduced the matte Matte black Black Centurion Card – —otherwise known as the â€Å"black Black cardCard† – —for elite clients. To obtain an invitation invitation-o