Advertising Colonial Romance and Imperial Masculinity: The Promotion of Philip Meadows Taylor's Novels in Britain

The comments of Charles Kegan Paul, the Victorian publisher who was involved in publishing the novels of the nineteenth-century British-Indian author Philip Meadows Taylor as single volume reprints in the 1880s, are illuminating. They are indicative of the publisher's position with regard to publishing - that there was often no correlation between commercial success and the artistic merit of a work. According to Kegan Paul, a substandard or mediocre text would be commercially successful as long it met a perceived want on the part of the public. In effect, the ruminations of the publisher suggests that a firm desirous of acquiring commercial success for a work should be an astute judge of the pre-existing wants of consumers within the market. Yet Theodor Adorno, writing in the mid-twentieth century, offers an entirely distinctive perspective to Kegan Paul's observations, arguing that there is nothing foreordained about consumer demand for certain cultural tropes or productions. They in fact are driven by an industry that preempts and conditions the possible reactions of the consumer. Both Kegan Paul's and Adorno's insights are illuminating when it comes to addressing the key issues explored in this essay. Kegan Paul's comments allude to the ways in which the publisher's promotion of Philip Meadows Taylor's fictional depictions of India and its peoples were to a large extent driven in the mid- to late-nineteenth century by their expectations of what metropolitan readers desired at any given time, whereas Adorno's insights reveal the ways in which British-Indian narratives and the public identity of their authors were not assured in advance, but were, to a large extent, engineered by the publishing industry and the literary marketplace.

Innovations in Hospitality Human Resources: Cases from the U.S. Lodging Industry

[Excerpt] Today’s hospitality and tourism companies face complex, dramatically shifting challenges, most notably the need to compete for increasingly sophisticated customers in a global, fluid marketplace. To attract and retain the loyal cadre of customers that will ensure the organization’s success, service companies such as hospitality organizations must employ technologically advanced, yet margin sensitive, product and pricing strategies and practices that will differentiate themselves to their intended market. Even more importantly, these service organizations need to devise strategies that will capture and retain the most important yet, from a financial perspective, unrecognized asset on the balance sheet: the employees that design and deliver the service to the customer base. Human resource strategists (i.e. Becker & Gerhart, 1996; Cappelli & Crocker-Hefter, 1996; O’Reilly & Pfeffer, 2000; Pfeffer, 1998; Ulrich, 1997), including those who take a hospitality perspective (i.e. Baumann, 2000; Hume, 2000; Worcester, 1999) advocate a renewed attention to the investment in employees or “human capital” as a source of strategic competitive advantage.

Free Drink or Free Mug? Managing Service Experience with Experiential vs. Material Complimentary Gifts

In the marketplace, complimentary gifts can take the form of experiential elements (e.g., a meal) or material items (e.g., tangible objects such as a mug). We identify these free gifts as a meaningful service design choice that helps service providers innovate service. Specifically, we examine the circumstances under which experiential or material gifts are preferred and generate greater consumer satisfaction, enhancing the overall service experience. Across three experiments, we demonstrate that consumers are generally happier with experiential offerings, and they prefer (and are more satisfied with) experiential offerings on ordinary consumption occasions; experiential elements are believed to further enrich otherwise mundane experiences. However, this experiential advantage disappears for consumers on meaningful and special occasions because of a strong desire to obtain a memory cue that will help them recall the experience. Indeed, the preference for a material item holds only when the gift has the quality to serve as a salient memory marker, but not when it lacks this quality. This research provides insight for managers to take into account consumption occasions or type of consumers (e.g., special occasions, repeat customers) to effectively design service bundles with complimentary gifts and thus better manage overall service experience.

Futures Shock: Are Greedy Brokers Ruining The Economy?

[Excerpt] In a recent public relations document, the New York Stock Exchange defines its mission statement as to: “Support the capital-raising and asset management process by providing the highest quality and most cost-effective, self-regulated marketplace for the trading of financial instruments.” The common thread that runs through this and similar statements made by organized financial markets from Frankfurt to Tokyo is that they hold as their primary goals to help companies raise capital and to provide a liquid and efficient aftermarket for those securities.

The Path between Pedagogy and Technology: Establishing a Theoretical Basis for the Development of Educational Game Environments

The power of computer game technology is currently being harnessed to produce “serious games”. These “games” are targeted at the education and training marketplace, and employ various key game-engine components such as the graphics and physics engines to produce realistic “digital-world” simulations of the real “physical world”. Many approaches are driven by the technology and often lack a consideration of a firm pedagogical underpinning. The authors believe that an analysis and deployment of both the technological and pedagogical dimensions should occur together, with the pedagogical dimension providing the lead. This chapter explores the relationship between these two dimensions, and explores how “pedagogy may inform the use of technology”, how various learning theories may be mapped onto the use of the affordances of computer game engines. Autonomous and collaborative learning approaches are discussed. The design of a serious game is broken down into spatial and temporal elements. The spatial dimension is related to the theories of knowledge structures, especially “concept maps”. The temporal dimension is related to “experiential learning”, especially the approach of Kolb. The multi-player aspect of serious games is related to theories of “collaborative learning” which is broken down into a discussion of “discourse” versus “dialogue”. Several general guiding principles are explored, such as the use of “metaphor” (including metaphors of space, embodiment, systems thinking, the internet and emergence). The topological design of a serious game is also highlighted. The discussion of pedagogy is related to various serious games we have recently produced and researched, and is presented in the hope of informing the “serious game community”.

Framework para comercialização de soluções de smart cities: o caso PT

Com um número cada vez maior de cidadãos a viver em grandes aglomerados urbanos, as cidades necessitam de se adaptar e tornar mais inteligentes por forma a serem sustentáveis. Desta forma, o conceito de smart city implica a integração de várias dimensões da gestão da cidade, mediante uma abordagem integrada e sustentada, criando um novo mercado per si. Mas, para responder a estas necessidades e conquistar este novo mercado, as empresas têm que se organizar por forma a sustentar as suas decisões estratégicas com ferramentas que permitem a análise e avaliação deste novo paradigma. Baseado nos conceitos de smart cities/cidades inteligentes, este trabalho desenvolve um conjunto de ferramentas que permitem a análise e avaliação de novos mercados pela empresa PTInovação, criando um modelo para a implementação de um mapa de calor/heat map que apresenta as cidades com maior potencial de mercado a nível mundial. Com base neste modelo, é então efetuada uma instanciação do modelo que permite analisar 7 casos diferentes de cidades localizadas na América, África, Ásia e Europa. A partir da análise realizada, é efetuado um caso de estudo para a cidade de Cartagena das Índias, na Colômbia. Este caso de estudo efetua a análise do portfólio de oferta da PTInovação, estuda as necessidades específicas dos utilizadores locais e analisa os potenciais competidores no mercado local, permitindo a realização de uma análise SWOT/TOWS que induz a criação de um plano de ação que permite mapear o processo de entrada da empresa neste mercado.

Proactive Marketing – Concept Development and Empirical Analysis

In this thesis, proactive marketing is suggested to be a broader concept than existing research assumes. Although the concept has been mentioned in the context of competitive advantage in previous research, it has not been comprehensively described. This thesis shows that proactive marketing is more than investing in marketing communications of a company. Proactive marketing is described as a three-phased process that contains different customer value identification, creation, and delivery activities. The purpose of proactive marketing is essentially to anticipate and pursue market opportunities that bring value to the company’s stakeholders. Ultimately, proactive marketing aims at acting first on the market, shaping the markets, and thus reaching competitive advantage. The proactive marketing process is supported by the structures of an organization. Suitable structures for proactive marketing are identified in the thesis based on existing research and through an empirical analysis. Moreover, proactive marketing is related to two management theories: the dynamic capabilities framework and the empowerment of employees. A dynamic environment requires companies that pursue proactive marketing to change continuously. Dynamic capabilities are considered as tools of the management, which enable companies to create suitable conditions for the constant change. Empowerment of employees is a management practice that creates proactive behaviors in individuals. The empirical analysis is conducted in an online company operating in the rapidly changing marketplace of the Internet. Through the empirical analysis, the thesis identifies in practice how proactiveness manifests in the marketing process of a company, how organizational structures facilitate proactive marketing, and how proactive marketing is managed. The theoretical contribution of this thesis consist of defining the proactive marketing concept comprehensively and providing further research suggestions related to proactive marketing.

Innovating a consumer awareness of sweetpotato: industry, research and consumer adoption issues

In Australia, sweetpotato production has grown remarkably (1700%) in the last 16 years. Growers currently market 75 000 t per annum, worth $80-90 million at farm gate. The orange-fleshed cultivars are the most familiar to consumers, but other cultivars with varying flesh colour and properties also have potential for the consumer market. Given that Australian sweetpotato growers desire alternative cultivars to promote market demand, it is important to articulate the characteristics of sweetpotatoes that are most and least desirable for consumers. Research indicates that consumer acceptability of the new cultivar 'Evangeline' may assist sweetpotato growers and marketers in understanding the impact of both sensory properties, such as colour and the importance of flavour and texture of sweetpotatoes, and an awareness of the potential health benefits of sweetpotato consumption. In addition, whilst consumer preferences (regarding size, colour, texture, skin tone) and nutritional knowledge of sweet potato (regarding glycaemic index) is increasing, there is limited research investigating consumers understanding of health messages of sweetpotato attributes. This industry and consumer research review highlights the potential for promoting innovative strategies to improve adoption of new cultivars in the marketplace.

O perfil do idoso no mercado de trabalho brasileiro: análise das pnads 2002 e 2012

O presente trabalho tem como finalidade traçar um perfil do idoso inserido no mercado de trabalho Brasileiro. Para a realização deste objetivo, de acordo com a literatura sobre mercado de trabalho e estudos realizados sobre o assunto, utilizaram-se modelos econométricos de resposta qualitativa, o logit e o probit, para a obtenção da probabilidade dos idosos brasileiros estarem inseridos no mercado de trabalho, a partir de variáveis independentes selecionadas. A mostra foi construída a partir de dados fornecidos pela Pesquisa Nacional de Amostra por Domicílios, a PNAD, para os anos de 2002 e 2012. Os resultados dos modelos apresentaram um perfil de idoso inserido no mercado de trabalho brasileiro como sendo residente de áreas rurais, branco, não aposentado e moradores principalmente dos estados do Sul e do Nordeste do país.

Emociones cromáticas: análisis de la percepción de color basado en emociones y su relación con el consumo de moda

La globalización del mercado actual exige que los productos sean novedosos, comerciales, funcionales y altamente llamativos, para despertar así en el consumidor la atención suficiente y lograr que se dé el momento de la compra, con la previa identificación de su necesidad y la aceptación del producto. Caracterizar al consumidor es complejo, y deben ser analizados diferentes aspectos como el color y las emociones. En este trabajo se estableció, la relación que existe entre la emoción, el color y el objeto moda, identificando las variables que motivan al consumidor en el momento de su compra. Para ello se aplicó una encuesta sobre una población universitaria en Colombia y, adicionalmente, mediante la base de datos DEAP perteneciente a 4 universidades de Europa (Queen Mary University de Londres, University of Twente de Holanda, University of Geneva y al EPFL de Suiza), que relaciona emociones y vídeos en una población universitaria de Europa, se hizo un análisis del color en la ambientación de estos y se demostró la influencia del color utilizando el gráfico de Geneve. Los resultados obtenidos demostraron una fuerte influencia del color en la actitud de consumo y del color sobre las emociones, aunque no se logró concluir que las emociones afecten el momento de adquisición por parte del consumidor.

Symbiotic Cities: Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Mass Culture, 1910-1960

This dissertation examines how Buenos Aires emerged as a creative capital of mass culture and cultural industries in South America during a period when Argentine theater and cinema expanded rapidly, winning over a regional marketplace swelled by transatlantic immigration, urbanization and industrialization. I argue that mass culture across the River Plate developed from a singular dynamic of exchange and competition between Buenos Aires and neighboring Montevideo. The study focuses on the Argentine, Uruguayan, and international performers, playwrights, producers, cultural impresarios, critics, and consumers who collectively built regional cultural industries. The cultural industries in this region blossomed in the interwar period as the advent of new technologies like sound film created profitable opportunities for mass cultural production and new careers for countless theater professionals. Buenos Aires also became a global cultural capital in the wider Hispanic Atlantic world, as its commercial culture served a region composed largely of immigrants and their descendants. From the 1920s through the 1940s, Montevideo maintained a subordinate but symbiotic relationship with Buenos Aires. The two cities shared interlinked cultural marketplaces that attracted performers and directors from the Atlantic world to work in theatre and film productions, especially in times of political upheaval such as the Spanish Civil War and the Perón era in Argentina. As a result of this transnational process, Argentine mass culture became widely consumed throughout South America, competing successfully with Hollywood, European, and other Latin American cinemas and helping transform Buenos Aires into a cosmopolitan metropolis. By examining the relationship between regional and national frames of cultural production, my dissertation contributes to the fields of Latin American studies and urban history while seeking to de-center the United States and Europe from the central framing of transnational history.

Graphic satire and the rise and fall of the First British Empire: political prints from the Seven Years' War to the Treaty of Paris, c. 1756-1783

This thesis examines the early stages of the transformation of emblematic political prints into political caricature from the beginning of the Seven Years' War (1756) to the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolutionary War (1783). Both contextual and iconographical issues are investigated in relation to the debates occasioned by Britain's imperial project, which marked a period of dramatic expansion during the Seven Years' War, and ended with the loss of the American colonies, consequently framing this thesis as a study of political prints during the rise and fall of the so-called 'First British Empire'. Previous studies of eighteenth-century political prints have largely ignored the complex and lengthy evolutionary process by which the emblematic mode amalgamated with caricatural representation, and have consequently concluded that political prints excluded emblems entirely by the end of the 1770s. However, this study emphasizes the significance of the Wilkite movement for the promotion and preservation of emblems, and investigates how pictorial political argument was perceived and received in eighteenth-century British society, arguing that wider tastes and opinions regarding the utilization of political prints gradually shifted to accept both modes of representation. Moreover, the marketplace, legal status, topicality, and manufacturing methods of political prints are analyzed in terms of understanding the precarious nature of their consumption and those that endeavoured to engage in political printmaking. The evolution, establishment, and subsequent appropriation of pictorial tropes is discussed from the early modern period to the beginning of the so-called Golden Age of caricature, while tracing the adaptation of representational models in American colonial prints that employed emblems already entrenched in British pictorial political debate. Political prints from the two largest print collections, the British Museum and the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale are consulted, along with a number of eighteenth-century newspapers and periodicals, to develop the earlier research by M. Dorothy George, Charles Press, Herbert Atherton, Diana Donald, Amelia Rauser, and Eirwen Nicholson.

PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP FOR RESPONSIVE EXTENSION EDUCATION: THE CASE OF SAFE AND UCC IN GHANA

Developing nations in Africa are not shielded from the pressures of a globalized competitive agricultural marketplace. With an appreciable bulk of her people deriving livelihoods from diverse agricultural enterprises, these nations must respond to important contemporary issues shaping global agriculture. Farmers from such nations, including Ghana, will be able to improve their participation in the competitive local, regional and global agricultural marketplace if the appropriate agricultural technologies and extension information support are available. To achieve this, a new breed of agricultural extension graduates who can respond to current and emerging challenges in agriculture and interface effectively with farmers must be produced through responsive extension education and training. While extension education can produce effective extensionists to hasten agricultural development, budgetary constraints make it difficult for most African governments to successfully and sustainably implement such educational programs. However, public-private partnership (PPP) initiatives offer a way out of this financial dilemma. Beginning in 1993, the Sasakawa Africa Fund for Extension Education (SAFE) worked with the University of Cape Coast (UCC) in Ghana to develop an innovative extension education program through a public private partnership. The program, comprising a BSc. and Diploma components, was designed to respond to the myriad of challenges facing higher agricultural extension education in Ghana. A key practical feature of the curricula is the “Supervised Enterprise Projects” (SEPS), which enable students to work with relevant stakeholders to identify and tackle agricultural problems in farming communities through experiential extension approaches and action research. The SAFE-UCC initiative fulfils important education goals such as: expanding and improving access; ensuring quality and relevance; ensuring funding and mobilizing resources for sustainability; building partnerships and linkages; and promoting international co-operation. The paper discusses the underlying conditions for a successful public private partnership in agricultural and extension education and sheds light on the impacts, lessons learned and challenges.

DEVELOPMENT OF LI+ AND NA+ CONDUCTING CERAMICS AND CERAMIC STRUCTURES FOR USE IN SOLID STATE BATTERIES

A solid state lithium metal battery based on a lithium garnet material was developed, constructed and tested. Specifically, a porous-dense-porous trilayer structure was fabricated by tape casting, a roll-to-roll technique conducive to high volume manufacturing. The high density and thin center layer (< 20 μm) effectively blocks dendrites even over hundreds of cycles. The microstructured porous layers, serving as electrode supports, are demonstrated to increase the interfacial surface area available to the electrodes and increase cathode loading. Reproducibility of flat, well sintered ceramics was achieved with consistent powderbed lattice parameter and ball milling of powderbed. Together, the resistance of the LLCZN trilayer was measured at an average of 7.6 ohm-cm2 in a symmetric lithium cell, significantly lower than any other reported literature results. Building on these results, a full cell with a lithium metal anode, LLCZN trilayer electrolyte, and LiCoO2 cathode was cycled 100 cycles without decay and an average ASR of 117 ohm-cm2. After cycling, the cell was held at open circuit for 24 hours without any voltage fade, demonstrating the absence of a dendrite or short-circuit of any type. Cost calculations guided the optimization of a trilayer structure predicted that resulting cells will be highly competitive in the marketplace as intrinsically safe lithium batteries with energy densities greater than 300 Wh/kg and 1000 Wh/L for under $100/kWh. Also in the pursuit of solid state batteries, an improved Na+ superionic conductor (NASICON) composition, Na3Zr2Si2PO12, was developed with a conductivity of 1.9x10-3 S/cm. New super-lithiated lithium garnet compositions, Li7.06La3Zr1.94Y0.06O12 and Li7.16La3Zr1.84Y0.16O12, were developed and studied revealing insights about the mechanisms of conductivity in lithium garnets.

'What if you live on top of a bakery and you like cakes?'- Drug use and harm trajectories before, during and after the emergence of Silk Road

BACKGROUND: Cryptomarkets are digital platforms that use anonymising software (e.g. Tor) and cryptocurrencies (e.g. Bitcoin) to facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) trade of goods and services. Their emergence has facilitated access to a wide range of high-quality psychoactive substances, according to surveys of users. In this paper, we ask the question 'How does changing access to drugs through cryptomarkets affect the drug use and harm trajectories of their users?'

METHODS: We conducted a digital ethnography spanning 2012-2014, a period that included the seizure of the original Silk Road marketplace and forum by law enforcement. Using encrypted online chat, we interviewed 17 people who reported using Silk Road to purchase illicit drugs. The interviews were in-depth and unstructured, and also involved the use of life history timelines to trace trajectories. Transcripts were analysed thematically using NVivo.

RESULTS: For some, Silk Road facilitated initiation into drug use or a return to drug use after cessation. Typically, participants reported experiencing a glut of drug consumption in their first months using Silk Road, described by one participant as akin to 'kids in a candy store'. There was evidence that very high availability reduced the need for drug hoarding which helped some respondents to moderate use and feel more in control of purchases made online. Cryptomarket access also appeared to affect solitary and social drug users differently. Most participants described using other cryptomarkets after the closure of Silk Road, albeit with less confidence.

CONCLUSION: In the context of high levels of drug access, supply and diversity occurring within a community regulated environment online, the impacts of cryptomarkets upon drug use trajectories are complex, often posing new challenges for self-control, yet not always leading to harmful outcomes. A major policy challenge is how to provide support for harm reduction in these highly volatile settings.