Colgate Marketing Plan analysis

Colgate Marketing Plan analysis Colgate has realised the significance of marketing plan in its 200 years of existence. This is essential towards understanding the business plans, aims, and communicating the companys horizon within the operational market. This report will focus on the marketing plan for the new Colgate toothbrush called 360 Actiflex, as part of Oral care and Health products which comprises of Tooth paste, Tooth brush, Mouth wash and dental floss. Oral care is important because research indicate that a clean mouth prevents gum disease and prevent heart disease. The plan will address the niche market of dental professional which will recommend the product to their clients and the product brand name will remain to be Colgate. Situation Analysis Colgate Palmolive has been in existence for over 200 hundred years and they operate in more than 70 countries such as Brazil, America, Latin America, Asian etc which will enable to penetrate the new market easily. This is as a result of their brand, experience, capacity in term of resources and existing structure. Product Classification The 360 Actiflex brush with flexible head for cheek and tongue cleaner is design to clean all direction, to remove bacteria from your teeth, cheek, gum and tongue for healthier mouth. Customers want toothbrush that can give them healthy clean teeth and breathe at a reasonable price. Market Summary Colgate Palmolive is aiming to increase its market share in toothbrush which is currently at 30% in 2009 by demonstrating proficiency and professionalism by serving new and existing customers. Through the RD, Colgate has been able to improve their existing products and introduce more products which meet the customers need in dental care. Market Needs According to research, customers only need two or three toothbrushes a year. 65% of customers have more than one toothbrush, 24% keep brush at work 54% have special toothbrush for travelling. Buying Behaviour Pattern Customers base their purchase of tooth brush on how comfortable it feels in their mouth, whether it is soft enough and suits their mouth size or flexible enough. Their purchase is also base on the ability of the toothbrush to remove food particles, plaque removal and gum stimulation. SWOT ANALYSIS Strengths Colgate maintains strong relationship with dental professional, wholesalers and retailers. Have a good communication with the consumers through media and other social resources Extensive industry knowledge and expertise Well designed training programme. Ability to convince customers to spend more though continual rebranding and growing company sales by releasing new twists on under established brands. Weaknesses Increase competition where other competitors produce the same products. The recent recession has impact on the reduction of planned expansion. Opportunities Oral care is a growing industry with the ever changing customers taste. Continuous innovation using the idea technology challenge. Threats Changes in exchange rates for foreign currencies, which may reduce the U.S. dollar value of revenue, receive from oversea market sales. Political or economic instability or changing macroeconomic conditions in our major markets, Lack of well-established or reliable legal systems in certain areas where the Company operates, Objective Setting Colgate by introducing the 360 Actiflex toothbrush is aiming to achieve the following objectives: To retain the 20% existing loyal customers To increase current awareness level of brand from 5% to 15% in 12 months through integrated campaign of advertising, sales promotion and sponsorship. To acquire more customers by targeting the luxury segments of the market. Strategy Development The objective of Colgate Palmolive is to position the company as continuous market leader of oral care and Heath care, serving domestic market as well as international market. To enter the market Colgate will start with our dental professionals whom we have collaboration with in our existing various areas of operation. The company will make small adaptation upon on this product which will permit to save cost. There will be a launch of the product in selected dental professionals where the demonstration of how the product is use will be provided. Tactics As part of tactic the large advertising campaigns will be launched through promotion activities which will include advertising by posters, television, outdoor adverts, online adverts. B: CRITICALLY EVALUATE THE MARKETING PLAN, IN PARTICULAR ITS MARKETING ENVIRONMENT. Marketing environment entails the players and powers outside the marketing that affect management steadiness to build and sustain effective relationships with target customers. Prosperous Companies mostly identify the vital importance of continuously observing and adapting to the ever-changing environment. The marketing environment of a company can be categorised into two areas this include macro environment and micro environment, the macro environment include the main actors of the company involved in producing, distributing, and promoting the offering. The marketing environment analysis can provide insight of online and offline competitive environments. Using Five Forces Model, Porter explains that in any industry there are five forces that influence what happens within the industry, these five forces combine to make up the business environment. By studying the structure of dynamics between these forces, the company can discover opportunities for improving the marketing strategies. When developing company marketing plan which include the marketing, this can not be completely ruled out strategies Colgate Palmolive can identify the forces as: The Threat of new entrants There has been n o major new entrant to the industry for the past few years leaving the giant manufacturer of consumer goods like Colgate and others to dominate the scene. However, no major changes appear to be existing barriers to entry such as the economies of scale already benefited by the Colgate as a player who have been in the business for long. As a result of difficult trading conditions in the environment, capital requirements and integration costs are high due to the downturn in the increase interest rates rises. Power of supplier Tighter credit markets may lead to business disruptions for certain of the suppliers, contract manufacturers or trade customers which could, in turn, adversely impact colgate business. Even though this look impossible as the supplier will not want to loss Colgate business because of its global presence worldwide, this cannot be totally ruled out. Competitive Rivalry Significant competition in the industry could affect the business, for instance the rigorous competition around the world, especially from the bigger multinational consumer product companies who have greater resources than Colgate. The ability to compete depends on the strength of our brands and on our ability to protect our patent, trademark and trade dress rights and to defend against related challenges brought by competitors. A failure to compete effectively could adversely affect the growth and profitability of the company Limitation of the Five forces method The limitation of this method is the interaction of the forces with each other especially in relation to the cosmetic life cycle which affect the competitive forces significantly. Media/IT Interference at Colgate Palm Olive In 200 years of existence, information technology and media has assisted to develop a vibrant organization at Colgate. As the trend in IT changes over the years, it has also been reflected in every operations the organization. Starting with the ancient IBM system units of early 1950s to the first consumer computers of 1977 (Apple I, II III), Colgate has grown alongside to compliment the transition with time. In the modern era, parts of the positive impacts can be seen in bulletin board services, computer conferencing, computer output on microfilm, communication network, decision support systems, Electronic mail (e-mail), Electronic spread sheet, Telex, video chat, teleconferencing and the likes has been a major contribution of IT and media to the industry. Not to mention the advanced electronic instrumentation for packaging and transportation that we could notice at every stage of production. Marketing to a layman can now be found on twitter, facebook, youtube, text messaging, google, eposters and the likes. On a negative side, insecurity of data and records has been a major setback of modern IT and media in marketing. The major fear here lies in the future of the system whether or not it still pose similar advantages or negative significance. All the aforementioned means of marketing in the modern era has lots of impacts both positively and negatively: Positive Impacts of Media/IT Marketing speed and Convenience Modern IT/media has posed lots of advantages on how fast information can be disseminated. A SATA system has a data transfer rate of 300Mb/s (Wisegeek 2011). It indicates that a huge data of the size of a disc could be communicated to a large set of audience in less than one second. Marketing is now possible 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Customers can now bridge the queuing problems at stores (Hollensen 2007). Cheaper dissemination routes Because of easy means of data flow, the cost of distribution has fallen considerably over time. It cots as low as 50 pence to fax a page whereas millions of pages will sent across the internet/media at almost a free distribution cost. Apart from the fact that the whole world receives the information at once and at the same quality, the impacts are the same with the impression expressed. Moreover, it is possible to search for the lowest price available for brands (Hollensen 2007). Online financial services are also possible through these means. Effective communication Media and IT has made it possible to decide on target audience, detailed information like product, availability, and pricing are provided for the people. Through the use of multimedia, the customers could have a better understanding of their needs by for example depicting the interior decorations or by showing the beauty of housing estates. Means of reducing workloads Marketing requires lots of workloads which have been reduced by adopting information technology. IT supports the full range of organizational functions and processes that delivers products and services to customers and other key stakeholders (Chaffey et al. 2000). Different functional parts of the organization can be corporately glued with the aid of this tool. Negative Impacts of Media/IT Despite the raging benefits enjoyed by the organizations using IT/Media, the following fears are yet to be addressed: Authentication Identity problem is still yet a major problem of modern marketing. The use of passwords as a safe key has been compounded by the hacking programmers. Loop holes have been created in lots of marketing links. This has posed a challenge to the future of e-marketing/media communication systems. Spam Disease Spam diseases in marketing involves filtering off of positive information from the direct sender by hackers or computer viruses Data Saturation Crashing marketing There is tendency for marketing crash of similar products from different manufacturers. Sometimes we found it difficult identifying the differences in the advertisement from similar companies. Insecurity channels Crackers often capture details rendering the marketing system unsafe for customers. Many fears have been expressed by customers on crackers capturing the credit/debit card details. This is still a threat to be investigated in future of information technology and media. References S Hollensen (2007) Global Marketing A decision-oriented approach, fourth edition pp. 499-506. Wisegeek (2011) A website on data transfer rate, [online], Available at www.wisegeek.com/what-is-data-transfer-rate.htm Assessed: 29 Mar. 11

The Struggles of Undocumented Students Essay -- Immigration, Legal Iss

If we talk about undocumented immigrants in United States, we usually focus on the benefits and jobs they take from our country, but have we ever stood in their shoes and imagine what life is like for an illegal immigrant? To live as an undocumented immigrant is a bad situation, but I believe to be a child of an undocumented immigrant is even worse, because their choices are limited and they are unaware of their rights to attend colleges. In this research, I will focus on undocumented immigrant students, who are unable to afford for higher education, and the fear of their unknown future which is mainly cause by their undocumented status. The largest invisible group in America, to explore â€Å"what are the struggles and unsolved problems of undocumented students?† Early statistic provide from scholar article has proved that since the 1970s to 80s, Census by state has documented a high population of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Passel and Woodrow indicate that the estimation of undocumented immigrants is 2.06 millions in 1980s; most of the undocumented immigrants are Mexicans. By the year 2000, more than 1.6 million captures were along the U.S border. In southern California, â€Å"with almost 2.5 million unauthorized immigrants residing in the state, California is home to almost one fourth of the nations unauthorized† (Gonzales 473). This group can split into two major types, which are people who enter U.S illegally and people who enter through admission with their overstay visa. The Mexican group represents 60 percent of those who entered between 1970 and 1980. Mexico is the only single country which accounts the largest number of undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S. In 1980, 55 percent of the illegal immigrants... ...onvinced that my original question is an important one, therefore I am continuing with this formulation: â€Å"This invisible group in United States: the struggles and unsolved problems of undocumented immigrants† is going to be my argument of supporting â€Å"Undocumented students†. They deserve the rights to extend their education in order to achieve their American dreams. Their choices shouldn’t be limited by their statues, if they could achieve their academics successfully. United States cannot deprive undocumented immigrants of their academic rights for long term because this is a lost-lost situation. If U.S gives the undocumented immigrants their opportunities, there will be more educated people in the country, and they will give the country back with their skills. As a result, the entire country can move forward as a whole to becoming a better and stronger country.

Computer Systems Essay

1. Introduction The purpose of this report is to survey the current state of scanner technology and to briefly discuss predicted advancements in the field. By examining a range of recently published journal articles, magazine articles and internet sites on the topic of scanners this report describes the main types of scanners in common use today and examines their performance in relation to four criteria: resolution, bit-depth, dynamic range and software. The report then considers the effect of further technological advances in these four areas, as well as the deployment of new sensor technology on the future development of scanners. The first scanner, initially referred to as a ‘reading machine’, was developed in 1960 by Jacob Rabinow, a Russian born engineer. The device could scan printed material and then compare each character to a set of standards in a matrix using, for the first time, the â€Å"best match principle† to determine the original message (Blatner, Fleishman and Roth 1998, p.3). This reading machine was to form the basis for the development of current scanning, sorting and processing machines. An early improvement on the reading machine was the drum scanner. These scanners used a type of scanning technology called photomultiplier tubes (PMT). Drum scanners are still used in industry today because of the high quality images they produce. The development of smaller, more economical scanners such as desktop scanners and scanners for domestic use followed the drum scanner as the number of computer users increased and computer technology advanced. Scanners can now capture images from a wide variety of two and three  dimensional sources. These images are converted to digitised computer files that can be stored on a hard-drive or floppy disk. With the aid of specific software, these images can then be manipulated and enhanced by the user. It is now possible to deploy electronic acquisition to create an entire layout (including all graphic elements) from the same computer. This means manual stripping is no longer required (Scanners, digital cameras and photo CDs 2000). Scanners are considered an invaluable tool for adding graphics and text to documents and have been readily adopted by both business and domestic users. 2. How scanners work A scanner is a device that uses a light source to electronically convert an image into binary data (0s and 1s). This binary data can then be used to store the scanned image on a computer. A scanner recreates an image by using small electronic components referred to as the scanner’s ‘eyes’ (Scanner tips 2000). The type of ‘eyes’ used in today’s scanners are charge-coupled devices (CCD) and photomultiplier tubes (PMT). These electronic eyes measure the amount of light reflected from individual points on the page and translate it to digital signals that correspond to the brightness of each point (Englander 2000). To create a file on the computer that represents a colour image, the scanner divides the image into a grid with many individual points called pixels or picture elements (Scanner tips 2000). A scanning head, termed a row of ‘eyes’, reads over the grid and assigns a number to each pixel based on the main colour in that pixel, u sing green, blue and red. For example an aqua pixel would be saved as a number to represent the proportion of blue, green and red which represents the colour aqua (Scanners, digital cameras and photo CDs 2000). 3. Types of scanners There are five main types of scanners in common use today: drum scanners, flatbed scanners, sheet-fed scanners, slide scanners, and hand held scanners. 3.1 Drum scanners Drum scanners were widely used in the past, however they are much less commonly used today due to advances in scanner technology. As a result of their expense, these machines are primarily used by professionals in industry, where they are considered important due to the high-end quality image they produce and because they use PMT technology which is more  sophisticated than charge-coupled devices (CCDs) and contact image sensor’s (CISs). Drum scanners are difficult to operate and technicians operate these scanners by placing the item to be scanned on a glass cylinder rotating at high speeds around the sensor (Sullivan 1996). 3.2 Flatbed scanners The most popular scanners for general use are flatbed scanners. This type of scanner is highly versatile because it is able to scan flat objects as well as small three dimensional objects. Flat-bed scanners operate by placing the item to be scanned on a glass window while scanning heads move underneath it. A transparency adapter is used to scan transparent originals such as slides or x-rays, and an automatic document feeder is available for scanning large numbers of documents (Scanner tips 2000). 3.3 Sheet-fed scanners Sheet-fed scanners have grown in popularity in recent years, particularly for small office or domestic use as they are reasonably priced, can scan full-sized documents and are compact, requiring limited desk space (Scanner tips 2000). Most models of sheet-fed scanners have an inbuilt document feeder to overcome the problem of manually feeding one sheet of paper at a time. However the actual process or scanning with a sheet-fed scanner may result in distortion as the image to be scanned moves over the scanning heads (Scanner tips 2000). A further limitation of sheet-fed scanners is that they are unable to scan three dimensional objects. 3.4 Slide scanners This type of scanner is used to scan items such as slides that need careful handling during scanning. Unlike other scanners, the scanning heads in slide scanners do not reflect light from the image, but rather pass light through it. This enables these scanners to produce superior results without distortions caused by reflective light. To be able to scan small and detailed items, these scanners have a large number of eyes on the scanning head which produces a high quality result. Slide scanners tend to be more expensive and less versatile than flatbed and sheet-fed scanners as they are limited to only scanning slides and film. These scanners, however, are well suited to users requiring high quality scans of large numbers of slides (Scanner tips 2000). 3.5 Hand held scanners Hand held scanners are compact, portable scanners which are simply dragged across a page manually to capture an image. These scanners are easy to use and economical to purchase; however, their use is limited to text of up to four inches in diameter that does not require a high resolution. For this reason, hand held scanners are unsuitable for colour images. A further disadvantage of hand held scanners is that the user must have a steady hand when scanning or the resulting image will be distorted (Scanner tips 2000). 4. Scanner specifications The performance of a scanner can be examined in relation to four main criteria: resolution, bit-depth, dynamic range and software. 4.1 Resolution Resolution is a measure of how many pixels a scanner can sample in a given image. It is used to describe the amount of detail in an image (Figeiredo, McIllree and Thomas 1996). Higher resolution scanners are generally more expensive and produce superior results as they have a greater capacity to capture detail. Scanners have two types of resolutions: optical resolution and interpolated resolution. Optical resolution, or hardware resolution, is a measure of how many pixels a scanner can actually read. A current model desktop scanner typically has a resolution of 300 x 300 dots per inch (dpi) (Anderson 1999). This means that this scanner has a scanning head with 300 sensors per inch, so it can sample 300 dpi in one direction and 300 dpi in the other direction by stopping the scanning head 300 times per inch in both directions. Some scanners stop the scanning head more frequently as it moves down the page, giving an optical resolution of 300 x 600 dpi; however, scanning more frequently in one direction does not improve the result of the scan. The basic requirement for scanning detailed images and line art from photos or other printed originals is an optical resolution of 600 dpi. When scanning slides and negatives the minimum optical resolution is 1200 dpi. Interpolated resolution measures the number of pixels a scanner is able to predict. A scanner can turn a 300 x 300 dpi scan into a 600 x 600 dpi scan by looking in-between scanned pixels and guessing what that spot would have  looked like if it had been scanned. This prediction is then used to insert new pixels in between the actual ones scanned. This technique is less precise than optical resolution; however it assists in improving the enlargement of scanned images. 4.2 Bit depth Bit depth refers to the amount of information that a scanner records for each pixel when converting an image to digital form. Scanners differ in the amount of data they record for each pixel within an image. The simplest kinds of scanners only record data related to black and white details and have a bit depth of 1 (Anderson 1999). The minimum bit depth required for scanning photographs and documents is 24-bits, while slides, negatives or transparencies need a scanner with at least 30-bits. Thus for a scanner to produce a high quality scan with colour, a higher bit depth is required. In general, current scanners have a bit depth of 24, which means that 8 bits of information can be collected for the three primary colours used in scanning; blue, red and green (Anderson 1999). This high resolution allows scanners to produce images close to photographic quality. 4.3 Dynamic range Dynamic range refers to the measurement of the range of tones a scanner can record on a scale of 0.0 to 4.0, with 0.0 being perfect white and 4.0 being perfect black. Colour flat-bed scanners usually have a dynamic range of 2.4. A range of this measurement is unable to provide high quality colour scans. A dynamic range of 2.8 and 3.2 is suited to professional purposes and can be found in high-end scanners. An even higher dynamic range of 3.0 to 3.8 can be provided by drum scanners. 4.4 Software A scanner, like any type of hardware, requires software. Typically the two most common pieces of software provided with scanners include optical character recognition (OCR) and image editing software. Optical character recognition software translates the information recorded in a scan, tiny dots, into a text file which can be edited. Image editing software allows the tones and colours of an image to be manipulated for better printing and display. Image editing also gives filters to apply special effects to scanned images 5. Future developments The quality of scanned images is constantly improving as characteristics such as resolution, bit-depth and dynamic range are enhanced and further developed. More sophisticated image editing and optical character recognition software development is also resulting in superior quality scans. Future advances are expected to result in the incorporation of specialized scanners into other types of technology such as the recently developed digital camera. This device allows the user to take pictures of three-dimensional objects much like a regular camera, except that instead of using film, the objects are scanned by the camera in a similar process to the functioning of a flatbed scanner. The relatively new area of sensor technology in the form of a contact image sensor (CIS) (see Appendix 1) is expected to improve the functionality of scanners and the quality of images as it â€Å"replaces the cumbersome optical reduction technique with a single row of sensors† (Grotta and Wiener 1998, p. 1). Developers have already been able to produce a CIS scanner which is thinner, lighter, more energy efficient and cheaper to manufacture than a traditional CCD base device. However, the quality of the scan is not as good as its counterparts. Further development of CIS technology is needed to improve image quality and colour, and to address the problem of a limited 300 or 600 dpi. 6. Conclusion This report has identified five types of scanners currently available. Some are primarily used for professional purposes such as the drum scanner; others are used more broadly in the workplace and home such as flatbed scanners and to a lesser extent sheetfed scanners. Scanners for specialized purposes have also been identified such as slide and handheld scanners. The performance of these scanners is dependent upon their resolution, bit-depth, dynamic range and software. Scanners have improved significantly in recent years in terms of weight, size, price and speed, and the replacement of CCD technology with CIS technology is anticipated to produce further benefits to these areas as well as to scan quality. The impact of these improvements is expected to increase the accessibility of scanner technology to a wider range of users and its suitability for a wider range of purposes. In  relation to this, the future of scanner technology seems to point to the convergence of different techn ologies. Specialized scanners are currently being incorporated into other types of technologies such as digital cameras, printers, and photocopiers. This can be expected to continue with other forms of technology in conjunction with further improvements to image quality, speed, price, size and weight. 7. Reference list Anderson, D. The PC Guide. [http:www.pctechguide.com/18scanners.htm]. Blatner, D., Fleishman, G. Roth, G. (1998) Real world scanning and halftones 2nd edition, Peachpit Press, USA. Englander, I (2000). The Architecture of computer hardware and systems software. John Wiley, USA, p272. Figeiredo, J. McIllree, J. Thomas, N. (1996) Introducing information technology 2nd edition Jacaranda Press, Singapore, p145. Grotta, D. and Weiner, S. What’s now †¦What’s next. [http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/features/scanners98/intro.html] PC Magazines 20 October 1998. 8/4/00 Prepress, scanners, digital cameras and photoCDs. [http://www.prepress.pps.com/mem/lib/ptr/scanners.html] 1998. 6/4/00 Scansoft scanner tips [http://www.scannercentral.com/scanners/tips/tips1.asp] 2000.6/4/00 Sullivan. M. Types of scanners. [http://hsdesign.com/scanning/types/types.html] 1996. 8/4/00

The Race, Racialization, Ethnicity And Racism - 1384 Words

When immigrants flooded the shores of the United States in the earliest part of the twentieth century, the Immigration Commission hired an anthropologist to prepare a Dictionary of Races of Races or People. W.E.B. Du Bois observed in the late 1930s that no scientific definition of race is possible. He said Race is a dynamic and not a static conception, and that typical races are continually changing and developing, amalgamating and differentiating. What Du Bois meant in layman’s term was that it is impossible to characterize people based on measurements. Orser begins his book by talking about Race, Racialization, Ethnicity and Racism. Orser says that it can be argued that the science of humanity in America was initially organized around†¦show more content†¦The first example of classifying people was during the seventh century when Isidore of Seville used region to classify the world’s people into two groups: Christians and Idol worshippers. I thought this was quite interesting because it has never crossed my mind, classsification has been a thing since humanity. I always thought people were only classified into groups based on physical characteristics. On the other hand, Ancient Egyptians, Indians, Greeks and Indian created and used what is called the racialist classification of human difference. He brought up ethnicity because archaeologists have made significant advances in connecting past ethnic groups with excavated material cultures. The prominent role of ethnic research in archaeology makes sense because it re affirmed the long-held archaeological tenet that culturally discrete peoples could be identified by their specific objects. Orser continues by saying that the basis for identifying archaeological cultures linked distinct peoples and their unique artifacts. This quite Interesting because objects from the past, some maybe valuable brings about a sense of culture. Orser also made a relationship/distinction between Class and Rac e. A statement that I thought summarized the relationship betw Class and Race was when he said The Negro is poor because is black ; that is obvious enough.p But, perhaps more Importantly, the Negro is black because he is poor. This statement is interesting, it was true years