Emirates Airline Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Emirates Airline - Case Study Example (Butler & Keller, 2000) Emirates Airline has been very fortunate during the 2000s and beyond. The political scene in the region has been quite favourable because most of the countries in the Asian Pacific have been making agreements that facilitate better trade between countries especially in relation to the aviation sector. These countries have signed agreements between themselves and also with other countries in the United States and also in the European continent. These agreements have opened up Emirates to the world and have provided ready made markets for the Airline Company. Any aviation company must be ready to tackle high fuel costs and Emirates is no exception,. In the year 2005, the country reported an increase in fuel expenditure of seven percent from the previous year. Fuel costs represent the highest form of expenditure in the company as this has really eaten into their profits. The Asian Pacific region and in particular the United Arab Emirates, has been nurturing its economy at a rapid pace. Most of the countries located there are becoming more mature. These economies are growing at a substantial rate consequently affecting their overall income. This means that most of them are earning more revenue per capita and they can therefore afford to use air transport. This is probably the reason why Emirates Airline has been steadily growing over the past few years. ... (Tayeh, 2006) Airline traffic in the rest of the world has reduced drastically. However, the Middle Eastern region has improved especially for Emirates. Emirates success is directly linked to the City's success-Dubai. Dubai is one of the most rapidly growing cities in the world. It represents a lot of potential for investment both in the tourism industry and also in the business world. First of all, there are so many projects that re coming up with time. First of all, the City is building a theme park that resembles Disney world; it has embarked on a project that will house over four hundred thousand residents through a waterfront project. As if this is not enough, there are plenty of businesses that are always coming up all the time. Real estate is one particularly interesting sector because it attracts lots of capital investment. All these business ventures are encouraging more visitors to the City and the country in general; this has been reflected in the overwhelming market for Emirates. As if this is not enough Emirates Airline is located at a very suitable region in Asia, it is in the middle of the Eastern and Western regions. Consequently, the Airline is capable of tapping resources from both sides. The Asian continent has a booming economy and Emirates Airline has really benefited from this. Social Emirates Airlines operates in a region where there are numerous employees and workers. Most of these workers rarely demand for high compensation. When the United Arab Emirates is compared to other countries such as the United States, it can be found that there is a significant difference in labour costs as the latter country uses up thirty eight percent of its operating expenses while the UAE only uses up eight percent of its operating costs to pay its

Women, Health, and the Environment Essay Example for Free

Women, Health, and the Environment Essay -These three words together speak to a web of issues and concerns that challenges us to think outside the proverbial box and silos that keep us narrowly focused and divided. We must think and act from a holistic perspective if we are ever to reverse the environmental degradation and social inequalities on the planet and create environmentally sustainable, economically viable, and socially equitable gender-sensitive societies. A discussion of women’s health and the environment must also include issues of poverty, hunger, food, security, racism, water, sanitation, agriculture, trade, energy, species extinction, biodiversity and climate change. Our agenda for women’s health and environment must also address access and right to live with dignity, sustainable livelihoods, shelter, education for girls, political power and decision making, sexuality, and freedom from violence, conflict and war. Today many feminists believe we are in a third wave of feminism, one that challenges the idea if dualism itself while recognizing diversity, particularity, and embodiment. By theorizing from the notion of embodiment, recent iterations of feminism are beginning to reweave the specific duality between culture and nature, an especially important endeavor in these environmentally disturbing times. These feminisms, rather than working from established and usually abstract foundational theories, begin from the situated perspectives of different women. Beyond this general congruence, however, there are several different foci in the feminisms seen as third wave today. One of the most intractable problems facing environmentalists is how to address global environmental issues given the very different, often conflicting, ways that nature is valued within and across cultures. In many parts of the world, nature is valued as an exploitable resource that when used efficiently can raise standards of living, improve the quality of life, or increase the wealth of a select few. In other places, people believe that economic development efforts must be sustainable; promoting natural balance and improving living standards are values that can be achieved simultaneously. For many people, the value of global justice suggests that rich nations must do more to protect the global environment in order to allow for the legitimate improvement of the quality of life of the poor. To make things more complicated, there are additional values beyond the value of nature, and the value of justice. Ecofeminism, in the United States, originated during the second wave of feminism as women in the peace movement began to perceive the interrelationships of militarism, sexism, racism, classism and environmental damage. The theorizing of how this environmental damage was related to women’s oppression and the oppression of other people, together with theorizing form the perspectives of the women involved, including women in the so-called developing world, became evident during the time period seen as the emergence of third-wave feminism. Consider basic issue-women’s everyday living environments and women’s access to water and sanitation. Millions of poor women in urban and rural areas around the world do not have access to safe and affordable water or toilets. Unsafe water causes health problems such as diarrhea, schistosomiasis, trachoma, hepatitis, malaria and poisoning. The care of sick family members is usually the responsibility of women and takes time away from their income generating initiatives. To ill health, add the loss and suffering from the death of an estimated three million children a year from contaminated water-related diseases. In the rural area of Garla Mare, Romania, the majority of the water sources-the wells are contaminated with nitrates, chemicals, heavy metals and bacteria. Amongst other things, high nitrate levels in drinking water are linked to â€Å"blue baby disease† or acute infantile methaemoglobinaemia. Women in Romania along with Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF) are working together to document sources of contaminated water, develop strategies to â€Å"clean† water with local authorities and run educational campaigns demonstrating the links between polluted water and ill-health (Merchant, 1980. Due to deforestration, the loss of vegetation, and the lack of toilets, rural women have to rise earlier and walk further to attend to their daily needs. In urban areas, slums often lack hygienic and secure toilets for women. Women and girls in many countries have been sexually and physically assaulted in the night when attempting to use the â€Å"outside,† or toilets that are too far from their homes. Women in the US are also organizing to question poor water quality as water supplies in many US cities and towns are contaminated with industrial and agricultural chemicals. Access to safe and affordable sanitation services is critical for women’s and girl’s dignity, health, and safety. Human-made chemicals and metals that are persistent, biomagnifying and endocrine disrupting such as atrazine, 2, 4-D, and lindane, have been used extensively in agriculture, industry, and the home and garden. Some of these chemicals are also called POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants). They are the subjected of the United Nations Stockholm Convention for the protection of human health and the environment. These same chemicals are readily found in household sprays and cleaners, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, and in our food. Chemicals enter into natural systems and are having devastating impacts on wildlife. For example, there is evidence that some alligators, Western gulls, and Rainbow trout are developing rudimentary sexual organs, Western and Herring gulls are exhibiting mating behavior of both genders, frogs are being born with missing limbs and eyes, and Beluga whales are dying from immune suppression and cancer. Human beings are at the top of the food chain and health impacts similar to those on wildlife are being documented around the world. Widely documented are the health impacts on agricultural and horticultural workers, many of whom are poor women and children with limited options for other livelihoods. Lead, dioxins, DDT and PCB’s are found in women’s breast milk, from indigenous women in the Aral Sea region of Central Asia. Human exposure to these chemicals is linked to endocrine disruption, learning impairment and hyperactivity in children, as well as cleft lip and palate, spina bifida and limb anomalies. Environmental contamination has resulted in women in the North and in greater numbers in the South facing increased risks of fertility problems, spontaneous abortion and miscarriage, reproductive system abnormalities, immune system disorders and cancer. Breast cancer has become major women’s disease, transcending class, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation and geographical location. The complexity of women’s sexual and reproductive health issues and illnesses underlines the need for women’s right to decision making and control of their sexuality, sexual and reproductive health, and their right to relevant services through the public health care system. While women are often dismissed from discussions on energy, it is a central issue concerning women’s quality of life. Poor women who use wood fuel and charcoal to cook indoors are exposed to poor air quality and an increased risk of severe respiratory problems. While nuclear proponents advertise nuclear energy as â€Å"clean† energy, they deliberately ignore the impacts of radiation and nuclear waste and the work of many women who have researched and critiqued the dangers of nuclear energy and weapons. Seventeen years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, medical research shows that 70% of pregnant women in the Ukraine have extra-genital and obstetrics disorders including anemia, late toxicosis, cardiovascular disorders and urogenital diseases (Merchant, 1980). Increases in the frequency and severity of floods and drought have been linked to changing global climate regimes. A recent study on the impact of floods on women and girls in Cambodia highlights a number of issues. These include an increase in food insecurity and loss of crops; fear of losing children to the floods; risk of drowning because women and girls are not taught to swim; disaster-related debt and the corresponding increase in workloads of women as men migrate to cities; and the resulting stress and fear of HIV and sexually transmitted infections brought back from men engaging with other partners in the cities. While the study did not document an increase in wife assault during the disaster period or after, it did identify that the fear of assault is a constant factor enmeshed in women’s daily life and an ever present threat that colours women’s actions and involvement in decision making. The lack of political will and commitment from many national governments and major international bodies, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have degraded natural environments and subjected women citizens to increasing poverty by a loss of livelihoods and a reduction in accessibility to health, education, and other basic services. Extensive research and documentation has demonstrated the negative economic and social impacts of programs like the structural adjustment programmes o the IMF on African women. Another approach advocated by feminists such as Shulamith Firestone is the liberation of women through reproductive technology. This approach includes a spectrum of possibilities that would give women the right to choose when and if they wish to bear and raise children: male and female contraceptive devices, voluntary vasectomies and tubal ligations, amniocentesis and genetic counseling an, ultimately, test-tube reproduction and cloning. Science and technology are here viewed as potentially liberating and progressive, yet these approaches also raise a host of difficult ethical questions about the nature of control over life itself. For example, amniocentesis allows the woman to know the sex of her unborn child and thus to decide whether or not to abort the fetus. If through contraceptive and genetic technology families decide to have one or two children and to make the first child a male, then an increase in the proportion of males in society could result. If the psychological approach to the woman-nature question is valid, and if trust children tend to be more highly motivated, aggressive, and domineering than second children, then the outcome could be an increase in dominating males, with negative implications for women and nature. For many women who have become aware of environmental hazards and nuclear technologies through environmentalism and have become conscious of sexism through feminism, the appropriate technology movement presents an appealing alternative. Here the hands on skills necessary for personal survival and control over one’s own life are revered, and low-environmental-impact technologies are the movement’s hallmarks. Women involved in the appropriate technology movement, however, find great satisfaction in building bridges, solar collectors, greenhouses, and doing home repairs themselves, without resorting to high-cost contractors. Carpentry and plumbing skills taught to groups of women by other women rather than male â€Å"experts† are popular forms of education. The social economic analysis of the woman-nature question accepts many of the insights of the foregoing feminists but is critical of the idea of universal sex oppression and of the dichotomies â€Å"public-private† and â€Å"self-other† as explanatory categories. Rather than postulating a separate sex/gender system as the framework of analysis, this approach examines the historical context of male and female gender roles in different systems of economic production. The simultaneous emergence of the womens and environmental movements over the past two decades raises additional questions about the relationships between feminism and ecology. The structures and functions of the natural world and of human society interact through a language common to both. Ethics in the form of description, symbol, religion, and myth help to mediate between humans and their world. Choices are implied in the words used to describe nature: choices of ways in which to view the world and ethical choices that influence human behavior toward it. Ecology and feminism have interacting languages that imply certain common policy goals. These linkages might be described as follows: 1. All parts of a system have equal value. Ecology assigns equal importance to all organic and inorganic components in the structure of an ecosystem. Healthy air, water, and soil-the abiotic components of the system-are essential as the entire diverse range of biotic parts-plants, animals, and bacteria and fungi. Without each element in the structure, the system as a whole cannot function properly. Remove an element, reduce the number of individuals or species, and erratic oscillations may appear in the larger system. Similarly, feminism asserts the equality of men and women. Intellectual differences are human differences rather than gender-or race-specific. The lower position of women stems from culture rather than nature. Thus policy goals should be directed toward achieving educational, economic, and political equity for all. Ecologists and feminists alike will therefore assign value to all parts of the human-nature system and take care to examine the long and short range consequences of decisions affecting an individual, group, or species. In cases of ethical conflict, each case must be discussed from the perspective of the interconnectedness of all parts and the good of the whole. 2. The earth is a home. The Earth is a habitat for living organisms; houses are habitats for groups of humans. Each ecological niche is a position in a community, a hole in the energy continuum through which materials and energy enters and leaves. Ecology is the study of the Earths household. Human houses whether sod houses, igloos, or bungalows, are structures in an environment. Most are places wherein life is sustained-shelters where food is prepared, clothes are repaired, and human beings cared for. For ecologists and feminists the Earths house and the human house are habitats to be cherished. Energy flows in and out; molecules and atoms enter and leave. Some chemicals and forms of energy are life-sustaining; others are life-defeating. Those that lead to sickness on the planet or in the home cannot be tolerated. Radioactive wastes or potential radioactive hazards are present in some peoples environments. Hazardous chemicals permeate some backyards and basements. Microwaves, nitrite preservatives, and cleaning chemicals have invaded the kitchen. The home, where in fact women and children spend much of their time, is no longer a haven. The soil; over which the house is built or the rocks used in its construction may emit radon, potentially a source of lung cancer. The walls, furniture, floor coverings, and insulation may contain urea formaldehyde, a nasal, throat, and eye irritant. Leaky gas stoves and furnaces can produce nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide, resulting in nausea, headaches, and respiratory illnesses. An underground garage in an apartment building can be an additional source of indoor carbon monoxide. The homes faucets may be piping in carcinogenic drinking water, formed by the action of chlorine on organic compounds in reservoir supplies. Disinfectants sprayed where people eat or children play may contain phenols, aerosols, or ammonium chlorides that can produce toxic effects on the lungs, liver, and kidneys, or act as nervous system depressants. Over cleaners may contain caustic alkalis. The bathroom and bedroom any feature cosmetics and shampoos that can produce headaches, eye-make up contaminated by bacteria and fungi, deodorants laced with hexachlorophene and hair dyes containing aromatic amines that have been linked to cancer. The kitchen may have microwave oven and the living room a color television emitting low-level radiation when in use. The refrigerator may be stocked with food containing nitrite preservatives, food dyes, and saccharin-filled ‘low-cal’ drinks suspected as potential carcinogens. In the cupboards pewter pitchers or dishes containing lead glazes can slowly contribute to lead poisoning, especially when in contact with acidic foods. The indoor atmosphere may be filled with cigarette, cigar, or tobacco smoke, containing particles that remain in the air and accumulate even in the lungs of non-smokers. For ecologists and feminists alike, the goal must be the reversal of these life-defeating intrusions and the restoration of healthy indoor and outdoor environments. 3. Process is primary. The first law of thermodynamics, which also the first law of ecology, asserts the conservation of energy in an ecosystem as energy is changed and exchanged in its continual flow through the interconnected parts. The total amount of energy entering and leaving the Earth is the same. The science of ecology studies the energy flow through the system of living and non-living parts on the Earth. All components are parts of a steady-state process of growth and development, death, and decay. The world is active and dynamic; its natural processes are cyclical, balanced by cybernetic, stabilizing, feedback mechanisms. The stress on dynamic processes in nature has implications for change and process in human societies. The exchange and flow of information through the human community is the basis for decision making. Open discussion of all alternatives in which ecologists and technologists, lawyers and workers, women and men participate as equals is an appropriate goal for both environmentalists and feminists. Each individual has experience and knowledge that is of value to the human-nature community. 4. There is no free lunch. â€Å"No free lunch† is the essence of the laws of thermodynamics. To produce organized matter, energy in the form of work is needed. But each step up the ladder of organized life, each material object produced, each commodity manufactured increases entropy in its surroundings, and hence increases the reservoir of energy unavailable for work. Although underpaid environmentalists are said to accept free lunches, nature cannot continue to provide free goods and services for profit-hungry humans, because the ultimate costs are too great. Thus, whenever and wherever possible, that which is taken from nature must be given back through the recycling of goods and the sharing of services. For feminists, reciprocity and cooperation rather than free lunches and household services are a desirable goal. Housewives frequently spend much of their waking time struggling t undo the effects of the second law of thermodynamics. Continually trying to create order out of disorder is energy consumptive and spiritually costly. Thus the dualism of separate public and private spheres should be severed and male and female roles in both the household and the workplace merged. Cooperation between men and women in each specific context-childrearing, day-care centers, household work, productive work, sexual relations, etc. -rather than separate gender roles could create emotional rewards. Men and women would engage together in the production of commodities that are costly to nature. Technologies appropriate to the task, technologies having a low impact on the environment, would be chosen whenever possible. Resistance to a feminist-environmental coalition comes form both movements. Environmental coalition comes from both movements. Environmentalists react negatively to the intrusion of feminist’s issues that seem to them to muddy and complicate an already difficult struggle. At anti-nuclear rallies and solar technology conferences, the presence of lesbian feminists challenging male control of technology may seem particularly galling. Increasingly, in countries of the South and North, many governments are failing to defend and enhance women’s hard earned rights to live free of violence from either family members or the State, and to have right and access to health services, as well as specific programmes to address gender concerns as in the case of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. For poor rural women, government supported privatization of common property resources such as forests, wetlands, fallow fields, pasturelands, etc. make it nearly impossible to maintain precarious levels of substinence living; thus, further marginalizing those women who rely on common property resources for food, fodder and raw materials. Moreover, many of these groups establish ritual behaviors that maintain steady-state equilibrium between population and resources. Here nature and culture are not separated dichotomies in which nature is devalued and culture elevated. The nonhuman world is alive, sensitive, intelligent, and on a par with the human portion. In some cultures animals are members of separate societies governed by special spirits; particular rocks and trees are sacred; and the Earth is a living nurturing mother. Women and men perform different tasks and have different roles, but each is essential to the survival of the group as a whole and neither is devalued. The society is geared to the production of use values as the material basis for sustaining life. Like postcolonial and generational/youth cultures, feminism’s growing interest in ecofeminism has been evident in the last several years. Some ecofeminists, however, posit that, as a term, â€Å"ecofeminism† informally appeared, here and there, worldwide, in the 1970’s, usually as a response to so-called development activities. The Chipko Movement, the movement that began when village women of Himalayan India organized in the 1970’s to protect their forests, as described by their country woman, Vandana Shiva, and noted above, is most often specifically cited as the beginning of ecofeminism. In the West, an ecofeminist focus in activism emerged during the second wave of the women’s movement and was predicated on seeing the relations between militarism, sexism, racism, classism, and environmental damage. By the middle 190’s, many women, committed to direct action against militarism, started naming themselves ecofeminists to depict the interdependencies of their political concerns. As ecofeminism evolved, it took up additional issues such as toxic waste, deforestation, military and nuclear weapons policies, reproductive rights and technologies, animal liberation, and domestic and international agricultural development, in its efforts to reweave the nature/culture dualism. Ecofeminism is distinct, however, in its insistence that nonhuman nature is a feminist concern. Ecofeminist theory utilizes principles from both ecology and feminism to inform its political organizing and its efforts to create equitable and environmentally sound lifestyles. From ecology, it learns to value the interdependence and diversity of all life forms; from feminism, it against the insights of a social analysis of women’s oppression that intersects with other oppressions such s racism, colonialism, classism, and heterosexism. Ecofeminism, in its use of ecology as a model for human behavior, suggests that we act out of recognition of our interdependency with others, all others: human and nonhuman. Ecofeminist politics embrace heterogenous strategies and solutions. Ecofeminists do share a broad vision of a society beyond militarism, hierarchy, and the destruction of nature, but like feminism itself, they often have different analyses and strategies for achieving them. In many ways, an ecofeminist style of politics the notion of â€Å"local resistance† against power relations. Ecofeminists understand power as â€Å"multiplicity of force relations† that are not centered, but are diverse and are constantly being reproduced. While ecofeminsm emphasizes local activism, it also maintains the importance of a global perspective. In ecofeminism, where everything is seen as interconnected and/or interdependent, there is a serious regard for women whose cultures and geographic locations are being foisted croded as a result of so-called development projects that are being foisted on the third world. Ecofeminists challenge the relationship between economic growth and exploitation of the natural environment, and as noted above, ecofeminist anthologies contain work by and about women resisting ill-conceived development projects in the third world, in addition to those in the West. The relation of ecofeminism theory to political activism is ideally informative and generative, not perspective. The activism that is undertaken is a result of the individuals who are involved reflecting on an actual problematic situation or issue. Because of ecofeminism recognizes that sexism, racism, classism, heterosexism, speciesism, and naturalism are mutually reinforcing systems of oppression, the work o end any oppression is valuable. Using ecology as a model for understanding these interdependencies and the value of diversity enables ecofeminists to include many kinds of political action. Ecofeminist theory, in turn is expanded by focusing on the actual activities, as articulated by the embodied voices of the participants. Social justice cannot be achieved apart from the well-being of the Earth. Human life is dependent on the Earth; our fates are intertwined. Ecofemism is spiritual, too, emphasizing that the Earth is sacred unto itself. And a strong recognition of the necessity of sustainability-a need to learn the many ways we can walk the fine line between using the Earth as resource while respecting the Earth’s need. One of the main endeavors of ecofeminism, in its efforts to reweave the nature/culture duality, is to understand the ideology that perpetuates the domination of women, other humans, and nonhuman nature. There are many approaches taken by ecofeminists who are engaged in analyzing how the subjugation of women, other suppressed people and nature are interconnected. Karen Warren (2000), writing 10 years after the Diamond and Orenstein anthology, in her work Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What It Is and Why It Matters, discerns 10 directions ecofeminists take to theorize these interconnected subjugations. Warren terms these various approaches: historical and causal, conceptual, empirical, socioeconomic, linguistic, symbolic and literary, spiritual and religious, epistemological, ethical, and political. Feminist who take the historical and causal approach to explain the interconnected subjugations of women, other suppressed people, and nature, suggests that the ubiquitous ness of androcentrism with its accompanying phenomenon, the patriarchal domination of women and nature, is the source of environmental degradation. Riane Eisler and Carolyn Merchant are examples of feminists who present varying accounts of this approach. They explain how and approximately when societies that previously had been living essentially in concord with nature and with each other became subjugated by patriarchal domination. Societies, in these accounts, then become disharmonious in their relationships. A second approach some ecofeminists take to understand the ideology that perpetuates domination is an analysis of conceptual frameworks that have functioned historically to perpetuate and justify the dominations of interconnected subjugations. Conceptual frameworks function as socially constructed lenses through which one perceives reality. These conceptual works can be oppressive because of the part plated by rationalism in the domination of women and nonhuman nature illustrates. Rationalism explains how structures of domination are based â€Å"in hierarchically organized value dualism and an exaggerated focus on reason and rationality divorced form the realm of the body, nature, and the physical† (Warren 2004, p. 24). Warren, she, makes similar conceptual connections. She locates these connections in an oppressive patriarchal conceptual connection. She locates these connections in an oppressive patriarchal conceptual framework, mediated by what she calls â€Å"a logic domination. † This â€Å"logic† provides the moral premise for domination/subordination relationships based on socially constructed dualistic notions of superiority/inferiority. Empirical interconnections are made by ecofeminists who use verifiable evidence to document the tie-in among dominations. Using this kind of data, they are able to illustrate, for example, that subordinate groups suffer disproportionately form industrial environmental pollutants. Coinciding with postcolonial feminism, some ecofeminists using the empirical interconnections approach, furnish data to show how women’s inability to provide adequate sustenance for themselves and their families is caused by first-world development policies such as those destroying subsistence agriculture and/or the productivity of the land. Nature like women’s bodies and labor is colonized by the inter-workings of capitalism and patriarchy in first-world development. Some ecofeminists, who follow the concept formation that is strongly influenced by language, make linguistic interconnections to explain subjugation. They maintain that language is pivotal in maintaining mutually reinforcing sexist, racist, and naturist views of women, people of color, and nonhuman nature. They call our attention to the considerable extent that Euro-American language contains illustrations of sexist-naturist language depicting women, animals, and nonhuman nature as having less value than men. Related to this approach is the ecofeminist animal welfare â€Å"analysis that the oppression of nonhuman animals, is based on a variety of women-animal connections: for example, sexist-naturalist language, images of women and animals as consumable objects, pornographic representations of women as meat, male perpetuated violence against women and nonhuman animals,† (Warren 2000, p. 126). Another method-that of making symbolic and literary interconnections-is seen in a new genre of literary analysis: ecofeminist literary criticism. This genre has emerged as a way to appraise literature according to criteria of ecological and feminist values. Ecofeminists using this approach, maintain that the literary canon needs to be reconsidered to include a de-homocentric approach. Ecofeminist theologians work to make spiritual and religious interconnections to explain subjugation. They discern most ancient religious myths basic to Judeo-Christian and Western traditions as ones justifying a social structure that exalts ruling-class men while denigrating others, including nonhuman nature. What many of these ecofeminist theologians subsequently have to consider is whether these religions can be reformed or if new religions, myths, and spiritual practices are needed. Some Ecofeminist working with spiritual and religious interconnections, see women’s spirituality as political. They believe â€Å"the preservation of the Earth will require profound shift in consciousness, a recovery of a more ancient and traditional view that reveres the profound connection of all beings in the web of life and a rethinking of the relation of both humanity and divinity in nature (Warren 2000, p. 32). The notion of â€Å"the Goddess† is also invoked by many spiritual ecofeminists to express the veneration both nonhuman nature and the human body merit. Warren further notes that knowledge and knowledge creation is studied by ecofeminists who work to make epistemological interconnections. Like postcolonial feminism, they challenge the Western view that knowledge is objective. Warren is also discusses the ethical interconnection approach made by ecofeminist philosophers who hold that a feminist ethical analysis and response is needed to show how subjugation of women, other â€Å"others† and nonhuman nature is interlinked. â€Å"Minimally, the goal of ecofeminist environmental ethics is to develop theories and practices concerning humans and the natural environment that are not male-biased and that provide a guide to action in the prefiminist present,† (Warren 20007, p. 37). Making political interconnections is integral to ecofeminism, which has always been a grassroots political movement, motivated by pressing pragmatic concerns (Warren 2000, p. 35). In addition to women’s activism to sustain their families and communities, the relationship of environmental and women’s health to science and development projects, animal rights, and peace activism are examples of issues that

The Evolution of Tragedy in Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, and Desire Under the E

The Evolution of Tragedy in Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, and Desire Under the Elms There are many genres of literature. Because of the age of this genre, it stands to reason that many variations have occurred throughout the years to make it reflect that time period. The genre of tragedy tends to be considered great because it occurs during great periods of history, it is about great men, and it is written by great writers.> The evolution of tragedy and the characteristics of tragedy are exemplified in the comparison of Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, and Desire Under the Elms. In the comparison of Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, and Desire Under the Elms the characteristics of tragedy are revealed. One characteristic is that tragedy appears during great times in history. It is thought that tragedy only occurs during great times in history because the people during those times have a sense of confidence that they can handle the horror of tragedy. Oedipus Rex was written during ancient Greece, which is considered the birthplace of the western culture. Ancient Greece is a time of great enlightenment in all of the arts, so it is not surprising that this is one of the beginnings of the tragedy. During this time Greece is rising in power so the people could enjoy watching others face hard times. Hamlet was written during another great period of history, the Renaissance. During this time people are moving out of the Middle Ages into a time of enlightenment, where a rebirth of interest in the arts occurs. This time also is marked by a confidence in one having a p rosperous future and the country as a whole looking toward a good life. Finally, Desire Under the Elms appeared during what is called the Modern period. The Modern period is anot... ...e determined. All three of these plays are great tragedies even if not all of them follow the characteristics of tragedy. It further proves that each period must make their own personal mark on the ideas of the arts in order to establish themselves as a distinct and great time period. [very good pick-up of earlier point] Without the evolution of these ideas, cultures would be stifled in the creative process and not stand out as an individual expressing the feelings of their time period. Works Consulted: O'Neill, Eugene. Desire Under the Elms. In Nine Plays by Eugene O'Neill. New York: Modern Library, 1941. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet. ca. 1600-1601. Ed. Edward Hubler. A Signet Classic. New York: Penguin Publishers,1963. Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. The Oedipus Cycle. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, trans. San Diego: Harvest, 1976

Criminal Law Paper Essay

Maryland v. King, 569 U.S., on June 3, 2013 the United States Supreme Court ruled that it is not a violation of the fourth amendment right by having your DNA swabbed while being booked into a detention facility. And that a simple swab on the inner cheek was no different than taking a photo or being finger printed during the booking process. This case came to be after an individual was arrested and booked for assault and during the booking process the individual had the inner cheek swabbed as part of the booking process as part of Maryland DNA Collection Act (Maryland Act). After this individual DNA was processed per the Maryland Act, the DNA matched that of an unsolved rape from years earlier. Because of the match DNA, this individual argued that his fourth amendment right was violated. What interested me about this case was the taking of the DNA during the booking process. I have always thought that giving a DNA sample was something that was voluntarily given, rather than being forc ed. Or if there was a court order to obtain one’s DNA. I know that many states across the country have been creating laws regarding the collection of DNA from individuals who are involved in the criminal justice system. Some states collect DNA during the booking process, while other states only collect when you are a repeat offender. However, I understand that deterring crime and criminals is the main goal behind these laws and agree that taking this step will cause for individual criminals to think twice before they live a lifestyle of crime. I believe these laws allow for some sort of closure for victims of crimes and feel that justice was done in regards to the Maryland v. King Supreme Court ruling. Criminal liability is something that is needed to prove that the individual being accused is guilty of a crime. Therefore, to ensure that a person is criminally liable the court system needs to prove that the individual did commit the crime being accused of and that the individual  being accused had the criminal mindset to commit the cri me. Accomplice liability is when the court finds an individual criminally liable for crimes that were committed by a different person. If an individual participates, helps, or plays any role when another individual is committing a crime. This individual may be charged as a accomplice to the crime. Because of the nature of the Supreme Court case that I selected neither criminal liability nor accomplice liability pertained to this case. This case was about an individual who’s past caught up with him, after thinking that he got away with rape. During this case the individual never denied guilt for the rape but argued his rights were violated by the state law, which I feel was used as a tactic to get out of the sentences that was imposed by the court. The elements of a crime are the facts that need to be proven in order to find the accused guilty of a crime. Before an individual is found guilty of a crime, the prosecution must show the This evidence must be credible and sufficient eno ugh to prove without a doubt that the accused did in fact commit a crime and that each of the elements of the crime exists. There are three major elements of crime that are considered during this process. Mens Rae is when the mental elements of the accused are looked at as it relates to the intent of committing a crime. The defendant’s state of mind during the crime can be used to prove or disapprove the intent of the crime. Actus Reus is a criminal act or an unlawful confession of an act. Basically an individual who is accused must profess their guilt of committing a crime. An individual cannot be found guilty of thinking of committing a crime. Concurrence is the combination of Mens Rae and Actus Reus when they happen at the same time. The criminal intent must go alongside the criminal act, or be connected some way to the crime. Actus Reus and Mens Rae do not directly relate to the case that I selected. It is my opinion that occurrence is the best fit for my case. In my opinion for an individual to commit a crime of rape intent is always present and the individual who is accused never denied the c harges against him, but rather that his fourth amendment right had been violated. References: Supreme Court of the United States, Maryland v. King June 3, 2013 retrieved August 10, 2014 from http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-207_d18e.pdf Freeman, C.G. (2013). Supreme court cases of interest. Criminal Justice, 28(1), 46-49. Retrieved August 10, 2014 from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1353616933?accountid=458

Marketing Mistakes and Successes

ELEVENTH EDITION MARKETING MISTAKES AND SUCCESSES 30TH ANNIVERSARY Robert F. Hartley Cleveland State University JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC. VICE PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER EXECUTIVE EDITOR ASSISTANT EDITOR PRODUCTION MANAGER PRODUCTION ASSISTANT EXECUTIVE MARKETING MANAGER ASSISTANT MARKETING MANAGER MARKETING ASSISTANT DESIGN DIRECTOR SENIOR DESIGNER SENIOR MEDIA EDITOR George Hoffman Lise Johnson Carissa DoshiDorothy Sinclair Matt Winslow Amy Scholz Carly DeCandia Alana Filipovich Jeof Vita Arthur Medina Allison Morris This book was set in 10/12 New Caledonia by Aptara ®, Inc. and printed and bound by Courier/Westford. The cover was printed by Courier/Westford. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Copyright  © 2009, 2006, 2004, 2001, 1998, 1995, 1992, 1989, 1986, 1981, 1976 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, website www. copyright. com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, (201)748-6011, fax (201)748-6008, website http://www. wiley. com/go/permissions. To order books or for customer service please, call 1-800-CALL WILEY (225-5945). Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hartley, Robert F. , 1927Marketing mistakes and successes/Robert F. Hartley. —11th ed. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-470-16981-0 (pbk. ) 1. Marketing—United States—Case studies. I. Title. HF5415. 1. H37 2009 658. 800973—dc22 2008040282 ISBN-13 978- 0-470-16981-0 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 PREFACEWelcome to the 30th anniversary of Marketing Mistakes and Successes with this 11th edition. Who would have thought that interest in mistakes would be so enduring? Many of you are past users, a few even for decades. I hope you will find this new edition a worthy successor to earlier editions. I think this may even be my best book. The new Google and Starbucks cases should arouse keen student interest, and may even inspire another generation of entrepreneurs. A fair number of the older cases have faced significant changes in the last few years, for better or for worse, and these we have captured to add to learning insights.After so many years of investigating mistakes, and more recently successes also, it might seem a challenge to keep these new editions fresh and interesting. The joy of the chase has made this an intriguing endeavor through the decades. Still, it is always difficult to abandon interesti ng cases that have stimulated student discussions and provoked useful insights, but newer case possibilities are ever contesting for inclusion. Examples of good and bad handling of problems and opportunities are forever emerging. But sometimes we bring back an oldie, and with updating, gain a new perspective.For new users, I hope the book will meet your full expectations and be an effective instructional tool. Although case books abound, you and your students may find this somewhat unique and very readable, a book that can help transform dry and rather remote concepts into practical reality, and lead to lively class discussions, and even debates. In the gentle environment of the classroom, students can hone their analytical skills and also their persuasive skills—not selling products but selling their ideas—and defend them against critical scrutiny. This is great practice for the arena of business to come.NEW TO THIS EDITION In contrast to the early editions, which exa mined only notable mistakes, and based on your favorable comments about recent editions, I have again included some well-known successes. While mistakes provide valuable learning insights, we can also learn from successes and find nuggets by comparing the unsuccessful with the successful. With the addition of Google and Starbucks, we have moved Entrepreneurial Adventures up to the front of the book. We have continued Marketing Wars, which many of you recommended, and reinstated Comebacks of firms iii iv †¢ Preface ising from adversity. I have also brought back Ethical Mistakes, because I believe that organizations more than ever need to be responsive to society’s best interests. Altogether, this 11th edition brings seven new cases to replace seven that were deleted from the previous edition. Some of the cases are so current we continued updating until the manuscript left for the production process. We have tried to keep all cases as current as possible by using Postscrip ts, Later Developments, and Updates. A number of you have asked that I identify which cases would be appropriate for the traditional overage of topics as organized in typical marketing texts. With most cases it is not possible to truly compartmentalize the mistake or success to merely one topic. The patterns of success or failure tend to be more pervasive. Still, I think you will find the following classification of cases by subject matter to be helpful. I thank those of you who made this and other suggestions. Classification of Cases by Major Marketing Topics Topics Most Relevant Cases Marketing Research and Consumer Analysis Coca-Cola, Disney, McDonald’s, Google, Starbucks ProductStarbucks, Nike, Coke/Pepsi, McDonald’s, Maytag, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Newell Rubbermaid, DaimlerChrysler, Kmart/Sears, Harley-Davidson, Boeing/Airbus, Merck, Boston Beer, Firestone/Ford, Southwest, MetLife, Borden, United Way, Vanguard, Continental, Euro Disney Distribution Nike, Coke/Peps i, Newell Rubbermaid, Harley-Davidson, Vanguard, Starbucks, Kmart/Sears, Hewlett-Packard, Dell Promotion Nike, Coke/Pepsi, Maytag, Vanguard, Merck, Boston Beer, Kmart/Sears, Harley-Davidson, Borden, MetLife, HewlettPackard, Southwest Air, Google, Starbucks PriceContinental, Southwest, Vanguard, Starbucks, Boston Beer, Dell, Euro Disney, Newell Rubbermaid, Boeing/Airbus, McDonald’s Non-product Google, United Way, Disney, Southwest, Continental International Euro Disney, Boeing/Airbus, Harley-Davidson, Maytag, DaimlerChrysler, Firestone/Ford, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Nike, Coke/Pepsi, Starbucks, McDonald’s Customer Relations Newell Rubbermaid, Vanguard, Maytag, Harley, Merck, Firestone/Ford, Starbucks, United Way, Nike, MetLife Social and Ethical Starbucks, Merck, Firestone/Ford, United Way, MetLife Outsourcing Boeing/Airbus, Maytag, Nike, DellPreface †¢ v TARGETED COURSES As a supplemental text, this book can be used in a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses . These range from introduction to marketing/marketing principles to courses in marketing management and strategic marketing. It can also be used as a text in international marketing courses. Retailing, entrepreneurship, and ethics courses could use a number of these cases and their learning insights. It can certainly be used in training programs and even appeal to nonprofessionals who are looking for a good read about well-known firms and personalities. TEACHING AIDSAs in previous editions, you will find a plethora of teaching aids and discussion material within and at the end of each chapter. Some of these will be common to several cases, and illustrate that certain successful and unsuccessful practices are not unique. Information Boxes and Issue Boxes are included in each chapter to highlight relevant concepts and issues, or related information, and we are even testing Profile Boxes. Learning insights help students see how certain practices—both errors and successes cross company lines and are prone to be either traps for the unwary or success modes.Discussion Questions and Hands-On Exercises encourage and stimulate student involvement. A recent pedagogical feature is the Team Debate Exercise, in which formal issues and options can be debated for each case. New in some cases are Devil’s Advocate exercises in which students can argue against a proposed course of action to test its merits. A new pedagogical feature, based on a reviewer’s recommendation, appears at the end of the Analysis section: students are asked to make their own analysis, draw their own conclusions, and defend them, thereby having an opportunity to stretch themselves.In some cases where there is considerable updating, a new feature invites students to Assess the Latest Developments. Invitation to Research suggestions allow students to take the case a step further, to investigate what has happened since the case was written, both to the company and even to some of the individuals involved. In the final chapter, the various learning insights are summarized and classified into general conclusions. An Instructor’s Manual written by the author accompanies the text to provide suggestions and considerations for the pedagogical material within and at he ends of chapters. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It seems fitting to acknowledge everyone who has provided encouragement, information, advice, and constructive criticism through the years since the first edition of these Mistakes books. I hope you all are well and successful, and I truly appreciate your contributions. I apologize if I have missed anybody, and vi †¢ Preface would be grateful to know such so we can rectify this in future editions. I welcome updates to present affiliations. Michael Pearson, Loyola University, New Orleans; Beverlee Anderson, University of Cincinnati; Y. H. Furuhashi, Notre Dame; W.Jack Duncan, University of AlabamaBirmingham; Mike Farley, Del Mar College; Joseph W. Leona rd, Miami University (OH); Abbas Nadim, University of New Haven; William O’Donnell, University of Phoenix; Howard Smith, University of New Mexico; James Wolter, University of Michigan, Flint; Vernon R. Stauble, California State Polytechnic University; Donna Giertz, Parkland College; Don Hantula, St. Joseph’s University; Milton Alexander, Auburn University; James F. Cashman, University of Alabama; Douglas Wozniak, Ferris State University; Greg Bach, Bismark State College; Glenna Dod, Wesleyan College; Anthony McGann, University of Wyoming; Robert D.Nale, Coastal Carolina University; Robert H. Votaw, Amber University; Don Fagan, Daniel Webster University; Andrew J. Deile, Mercer University; Samuel Hazen, Tarleton State University; Michael B. McCormick, Jacksonville State University; Neil K. Friedman, Queens College; Lawrence Aronhime, John Hopkins University; Joseph Marrocco, Boston University; Morgan Milner, Eastern Michigan University; Souha Ezzedeen, Pennsylvania Stat e University, Harrisburg; Regina Hughes, University of Texas; Karen Stewart, Stockton College; Francy Milner, University of Colorado; Greg M.Allenby, Ohio State University; Annette Fortia, Old Westbury; Bruce Ryan, Loyola; Jennifer Barr, Stockton College; Dale Van Cantfort, Piedmont University; Larry Goldstein, Iona University; Duane Prokop, Gannon University; Jeff Stoltman, Wayne State University; Nevena Koukova, Lehigh University; Matthew R. Hartley, University of California, Berkeley; Cindy Claycomb, Wichita State University; Pola Gupta, Wright State University; Joan Lindsey-Mullikin, Babson College. Also: Barnett Helzberg, Jr. f the Shirley and Barnett Helzberg Foundation, and my colleagues from Cleveland State University: Ram Rao, Sanford Jacobs, Andrew Gross and Benoy Joseph. From Wiley: Judith Joseph, Kimberly Mortimer, Carissa Marker. Robert F. Hartley, Professor Emeritus College of Business Administration Cleveland State University Cleveland, Ohio R. [email  protected] ED U ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bob Hartley is Professor Emeritus at Cleveland State University’s College of Business Administration. There he taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in management, marketing, and ethics.Prior to that he taught at the University of Minnesota and George Washington University. His MBA and Ph. D. are from the University of Minnesota, with a BBA from Drake University. Before coming into academia, he spent thirteen years in retailing with the predecessor of Kmart (S. S. Kresge), JCPenney, and Dayton-Hudson and its Target subsidiary. He held positions in store management, central buying, and merchandise management. His first textbook, Marketing: Management and Social Change, was published in 1972. It was ahead of its time in introducing social and environmental issues to the study of marketing.Other books, Marketing Fundamentals, Retailing, Sales Management, and Marketing Research, followed. In 1976 the first Marketing Mistakes book was published and brought a new approach to case studies, making them student-friendly and more relevant to career enhancement than existing books. In 1983, Management Mistakes was published. These books are now in the eleventh and ninth editions, respectively, and have been widely translated. In 1992 Professor Hartley wrote Business Ethics: Violations of the Public Trust. Business Ethics Mistakes and Successes was published in 2005. He is listed in Who’s Who in America, and Who’s Who in the World. ii This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Preface About the Author Chapter 1 Introduction PART I ENTREPRENEURIAL ADVENTURES Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Google: An Entrepreneurial Juggernaut Starbucks: A Paragon of Growth and Employee Benefits Finds Storms Boston Beer: Is Greater Growth Possible? 29 46 PART II MARKETING WARS 61 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Cola Wars: Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi PC Wars: Hewlett-Packard vs. Dell Airliner Wars: Boeing vs. Airbus; and Recent Outsourcing Woes 63 86 PART III COMEBACKS Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 McDonald’s: Rebirth Through ModerationHarley-Davidson: Creating An Enduring Mystique Continental Airlines: Salvaging From the Ashes PART IV MARKETING MANAGEMENT MISTAKES Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Borden: Letting Brands Wither United Way: A Nonprofit Tries to Cope with Image Destruction DaimlerChrysler: A Merger Made in Hades Newell’s Acquisition of Rubbermaid Becomes an Albatross Euro Disney: Bungling a Successful Format Maytag: An Incredible Sales Promotion in England; and Outsourcing Kmart and Sears: A Hedge Fund Manager’s Challenge Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 iii vii 1 9 11 103 127 129 147 161 175 177 190 203 220 233 251 67 ix x †¢ Contents PART V NOTABLE MARKETING SUCCESSES 281 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Southwest Airlines: Success Is Finally Contested Nike: A Powerhouse Brand Vanguard: Is Advertising Really Needed? 283 302 319 PART VI ETHICAL MISTAKES Chapter 21 Chapte r 22 Chapter 23 Merck’s Vioxx: Catastrophe and Other Problems MetLife: Deceptive Sales Practices Ford Explorers with Firestone Tires: A Killer Scenario Ill Handled 335 351 Conclusions: What We Can Learn 380 Chapter 24 Index 333 365 400 CHAPTER ONE Introduction A t this writing, Marketing Mistakes has passed its thirtieth anniversary. Who would have thought?The first edition, back in 1976, was 147 pages and included such long-forgotten cases as Korvette, W. T. Grant, Edsel, Corfam, Gilbert, and the Midi. In this eleventh edition, seven cases from the tenth edition have been dropped, and seven added, several of these being modified from earlier editions. Other cases have been updated, and in some instances reclassified. Two exciting new entrepreneurial cases, Google and Starbucks, are introduced, and the entire Entrepreneurial Adventures moved to the front of the book as Part I. I think your students will find these cases particularly interesting and even inspiring.The popular â€Å"Marketing Wars† is again included, this time as Part II, and it follows major competitors in their furious struggles. Two new parts have been added from older editions: Part III Comebacks, and Part VI Ethical Mistakes. In response to your feedback, the section on notable successes has been continued. Some cases are as recent as today’s headlines; several still have not come to complete resolution. A few older cases have been continued or brought back. For example, Borden last appeared in the ninth edition, but some of you thought the learning insights were important enough to reintroduce the case.We continue to seek what can be learned—insights that are transferable to other firms, other times, other situations. What key factors brought monumental mistakes to some firms and resounding successes for others? Through such evaluations and studies of contrasts, we may learn to improve batting averages in the intriguing, ever-challenging art of decision making. We will encounter organizational life cycles, with an organization growing and prospering, then failing (just as humans do), but occasionally resurging. Success rarely lasts forever, but even the most serious mistakes can be (but are not always) overcome.As in previous editions, a variety of firms, industries, mistakes, and successes are presented. You will be familiar with most of the organizations, although probably not with the details of their situations. We are always on the lookout for cases that can bring out certain points or caveats in the art of marketing decision making, and that give a balanced view of the spectrum of marketing problems. The goal is to present examples that provide 1 2 †¢ Chapter 1: Introduction somewhat different learning experiences, where at least some aspect of the mistake or success is unique. Still, we see similar mistakes occurring time and again.From the prevalence of such mistakes, we have to wonder how much decision making has really progr essed over the decades. The challenge is still there to improve it, and with it marketing efficiency and career advancement. Let us then consider what learning insights we can gain, with the benefit of hindsight, from examining these examples of successful and unsuccessful marketing practices. LEARNING INSIGHTS Analyzing Mistakes In looking at sick companies, or even healthy ones that have experienced difficulties with certain parts of their operations, it is tempting to be overly critical. It is easy to criticize with the benefit of hindsight.Mistakes are inevitable, given the present state of decision making and the dynamic environment facing organizations. Mistakes can be categorized as errors of omission and of commission. Mistakes of omission are those in which no action was taken and the status quo was contentedly embraced amid a changing environment. Such errors, often characteristic of conservative or stodgy management, are not as obvious as the other category of mistakes. T hey seldom involve tumultuous upheaval; rather, the company’s competitive position slowly erodes, until management finally realizes that mistakes having monumental impact have been allowed to happen.The firm’s fortunes often never regain their former luster. Mistakes of commission are more spectacular. They involve hasty decisions often based on faulty research, poor planning, misdirected execution, and the like. Although the costs of eroding competitive position due to errors of omission are difficult to calculate precisely, the costs of errors of commission are often fully evident. For example, with Euro Disney, in 1993 alone the loss was $960 million from a poorly planned venture; it improved in 1994 with only a $366 million loss.With Maytag’s overseas Hoover Division, the costs of an incredibly bungled sales promotion were more than $300 million, and still counting. Then there was the monumental acquisition of Chrysler by Germany’s Daimler, maker of p roud Mercedes, for $36 billion in 1998. After nine tumultuous years, Daimler gave up and sold Chrysler to a private equity firm in 2007 for only $7. 4 billion. Although they may make mistakes, organizations with sharp managements follow certain patterns when confronting difficult situations: 1. Looming problems or present mistakes are quickly recognized. 2.The causes of the problem(s) are carefully determined. 3. Alternative corrective actions are evaluated in view of the company’s resources and constraints. 4. Corrective action is prompt. Sometimes this requires a ruthless axing of the product, the division, or whatever is at fault. Learning Insights †¢ 3 5. Mistakes provide learning experiences. The same mistakes are not repeated, and future operations are consequently strengthened. Slowness to recognize emerging problems leads us to think that management is incompetent or that controls have not been established to provide prompt feedback at strategic control points.Fo r example, a declining competitive position in one or a few geographical areas should be a red flag that something is amiss. To wait months before investigating or taking action may mean a permanent loss of business. Admittedly, signals sometimes get mixed, and complete information may be lacking, but procrastination is not easily defended. Just as problems should be quickly recognized, the causes of these problems— the â€Å"why† of the unexpected results—must be determined as quickly as possible. It is premature, and rash, to take action before knowing where the problems really lie.Returning to the previous example, the loss of competitive position in one or a few markets may reflect circumstances beyond the firm’s immediate control, such as an aggressive new competitor who is drastically cutting prices to â€Å"buy sales. † In this situation, all competing firms will likely lose market share, and little can be done except to stay as competitive as possible with prices and servicing. However, closer investigation may reveal that the erosion of business was due to unreliable deliveries, poor quality control, noncompetitive prices, or incompetent sales staff.With the cause(s) of the problem defined, various alternatives for dealing with it should be identified and evaluated. This may require further research, such as obtaining feedback from customers and from field personnel. Finally, the decision to correct the situation should be made as objectively as possible. If drastic action is needed, there usually is little rationale for delaying. Serious problems do not go away by themselves: They tend to fester and become worse. Finally, some learning experience should result from the misadventure. A vice president of one successful firm told me,I try to give my subordinates as much decision-making experience as possible. Perhaps I err on the side of delegating too much. In any case, I expect some mistakes to be made, some decision s that were not for the best. I don’t come down too hard usually. This is part of the learning experience. But God help them if they make the same mistake again. There has been no learning experience, and I question their competence for higher executive positions. Analyzing Successes Successes deserve as much analysis as mistakes, although admittedly the urgency is less than with an emerging problem that requires quick remedial action.Any analysis of success should seek answers to at least the following questions: Why Were Such Actions Successful? †¢ Was it because of the nature of the environment, and if so, how? †¢ Was it because of particular research, and if so, what and how? 4 †¢ Chapter 1: Introduction †¢ Was it because of particular engineering and/or production efforts, and if so, can these be adapted to other operations? †¢ Was it because of any particular element of the strategy—such as service, promotional activities, or distribution methods—and if so, how, and is it transferable to other operations? Was it because of the specific elements of the strategy meshing well together, and if so, how was this achieved? Was the Situation Unique and Unlikely to Be Encountered Again? †¢ If the situation was not unique, how can these successful techniques be used in the future and defended against competition? ORGANIZATION OF THIS BOOK In this eleventh edition we have modified the classification of cases somewhat from earlier editions. As mentioned before, Part I, Entrepreneurial Adventures, describes and analyzes well-known recent endeavors.In Part II, Marketing Wars, we examine the actions and countermoves of archrivals in hotly competitive arenas. Part III, Comebacks, studies three firms that faced adversity, and came back better than ever. In Part IV, Marketing Management Mistakes, we delve into seven firms guilty of a variety of mistakes that offer great learning insights. Part V, Notable Marketing Success es, offers paragons of successful marketing strategies and operations. Finally, in Part VI, Ethical Mistakes, we examine three firms whose mistakes had major ethical and legal consequences.Let us briefly describe the cases that follow. Entrepreneurial Adventures Google is arguably the most outstanding successful new enterprise ever. It was founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page who dropped out of Stanford’s Ph. D program to do so. With its search engine, it raised advertising to a new level: targeted advertising. In so doing, it spawned a host of millionaires from its rising stock prices and stock options and made its two founders some of the richest Americans, just under Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. How did they do it?Starbucks is also a rapidly growing new firm—not as much as Google, but still great—and a credit to founder Howard Schultz’s vision of transforming a prosaic product, coffee, into a gourmet coffee house experience at luxury prices. Boston Beer burst on the microbrewery scene with Samuel Adams beers, higher priced even than most imports. Notwithstanding this—or maybe because of it—Boston Beer became the largest microbrewer. It proved that a small entrepreneur can compete successfully against the giants in the industry, and do this on a national scale. Marketing WarsPepsi and Coca-Cola for decades competed worldwide. Usually Coca-Cola won out, but it could never let its guard down; however, it recently did so in Europe. Now a Organization of this Book †¢ 5 trend toward noncarbonated beverages along with Pepsi’s non-drink diversifications is swinging the momentum to Pepsi. But Coca-Cola is trying hard to recover. Dell long dominated the PC market with lowest-prices, direct-to-consumer marketing. Hewlett-Packard, the world’s second biggest computer maker, chose Carly Fiorina, a charismatic visionary, to be its CEO, and she engineered a merger with Compaq.But growth in profitability did no t follow, and early in 2005, the board fired Fiorina. Mark Hurd, an operational person, replaced her, and brought the company to PC dominance. But Michael Dell is fighting back. Boeing long dominated the worldwide commercial aircraft market, with the European Airbus only a minor player. A series of Boeing blunders, however, coupled with an aggressive Airbus, brought market shares close to parity. Both firms are now introducing strikingly new planes, but are finding problems with their outsourcing key components to foreign suppliers.Comebacks McDonald’s had long dominated the fast food restaurant market. Then it began to falter, and hungry competitors made inroads into its competitive position. As it fought to regain its momentum, it explored diversifications and ever more store openings, while profitability plummeted. Recently, it found a new formula for profitable growth. In the early 1960s, Harley-Davidson dominated a static motorcycle industry. Suddenly, Honda burst on the scene and Harley’s market share dropped from 70 percent to 5 percent in only a few years.It took Harley nearly three decades to revive, but now it has created a mystique for its heavy motorcycles and gained new customers. And its Rallies are something else again. The comeback of Continental Airlines from extreme adversity and devastated employee morale to become one of the best airlines in the country is an achievement of no small moment. New CEO Gordon Bethune brought marketing and human relations skills to one of the most rapid turnarounds ever, overcoming a decade of raucous adversarial labor relations and a reputation in the pits.Marketing Management Mistakes Borden, with its enduring symbol of Elsie the Cow, was the country’s largest producer of dairy products. On an acquisitions binge in the 1980s, it became a diversified food processor and marketer—and a $7 billion company. But Borden allowed consumer acceptance of its many brands to wither through unrea listic pricing, ineffective advertising, and an unwieldy organization. United Way of America is a nonprofit organization. The man who led it to become the nation’s largest charity perceived himself as virtually beyond authority.Exorbitant spending, favoritism, conflicts of interest—these went without criticism until investigative reporters from the Washington Post publicized the scandalous conduct. With its public image plummeting, contributions nationwide drastically declined. The real concern was whether United Way could ever regain its former luster. 6 †¢ Chapter 1: Introduction The merger of Chrysler with Daimler, the huge German firm that makes Mercedes, was supposed to be a merger of equals. But Chrysler’s management quickly found otherwise, and the top Chrysler executives were soon replaced by executives from Germany.Assimilation and coordination problems plagued the merger for years. Nine years later, Daimler sold Chrysler to a private equity firm f or tens of billions of dollars less than it paid. Newell, a consumer-products firm, successfully geared its operations to meet the demands of giant retailers, particularly Wal-Mart, whereas Rubbermaid had in recent years been unable to meet those stringent requirements. In 1999, Newell acquired Rubbermaid, confident of turning its operation around, only to find that Rubbermaid’s problems were not easily corrected and that they negatively impacted Newell’s fortunes as well.What do you do now? In April 1992, just outside Paris, Disney opened its first theme part in Europe. It had high expectations and supreme self-confidence (critics later called it arrogance). The earlier Disney parks in California, Florida, and more recently Japan were all spectacular successes. But rosy expectations became a delusion as marketing miscues finally showed Disney that Europeans, and particularly the French, were not carbon copies of visitors elsewhere. The problems of Maytag’s Hoov er subsidiary in the United Kingdom almost defy reason.The subsidiary planned a promotional campaign so generous that the company was overwhelmed with takers; it could neither supply the products nor grant the prizes. In a miscue of multimillion-dollar consequences, Maytag had to foot the bill while trying to appease irate customers. What can we learn from Maytag’s travails? Two faltering retail chains, Kmart and Sears, merged under the auspices of a hedge fund manager, Edward Lampert. Whether two weaklings could become one strong operation to compete with the likes of Wal-Mart and Target was uncertain, though investors bid both stocks up to extravagant levels in anticipation.The rosy expectations collapsed as we moved into a recession in 2007 and 2008. Notable Marketing Successes Southwest Airlines found a strategic window of opportunity as the lowest cost and lowest price carrier between certain cities. And how it milked this opportunity! Now it threatened major airlines in many of their domestic routes. However, by 2008, competitors were beginning to counter Southwest’s price advantage. Nike and Reebok were major competitors in the athletic footwear and apparel market. Nike was overtaken by Reebok in the late 1980s, but then Nike surged far ahead, never to be threatened again.What is the secret of Nike’s increasing dominance? Vanguard has become the largest mutual fund company, charging past Fidelity. Vanguard’s strategy is to downplay marketing, shunning the heavy advertising and overhead of its competitors. It provides investors with better returns through far lower expense ratios and relies mostly on word of mouth and unpaid publicity to General Wrap-Up †¢ 7 gain new customers, while old customers continue to pour in money. Is Vanguard vulnerable to aggressive new competitors? Ethical MistakesMerck, the pharmaceutical giant, learned that its blockbuster arthritis drug, Vioxx, doubled the risk of a heart attack or stroke. Over five years and $500 million in advertising, it had 20 million users in the United States at the time it recalled the drug September 30, 2004. Critics and tort lawyers assailed the company for waiting so long to recall this drug, since some research studies as early as five years before had raised questions about the safety of Vioxx. What can we learn from Merck’s handling of its great profit-making drug now discredited?The huge insurance firm MetLife, whether through loose controls or tacit approval, permitted an agent to use deceptive selling tactics on a grand scale, in the process enriching himself and the company. Investigations by several state attorneys general brought a crisis situation to the firm that it was slow to react to. Eventually, fines and lawsuits totaled almost $2 billion. Product safety lapses that result in injuries and even loss of life are among the worst abuses any company can confront. Worse, however, is when such risks are allowed to continue fo r years.Ford Explorers equipped with Firestone tires were involved in more than 200 deaths from tire failures and vehicle rollovers. After news of the accidents began surfacing, Ford and Firestone each blamed the other for the deaths. Eventually, inept crisis management brought a host of lawsuits resulting in massive recalls and billions in damages. GENERAL WRAP-UP Where possible, the text depicts major personalities involved in these cases. Imagine yourself in their positions, confronting the problems and facing choices at their points of crisis or just-recognized opportunities.What would you have done differently, and why? We invite you to participate in the discussion questions, the handson exercises, the debates appearing at the ends of chapters, and the occasional devil’s advocate invitation (a devil’s advocate is one who argues an opposing viewpoint for the sake of testing the decision). There are also discussion questions for the various boxes within chapters. W hile doing these activities, you may feel the excitement and challenge of decision making under conditions of uncertainty. Perhaps you may even become a fast-track executive and make better decisions.QUESTIONS 1. Do you agree that it is impossible for a firm to avoid mistakes? Why or why not? 2. How can a firm speed up its awareness of emerging problems so that it can take corrective action? Be as specific as you can. 8 †¢ Chapter 1: Introduction 3. Large firms tend to err on the side of conservatism and are slower to take corrective action than smaller ones. Why do you suppose this is? 4. Which is likely to be more costly to a firm, errors of omission or errors of commission? Why? 5. So often we see the successful firm eventually losing its pattern of success.Why is success not more enduring? PART ONE E N T REPREN E U R I A L A D V EN T UR E S This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER TWO Google—An Entrepreneurial Juggernaut I n 1998 Sergey Brin and Larry Page dropped out of the Ph. D program at Stanford to start Google in a friend’s garage. Along the way, they discovered a powerful marketing tool that would revolutionize advertising. Six years later, on August 19, 2004, they took this Internet search and advertising firm public at a price of $85 a share. One year after the initial public offering (IPO), Google stock closed at $280.By 2007, the stock had gone over $700, and lots of people had become very rich. But this was to cause some serious concerns for the firm. Brain Drain Craig Silverstein, a fellow Stanford Ph. D student, was the first hire of Page and Brin. He helped them move their equipment out of Page’s dorm room and into a place with more space and, more importantly, a garage. In early 1999, five months later, the enterprise had grown enough to move into offices on University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto. The firm’s fortunes continued to improve, and Craig became director of technology in charge of product develo pment.Before many years, Craig realized he had become very rich indeed. From the beginning, Google gave its employees stock options in lieu of competitive salaries that in those days it could ill afford. These options gave employees the right to purchase a given number of shares of stock at a certain price, called a vested price, some years in the future. Even before going public in 2004, it had granted two big batches of such options. A 2002 grant that was priced at 30 cents a share vested in 2006. Another, priced at $4 a share in 2003, also vested in 2006.In May 2008, another round of options would be exercisable at $35, far more costly than the 30 cent option, but the way the stock was going up since the IPO, this higher price was of little consequence. By 2007, Craig was worth well over $100 million in Google stock and was becoming richer with every passing day. He knew that some 700 of his associates were worth at least $5 million, and he knew that many of them were talking abo ut quitting, with some wanting to start their own businesses. He knew that Bismarck Lepe, for example, who began working 11 12 †¢ Chapter 2: Google—An Entrepreneurial Juggernaut or Google in 2003, had left the firm immediately after his four-year options vested in 2007. He now had a few million dollars that would help him start his own firm—2 million in only four years, wow! Craig couldn’t help pondering whether he should do the same. After all, how many hundreds of millions does one man need? But he did not really see himself as an entrepreneur. At his young age, about the same age as Sergey and Larry, he was not ready to retire to some South Sea island and count coconuts. So he stayed, caught up in the challenge of solving tough problems with other smart Googlers. Making the brain drain all the more tempting for many of these employees was Google’s hiring of the brightest young people, the very ones most likely to become entrepreneurs, if given the chance. Their ambitions fed on the great example of Google, as well as a plethora of smaller enterprises in this hotbed of innovation that was Silicone Valley with its great research universities such as Stanford. SERGEY BRIN AND LARRY PAGE AND THE START OF GOOGLE In 1998 when the venture that was to be Google was only an idea, Sergey and Larry were both 25 years old and were doctoral students at Stanford.Sergey was a math whiz, having completed his undergraduate degree at 19, and aced all ten of the required doctoral exams on his first try, and teamed easily with professors doing research. His parents’ backgrounds were rich in science and technology. His mother was a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. His father, Michael, taught math at the University of Maryland. Sergey was born in Moscow, but he and his family left the Soviet Union when he was six, fleeing anti-Semitism and seeking greater opportunity for themselves and their children.Larry Page grew up in Michigan, also the son of a professor whose Ph. D was computer science, and who taught at Michigan State University where Larry’s mother also taught computer programming. He followed in the footsteps of his father and brother by going to the University of Michigan where he studied computer engineering, receiving his undergraduate degree in 1995. At first he had felt uneasy about being one of the select few to be admitted to Stanford’s elite Ph. D program. In those early days, these sons of esteemed professors were focused on pursuing their Ph. Ds, not on getting rich. In their families, nothing trumped the value of a great education. Neither of them had the slightest idea just how soon their heartfelt commitment to academia would be tested. †2 The Beginning In the mid-1990s, the Internet was just emerging. Millions of people were logging on and communicating through email. But researchers grew frustrated with the clutter of Web sites. Searching it for relev ant information often resulted in an abundance of completely meaningless data. Search engines began to organize the Internet, and thus Yahoo and AltaVista among others were born. But they still left a lot to be 1 2Examples can be found in Quentin Hardy, â€Å"Close to the Vest,† Forbes, July 2, 2007, pp. 40–42. David A. Vise, The Google Story, New York: Delacorte, 2005, p. 31. Sergey Brin and Larry Page and the Start of Google †¢ 13 desired. The answer to more relevant research seemed to be a better use of links, such as a highlighted word or phrase. In 1996, Page and Brin teamed up to work on downloading and analyzing Web links. In the process they developed a ranking system for searching the Internet that yielded prioritized results based on relevance to the object of the search, and useful answers could be found swiftly.In 1997, they made the search engine available to students, faculty, and administrators on the Stanford campus, and popularity grew by word of mouth. As the database and number of users burgeoned, more computers were needed. In these early days, Brin and Page were able to scrounge around for unused computers and string together inexpensive PCs. By July 1998, they had an index of 24 million pages, with more coming. But their growth was stymied by lack of capital. They decided to take a leave of absence from the Ph. D program and start their own firm.This way they could develop a business of their own that would fit their search engine. If it was as good as they thought, and with Internet use growing so rapidly, growth could be virtually unlimited. Rather than selling out to some existing firm, wouldn’t they be better off keeping control? Still, by August they had run out of cash and badly needed an â€Å"angel. † One of their professors suggested they meet his friend, Andy Bechtolsheim, a legendary investor in a string of successful start-ups. After listening to their presentation, he said, â€Å"This is the single best idea I’ve heard in years.I want to be part of this,† and he left them a check for $100,000 made out to Google Inc. 3 It took them two weeks before they could formally incorporate the company, Google Inc. , and then open their first bank account. The check sustained the two entrepreneurs at first, and in fall 1998 they moved their computers from a dorm room into a garage and several rooms of a house. They also hired a friend, Craig Silverstein (mentioned earlier), as their first employee. After five months they outgrew the garage and moved into offices in downtown Palo Alto, barely a mile from the Stanford campus.By now, their search engine was handling 100,000 queries a day, all this through word of mouth, emails, and instant messages. But they were again running out of money, despite the now $1 million in funding that they had collected from Bechtolsheim and other early investors, and through borrowing on their credit cards. But it was clear that with upwar d of 500,000 searches per day toward the end of the year, they needed much more money. In the boomtown climate of Silicon Valley in early 1999, a public stock offering was one option, even though Google had no profits.But Brin and Page resisted this option, not wanting to reveal their trade secrets and lose some control. Efforts to license their search technology to other firms wishing to use it for research, found few takers. Eventually they went the venture capital route. But Brin and Page insisted on keeping control of Google’s destiny and remain majority owners, or it was no deal. On June 7, 1999, less than one year after they left Stanford, they issued a press release announcing that two venture capital firms, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, were investing $25 million in Google.On the Stanford campus and around Palo Alto, amazement reigned at the enormity of the sum seemingly without the two giving anything up in return. â€Å"The announcement included details of t he funding as well as additional information about Google, its impressive list of investors, and its growth 3 Vise, p. 48. 14 †¢ Chapter 2: Google—An Entrepreneurial Juggernaut rate of 50 percent per month. All this put the company in the global limelight, giving it the opportunity to grow further through free media publicity. †4 But Google still had not earned any appreciable revenue to upport its heady growth, and no plan for this was revealed in the press release. THE EARLY GROWTH YEARS By the end of 1999, Google was averaging 7 million searches per day, but its revenue from licensing remained small. If the business could not be reasonably profitable, they could hardly maintain their vision of vast information available to users without charge. With licensing its search technology to businesses proving to be such a limited revenue source, they finally were forced to consider allowing advertisers access to their multitude of users.Brin and Page could see a relati onship between their search engine and the television networks: those offered entertainment and news for free, while charging millions for the advertising. But the two shuddered at the flashy banner ads that littered the Internet. Still, they belatedly recognized that advertising was where vast sums were being spent, not in licensing, Creating a Different Advertising Model They wanted to avoid the clutter of almost out-of-control, irrelevant ads, and they developed strict standards for size and type of ads.They separated the free search results from the ads, which they would label â€Å"Sponsored Links. † These â€Å"Links,† because of their relevance to the search, would be clicked on more often than if they were labeled simply â€Å"Ads. † They decided to display the links in a clearly marked box above the free search results. The ads would be brief and look identical, with just a headline, a short description, and a link to a web page. But these would be targ eted ads, offering a major advantage for advertisers confronted with the huge wastage of advertising reaching uninterested audiences.At first Google sold this advertising to large businesses that could afford expensive ad campaigns, but it soon found substantial market potential in letting smaller advertisers easily sign up online with a credit card, and their ads could then be running within minutes. This gave Google an edge over similar providers unable to offer such fast service, and also minimized its own costs of selling advertising. Shortly after turning to its advertising model, Brin and Page had another innovative idea—they would rank ads based on relevance.And relevance would be determined by how often ads were clicked on by computer users. This would provide valuable feedback to advertisers and influence the selling and pricing of ads. CHARGING AHEAD When the Internet stock price bubble burst in 2000, it ravaged the former highflying entrepreneurial firms of Silicon e Valley with major layoffs and bankruptcies. But Google stood poised at the nadir of its great growth to come and was one of 4 Vise, p. 69. Charging Ahead †¢ 15 the few firms able to hire outstanding software engineers and mathematicians, many holding worthless stock options.This pool of talent stimulated Google’s growth as it moved to a large headquarters in Mountain View, named the Googleplex, forty minutes south of San Francisco. There Brin and Page developed a work environment practically unprecedented. See the following Information Box for some examples of this culture that was designed to cultivate strong loyalty and job satisfaction and to foster a creative, playful environment where Google’s employees, mostly young and single, would be willing to spend their waking hours. By early 2001, Google was recording 100 million searches per day.It was also entering the dictionary as a verb, as for example, to â€Å"google each other before dates. † Now larg e firms, such as Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, and Acura, a major automobile manufacturer, joined the entourage of firms advertising their wares on Google. What was the secret behind the rapid growth of Google’s advertising program? As we saw before, Google came up with an unique approach to advertising, an INFORMATION BOX WORK CLIMATE AT GOOGLE Employees worked long hours but were treated like family. There was even a gourmet chef, with free meals, healthy drinks and snacks.The chef took pride in providing better meals than found in area restaurants. Given the international mix of employees, the menu was varied to cater to all tastes: Southwestern, classic Italian, French, African, Asian, Indian, etc. The Wall Street Journal sent a reporter out to investigate. â€Å"Where else but the Plex can you zip around on a bicycle and choose from multicultural comfort food, American regional food, small plates, entrees made with five ingredients or less, and dishes b ased on raw materials supplied from within 150 miles of Mountain View?Many employees eat three meals a day at the Plex’s 17 food venues, open any time day or night. . . . We were told that Messrs. Brin and Page chow down with the troops. † (Raymond Sokolov, â€Å"Googling Lunch,† Wall Street Journal, December 1–2, 2007, pp. W1 and W5. ) Also furnished were such conveniences as on-site laundry, hair styling, dental and medical care, a car wash, day care, fitness facilities with personal trainers, and a professional masseuse. Brightly colored medicine balls, lava lamps, assorted gadgets and sports equipment gave the appearance of a college campus.Chartered buses had internet access so that commuters to San Francisco could use their laptops. Social events and entertainment were Friday afternoon and evening features. As a spur for creativity, a policy was set that software engineers spend at least 20 percent of their time, or one day a week, working on whateve r projects interested them. Do you see any downside to these workplace amenities? Would these influence your choosing to work for Google despite less money? Would some of these be appropriate to other firms? If so, what kind of firms? 16 †¢ Chapter 2: Google—An Entrepreneurial Juggernaut pproach that most advertisers previously could only dream of: i. e. , Targeted Text Ads. The unobtrusive ads are seen only by potential customers who are searching for information on that specific topic. In one swell swoop this advertising virtually eliminates the great waste of most mass media advertising that is viewed by a vast audience who have no interest whatever in the product being advertised despite millions and hundreds of millions of dollars being spent. For an example of the waste of such untargeted ads, consider an airline spending $1 million or more on a TV ad campaign that gains only 100 new first-class customers as a result. Furthermore, in Google-placed ads no intrusive banners compete for attention. The text ads (links) and websites are read carefully by users or potential users, and these often find the ads as valuable as the actual search results. A New CEO In early January 2001, at the urging of its venture capitalists, Larry and Sergey reluctantly consented to hire a chief executive officer to run operations. Eric Schmidt was highly recommended by one of the venture capitalists. He not only had entrepreneurial experience as founder of Sun Microsystems, and CEO of Novell, but also academic credentials—a Ph.D in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley, and a degree in electrical engineering from Princeton. Then there was research experience at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and Bell Labs. At 46, he was a seasoned tech executive and brought a needed mature balance to this organization of young people. Besides, he was willing to invest $1 million of his own money to buy preferred stock in Google, this at a time when the company was running short of cash again. (It would soon never again run short of cash. ) Google entered into pacts with Yahoo, AOL, EarthLink, and Ask Jeeves.This gave it relationships with most of the biggest Internet properties. By the end of 2002, Google and its venture capitalists could see that the search engine was going to be a huge financial success. For the year, it had recorded $440 million in sales and an amazing $100 million in profits. Virtually all of these profits came from people clicking on the text ads that were on the right side of search results pages at Google. com and the pages of its partners and affiliates. But the world did not realize the extent of this profitability since Google was still a private company.This silence about the profitability of the online search and advertising business model undoubtedly kept other firms, especially Microsoft and Yahoo, from investing in or developing search engines of their own—until Google had an almost insur mountable head start. The advertising industry was being transformed as well, as billions of dollars of advertising was being shifted from television, radio, newspapers, and magazines to the Internet. But the time was nearing for Google to go public, and with this full disclosure would shock the investment community and make Google stock the darling of investors and employees alike. Example cited in Seth Godin, â€Å"Your Product, Your Customer,† Forbes, May 7, 2007, p. 52. Going Public †¢ 17 GOING PUBLIC Finally in early 2004, Larry and Sergey reluctantly started the process of taking Google public. In truth, their decision was practically dictated by federal rules that required public disclosure of financial results by companies with a substantial amount of assets and shareholders, and Google had exceeded these limits with many of the company employees having been given stock in the then-private firm. This move would enable them to convert their holdings to cash.The ve nture capitalists who had supplied the early crucial funds would also benefit from the liquidity that going public would provide. For most entrepreneurs, taking their new firm public was the ultimate goal since the IPO (initial public offering) would often make them instant millionaires. But for Brin and Page, the reality of being billionaires was not all that appealing. They both lived relatively modestly, loved the privacy, and cared little for the accumulation of wealth and the accoutrements of wealth—such as grand homes, planes, and yachts to attest to their success.The company was debt free, self-funded, had plenty of cash, and had no need to sell stock to the public to raise money. They were not sure they wanted the immense publicity and what it would entail and affect the freedoms they had enjoyed, and that of their families. For example, would they need bodyguards? How about the paparazzi? And their employees who would become instant millionaires, how would this affec t their intensity and focus? And would they even stay with Google, or go out on their own? (We know that many left to start their own enterprises. In early 2004, the employees were quietly told that the company was going to file a public offering. And thousands of Google employees, spouses, and interested others began an eight-month guessing game of how much the company and themselves would be worth. The eight months proved to be a stressful time for almost all concerned, but probably most of all for Brin and Page. Their reluctance to disclose much before the public auction did not endear them to the media. Then an ill-advised Playboy interview did not go well and even triggered a SEC investigation.To make matters worse, the stock market was tanking as world oil prices spiked, and many analysts were warning of a global recession. Also, the Athens Olympics were starting amid great fears of terrorism. Google and its bankers realized that the initial price range of $108–$135 wou ld probably not be acceptable to the market at this time, and on August 19, Google finally went public at $85 a share. By the end of the first day, the stock had reached nearly $100. By the next day it was $108. It reached $200 in November and kept climbing from there.Forbes, in its listing of the 400 Richest Americans cited Brin and Page’s wealth at $4 billion each at the end of 2004, due to the success of the IPO. Then in 2006, â€Å"The Google Guys crack the top 10 of the Forbes 400, each now worth $18. 5 billion. † This placed them as the fifth richest Americans, in the company of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, ahead of Michael Dell of Dell Computer, and way ahead of Donald Trump. And they were both only 34. 6 6 Forbes, Forbes 400 The Richest People in America, October 8, 2007, p. 78. 18 †¢ Chapter 2: Google—An Entrepreneurial Juggernaut AFTER THE IPOAfter the IPO, the pace of innovation at Google got into high gear. New products and innovations were be ing spawned and made available to millions of customers around the world. Google became the darling of the media; no other firm or individual got the press coverage of Google. The fact that it was now a public company with its financial performance readily available—and as such now well covered by financial analysts who did not cover private firms—made its promising results and potential very visible. It expanded the lead in its core search and advertising business in the United States and much of the world.And with its new cash horde, it eagerly branched out into new areas, even such far out visions as a Green renewable-energy program to find ways to generate electricity more cheaply than by burning coal. 7 Not surprising, the growth of Google was being compared with that of Microsoft two decades earlier. Google was also becoming a major competitor of Microsoft, not in PCs, but in a later phase of technology that was surpassing the earlier technology, this time by the power of the Internet revolution. But perhaps the real competition was in recruiting and retaining the brightest technology minds in the world.But more about this later. For now, let us compare this early growth of Google with Microsoft in the Information Box beginning on page 19. Google’s Poaching of Talent As the business burgeoned in the spring and summer of 2005, Google added more than 700 employees in just three months. The total headcount now was 4,183, nearly double the total the previous year. Google was hiring Ph. Ds from the top universities across the country, and even trespassing on Microsoft’s own neighborhood, at the University of Washington.It opened a facility in a Seattle suburb just down the road from Microsoft’s Redmond plant, and now it was easy for their engineers and scientists to move over to Google. They didn’t even have to move to a new city or change their commute. In these days, Microsoft was viewed as a mature business. It no longer had the sex appeal that Google had grasped. Microsoft was struggling to keep its best people, even offering more money and perks. But the amazing growth and potential of Google brought the lure of great riches as stock options became valuable.As mentioned before, not the least of the perks that Google offered were the free restaurants and other amenities at its Googleplex headquarters in the Silicone Valley 40 minutes south of San Francisco. The increasing poaching of talent climaxed with Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, a highly regarded scientist, who wanted to leave Microsoft to become president of Google China. Microsoft began an all-out legal assault alleging that Google improperly sought to induce Lee to violate the terms of his employment contract with Microsoft. A temporary triumph over Google raised the specter of litigation for any senior Microsoft employee who left for Google.The wide publicity served to illustrate how seriously Microsoft regarded the threat posed by its smaller ri val. 8 7 Rebecca Smith and Kevin J. Delaney, â€Å"Google’s Electricity Initiative,† Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2007, p. A16. 8 Vise, p. 274. Analysis †¢ 19 ANALYSIS Here we have seen perhaps the greatest growth ever of a new enterprise. In the exuberance of this growth, investors bid up its stock market price to make the company more valuable than such long-established firms as Coca-Cola, Hewlett-Packard, Time Warner, AT&T, Boeing, Disney, McDonald’s, and General Motors and Ford.INFORMATION BOX COMPARISON OF MICROSOFT AND GOOGLE Table 2. 1 Comparison of Microsoft and Google Growth in Revenues from Their Beginnings Microsoft Beginning Went Public Years from Beginning 1975 1986 11 years Revenues (millions) 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 Google Y/Y Growth $ 1996 2004 8 years 40. 7% 75. 1 70. 1 36. 0 47. 3 55. 8 49. 7 197 346 591 831 1,183 1,843 2,759 1996 28,365 32,187 36,835 39,735 44,282 Y/Y Growth $ 409% 233. 9 117. 5 92. 5 72. 8 9. 400 2002 200 3 2004 2005 2006 Revenues (millions) 13. 5 14. 4 7. 9 11. 4 439 1,466 3,189 6,138 10,605Source: Calculated from company annual reports. Commentary: The much faster start of Google is mind-boggling. The experts thought Microsoft was the model of the most successful entrepreneurial start ever. Bill Gates did not rush to take his venture public, waiting 11 years to do so, at which time revenues were almost $200 million. Google on the other hand delayed only six years before going public, but its revenues were already over $3 billion. As we can see, the year-to-year growth rate also strongly favored Google, with around a hundred percent growth since 2004. The two years before going public showed growth over 400 percent and 200 percent each year. ) The comparison between a young growth company and a mature Microsoft is clearly evident. (continues) 20 †¢ Chapter 2: Google—An Entrepreneurial Juggernaut COMPARISON OF MICROSOFT AND GOOGLE (continued) Table 2. 2 Comparison of Micr osoft and Google Net Income from Their B