Billing and Payments Monitoring System

I. INTRODUCTION 1. 1 Background of the Study One of the most important things to remember when you have a business or a company is keeping records. Monitoring bills and payments are very important. People are assigned to different positions such as cashiers, treasurers, finance managers and others that involve handling money. Without such records, a company will not be able to keep track of their transactions, which would lead to negative results such as being broken or having more expenses than income. The process of recording bills and payments are done in different ways.Most companies would do it manually, a cashier or any other qualified person would do the computations and write it down and keep it. Our client company, however, only has two people that have access to their records. In this situation, the cashier has no assistants so that the job is very difficult as she manages everything by herself. The proponents intend to propose and develop a Billing and Payments Monitoring System for Minerva Trading; the House of Motorcycles Inc. ; it would computerize the tiring manual process of writing everything down in paper.It would keep the records, and it would allow the users to keep track of their customers and their corresponding ledgers. It would show the total price and record factors that might affect changes in payment such as discounts and advanced payments. 1. 2 Overview of the Current System Our interview with Mr. Dustin Sacay the Officer in Charge of Minerva Trading, Novaliches branch and Ms. Rosie Pascual the cashier, went well as we talked about how we could help their company with the system that we intend to develop.They gave us all the data that we needed, and they were very cooperative while we were conducting the interview. Our client, Minerva Trading; the House of Motorcycles Inc. the company that accepted our proposal had to do everything manually, they write all the transactions and records on papers. While that is the most common way of k eeping records, there are certain problems that would arise from time to time. These problems might include ink erasures, writing the wrong data, misplacement of records, and restocking of paper constantly.Minerva's trading has a simple step by step process to be followed whenever a transaction was made. First, the customer would fill up an application form; he/she would select his/her payment type, installment or cash. If the customer chooses cash, he/she gets the bill and the transaction is finished. If its installment, the OIC would do a CI (Checking Investigation) to do some background checking on the customer, if the customer passes or fails the CI, he/she would be notified.If the customer is approved by the OIC, his application form and order detail would be submitted to the cashier. The cashier would then fill up a contract and a ledger that would give the payment details for the customer. The customer subsequently gives a down payment and afterwards pays the rest of the amou nt whenever he can until he/she completes the whole amount. 1. 3 Significance of the Study The following will be the beneficiaries of this study: * Company The system would reduce the time that they spend on manually writing down everything in paper. Cashier The cashier would be the primary beneficiary. She does nearly 90% of the paperwork in Minerva Trading. Once they receive and use the system, their work would be a lot faster, easier and more organized. * OIC (Officer In Charge) Other than the cashier, the OIC is the only other person that has the authority and access to all the records. He would find the system useful as it will simplify and lessen their work. * Customers The customers might also find the system helpful, especially during transactions.Filling up forms and other paperwork might shorten the time that they need to wait or to get their receipts and other things that usually involved the manual writing processes. * Proponents The proponents would also benefit from th is, as it would expand our knowledge when it comes to system development, it helps us practice our interpersonal skills as we communicate with different people, it helps us practice writing in English with the documentation, and last but not the least, the subject itself is going to prepare us for other thesis subjects in the coming semesters. Future Researchers This might also be of some of the use to future researchers as it is distinct from the typical proposals that involve systems that seem common to both teachers and other proponents alike. We believe that learning about a system that is different from the usual proposed titles would expand their knowledge and maybe even help them think of their individual concepts in creating their own systems.

ESL Essay on Belonging (China Coin and Rabbit Proof Fence) Essay

A sense of belonging or not belonging can emerge from the connections made with people, places, groups, communities and the larger world. How does this apply to â€Å"The China Coin†? Through a study of the novel â€Å"the China Coin† by Allan Baillie, it can be seen that a sense of belonging or not belonging can emerge from the connections made with people, places, groups, communities and the larger world. This essay will explore how a sense of belonging or not belonging develops from the main characters’ (Joan and Leah’s) connections with each other and with places, specifically Good Field Village. It will also examine how a character’s connection with the nation of China at large gives rise to their sense of belonging or not belonging. In the novel â€Å"The China Coin†, the author uses various language techniques to illustrate Leah and Joan’s sense of belonging or not belonging, which emerges from their connection with each other. The novel begins with Leah feeling disconnected with Joan even though they are the only two members of their family left. This can be seen by the way Baillie uses metaphor to compare Joan to â€Å"an evil aunt, who flies a broom on full moon†¦Ã¢â‚¬ . This conveys Leah’s sense of not belonging to the relationship. A sense of belonging unfolds later in the novel after Leah and Joan both go through much together, hence leaving them with a more intimate connection with each other. After hearing grandfather implying that he wants them to stay so that he can trick them into paying for a ‘Hong Kong house’, Joan and Leah’s strong connection is expressed by their ability to communicate without even using words. Baillie uses polysyndeton to emphasize this in the sentence â€Å"And both mother and daughter stopped and grinned at each other†. As can be seen, both these examples clearly show that Leah and Joan’s sense of not belonging or belonging to each other has emerged from their connection with each other. Apart from that, Allan Baillie has also used language features in the novel to draw attention to the sense of belonging or not belonging that stem from connections with a place, specifically, Go od Field Village in â€Å"The China Coin†. When the main characters first arrive in Good Field village, Joan felt accepted immediately as she spoke Cantonese fluently and quickly formed a connection with Jade. As a result, a sense of belonging was generated in Joan. This is reinforced by the author’s use of simile to describe them as women who â€Å"had been neighbours for years†. Contrastingly, Leah, who was not as fluent in  the language, could not converse with Jade and Joan. As a result, she did not feel a sense of belonging to Good Field village. This is portrayed by Baillie’s use of the third person narrative voice, which tells the audience â€Å"Leah felt suddenly alone†. All this suggests that the concept of belonging or not belonging develops from one’s connection with a place. Lastly, language features used in the novel â€Å"The China Coin† has supported the fact that a sense of belonging or not belonging can emerge from connections with the larger world. This can be seen in the character of the young boy who puts up political posters at the restaurant where Joan and Leah are eating. He does not feel connected with the state as he does not agree with the current political situations and wants democracy instead. This generates a sense of not belonging in the character, which is further reinforced as he uses hyperbole to describe other protesters and himself as â€Å"Enemies of the State†. Similarly, Ke, who is disconnected with the principles of China’s political agendas, feels like he does not belong to China at large. This is evidenced in the use of dialogue where Ke tells Leah about what he wants changed in the political system. He tells her that he wants â€Å"Democracy! No more guanxi! No more influence, no more back-door deals!†. From this, it can be inferred that one’s sense of not belonging can rise up from one’s relationship with the world at large. In conclusion, Leah and Joan’s connection with each other and with places such as Good Field Village give rise to their impression of belonging or not belonging. Similarly, a sense of not belonging can be seen to emerge from connections that other characters have with the larger nation of China.

Biological Anthropology Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Biological Anthropology - Assignment Example H. Sapiens was able to outcompete and survive than the Neanderthals because the Neanderthals were not wise enough to adapt to cultural and physiological advancements. Although the Neanderthals’ brains can be compared to that of H. Sapiens and of a modern man but their brains were solely focused on the needs of their massive bodies, leaving them unable to think logically on how they could innovate and survive as species. The case of the Neanderthal is more physiological than cultural: because they used their brains to identify the needs of their bodies, intercommunication was never part of their exercise and could have caused their extinction. During the Ice Age, H. Sapiens were more clever enough to speak complicated languages and build operations far from their locations but the Neanderthals were limited in these aspects. 2. According to the textbook, the biological definition of race is a population with individuals that have defining and measurable biological descriptions with an Fst of at least 0.25 virtual to other populations of the species. Among Humans, however, the Fst is only 0.17. This goes to say that Homo Sapiens do not have biological races. Furthermore, there is also no way to look at the genetic cards and identify race. Race, in my opinion, is just a matter of personal view. If you can certainly believe that you can categorize humans into groups based on their colors – whether it is a shade of brown or black or white – then that is a matter of personal standpoint. Nevertheless, categorization of humans based on color does not guarantee accuracy and uniformity among all people: how would you be able to distinguish an African person to an Australian aborigine? There is not enough variation in human population that could be used as basis for classifying humans into races or subspecies, much less, if

Counterfeiting and Pricing in China and UK Dissertation - 1

Counterfeiting and Pricing in China and UK - Dissertation Example Counterfeiting a product is a type of cheating the consumers. â€Å"Counterfeiting is such a problem in China that it may drive away some foreign investors that manufacture designer label goods, companies warn. They say that despite efforts by the authorities, they were still losing millions of dollars in revenues because of availability of counterfeit products† (International Management, Phatak, 2006)† (Designer Concern Over Mainland Fakes Threatens Future Investment 2002). Now a day, fashion industry is seen using the counterfeit products on a large scale. More number of designers is using the style and color of the same product which are being designed by the other designers. Girls of young age are attracted towards it, as when different colors emerge of the same design. Such consumers believe that the label name, brand name, and recognizing characteristics of design such as color, logo, outline, and models are very precious. Consumers will have the difficult dilemma whether they use a counterfeit product or an original. Fashion counterfeits may perform as a risk-free test form, make attention between consumers, and create them increase constructive word-of-mouth to other customers. When compared fashionable products to physical appearances, the customers will choose either the counterfeit products or the original one depending on the convenience for shopping, or income as both offer a better appearance irrespective of its product and service quality. "Counterfeiters serve customers who aspire to own luxury goods but who are unable or unwilling to pay for the real thing† ... A greater part of counterfeit commodities bought in the UK are purchased after the importing of those commodities into the country. The majority of clients buys counterfeit products deliberately; while some consumers have been mislead to purchase counterfeits as they supposed were legitimate at the point of sale. 2.3 Mass Production of Counterfeit Products: Products in huge demand can be produced on the basis of the equal or similar features, often enclosed and branded in means to create them indifferent from the existing one. â€Å"The most popular counterfeit market is clothing, followed by shoes, watches, leather goods, and jewelry. Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Burberry, Tiffany, Prada, Hermes, Chanel, Dior, Yves St Laurent, and Cartier are frequently pirated. Knockoffs of fashion brands are usually manufactured in China, South Korea, Taiwan, and South America.† (Ritson 2007). The counterfeit products are then sold through counterpart markets, or even familiarize into the product supply series. Without the expenses of the other similar products, the counterfeits are rated particularly with regard to the competitors. Owing to the viable circumference, in a number of marketplaces in some division of the world, counterfeit goods are faraway more widespread than the previous products. When compared to UK with regard to the counterfeit products, half of the unsafe products come from china. â€Å"Counterfeiting requires advanced and costly production equipment is seen as limiting the number of parties that would engage in infringing activities. For example, the automobiles or products of similar complexity are difficult targets for counterfeiters, even if they can utilize

Mid term assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Mid term - Assignment Example is 1.3%, European Union: 1%, Japan: -0.4%, China: 9.8%, India: 6.6%, Ethiopia: 8.5%. (C.I.A., 2009). As a general rule the LDCs tend to have higher average rates of growth as compared to high income economies, which implies that eventually, such poor countries may equal the per capita incomes of wealthier countries, which in an economic term is referred to as: convergence. b. Technological innovation is almost certainly a key driver of long-term economic growth. However, developing economies require more than mere technological advancements, to effectively achieve economic progress since economic growth, in the absence of proper and adequate manufacturing capabilities, along with the implementation of state of the art technological knowhow, no innovation can actually be expected. Moreover, there must be the existence of sufficient resources that facilitate such innovation, which in turn drives economic growth, such as exceptionally high quality of human capital, an adequate level of educational system and science and technology, as well as effective implementation of institutional reforms across the country. c. The institutional reforms must be accompanied by advances in science and technology as well as nation wide political, and legal reform policies. Also, these countries must make optimum utilization of their natural resource base such as wind and solar energy, by taking into consideration the differences in its technological capacity and energy requirements. Furthermore, long term sustainable development can be ensured through partnerships with industrialized nations which enable LDCs to share and implement valuable information regarding policies to ensure growth and development. 2. Vietnam has successfully managed to accomplish a noteworthy reduction in poverty in the recent years which further substantiates the belief that poverty could be concentrated considerably within a specified time limit with the help of effective market reform policies.

Movie Gattaca Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Gattaca - Movie Review Example to second-class citizen status and find that they cannot reach their goals, and their dreams severely impeded because society just cannot tolerate them and will obstruct their every hope and aspiration. They also suffer psychologically and emotionally because society not only treats them as pariahs but look at them as pitiful and scornful creatures. But this society itself is grossly myopic because it fails to see defect such as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who suffered polio and yet campaigned and won the presidency or heptathlete Jackie Joyner Kersee who was asthmatic and yet ruled them all in Olympic heptathlon and the long jump for decades. The list is long and includes Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Albert Einstein, Helen Keller. The list goes on and on and probably include our own ancestors who shone and stood out despite physical limitations stressing the point that the most valuable thing is not what is evident to the eyes. MOVIE SYNOPSIS It is in the above backdrop that Vincent (Ethan Hawke), who was born In-Valid, meaning that because of poverty his parents could not afford to allow the foetal Vincent to undergo pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and DNA selection and thus be genetically engineered with superlative traits from both mother and father, was caught in a trying situation. As such, Vincent cannot qualify for professional jobs such as being an astronaut, which he dearly desired but had to content himself with menial jobs such as the cleaning job at Gattaca Aerospace Corporation, the NASA type of the future era. Unlike his brother Anton, who has the whole world in front of him, Vincent found out that because society practically shut the door in front of him, he had to work double time- learning, working and dreaming to remove the barriers placed before him. Instead of resigning himself to his fate, he saved money, led a frugal life while scavenging

Methodology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Methodology - Essay Example The research undertakes a mix of qualitative and quantitative aspects of study in order to arrive at desired observations. The questionnaire is circulated online to access a wide range of responses. Additionally, few open ended questions allow for greater knowledge on certain areas of study through the questionnaire format. The study has also undertaken a telephonic interview apart from the secondary data research to support quantitative facts by reliable and verifiable information sourced from the interview and qualitative research. According to Tobin and Joseph, (2006), research philosophy is the manner in which one gathers, organizes and analyses the data for the purpose of researching a particular problem. The common research philosophy has two main principals associated which are known as the positivist philosophical process and the interpretivism or the phenomenological style. Both the models are effective tools for carrying out the research activity but the difference arises in the objectivity of the model. According to the positivist approach, theory is established prior to conducting the research activity. The positivist research can be carried out in a two pronged approach, the descriptive research and the experimental research. The research model based on the positivist approach is primarily focused upon bringing together an analysis of the dependency of the external factors and the internal factors of the research. Philosophically, the positivist research method is based on ontological and axiological perspectives of a research problem. The phenomenological model of interpretivism was developed by Edmund Husserl and is the way of research that conducts the research in a manner that is influenced by human perceptions (Somekh and Lewin, 2004). The particular model of research lays focus on the micro level sociological issues like the prime motives behind the behaviour of people. Such

Job Interview Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Job Interview - Assignment Example The challenges that I usually face at job interviews are fear of under-performing, difficulty in articulation and a feeling of answering off-the-track. As a result, I cannot project my talent and skill to prospective employers the way I would like to. I constantly have this negative feel that I would make blunders in the interview and this fear puts me under stress which eventually hampers my performance. I have observed that my panic attack numbs my other faculties like speech and comprehension, thereby affecting my ability to communicate in a sound manner. I become tongue-tied and stiff in responding to the interviewer’s questions and often miss the point. According to job consultants and grooming experts, interview fright is caused due to many factors but the most common one is lack of preparation (Crosby, 2000). At this point, I would like to share my experience at a job interview. There were two rounds to the interview, an aptitude test in the first round and meeting in person in the second round. I qualified in the first round but I did miserably in the second. I could not provide prompt replies to basic questions like â€Å"Why have you chosen our organization over the others?† â€Å"Why do you think we should consider you, when there are more experienced professionals?† I was totally unprepared for these types of questions and had concentrated only on my field of expertise. I learned a valuable lesson that being good in your subject is not enough to make it big in the world; you need to make a strategy for achieving your goals. I fell on to reading a number of informative articles and write-ups on winning interview skills and confidence-building. My reading resources helped me formulate an action plan. Firstly, I would prepare an interview script that would include self-introduction, answers to possible

Business Law - land law Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Business Law - land law - Case Study Example By its very nature, a claim of adverse possession is hostile to the claims of other persons. It cannot be hidden but must be open and notorious in order to put other persons on notice as to one's claim for possession of the real estate. A claim to title by adverse possession often must be made under color of title. Color of title means a claim to title by way of a fact which, although on its face appears to support a person's claim to title, is in some way defective and falls short of actually establishing title to the real estate. An example of a claim made under color of title would be a deed whose execution was defective or is in question. Another example is a claim arising from another person's Last Will and Testament. Yet another common example is where two or more persons have received separate deeds to the same parcel of real estate." Black's Law (2006). "Unknown to the owner, a third person - a "squatter" - may be in illegal and unauthorized occupation of a far corner of the land parcel. If nothing is done to remove him, after a certain period of time the squatter may eventually acquire legal rights over the land parcel, or part of it. Further, questions may arise as to the relationship between the formal owner of the land parcel, often a male, and other family members. What interests, if any, do women and other members of the owner's family hold in the land" Hodgson (2004). Second, does he have a reason to believe that he has a right to be there and keep the land Hill Bob may have been given a portion of the land through title in a last will and testament. Third, how many years has he actually lived on the land Hill Bob would be able to claim adverse possession of a portion of the land if it were obvious that he could support that claim. In Colorado, the duration of such possession is seven (7) years if the claimant claims under color of title. If the claimant does not make his/her claim under color of title, the duration of possession is eighteen (18) years. Colorado Code 38-41-101, 108, 109. Fourth, has he ever been told by a previous owner that in exchange for work completed to the land, a portion of the land belonged to him in exchange For example in a different state, the person claiming must past three tests. "Under the Limitations Act in Ontario, an owner's title to land can be extinguished by the adverse possession of another person for a period of 10 years. In order for an adverse possession claim to succeed, the person claiming the disputed land must meet three tests. Throughout the entire 10-year period, he or she must have:had actual exclusive, open, and visible possession,had the intention to exclude the true owner from possession, and effectively excluded the true owner from possession." Aaron (2002) In summary, if Tim sued Hill Bill and Hill Bill has been in possession of the

Comparing of two corpora from a linguistic journal and a transcribed Essay

Comparing of two corpora from a linguistic journal and a transcribed interview - Essay Example This study compared two differing corpora, each 300 words in length, for four different linguistic variables. The corpora were extracted from a linguistic journal and a transcribed interview and the linguistic variables were number of sentences, average length of sentences, number and type of dependent clauses and number of contractions. Results supported Hypotheses 1 and 4, wherein more and shorter sentences and more contractions were found in the transcribed interview corpus than in the linguistic journal extract. The findings did not support Hypothesis 2 because even though the linguistic extract provided less and longer sentences it was the interview extract that provided more dependent clauses within the 300 words. Hypothesis 3 was only partly supported because the linguistic journal corpus did not provide evidence of more dependent noun clauses than other types of dependent clauses.

Payroll System Essay Example for Free

Payroll System Essay This chapter presents the introduction, background of the study, theoretical framework, conceptual framework, statement of the problem, scope and limitation, significance of the study, and definition of terms of the proposed study. Introduction The emerging technology of today’s generation brought up the advancement of processes in people’s lives. Information technology (I.T.) is a more specific term that stresses the role of unified communication and the integration of telecommunication and computers (Murray, 2011). Specifically, computer is a general purpose device that can be programmed to carry out a finite set of arithmetic and logical operations. It lessens the tedious tasks carried out in manual based operations in the society. However, providing efficient security is still considered as one of the arising difficulties in information technology. Security plays a vital role in one’s daily lives and as forms of protection are structure and process that provide or improve security as a condition, it is present in all aspects of life. At present, one of the devices used in maintaining a strict security especially in attendance monitoring and payroll generation is the biometric technology or simply biometrics. Biometrics (MSU, 2012) refers to the automatic identification of a person based on his/her multiple scientific fields. One of which is his anatomical (e.g. fingerprint, iris) characteristics of traits. A biometric system made use of a fingerprint scanner, a sensor that employs the user to be present to enroll in the system so that his biometric template or reference can be captured. This template is securely stored in a central database or smart card issued to the user. The template is used for matching when an individual needs to be identified. Depending on the context, a biometric system can operate either in verification (authentication) or an identification mode. Thus, the identification mode of biometrics is frequently used in attendance monitoring in order to compute and generate payrolls. Biometrics or biometric fingerprint scanner is used in monitoring the attendance that supervises the employee’s daily time log and are stored in a computerized database. It maintains a daily record of a person’s arrival and departure time from work which helps in generation of payrolls. Payroll is the sum of all financial records of salaries of an employee, wages, bonuses and deductions. Thus, the main purpose of a payroll system is to lessen the tedious tasks in salary computation in order to generate accurate and timely reports.

The Victorian Era and the French Lieutenants Woman Essay Example for Free

The Victorian Era and the French Lieutenants Woman Essay The French Lieutenants Woman is a 1981 film of historical fiction, contrasting present day relationships, morality and industry with that of the Victorian era in the 1850s. It is an adaptation of a novel by John Fowles, the script was written by Harold Pinter. The setting is in England, Lyme and London specifically, where Charles, a Darwinian scientist is courting the daughter of a wealthy businessman. The film depicts Charles as somewhat of the laughingstock with the rich citizens of Lyme who regard his profession as folly. His future father-in-law offers him a position in his shipping company which is expanding to Liverpool and Bristol. The scenery in this portion of the film depicts frantic building going on in the background fitting with the period of the Industrial revolution. The film within a film concept has two actors playing the characters in the film The French Lieutenants Woman but also follows the actors relationship with each other. This presents a contrast between the present day (1981) with the Victorian era. In her research on the Victorian era in the film, the actress Anna states that in 1857 there were over 50,000 prostitutes in London. Sarah Woodruff, the French Lieutenants woman, is seen as a morally deficient woman, likened to a prostitute, and goes to work for a rich and pious woman. This woman, Mrs. Palfrey (I think) describes Sarahs actions of walking in the under cliffs and staring out at sea to be sinful. She states there is a vast difference between those people from the country and those from London and says there are gross disorders in the streets. This division between what is acceptable in Lyme versus London is seen when Charles is present for tea with his fiance and Mrs. Palfrey, and is scolded for his servants attraction to a country girl. There is an obvious division between the upper and lower class which is depicted in Mrs. Palfreys treatment of her servants and Sarah. The prudent relations between male and female in the Victorian era are depicted in Charles behavior towards his fiance, for example he asks permission to see her alone in the conservatory. The treatment of women during this period is demonstrated in Sarah Woodruff, that she is labeled a whore, when in fact we find out later, she was as much a virgin as Charles former fiance. Charles falls in love with Sarah Woodruff, offering to pay for an asylum for her treatment. He ends his engagement, and interestingly he has to appear in a court and be labeled a scoundrel. When Sarah Woodruff disappears, he looks in London, waiting as the factory women get out of work at 5:00 p.m. Presumably, according to the history of this era from the Longman Anthology, most workers would have gone to work as early as 4:00 a.m. that morning (1826). The faces of the women provide a poignant message of the working conditions of that period. Charles also goes to a prostitution area searching for Sarah. He does not find her there, but earlier in the film he had asked her why she didnt just leave Lyme and all the condemnation and accusations of the townsfolk. Sarah stated that if she went to London, she knew what she would become. In the film there are beggars in the streets and London is depicted as a dreary place to live. Sarah Woodruff, turns her name around to become Mrs. Roughwood and Charles eventually finds her. The contrast in this film is interesting as both actors sleep with each other though they both apparently have committed relationships. In the end, the male actor seems ready to forsake his marriage for a relationship with the actress, Anna. He mistakenly calls out Sarah when she leaves, so it appears he was having difficulty separating fact from fiction. This film was accurate historically in my opinion, with what I have read this term in the Longman Anthology which states that in the Victorian era working conditions necessitated reform in the 1840s (1793). The Atlas of Literature describes London in the period in which this film is set as gentility and beggary, great spaces and cramped crooked streets, leisure and brute work, families and orphans (96). This film did an excellent job of contrasting the idle rich in the country and the upper class in London. There was a snobbery that was emphasized, using the servants versus their masters. The condemnation of Sarah Woodruff as a fallen woman was contrasted by the facts that later came out. The stark contrasts in England during the Industrial revolution were evident in this film and I felt it was an interesting piece of historical fiction. Works Cited Bradbury, Malcolm, ed. The Atlas of Literature. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1998. Damrosch, David, ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. New York: Longman, 2000. The French Lieutenants Woman. Dir. Karel Reisz. Perf. Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep. United Artists, 1981.

Integrated Marketing Communications

Integrated Marketing Communications Introduction Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is a development of current and customary strategies of marketing, to upgrade the correspondence of a steady message passing on the organizations brands to partners. Coupling different strategies together is added value in making successful correspondence as it tackles the individual advantages of each channel, which when consolidated together forms a clearer and greater effect than if utilized exclusively. To have the capacity to make progress through IMC, advertisers will recognize the limits around the promotional mix components and how the adequacy of the campaign message will be gotten a handle on by the gathering of people. Discussion Integrated Marketing Communications is a basic concept. It guarantees that all types of communications and messages are deliberately connected together. At its most fundamental level, Integrated Marketing Communications, or IMC, as well call it, implies coordinating all the limited time instruments, so they cooperate in agreement. Promotions is one of the Ps in the marketing mix. Promotion has its own blend of specialized tools. These specialized instruments work better in the event that they cooperate in amicability as opposed to in disconnection. Their entirety is more noteworthy than their parts furnishing they talk reliably with one voice constantly, unfailingly. This is upgraded when coordination goes past simply the essential specialized devices. There are different levels of coordination, for example, Horizontal, Vertical, Internal, External and Data joining. Here is the way they help to reinforce Integrated Communications. Brand Communication and Integrated Marketing Brand communication is an activity taken by associations to make their products and services famous among the end-clients. Brand communication goes far in promoting products and services among target buyers. The procedure includes recognizing people who are most appropriate to the buy of items or administrations (likewise called target customers) and advancing the brand among them through any of the accompanying means: Advertising Sales Promotion Public Relation Direct Marketing Personal Selling Social media, and so on Integrated marketing communication alludes to coordinating every one of the strategies for brand advancement to advance a specific item or administration among target clients. In incorporated showcasing correspondence, all parts of promoting correspondence cooperate for expanded deals and most extreme cost adequacy. Components of Integrated Marketing Communications The Foundation As the name recommends, this stage includes detailed examination of both the product and also target market. It is fundamental for advertisers to comprehend the brand, its offerings and end-clients. You have to know the necessities, states of mind and desires of the objective clients. Keep a close watch on contenders exercises. The Corporate Culture The elements of items and administrations should be in accordance with the work culture of the association. Each association has a vision and its imperative for the advertisers to remember the same before planning items and administrations. Give a chance to comprehend it with the assistance of a case. Association As vision is to advance green and clean world. Normally its items should be eco benevolent and biodegradable, in lines with the vision of the association. Brand Focus Brand Focus speaks to the corporate personality of the brand. Purchaser Experience Marketers need to concentrate on shopper encounter which alludes to what the clients feel about the item. A buyer is probably going to get an item which has great bundling and looks appealing. Items need to meet and surpass client desires. Communication Tools Communication devices incorporate different methods of advancing a specific brand, for example, publicizing, coordinate offering, advancing through web-based social networking, for example, Facebook, twitter, Orkut et cetera. Promotional Tools Brands are advanced through different special devices, for example, exchange advancements, individual offering et cetera. Associations need to reinforce their association with clients and outer customers. Integrated Tools Organizations need to keep a customary track on client criticisms and audits. You need particular programming like client relationship administration (CRM) which helps in measuring the adequacy of different coordinated advertising specialized instruments. Incorporated advertising correspondence empowers all parts of showcasing combine to work in congruity to advance a specific item or administration successfully among end-clients. Benefits of Integrated Marketing Communications Albeit Integrated Marketing Communications requires a considerable measure of efforts, it conveys many advantages. It can give competitive advantage, help sales and benefits, while sparing cash, time and stress. IMC wraps correspondences around clients and helps them travel through the different phases of the purchasing procedure. The association all the while combines its image, builds up a discourse and supports its association with clients. This Relationship Marketing concretes an obligation of devotion with clients which can shield them from the inescapable issue of competition. The capacity to keep a client forever is an intense competitive advantage. IMC additionally expands benefits through expanded viability. At its most essential level, a brought together message has more effect than an incoherent heap of messages. In a busy world, a predictable, and perfectly clear message has a superior shot of slicing through the commotion of more than five hundred business messages which hits clients every single day. At another level, introductory research proposes that images partook in promoting and regular postal mail help both publicizing mindfulness and mail shot reactions. So IMC can help deals by extending messages over a few specialized devices to make more roads for clients to wind up distinctly mindful, stimulated, and at last, to make a purchase. Integrated messages additionally help purchasers by giving convenient updates, refreshed data and exceptional offers which, when displayed in an arranged succession, help them move serenely through the phases of their purchasing procedure and this lessens their hopelessness of decision in a mind boggling and occupied world. IMC additionally makes messages more reliable and in this manner more strong. Office expenses are lessened by utilizing a individual organization for all correspondences and regardless of the possibility that there are a few offices, time is spared when gatherings unite every one of the offices for briefings, imaginative sessions, strategic or key arranging. This lessens workload and consequent anxiety levels one of the many advantages of IMC. Barriers Regardless of its many advantages, Integrated Marketing Communications, or IMC, has numerous barriers. Notwithstanding the standard imperviousness to change and the unique issues of speaking with a wide assortment of target gatherings of people, there are numerous different hindrances which limit IMC. These include: Functional Silos; Stifled Creativity; Time Scale Conflicts and an absence of Management know-how. Take useful storehouses. Unbending hierarchical structures are swarmed with managers who secure both their financial plans and their energy base. Tragically, some hierarchical structures detach correspondences, information, and even supervisors from each other. For instance the PR sector frequently doesnt answer to promoting. The business drive seldom meet the publicizing or deals advancement individuals et cetera. And the greater part of this can be exasperated by turf wars or interior power fights where particular managers oppose having some of their choices (and spending plans) decided or even affected by somebody from another department. IMC can confine imagination. Not any more wild and wacky deals advancements unless they fit into the general showcasing interchanges procedure. The delight of uncontrolled inventiveness might be smothered, however the innovative test might be more prominent and at last all the more fulfilling when working inside a more tightly, incorporated, imaginative brief. Include diverse time scales into an inventive brief and youll see Time Horizons give one more hindrance to IMC. For instance, picture publicizing, intended to sustain the brand over the more drawn out term, may strife with shorter term promoting or deals advancements intended to lift quarterly deals. However the two targets can be suited inside a general IMC if precisely arranged. However, this sort of arranging is not normal. A review in 1995, uncovered that most directors need mastery in IMC. Be that as it may, its chiefs, as well as organizations. There is a multiplication of single train offices. There give off an impression of being not very many individuals who have genuine experience of all the promoting correspondences disciplines. This absence of know how is then intensified by an absence of duty. The Shift from Fragmented to Integrated Marketing Communications Preceding the development of integrated marketing communication amid the 1990s, mass interchanges-the act of relaying data to substantial portions of the populace through TV, radio, and other media-dominated promoting.   Publicists communicated their offerings and strategic offers with little respect for the assorted needs, tastes, and estimations of purchasers. Frequently, this one size fits all approach was expensive and uninformative because of the absence of devices for measuring brings about terms of offers. Be that as it may, as techniques for gathering and breaking down consumer information through single-source innovation, for example, store scanners enhanced, advertisers were progressively ready to connect limited time exercises with customer buying designs. Organizations likewise started to scale back their operations and grow promoting errands inside their associations. Promoting organizations were additionally anticipated that would comprehend and give all showcasing capacities, not simply publicizing, for their customers. Today, corporate marketing spending plans are distributed toward exchange advancements, customer advancements, marking, advertising, and promoting. The allotment of correspondence spending plans far from broad communications and conventional promoting has raised the significance of IMC significance for viable showcasing. Presently, promoting is seen more as a two-path discussion amongst advertisers and purchasers. This move in the publicizing and media businesses can be condensed by the accompanying business sector patterns: a move from broad communications promoting to different types of correspondence the developing ubiquity of more particular (specialty) media, which considers individualized examples of utilization and expanded division of shopper tastes and inclinations the move from a maker commanded market to a retailer-ruled, shopper controlled market the developing utilization of information based promoting rather than general-center publicizing and showcasing more prominent business responsibility, especially in promoting execution based remuneration inside associations, which expands deals and advantages in organizations boundless Internet get to and more noteworthy online accessibility of merchandise and ventures a bigger concentrate on creating showcasing correspondences exercises that deliver an incentive for target gatherings of people while expanding advantages and decreasing ex penses The Tools of Integrated Marketing Communications The IMC procedure by and large starts with an incorporated showcasing interchanges arrange for that depicts the diverse sorts of promoting, publicizing, and deals instruments that will be utilized amid crusades. These are to a great extent limited time instruments, which incorporate everything from site improvement (SEO) strategies and pennant notices to online courses and websites. Integrated marketing communication components, for example, daily papers, announcements, and magazines may likewise be utilized to educate and induce buyers. Advertisers should likewise settle on the fitting mix of customary and advanced correspondences for their intended interest group to fabricate a solid brand-buyer relationship. Notwithstanding the brands special blend, it is critical that advertisers guarantee their informing is steady and credible over all correspondence channels.Integrated Marketing Communication is characterized as the coordination and reconciliation of all advertising specialized instrument, roads and sources inside an organization into consistent program that augment the effect on client and flip side clients at a negligible cost. This reconciliation influences all firm business-to-business, showcasing channel, client centered, and inside coordinated correspondences. Incorporated Marketing Communications is an administration idea that is intended to make all parts of showcasing correspondence, for example, publicizing, deals advancement, advertising, individual offering and direct promoting cooperate as a bound together compel, instead of allowing each to work in disconnection. Additionally, it goes about as a forceful promoting arrangement since it sets and tracks advertising methodology that catches and uses broad measure of client data. It likewise guarantees that all types of correspondences and messages are precisely connected together to accomplish particular target. Advertising Advertising has four qualities: it is powerful in nature; it is non-individual; it is paid for by a recognized support; and it is dispersed through mass channels of correspondence. Publicizing messages may advance the reception of merchandise, administrations, people, or thoughts. Since the business message is scattered through the broad communications-instead of individual offering-it is seen as a substantially less expensive method for achieving shoppers. Be that as it may, its non-individual nature implies it does not have the capacity to tailor the business message to the message beneficiary and, all the more critically, really get the deal. Accordingly, promoting impacts are best measured as far as expanding mindfulness and changing dispositions and suppositions, not making deals. Public Relations (PR) Advertising is characterized as an administration capacity which recognizes, builds up, and keeps up commonly valuable connections between an association and general society whereupon its prosperity or disappointment depends. Though promoting is a restricted correspondence from sender (the advertiser) to the beneficiary (the shopper or the retail exchange), advertising considers numerous gatherings of people (purchasers, representatives, providers, sellers, and so forth.) and utilizations two-path correspondence to screen input and conform both its message and the associations activities for greatest advantage. Sales Promotions (SP) Sales promotion are immediate actuations that offer additional impetuses to improve or quicken the items development from maker to buyer. Deals advancements might be coordinated at the customer or the exchange. Buyer advancements, for example, coupons, examining, premiums, sweepstakes, value (packs that offer more noteworthy amount or lower cost than ordinary), minimal effort financing arrangements, and refunds are buy impetuses in that they prompt item trial and energize repurchase. Personal Selling (PS) Individual offering incorporates all individual to-individual contact with clients with the reason for acquainting the item with the client, persuading him or her of the items esteem, and bringing the deal to a close. The part of individual offering changes from association to association, contingent upon the nature and size of the organization, the industry, and the items or administrations it is promoting. Direct Marketing (DM) Coordinate promoting, the most established type of showcasing, is the way toward discussing specifically with target clients to energize reaction by phone, mail, electronic means, or individual visit. Clients of direct showcasing incorporate retailers, wholesalers, makers, and specialist organizations, and they utilize an assortment of techniques including regular postal mail, telemarketing, coordinate reaction promoting, online PC shopping administrations, link shopping systems, and infomercials. Emerging Tools of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Sponsorships (Event Marketing) Sponsorships, consolidate publicizing and deals advancements with advertising. Sponsorships increment consciousness of an organization or item, fabricate unwaveringness with a particular target crowd, help separate an item from its rivals, give marketing openings, show responsibility to a group or ethnic gathering, or effect all that really matters. Like promoting, sponsorships are started to assemble long haul affiliations. Associations in some cases contrast sponsorships and promoting by utilizing gross impressions or cost-per-thousand estimations. Social Media Marketing The idea of web-based social networking marketing fundamentally alludes to the way toward advancing business or sites through web-based social networking channels. It is a capable promoting medium that is characterizing the way individuals are imparting. It is one of the altogether minimal effort special strategies that give organizations extensive quantities of connections and gigantic measure of activity. Organizations figure out how to get huge consideration and that truly works for the business. Online networking promoting is a powerful technique connected by dynamic organizations for offering their items/administrations or for simply distributing content for commercial income. Internet Marketing Internet Marketing likewise alluded to as i-promoting, web-marketing, online marketing or e-Marketing, is the marketing of items or administrations over the Internet. The Internet has conveyed media to a worldwide gathering of people. The intuitive way of Internet advertising as far as giving moment reactions and inspiring reactions are the one of a kind characteristics of the medium. Mobile Marketing Portable Marketing includes speaking with the customer by means of cell (or versatile) gadget, either to send a straightforward showcasing message, to acquaint them with another group of onlookers support based crusade or to permit them to visit a versatile site. Conclusion The rise of integrated marketing communication (IMC) has turned into a important case of development in the area of marketing. It has affected thinking and acting among a wide range of organizations and associations confronting the substances of rivalry in an open economy. From the earliest starting point of the 1990s IMC turned into a genuine intriguing issue in the field of promoting. Four phases of IMC have been recognized, beginning from strategic coordination to budgetary and key reconciliation. Be that as it may, the greater part of firms are tied down in the primary stages and not very many have moved to a vital level. One conclusion is that there are obstructions to creating IMC from strategies to technique. Integrated marketing communication is a way to deal with arranging communications that gives your independent company the possibility to show signs of improvement results from your campaigns and decrease promoting costs. By incorporating tools, for example, publicizing, direct mail, web-based social networking, telemarketing and deals advancement, you give clearness, consistency and greatest interchanges affect. An integrated campaign helps you give clients data in the configuration they incline toward. Buyers and business clients can indicate in the event that they need to get item data through email, direct mail, instant message or phone. Coordination guarantees they get a similar data in all interchanges. You can likewise address the issues of clients who scan the Internet for item data by incorporating your web architecture and substance with different correspondences. In the customary approach to deal with marketing communication, organizations and their agencies plan different campaigns for publicizing, press relations, coordinate advertising and sales promotion. Coordinated campaigns utilize a similar promotion apparatuses to fortify each other and enhance showcasing viability. In a coordinated crusade, you can utilize promoting to bring issues to light of a product and produce leads for the business compel. By conveying a similar data in official statements and highlight articles, you fortify the messages in the promoting. You can then utilize post office based mail or email to catch up request from the promoting or press crusades and furnish prospects with more data. Integrated Marketing Communications Integrated Marketing Communications INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS: ISSUES Introduction The emergence of integrated marketing communications (IMC) has become one of the most significant examples of development in the marketing discipline (Kitchen, 2003). Because of the realities of competition in an open economy it has influenced thinking and acting among corporate organisations, Some 20 years ago academics and professionals discussed theory and practice of business communication but without considering the idea of integration as a realistic approach to reach a competitive strategic position for the company. Some early attempts in the beginning of the 1980s initiated academic interest and articles appeared in the academic literature (Dyer, 1982; Coulson-Thomas, 1983). From the beginning of the 1990s IMC became a real hot topic in the field of marketing (Caywood et al., 1991; Miller and Rose, 1994; Kitchen and Schultz, 1997, 1998, 1999). Twenty years ago, 75 percent of marketing budgets went to advertising in the US. Today, 50 percent goes into trade promotions, 25 percent into consumer promotions and less than 25 percent into advertising (Kitchen, 2003). The allocation of communication budgets away from mass media and traditional advertising has obviously promoted IMC in recognition and importance for effective marketing. The emergence of IT has greatly chang ed the media landscape, contributed to an extensive deregulation of markets and individualized patterns of consumption and increased the segmentation of consumer tastes and preferences (Eagle and Kitchen, 2000; Kitchen, 2003). Four stages of IMC have been identified by Kitchen and Schultz (2000) starting from tactical coordination of promotional elements, redefining the scope of marketing communications, application of information technology to financial and strategic integration. They found that the majority of firms are still operating in the first two stages, some are moving into stage three and very few have moved to stage four. One fact is that there are barriers to developing IMC from tactics to strategy. If we accept that communication is the foundation of all human relationship (Duncan, 2002) we also have to accept that only strategically oriented integrated brand communications can help business to reach a sustainable competitive position. My main purpose, thus, is to systematically review the literature of the marketing concept Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) by identifying key debates within the academic research, summarize them and propose opportunities for further research. LITERATURE REVIEW Communication is the process by which individuals share meaning. This means that each participant must fully understand each other otherwise no dialogue will occur. Only through knowledge and understanding of the communication process are the actors likely to achieve their objectives of influencing attitudes, knowledge and/or behaviors to persuade, which is one of the most prominent reasons why organizations need to communicate (Fill, 1999). With increasing worldwide interest in the emergent concept and field of IMC it is important to investigate its theoretical foundations. An English exile in Paris Thomas Hobbes produced his major work: Leviathan in April 1651 (Hobbes, 1651, pp. 46-8). He argued that our cognizance, i.e the thinking, such as beliefs (Peter,J.P., Olson,J.C., Gruert, K.G. 1999) of the world are really of the pressures materially exerted on us by external motions (or signals from the environment). Also our passions are influenced by material motions. Men are therefore mostly influenced by internal material perceptions of an external material world (Hobbes, 1651, p. 52). While not accepting his thesis wholeheartedly, it is evident that we live in a material world (Lansley, 1993) one which supports the perspective that men are expected to be influenced by external motions. However, the outcomes associated with the Hobbesian metaphor suggest that conditions now are quite different from those early years a position supported by the communications revolution taking place in the twentieth century alone. The opinion that we are influenced by external motions gains credence when standard models of consumer behaviour are considered (Kotler, 1992, pp. 161-4). Such models describe consumer behaviour as a black box of consumer characteristics and decision-making processes. The black box is influenced by inputs consisting of environmental characteristics (social, economic, technological, political and cultural) and marketing characteristics (product, price, promotion, and place). These may lead to attitudinal change (i.e. brand loyalties and behavioural tendencies) and ultimately to actions in the form of product, brand, and store choice, timing, and amount.Clearly, such communications are not alone in their attempts to influence thinking or behaviour. So what is occurring within the black box? Marketing communicators are aiming to progress consumers through the cognitive, affective, and behavioural stages of decision making as exemplified by, for example, the AIDA model (Strong, 1925) which asserts that, for advertising to work, it must be effective through four distinct stages: Attention. The consumer must notice the communication. Interest. The consumer must be drawn to take in the message which is being communicated. Desire. The consumer must want to acquire the product or service which is the subject of the communication. Action. The consumer must make the purchase. There are many other communication models all of which describe promotional communication in terms of altered cognitions, emotional feelings, or behavioural tendencies towards a firm and/or its products or services. Marketing communications does not and cannot operate in a vacuum of its own making. Consumers perceive social reality in a number of ways in which , the least being, by social interaction with others (Berger and Luckman, 1991). Media content and other forms of promotion, together with knowledge derived from a diversity of origins, and social interaction, form a constructed view of temporal existence within consumer minds. Consumers make use of, and are not just affected by, promotional activity. Marketing communications are limited in the effects they can have on consumer minds (Katz, 1987). But, undoubtedly, in order for marketing communications to have an effect on consumer minds, they have to reach the sense organs of the person(s) to be affected. However, what happens after is debatable. Most consumers are continually bombarded with communications virtually every waking moment of the day. On an average day this may amount to over 2,000 exposures (Kotler, 1988). The majority of such exposures are screened out either by lack of interest or sensory overload. Messages may be distorted or twisted to fit with pre-existent cognitive structures (Cartwright, 1972), i.e. recipients of communications may twist them to fit in with their existing knowledge or information base. Selectivity in memory retention is evident dependent on the extent to which elaboration and message rehearsal take place in receivers. Thus communication systems are very essential in affecting consumer opinions. By a communication system Shannon and Weaver meant a system essentially contained five parts: An information source which produces a message or sequence of messages to be communicated to a receiving terminal. The message may be of various types. A transmitter which operates on the message to produce a signal suitable for transmission over the channel. The channel is merely the medium used to transmit the signal from transmitter to receiver. The receiver, reconstructing the message from the signal. The destination is the person for whom the message is intended (Shannon and Weaver, 1949, p. 3). Shannon and Weaver classified communication systems into three main categories: discrete, continuous and mixed. By a discrete system they meant one in which both the message and the signal are a sequence of discrete symbols, for instance telegraphy. A continuous system is one in which the message and signal both are treated as continuous functions, e.g. radio or television. A mixed system is one in which both discrete and continuous variables appear, e.g. transmission of speech. Related to the broad subject or communication, Warren (1949) identified, problems at three levels.Level 1 The technical problem how accurately the symbols of communication can be transmitted. Level 2 The semantic problem how precisely the transmitted symbols convey the desired meaning and Level 3The effectiveness problem how effectively the received meaning does affect conduct in the desired way. Figure 1 shows a communication system, where the information source selects a desired message out of a set of possible messages. The selected messages may consist of written or spoken words, or of pictures, music, etc. The message is changed by the transmitter into the signal, which is sent over the channel to the receiver. The kinds of questions which Shannon seeks to ask concerning such a communication system are: How to measure amount of information? How to measure the capacity of a communication channel? The action of the transmitter in changing the message into the signal often involves a coding process. When the coding process is as efficient as possible, at what rate can the channel convey information? What are the general characteristics of noise and how can undesirable effects of noise be minimized or eliminated? If the signal being transmitted (as in written speech, telegraphy) how does this fact affect the problem? Shannon and Weaver developed what is now accepted as the basic model of communications. It is a sequential and linear model, which has survived for decades and appears in somewhat different shapes in common literature in the field of marketing communications. However, the model is essentially a one-step model of communication and is oversimplified since communications do not necessarily occur in a single step. The linear model of communications emphasizes the transmission of signals, ideas and information primarily through symbols. As we have seen the linear model focuses on transmission effectiveness and efficiency and emphasizes measurability. Holm (2002) found that 70-80 percent of relevant literature in the field of marketing communications during the 1990s is based on the linear, process-oriented perspective on communication theory. We assume that communication is intentional and a deliberate effort to bring about response. We also assume that communication is a transactional process between two and more parties whereby meaning is exchanged through the intentional use of symbols. This means that all those involved in the process must share a common view of what the symbols and signs actually mean. This, then, means that a senders and a receivers field of experience, understanding and interpretation to a certain extent must overlap. This requires a somewhat different and developed theoretical approach to marketing communications, a qualitative approach, which pays attention to the reader, to the listener and the viewer since meaning can only be derived socially (Blythe, 2000). Meaning, signs, symbols, syntactic and culture become essential elements in the developing of communications. The linear, process-oriented model and its components are straightforward, but it is the quality of the linkages between the vario us elements in the process that determine whether the communication will be successful (Fill, 2002). However, this crucial perspective on communications is focused by only 20-30 percent of the relevant literature in the field of marketing communications. IMC as a concept has gained recognition on an international scale during the 1990s. Thus its widespread use is comparatively recent. Let us assume that the ultimate purpose of marketing is to deliver a higher standard of living (Kotler, 2003). If we use a more limited definition we could say that marketing is a societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering and freely exchanging products and services of value with others (Kotler, 2003, p. 9). The keyword is value, which can be defined as a ratio between benefits and costs, between what the customer gets and what he/she gives. To increase greater customer participation the marketer can use several combinations of methods, all aiming to raise benefits and reduce costs. It is then evident that the main purpose of marketing communication is to affect the consumers conception of value and of the relation between benefits and costs. Defining IMC, Smith et al. (1999) distinguishes three definitions: Management and control of all market communications. Ensuring that the brand positioning, personality and messages are delivered synergistically across every element of communication and are delivered from a single consistent strategy. The strategic analysis, choice, implementation and control of all elements of marketing communications which efficiently (best use of resources), economically (minimum costs) and effectively (maximum results) influence transactions between an organization and its existing and potential customers, consumers and clients. In order to reach a better understanding of the full meaning and process of IMC Smith et al. (1999) have developed a tool which is supposed to show marketing integration as occurring at one or more of seven levels. They distinguish the following levels and corresponding degrees of integration. Vertical objectives integration. It means that communication objectives fit with marketing objectives and the overall corporate objectives. Horizontal/functional integration. Marketing communications activities fit well with other business functions of manufacturing, operations and human resource management. Marketing mix integration. The marketing mix of product, price and place decisions is consistent with the promotion decisions, e.g. with the required communication messages. Communications mix integration. All the 12 communications tools are being used to guide the customer/consumer/client through each stage of the buying process and all of them portray a consistent message. Creative design integration. The creative design and execution is uniform and consistent with the chosen positioning of the product. Internal/external integration. All internal departments and all external employed agencies are working together to an agreed plan and strategy. Financial integration. The budget is being used in the most effective and efficient way ensuring that economies of scale are achieved and that long-term investment is optimized. Smith et al. claim that the most important and fundamental level is that of vertical integration of objectives and activities and that no effective marketing communication objective can be formulated, which is not directly linked to specific marketing objectives and to relevant corporate objectives. All these levels contain specific critical issues which might occur during the process and need to be solved. One of the most essential tasks is to make sure that goals on different levels and character are mutually achievable. Objectives for profitability must be consistent with objectives for growth, for gaining increasing market share and for certain social responsibilities and to broader societal concerns. Goals and strategies must deal with industry threats and take into consideration risks of competitive response. When it comes to communication and implementation it must be sure that the goals are well understood and accepted by the key implementers. The emergence of the internet and new information technology has led many companies to reconsider their key factors to competitive success. Porter (2001) states that some companies have used internet technology to shift the basis of competition away from quality, features and service toward price, making it harder for anyone in the ir industry to reach profitability. Porter has pointed out how internet influences industry structure. Some of his findings are: differences among competitors are reduced; competition migrates to price; geographic market widens increasing the number of competitors; new substitution threats are created by the proliferation of internet; standardization of products reduces differentiation; reduced barriers to entry shifts power to suppliers; traditional powerful channels are eliminated; end-users bargaining power is increased through reduced switching costs; difficult to keep internet applications from new entrants; and the internet can expand the market by making the industry more efficient. Evidently, these and other factors must be taken into consideration when developing marketing communication. However, the most essential difference, from a communicative perspective, is not the changing set of tools. More important is to adjust objectives and strategies to changing marketing and communication realities. As we can see, IMC is a more complex issue. It is the art of uniting a senders purposes and goals with the carefully selected receivers prerequisites of interpretation and preunderstanding, to develop a creative strategy, where content and form of the messages are congruent and to optimize the selection of channels. The process has obvious similarities with classic methodology of rhetoric (Vossius, 1990). Thus IMC has become a strategic issue and should, therefore, be treated in accordance with the nature of strategy and strategic decisions. The characteristics commonly associated with the concept of strategy and strategic decisions are, first, that strategy is concerned with the long-term direction of an organization or a company. Second, strategic decisions are likely about to gain some competitive advantage. Third, strategic decisions are concerned with the scope of the organizations activities. It is to do with what owners and managements want the organization to be like and to be about. This could and should include important decisions about visions, product range, withdrawal from or entering markets. Johnson and Scholes (2002) claim that strategy can be seen as the matching or resources and activities or an organization to the environment in which it operates, sometimes known as the search for strategic fit. Besides identifying strengths and weaknesses, threats and opportunities in the business environment it would be seen as important to achieve the correct positioning of the company including the organization of the three concepts identity, profile and image. Questions concerning the connection between these concepts are of the utmost importance for the organizations relations to its market, for its ability to develop, maintain and increase a competitive position (Holm, 1998). There are many tactics at the marketers disposal when using the elements of the communications mix in order to maximize the impact of the communications activities. The basics of this is the four-way division into advertising, public relations, sales promotion and personal selling (Blythe, 2000). Traditionally, the tools of marketing communications are around 12-20. Collectively, these are referred to as the promotional mix (Blythe, 2000; Burnett and Moriarity, 1998; Fill, 1999; Kitchen, 2003; Kotler, 2003; Pickton and Broderick, 2001; Smith et al., 1999). In order to illustrate the complexity of the communication process, we must add a number of tools of varying importance and of different character, both personal and mass marketing communications. On a macro level, the scope of marketing should include ideologies, political as well as commercially oriented. Examples like the Nazi era in Germany (The Ministry of Propaganda systematically used sports events like the Olympic Games, as large-scale event marketing. Music, opera, art, architecture, uniforms, badges, flags, exhibitions, film, literature, education and parades were all used as communications tools in order to sell a political ideology). We find similar examples in the former Soviet Union and in todays North Korea. However, increasing need and opportunities to reach the single individual consumer, buyer, guest, client, visitor, patient or voter, leads to the search for more sophisticated and in several situations critical tools. It is of utmost importance to widen the methodo logical perspective and take into consideration tools of particular interest in a one-to-one marketing perspective. The numerous tools and the uncountable possible combinations illustrate the complexity of IMC and that decisions concerning IMC is a strategic issue mainly consisting of principals and guidelines rather than instructions on a tactical level, mostly handled by advertising agencies (Schroeder, 2002; Percy et al., 2002) and account executives. Also on a macro level, we can distinguish three factors which have fundamentally changed the conditions for IMC; deregulations of markets, globalization of the economy and individualization of the consumption. The emergence of new information technology can be considered as the dominating underlying factor. Communication has always been built upon three different systems sound, image and writing. All these systems have been depending on technological development. Up till now no technology has been able to transmit all systems, at t he most two. Gutenberg produced writing and image. Sound film came 1929, based on sound technology and photography. The numeric revolution handle the three systems and has become a fourth system, the digital system which itself has had tremendous economic and social consequences. Previously, the three communication systems were separate. The IT-revolution has made a total communicative integration possible, which in its turn has changed business structures. Three large business areas are now integrated: telephony, television and the computer industry. The importance of specialization has decreased and differences between previously separate cultures as publishing, film industry and music industry have diminished. Fusions have brought the three spheres together and they have become the heavy industry of our time. The development of the industrial revolution took around 200 years. The new technology has reached practically all over the world in 20 years. However, communication remains as one of the most human of activities. We can, again, define communication as a transactional process between two or more parties whereby meaning is exchanged through the intentional use of symbols (Engel et al., 1994). Notice the key elements: communication is intentional; a deliberate effort is made to bring about a response. It is a transaction and the participants are all involved in the process and it is symbolic where words, pictures, music and other stimulants are used to convey thoughts (Blythe, 2000). Computer-based systems have revolutionized communications. Computer-based communications include data based systems and web sites. We can argue that technological development has put good old days far behind. The competitive arena of today bears little resemblance to that of the mid-1990s (Blythe, 2000, p.10). Non-differentiated mass markets rarely exist today. A number of factors have emerged and interact in such a way that the environment for c ommunication strategy is radically changed. Engel et al. (1994) claimed that appealing to unidentified individuals in a mass market is increasingly becoming a dead end. One fundamental consequence is that the traditional emphasis on heavyweight mass communication campaigns (so-called above-the-line), has been replaced by more direct and highly targeted promotional activities using direct marketing and other tools aimed to reach the smallest of all target groups, the single individual. Conclusions The primary goal of IMC is to affect the perception of value and behavior through directed communication. The development and diffusion of IMC is closely associated with fast technological advancement and of a rapidly globalizing and deregulations of markets and individualization of consumption patterns. This has emphasized the need to adjust objectives and strategies to changing marketing and communication realities. In the rapidly changing and highly competitive world of the twenty-first century only strategically oriented IMC can help business to move forward. However, Kitchen and Schultz (2000) have found that a majority of firms have remained on a level mainly dealing with tactical coordination of promotional elements and that very few, a handful in todays world, have moved to financial and strategic integration. We can assume that the theoretical and methodological perspectives and frameworks are influenced by educational background and tradition. On a tactical level marketing, communication is handled by professionally skilled account executives, art directors and copy directors with very limited competence and experience from strategic management. A study of the current educational program, specially designed for management on strategic level, shows that communication theory and methodology takes up approximately 3 percent of total time. The rest of the time is devoted to strategic planning, applied management, financial analysis, marketing, politics and economics. This educational structure has remained during at least the last two decades. A main conclusion we can draw is that those who have strategic and tactic responsibility for IMC live in separate educational, cultural, intellectual and empirical spheres. Those responsible for strategic management decisions possess, at the best, strategic management ability but lack insight and awareness concerning communication theory and method. And those professionally skilled in communication lack relevant skills concerning strategic management, theoretically and empirically. If we imagine these two spheres as areas, we can easily notice that the intersection field is very small. A study of relevant literature published during the 1990s shows that a simplified theoretical perspective on communication as process oriented, sequential and linear is dominating 70-80 percent of the books, thereby overlooking the complexity of communication. Different educational cultures might be an essential obstacle to move IMC from tactics to strategy. A study of leading Swedish schools and institutes in the fields of management shows that approximately only 3 percent of total time is devoted to communication theory and methodology. The study also shows that the education programs of the leading marketing communications schools contain less than 10 percent of leadership and strategic management while more 90 percent is aimed at communication theory, various techniques, advertising, art, copy and account executive training. A concluding remark is that the concept of IMC is dominated by a simplified and insufficient theoretical perspective and handled by professionals with skills on a technical and tactical level. This indicates that there is a gap between two cultural, intellectual and empirical spheres. Opportunities for further research. Based on various researches by scholars in the field, I would encourage more research to be carried out in this aspect of marketing. It is a matter of common interest for academics, professional schools and practitioners on strategic and tactical levels to close the gap in order to move IMC from tactics to strategy. This can be achieved by international research and reconsidering educational programs regarding management, marketing and marketing communications. REFERENCES Berger, P., Luckman, T. (1991), The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Penguin, New York, NY, pp.56-7. Blythe, J. (2000), Marketing Communications, Pearson Education, Edinburgh, Financial Times/Prentice-Hall, Burnett, J., Moriarity, S. (1998), Introduction to Marketing Communications, An Integrated Approach, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Cartwright, D. (1972), Some Principles of Mass Persuasion, Human Relations, Cohen, J.B., New York, NY, Vol. 2 No.3, pp.253-67;. Caywood, D., Schultz, D.E., Wang, p. (1991), Integrated marketing communications: a survey of national goods advertisers, unpublished report, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, June, . Coulson-Thomas, C.J. (1983), Marketing Communications, Butterworth-Heineman, Oxford, Duncan, T. (2002), IMC: Using Advertising and Promotion to Build Brands, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, International edition,. Dyer, G. (1982), Advertising As Communication, Routledge, London,. Eagle, L.C., Kitchen, P.J. (2000), IMC, brand, communications and corporate cultures; client/advertising agency co-ordination and cohesion, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 34 No.5/6, pp.667-86. Engel, J.F., Warshaw, M.R., Kinnear, T. (1994), Promotional Strategy: Managing the Marketing Communications Process, 8th ed., Irwin, Burr Ridge, IL,. Fill, C. (1999), Marketing Communications, Context, Contents and Strategies, 2nd ed., Prentice-Hall, Hemel Hempstead,. Fill, C. (2002), Marketing Communications, Contexts, Strategies and Applications, 3rd ed., Prentice Hall, Europe, Hemel Hempstead, pp.32. Holm, O. (1998), Aspects of Marketing Communication and Operational Concepts in Companies and Organisations, Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Helsinki, No. 73,. Holm, O. (2002), Strategisk Marknadskommunikation, Teorier och Metoder (Strategic Marketing Communications Theories and Methods), Liber Fà ¶rlag, Malmà ¶,. Hobbes, T. (1651), Leviathan: or, the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil, Morleys Universal Library, Paris, No.April,. Johnson, G., Scholes, K. (2002), Exploring Corporate Strategy, Prentice-Hall, Edinburgh, Katz, E. (1987), Communication Research since Lazarsfield, Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 51 No.4, pp.S25-S45. Kitchen, P.J., Schultz, D.E. (1997), Integrated marketing communications in US advertising agencies: an exploratory study, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 37 No.5, pp.7-18. Kitchen, P.J., Schultz, D.E. (1998), IMC a UK ads agency perspective, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 14 pp.465-85. Kitchen, P.J. (2003), Critical times; an integrated marketing communication perspective, paper presented at the First International Conference on Business Economics,. Kitchen, P.J., Schultz, D.E. (1999), A multi-country comparison of the driver for IMC, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 39 No.1, pp.17-21. Kitchen, P.J., Schultz, D.E. (2000), A response to Theoretical concept or management fashion', Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 40 No.5, pp.17-21. Kotler, P. (1992), Marketing Management, 7th, Prentice-Hall International, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, pp 161-4. Kotler, P. (2003), Marketing Management, 11th ed., Prentice-Hall/Pearson Education, Englewood Cliff, NJ,. Lansley, S. (1993), Material World, Consumer Policy Review, Vol. 3 No.1, pp.27-33. Miller, D., Rose, P.B. (1994), Integrat

Leadership Style of Men and Women Essay -- Gender Leader Leading Leade

Leadership Style of Men and Women Women do have different leadership styles from men. As Bodyshop founder Anita Roddick says: ‘I run my company according to feminine principles – principles of caring, making intuitive decisions, not getting hung up on hierarchy, having a sense of work as being part of your life, not separate from it; putting your labour where your love is, being responsible to the world in how you use your profits; recognising the bottom line should stay at the bottom’. The problem with actually mapping these differences is that the successful male managerial stereotype is so strongly embedded in organisational life that female managers are pressured to conform to it, thereby confusing research results. Interest in the impact of gender on leadership is relatively new. The first studies were conducted in the US in the early 1970s when male managers at nine insurance companies were asked to characterise ‘women in general’, ‘men in general’ and ‘successful managers’. Successful managers were overwhelmingly identified exclusively with male traits. Many similar studies have been carried out since that time and all have demonstrated that the successful managerial stereotype remains male. Women managers’ perceptions of the successful manager are only slightly less conclusive. Unlike the women managers in the 1970s and 1980s not all female managers today sextype the successful manager as male; however, no one, male or female, ever identifies the successful manager as feminine. Male, and only to a slightly lesser extent, female, managers continue to describe successful managers as possessing masculine traits, such as self-confidence, competitiveness, decisiveness, aggressiveness and independence. Positive differences Many managers, both male and female, agree that sex differences in management style do exist. Interestingly both describe women’s differences in positive terms. Yet when researchers ask managers to describe their own management styles they usually find no significant differences between genders. Does this mean no difference exists? No. What these findings reveal is the extent to which individuals characterise themselves in terms of dominant managerial values, in this case masculine behaviour. At the same time managers describe themselves in terms that fit with the prevailing rhetoric of good management practice, now... ...rrectness. Fear of the backlash that can arise if being critical of any woman, or challenging the current wisdom of how ‘femininity’ can add to the boardroom, maintains the myth of gender differences influencing work related performance. The way forward Today’s economic reality is oversupply. Too many products and services are chasing too few consumers. In order to get that, ‘extra 2%’ which will make the difference, each organisation has to look to itself. Helping people to become more motivated to sell or to provide a higher level of service, requires that staff and management improve dialogue and their internal communications. In effect, internal diversities need to be turned into unique strengths, which give the organisation that extra push. What is the value of sending men and women on separate courses or being given different treatment (unless a special case exists), when aim is to ‘pull together’ in order to survive and prosper? Managing diverse groups to achieve a cohesive philosophy and consistency of performance is what is required of today’s corporate leader. Evidence shows that women and men are as adept, or as bad, as each other at responding to this challenge.

Henry Ford :: essays research papers

The Success of a Man   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To say that Henry Ford dilly-dallied around before finally establishing a serious car company would be invalid. The 40 year old man had been acquiring valuable knowledge regarding business, engines, management, and most importantly cars. Now it was time to take a leap of faith.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In 1903 the Ford Motor Company came to be. Ford, along with other investors including John and Horace Dodge raised $28,000 and in the first 15 months produced 1700 Model A cars. These cars were known for their reliability, yet were still too expensive for the average American. Over the next five years Ford and his engineers produced models with the letters B through S, the most successful of which was the Model N (priced at $500) , and the least successful was the Model K (priced at $2500). It was obvious from the Model N that the key to the companies success lay in inexpensive cars for a mass market. The answer that Ford and the American consumer were looking for was the Model T.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Model T, a small, sturdy four-cylinder car with an attractive design and a top speed of 45 mph, hit the market in 1908. It’s success came from it’s attractive price, at $850, and more than 10,000 were sold in the first year alone. It was easy to operate, maintain, handle on rough roads, and immediately became a success. Along with success came expansion, and in 1910 he established another assembly plant in Highland Park, Michigan. Through interchangeable parts, standard manufacturing, and a division labor, the demand greatly increased for the Model T. It was at this time in 1913 that Ford introduced the assembly line and forever changed our economy, our industry, and our culture.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ford’s concept of an assembly line sprang from the thought that a car could be produced much quicker if each person did one, single task. He applied this in his Highland Park plant, and cut down production time of one Model T to a fraction on the time. The carefully timed pace of a conveyer belt moving the parts along further speeded the process. With these new tactics, a factory could produce 40%-60% more cars per month. By late 1913 he had established assembly plants in Canada, Europe, Australia, South America, and Japan. At this point, the Ford Motor Company was the largest manufacturer of cars in the world.

Easy Access For Children on Pornography Sites Essay -- Argumentative P

Easy Access For Children on Pornography Sites You just finished a day's work, have arrived home, unlocked the door, step inside, and just as you are about to yell, "anyone home," you hear hooting and hollering coming from the family room. As you enter the room you see your children and their friends glued to the computer screen, which is covered with explicit images not intended for the eyes of children. According to an article written by P.J.Huffstutter, "Yahoo, MSN Criticized for Offering Easy Access to Pornography," (C1) these two large Internet companies, have made it possible for everyone of all ages to access these adult communities. They require no proof of age, making it far too easy for under-age children to freely view the pornographic pictures and videos of their choice While adults may find leaving a site easy if they are uncomfortable, trying to restrict children from accessing these sites is a different issue. To watch your kids every moment is unrealistic and would not please anyone. According to Net Nanny, "Kids need to learn Internet safety practices and differentiate between right and wrong, because their parents won't always be there." There must be some sort of compromise. We, being responsible adults, need to take charge of what our children are doing when online, since little effort is required to gain entry to pornography sites. I used Microsoft's MSN search facility to look for "porn," and the only warning I received was that I had entered a search term that was likely to return adult content. While that may be more warning than in the past, it still isn't enough to keep children away. Then I was directed to a related link entitled NightSurf, and within two minutes I was presented with images of nudity... ...pornography with such ease, parents are going to have to figure out a way to keep their children off these sites. The only other option is coming home and finding them looking at something they shouldn't. Because some children, given the opportunity, are going to seek out these sites, even if you ask them not to. After all, children will be children. Works Cited Huffstutter, P.J.. "Yahoo, MSN Criticized for Offering Easy Access to Pornography." Los Angeles Times 23 Sept. 2001, sec. C: 1-2. Bruckman, Amy. "Finding One's Own in Cyberspace." Composing Cyberspace. Richard Holeton. United States: McGraw-Hill, 1998. 171-178. SafeSurf. Press Release. "Netscape and SafeSurf Team Up to Protect Children Online." Westlake Village, CA. 17 June. 1998. "Net Nanny 4: Product Description." http://www.netnanny.com/home/net_nanny_4/product_description.asp. 4 Oct. 2001.

Issues and help seeking behavior Essay

According to Fallon and Bowles (1999) the area of adolescent help seeking behaviour is an under-researched area. Since the cognitive and critical thinking of adolescents are still developing, their behaviours toward issues concern them may vary case by case. The purpose of this report was to investigate issues concern adolescents and their help seeking behaviour toward those issues, especially seek professional helps. The report analysis was based on secondary information obtained from various researchers by scholars. The participants in the researchers were students with different demographic background, such as gender, ethnicities. Fallon et al (1999) investigated the major and minor problems concerned the adolescents and their help seeking behaviours toward those problems. The major problems were identified to be more severe and would cause participants distress, while minor problems would not distress the participants. The participants were 1,022 secondary school students from Melbourne Metropolitan area, 585 of them were male, and 419 were female. Total 297 of them were in year 7 and 8, 333 were in year 9 and 10, others were in year 11 and 12. Their ages ranged from 11 to 18 years. Each of the participants completed a survey comprised of three parts to define the adolescents’ concerns and help seeking behaviours. The first part contained demographic questions. The second part  contained mainly rating and categorizing questions to identify the major problems of concerns, nature of the concerns, and sources of help to the concerns. While the third part focused on the minor concerns. The nature of the both concerns was defined into five categories, family, interpersonal, health, education and others. And the sources of help were in the domain of friends, parents and professionals. The findings show that problems concerns different levels of students were very similar. About 50% of the participants sought help for their major problems, 40% sought for minor problems and 25% would seek help for both problems. The problems associated with family and interpersonal skills were often identified as major issues. For minor issues, family and education problems were frequently reported. Therefore the adolescents would differentiate major and minor problems and react differently toward the problems. For major problems, females were more willing to see k help than males, but there was no gender difference towards minor problems. And males preferred to ask parents and rather than friends, while females were inversely. However, on both minor and major problems, respondents were preferred to seek help from parents and friends over professionals, this may probably due to the easy access to nonprofessional sources. Gim, Atkinson, and Whiteley (1990) conducted an investigation which focuses on the issues concerns Asian-American and the relationship between acculturation and willingness to see a counsellor. The study was down through 816 Asian-American students from West Coast University. 399 of the respondents were male, 417 were female. And 291 of them were freshmen, 191 were junior, 159 were sophomores, 174 were seniors, which ranged in an age group of 16 to 37. The survey questionnaire comprised of three sections. The respondents were asked to report their demographic information and rate the seriousness of 24 issues in eight domains of concern and their wiliness to see counsellors on these concerns. Among the 24 issues, the respondents scaled highly for issues like financial, academic, relationship, conflicts with parents. The results show that for those Asia Americans, they were most willing to seek counsellors for issues like financial, academic, career, but least willing to seek help about concerns such as ethnic identity confusion, roommate, and health. The respondents’ attitudes towards seeking counsellors would be affected by acculturation, ethnicity, and gender. Asian Americans with higher level of acculturation would be more willing to seek  professional counsellors. In a similar study, Kim and Omizo (2003) generated respondents of 242 Asian American college students from mid-Atlantic and Hawaii universities ,140 of them were female and 102 were male, with an age range of 18 to 57 years. Fifty-nine of the respondents had had sought counselling before. And there were mainly from China, Korea, Philippines, and Japan. Similar conclusion was obtained that Asian Americans who were highly adhered to Asian cultural values, their attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help would be less positive and they were less willing to seek counsellors in general problems. But the sample size of the Kim and Omizo (2003) was relatively small, which may not be a strong support. In another research Eisenberg, Golverstein and Gol lust (2007) investigated the help-seeking behaviour and access to mental health service. The participants are students from Midwestern, public university. The initial sample size was 5,021 students aged above 18 years. And 2,495 were undergraduates, the remaining were graduate and professional students. Since the survey was web-based, total 2,785 students completed the survey and their demographic profile was similar to national student population. The survey used Patient Health Questionnaire-9(PHQ-9) as the key measure to identify the symptoms of depression. The result shows that 15% of Students obtained psychotherapy or psychotropic medication. About 50% respondents aware that there was free counselling service on campus and where to access the mental health care. Among participants who experienced major depression, only 36% received treatment which demonstrated a low level usage of cheap university medical service. For students who did not seek help, they often held the perception that stress was normal in school, or did not realise there is a need, or having the thou ght that problems would get better as time goes by. Limitations of the research include the reliability of web survey results and the survey ignored the informal sources of help like friends and family. The investigations above all show that female is more open to seek help for issues concerns them, however, comes to the issue of dating violence, male perpetrators and victims were more likely to seek help than female (Ashley & Foshee, 2005). Ashley et al investigated the adolescents’ help-seeking behaviour and helping sources when experienced of dating violence. The analysis was based on secondary data collected in a longitudinal study of adolescent dating violence. A sample size of 365 out  of 1814 survey participants collected in 1996 was chosen in their investigation. There were 225 dating violence victims and 140 perpetrators and all the participants were public school students from rural North Carolina country. The results show that over 60% respondents did not seek help for dating violence, especially perpetrators. Amon g those who sought help, friends and family members were more frequently chosen as their help sources than professionals. But males were more willing to seek professional help than females. The possible reasons are higher social acceptance to male hitting female than female hitting male and male will cause more serious and dangerous consequences in the dating violence than female. The findings also demonstrate that older perpetrators were more likely to seek help than younger ones. Researchers suggested that as the adolescent mature, they may have in-depth cognitive on dating violence and the potential consequences of their behaviour which compelling them to seek help. In conclusion, issues concerns or distress adolescents will vary due to their levels of education, gender, ethicises, age, nationality. And adolescents’ issues usually fall in the domains of family, interpersonal, education, and health. Most of them are not willing to seek help, especially male. But for certain issues, like dating violence, male are more willing to seek help. Easy accessibility made informal sources of help like friends and family common and popular than professional counsellors when adolescents experienced psychological issues. The other reasons cause low frequency of counselling professional help will be like social norms, lack cognition or unaware of benefits from professional help. So the society should promote more benefits of professional counselling and increase the acceptance of it. For adolescents, they are still at growing stage, abilities like perceptions, cognitions, abstract thinking are also developing. It is very important to guide them have a positive thinking of seeking professional help when facing issues concern them, in the end, may also help them develop a positive attitudes in their lives. References Ashley, O. S., & Foshee, V. A. (2005). Adolescent help-seeking for dating violence:prevalence, sociodemographic correlates, and sources of help_. Journal of Adolescent Health 36,_ 25-31. Eisenberg, D., Golverstein, E., & Gollust, E. (2007). Help-seeking and access to mental health care in a university student population. _Medical Care. 45 (7)._ Fallon, B. J., & Bowles, T. (1999). Adolescent help-seeking for major and minor problems. _Australian Journal of Psychology, 51 (1),_ 12-18. Gim, R. H., Atkinson, D. R., & Whiteley, S. (1990). Asian-American acculturation, severity of problems, and willingness to see a counselor. _Journal of Counseling Psychology, 37 (3)_, 281-285. Kim, B. S., & Omizo, M. M. (2003). Asian culture values, attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help, and willingness to seek a counsellor. _THE COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGIST, 31 (3),_ 343-361.