The Market Today Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

The Market Today - Essay Example Shopping today is characterised by binge shopping where marketers entice the modern consumer to shop their products in frenzy (Brown, 1993). As such, the current market is characterised by increased urge to consume not to satisfy a need by but for pleasure and in seeking identity as a postmodern consumer. Some of the characterized changes that have occurred in the market over the time could be grouped into modernism, critical and postmodernism eras, which have put different demands on than e-marketing function, as a response to evolving marketing needs and business operating environments. This paper outlines the three eras with the various changes that reshaped the marketing function and the respective environmental demands from the market that precipitated such changes. Critical thinking represented a significant step in business operations where scholars and researchers studied the contemporary organisation in finer details to understand how productivity could be improved. Winslow Fredrick Taylor, a management consultant, mainly concerned with the ways in which the output of any firm would be enhanced significantly, first developed the theory (Simmons, 2008). The central idea behind Taylors theory was to increase efficiency in the production functions within organisations. As Sedtke (2009) further explains, the theory demanded that work be divided into smaller movements that were highly regularised, resulting in a disciplined approach to functions at work. The result was breaking jobs into smaller sections leading to the separation of workers from each other and specialization of tasks (Tsukamoto, 2007).  

Gift-Giving and Exchange as an Important Element in Japanese Society Essay

Gift-Giving and Exchange as an Important Element in Japanese Society - Essay Example It is evidently clear from the research that along with the Confucian values, wrote Ilchman, Katz, and Queens, in particular, the value of humaneness, such obligation extend outwards to teachers, relatives, close neighbors and business associates. Japanese companies, for instance, allocate funds for equitable compensation to employees for ceremonial events or kankonsosai. Such importance given to the exchange of gifts allows the act to pervade in Japanese ceremonies and customs that is why it reveals a wealth of information in regard to Japanese rituals. There are four classifications of occasions or instances when gift-giving is required among the Japanese: life-cycle ceremonies, gift-giving occasions regulated by the calendar, emergencies that cause sudden deprivations and special events that call for prompt gift-giving. These occasions are diverse and are consistently well defined, and most importantly for this study, associated with particular rituals. They also entail Japanese p rinciples that are the basis of rituals and ceremonies. These include the concepts of obligation, duty, reciprocity, among others. Gift-giving is a prominent element in life-cycle ceremonies or â€Å"rite of passage† events and therefore provide a wealth of insights on the rituals that define these stages and the growth phases between them. As it is, people are preoccupied with gift-giving in birth, marriage, and death of people as well as in education, wedding anniversary, etc. In so many instances, gift-giving becomes a means of exchange –a kind of exchange that articulates obligation. For instance, during a wedding, there is normally a table outside of the hall where the wedding takes place. Young people sat behind this table and they are tasked to collect the money contained in envelopes given by arriving guests. What is interesting, perhaps for most foreigners, is that the amount contained in the envelope is strictly recorded along with the name of its giver.