The Influence of Consumerism on 7

The contemporary business environment is becoming very competitive, thanks to globalization and technological advancement. The increased competition is now forcing organizations to adopt powerful strategies in order to gain competitive advantage. It is for this reason that consumerism has gained popularity, with business enterprises investing heavily in promotion of their products in order to influence purchasing behaviour of target markets.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Influence of Consumerism on 7-11 Years Children specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Indeed, the consumer market seems to be the biggest driver of economic development in most countries, as it continues to grow as the economy and population grow. Therefore, marketing becomes an integral function in organizations, where different organizations use persuasive and manipulative techniques and strategies to convince or change perceptions of consumer s to purchase their products and services (Schor, 2004). Nowadays, most organizations are focusing on children as a niche market with potentially sustainable growth and profitability. Although this may be a move in the right direction for businesses and society in terms of commercial empowerment, there is a dark side, especially in relation to social and health wellbeing of children (Palmer, 2010). This paper will critically discuss the effect of consumerism on children aged 7-11 years. In the past generations, parents dictated children’s consumer behaviour by purchasing things (toys, sweets, clothes among other children stuff) that they felt their children needed or deserved to have. This was mainly based on necessity and affection, but there was no significant influence from outside to do so. However, social changes in recent years have allowed children to have a commanding influence on their consumption patterns, thanks to ever-increasing advertisements and pressure from p eers (Evans Chandler, 2006). Today, many organizations are advertising their products directly to children with the knowledge that children have become more empowered and their psychological faculties can easily be manipulated or persuaded to like the products offered (Hulbert, 2004). Indeed, every organization will target a market that would be positively responsive to its products.  According to Schor (2004), children are nowadays being used as the conduit for marketing products to parents, especially due to their passionate consumption behaviour, brand loyalty, and tendency to learn fast. Generally, marketers focus on children based on three key roles they play as consumers including, controlling a big niche market, influencing family purchasing behaviour and brand loyalty. However, several other factors have contributed to increased consumerism and marketing being directed to children. Children at the age of 7 to 11 have their own purchasing power due to pocket money given to them by their parents; however, they do not have mental capacity to make informed decision about wants and needs (Hill, 2011).Advertising Looking for essay on advertising? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More In addition, peer pressure tends to be setting in during this age, thus influencing children to purchase things that will make them compete with their peers. Moreover, families are trying to alleviate their children from threats of stigmatization and social identity by purchasing things to their children that will make them socially compatible with other children (Hamilton, 2011). Indeed, it is worth noting that modern parents have compromised their control on children’s purchasing influence (Herbst, 2005) by yielding easily to children’s pestering and giving out money (or items) to them out of guilt for not spending enough time with them due to professional engagements. Consumerism culture has adverse repercuss ions in children, especially in their social development. Importantly, since children do not have the capacity to make informed decisions, they are vulnerable to manipulation (Roche, 2009). In recent years, advertisement efforts by organizations have gone a notch higher to segment children market into age groups in order to capture more attention. Importantly, children at the age of 7-11 years are beginning to identify their true gender and tend to associate themselves with popular culture; so they will demand products that make them look cool, in reference to advertisements. Here, peer pressure plays a big role as children try to compete against each other in terms of possession and coolness (Là ¼sted, 2010). Indeed, children construct their identity by having a large collection of brands (Archer, Hollingworth, and Halsall, 2007). Moreover, children can easily identify the most endearing brands and labels, and they can skillfully use their little consumer knowledge to acquire thes e things (Pilcher, 2011). Indeed, it becomes very easy for children to participate in impulse purchases due to the amount of pocket money given to them by parents and their ability to influence parents to purchase for them. Indeed, Buckingham (2013) claims that children would influence parents and the society to accept something due to emotional connection that exists between them and the society would also respond quickly if something is harmful to the children. The social platform set by the contemporary marketers is eroding children’s values as they try to define their true self, because of bombarding them with so many products, which make them believe happiness is found from accumulation of possessions.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Influence of Consumerism on 7-11 Years Children specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Indeed, this is becoming immoral, as it is not only interfering with their psycholog ical health, but also their personal growth and development, especially because they are denied important tools (such as social, spiritual and intellectual) to respond appropriately to different situations (Schor, 2004). Consumerism is also interfering with the health of children; no wonder there are increased cases of child obesity and depression (Dittmann, 2004). Nowadays, parents prefer to buy ready or easy-to-cook food from fast food shops or retail shops due to lack of time or boredom to prepare healthy food as they used to do before. Importantly, marketers are taking this advantage to promote fatty, sugary and fast foods to children with the confidence of huge sales, the result of which is increasing cases of obese children due to consumption of these foods usually marketed as fun and cool (Gorman, 2008). Moreover, cases of drug abuse among children have increased due to the advertisements aired during children shows as well as sponsorship of children concerts and events by to bacco or alcohol companies (Schor, 2004). The excess reliance on toys, especially play stations and computer games by children is eroding the social and cognitive development aspect in children. Unlike in the past where children used to play with their neighbor’s children, modern children have their play stations and television as their best friends (Piachaud, 2007). Therefore, children are focusing more on their materialist possessions in expense of family and friendship. Moreover, some video games are training children to be violent instead of morally upright individuals, and this may justify the recent cases of violence and shooting in schools, especially in the US. Unsurprisingly, cases of mental disorder and depression have increased due to exposure to advertisements that have adverse psychological effect on children. Protection of this future generation is of paramount importance, and it should be a concerted effort by all stakeholders. Primarily, there needs to be regu lations on advertisements in order to prevent children from exposure to excess material that may alter their self-perceptions or behaviour. Indeed, regulations have worked in several countries that have limited or eliminated commercials during children’s programming and events, including Greece, Norway, Italy, and Austria among others (Hawkes, 2004, p.19). Another remedy lies with the parents who must nurture their children to be morally upright people. Parents should train their children about money management and consumer behaviour, as well as control the amount they give to children as pocket money.Advertising Looking for essay on advertising? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More They should know that children of this age have some knowledge about what money is, they would tend to imitate their parents’ spending habits (Pfund, 2011), and they are vulnerable to peer pressure; therefore, guidance is important. Parents would also be in a better position to control their children’s exposure to harmful advertisements that influence their consumption behaviors (Palmer Young, 2003). Finally, the society plays a big role in protecting its members from harmful effects. Primarily, children need a clean and safe environment to grow and develop, thus any advertisements that tend to be manipulative or directed to children must be thoroughly regulated. As seen above, corporations target children because they wield a lot of power in influencing consumption in families and they tend to be sustainable target market due to their brand loyalty. However, they become victims to social ineffectiveness, lifestyle illnesses, and mental disorders. Therefore, all stake holders should unite and create an atmosphere that inhibits consumerism from destroying these innocent consumers. References Archer, L., Hollingworth, S., Halsall, A. (2007). University’s not for me – I’m a Nike person: urban, working class young people’s negotiations of style, identity and educational engagement. Sociology, 41(2), 219–237. Buckingham, D. (2013). The Material Child. London, England: John Wiley Sons. Dittmann, M. (2004). Protecting children from advertising. American Psychology Association, 35(6). Evans, J., Chandler, J. (2006). To Buy or not to Buy: Family Dynamics and Children’s Consumption. Sociological Research Online, 11(2). Gorman, M. (2008). Childhood obesity statistics and facts. National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutes. Web. Hamilton, K. (2011). Low-Income Families and Coping Through Brands: Inclusion or Stigma? Sociology, 46(1), 75-90. Hawkes, C. (2004). Food to children: The glo bal regulatory environment. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization. Herbst, M. (2005). Advertising to Children. Norderstedt, Germany: GRIN Verlag. Hill, J. (2011). Endangered childhoods: how consumerism is impacting child and youth identity. Media Culture Society, 33(3), 347-362. Hulbert, A. (2004). Tweens â€Å"R† us. The New York Times. Web. Là ¼sted, M. (2010). Advertising to Children. Minnesota, USA: ABDO, 2010. Palmer, E. L., Young, B. M. (2003). The faces of televisual media: Teaching, violence, selling to children. New Jersey, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum. Palmer, S. (2010). Toxic Childhood: How The Modern World Is Damaging Our Children And What We Can Do About It. London, England: Orion. Pfund, F. (2011). Advertising to Children. Norderstedt, Germany: GRIN Verlag. Piachaud, D. (2007). Freedom to be a Child: Commercial Pressures on Children. London, England: Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion. Pilcher, J. (2011). No logo? Children’s consumption of fashio n. Childhood, 18 (1) 128-141. Roche, M. (2009). Children, Consumerism, and the Common Good. London, England: Rowman Littlefield. Schor, J. B. (2004). Born to buy: the commercialized child and the new consumer culture. New York: Scribner. This essay on The Influence of Consumerism on 7-11 Years Children was written and submitted by user Abr1l to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Antony, Cleopatra and Enobarbus Essays

Antony, Cleopatra and Enobarbus Essays Antony, Cleopatra and Enobarbus Paper Antony, Cleopatra and Enobarbus Paper Essay Topic: Literature Shakespeare has created three strong characters within the play Antony and Cleopatra. Their attitudes to death and mortality in the play have little similarities as Antony, Cleopatra and Enobarbus all approach the issue differently. Enobarbus, for example, acquires a broken heart after regrettably leaving the side of Antony to join forces with Caesar. He is ashamed at what he has done and feels he has acted wrongly. When the messenger sent by Antony gives Enobarbus his treasure, it makes him feel guiltier for his disloyalty to his close friend. At this point, the option of suicide becomes apparent as Enobarbus speaks of his death which would be a way of ending his broken heart. At the end of Act IV, Enobarbus feels not worthy and exits by saying; go seek / some ditch wherein to die It isnt until Scene 9 that Enobarbus carries out his suicide. He looks up to the moon and addresses it, as this is associated with mental instability and asks the moon to witness his repentance and for the forgiveness of Antony, and in line 23 he stabs himself uttering Antonys name. Enobarbus death showed his weakness to carry on with the guilt of leaving Antony. He felt so ashamed of his actions and saw the only way to fix the wrong doing was to end his life as he was the one at fault. Antony however feared death. Shakespeare gives the audience the impression that he is scared of mortality. But when he hears the news that his beloved Cleopatra has apparently committed suicide he attempts suicide himself because without her in his life, he has nothing to live for. It is Eros who kills himself first after Antony asks Eros to kill him as he cannot bring himself to carry out the act. At this point Shakespeare encourages the audience to believe that Antony is going to die using the sword, but when Antony falls on Eros sword afterwards, he fails to kill himself outright. After then asking Decretas to kill him, it becomes almost like a pantomime with Antony messing up his suicide twice. With his life as a soldier at an end, Antony becomes like a brideroom in his death and runs to it, As a lovers bed with no hesitation when he finds out that Cleopatra had deceived him by lying about her suicide. When Antony is sent to Cleopatras monument after finding out that she is still alive, there is a sense of a double irony as she was not dead and he was dying. As Cleopatra eventually gives Antony his kiss which he asked for as his death wish, he dies. Cleopatras death at the end of the play is the result of a climatic build-up. Her death is to show courage which relates to being a Roman quality. After faking her death to see what her lover Antonys reaction would be, she commits suicide to defeat Caesar and join Antony. Five minutes after he has died, she feels like she has melted away. She becomes convinced that now Antony is gone, Caesar will show her off as a trophy and she will become part of a Roman pageant. This scares her immensely and she begins to sulk. Her stubbornness, strong will and single mind comes into play and this shows her powerful side. Cleopatra is a proud woman and is not afraid to kill herself as she doesnt want to continue with her life anymore. Her actually death takes place in her monument away from the reach of Caesar. She puts on her best clothes to give the impression that she is going to do this properly unlike Antony who had done so with his suicide. She uses the asp (snake) to show the symbol that her life was about to be untangled for itself and speaks of how she is jealous of those who have already died. It is not until she is half way through a sentence that she dies. This gives the end of the play a sudden twist as there is no way of knowing what else was about to be said by the queen and shows a less traditional aspect to the end of a morality play. There is a define sense of death with honour in Antony and Cleopatra and is portrayed strongly in the suicides of all three characters in some form. However it can be argued that Antony does not have this honour because of the fact that he had already attempted two times to kill himself by falling of the sword and failed and Enobarbus can be said to be dishonourable because he stabbed himself of a broken heart and felt that escapism was the only way to end his guilt. The only argument that is clearly apparent for Cleopatra being seen as dishonourable is when she faked her own suicide to see what her lovers reaction would be. All three characters have different divisions in their attitudes to death and the death situations and this is made clear in all three separate death scenes. But none of the suicides are planned with great thought except Cleopatras who felt she must die in dignity by dressing up and using snakes as a symbolic reference to dispatch its venom rather than stabbing herself. Smaller characters in the play do not have much focus on their deaths unlike Antony, Cleopatra and Enobarbus who are able to conduct powerful, meaningful speeches before their deaths. Characters such as Eros and Charmian, who are close friends to Antony and Cleopatra exit with little recognition. For example, Eros is shown to be honourable in refusing to kill Antony when he asks him to. He ends his life by turning the sword on himself with his back to Antony before trying to kill Antony himself. Eros speaks of his death by saying; Thus I do escape the sorrow / Of Antonys death. This character shows his loyalty to Antony until the end of his time in the play. Charmian too shows her commitment to the queen as her maidservant by killing herself after the death of Cleopatra. She speaks of the world as vile and sees no hope for the future now Cleopatra has killed herself, so she applies an asp to herself also. Her last words resort back to showing her admiration to the queen and suggests she is most royal by stating; It is well done, and fitting for a princess / Descended of so many royal kings These few words show how Shakespeare is acknowledging her reign and her powerful impact on peoples lives, and used Charmian as an example to show this in her death even though the focus did not remain on her afterwards. Throughout Antony and Cleopatra, different characters act to the news of peoples deaths in interesting ways. When Antonys first wife Fulvia dies, His reaction to her death was to know where she had died. It meant he had back the freedom he had previously wanted and was now able to marry Cleopatra but Antony now did not want to. There is hardly any reference to Fulvia in the play apart from Act 1 when her death is announced then soon forgotten by Antony. Cleopatra however asks why he married her but chose not to love her. This question asked by the queen proved Fulvias little existence to Antony and the audience may have been surprised about this. For Caesar, the death of Antony and Cleopatra changes his attitudes and this is made apparent in the last speech which is carried out by Caesar himself. As he delivers his speech, it seems as though he is now different. It steps back on how the audience has previously perceived Caesar as a somewhat negative figure which causes friction between the two main characters. Shakespeare draws the tragedy around this last significant speech as it gives the choice of pity or terror with the idea that the world can be re-built after the deaths of a great warrior and the queen of Egypt. It also emphasises that there is no loss on their part because Cleopatra will be with her Antony for eternal life in a happier place; She shall be buried by her Antony. This part can be said to be connected with the ending in Hamlet with the funeral narration. In this play, Shakespeare creates the sense of death as going somewhere better then where they are stationed now. This was because he wrote his plays around Christian beliefs in the 1600s which meant that there was meant to be a life after death. Perhaps this idea meant that the play Antony and Cleopatra wasnt so much an emphasis into a tragedy but shown as a basis of something better to come out of their lives in Rome and Egypt after the wars and disloyalty of people throughout the story. It is noticeable to see how the beginning of the play differs to the end of the play on attitudes to death. The use of the fortune teller (soothsayer) in Act II, Scene 3 makes it seem that Antony is in control of a great force. The soothsayer tells Antony that he has a guiding spirit which is courageous and unmatchable, but fearful towards Caesar, so he should be wary of his limitations. Antony does not listen to his advice and it isnt until later when he loses the second battle he begins to struggle maintaining his successful image, which he feels is fading away. His attitudes change after this, as he goes from believing he can beat Caesar to feeling defeated in war. This is when he becomes scared of death and his earlier strong, fearless character has disappeared. The soothsayer also predicts the deaths of others. This tragedy reflects on three main criteria: war, love and betrayal which all connect with death. The men who fought for Antony and Caesar died in both battles on land and sea, Antony and Cleopatra died in the end for each other so love was the cause for their deaths, and the betrayal of friends such as Enobarbus leaving Antony to join Caesars army all contrast to create the tragedy itself. There is not one main factor that can be used to explain the suicides of each character, especially for Antony, Cleopatra and Enobarbus as they saw dying as achieving different things. The message of this tragedy has many definitions such as escapism, pain, suffering, gloom and death itself. But perhaps the main is the fall of a great man which is Antony himself. He was a great leader and was admired for his achievements. He had to be high up for it to be a tragic fall in the play. Each three main death scenes had their own purposely built moments, and Shakespeare must have deliberately chosen to do this. The death parts are built up, which starts with Enobarbus who is the first to die, and his reason for doing so was because he was heart broken, downbeat and felt guilty. The second is taken one step higher with Antonys death having two parts. The tension rises however when he dies in the middle of a line. But these two suicides are the climatic build up to Cleopatras death which is planned with props for the stage and a long death speech. It can be said that her suicide was the dramatic finale with the two suicides of the other main characters being looked upon as not as important because of how her death was prepared and ended the play. This love-tragedy by Shakespeare sees the heroine as centre of attention like many other of his plays, so this is why she deserves to die with the dignity that Antony and Enobarbus did not.

Development, Frameworks and Methods Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Development, Frameworks and Methods - Essay Example Since 1983, cellular phones have evolved from what was Motorola DynaTAC 8000X to the current iPhone 5 (Burgess, & Burgess, 2012). Besides the initial models lacking the many incorporated features, they were also bigger in size with protruding antennae compared to the current models. The phones also weighed much compared to the current ones. From basic conversation gadgets, cellular phones were later designed to take up more tasks including multimedia functions. This was a milestone achievement in the history of phones and no one could envisage any other advancement. In that era, phones were used to take personal images and record fascinating event in occasions like wedding and parties (Burgess, & Burgess, 2012). It is true that technology never stops to evolve. After the amazing feature in the history of the phone, another functionality was invented. The phone could now be used to access internet by either mobile broadband or Wi-Fi. Again, it was astonishing that computer based services could now be accessed using cell phones. This technology made it possible for the phone users to keep track of the word breaking news and to explore the various internet social sites like Facebook and twitter (Kling, 2010). Access to information was widened and just by having a phone, one could get direct access to all the information they needed. This technology made it possible to believe that cell phones could be made to suit any human need. Currently, cell phones can be used as Global Positioning Devices (GPS) that are able to receive satellite signals. In this regard, current position and location of the phones can be determined. This technology has been used to trace stolen or missing phones (Kling, 2010). It has been used to track criminals for apprehension by providing the exact longitude and latitude where the device is on the earth surface. GPS