How Introduction of E-Commerce Changed the Business World Research Paper

How Introduction of E-Commerce Changed the Business World - Research Paper Example The making of a client driven site is an overwhelming assignment for business associations. The principle challenge is realizing the data required by the client and introducing them in an easy to understand way. The commercialization of the web started with the National Science Foundation's (NSF) expulsion of web get to limitations for business purposes. It ought to be noticed that before 1991, utilization of the web turned out to be solely constrained to scholastics and scientists. In any case, the lifting of the limitation end up being a significant impetus as business people discovered that web get to business is industrially doable. Another factor which added to the commercialization of the web is the program wars started by the starting of the Netscape. This was additionally filled by the section of a large group of firms into business adventures using trend setting innovations which utilize the TCP/IP guidelines (Greenstein 1). This paper will take a gander at various ideas and issues in web based business. The following segment will be trailed by a short history of HTML and examination among XML and HTML. This report will likewise talk about the difficulties of making a client driven site, test the touchpoint consistency of McDonald's, and investigate two acclaimed kinds of web based promoting. HyperText Markup Language's (HTML) history can be respected to have had a life expectancy of seven years, beginning from its presentation as a straightforward language in the with just few labels to the as of late increasingly complex structures which empowers different movements, pictures, sounds, and other stunning stunts. The inception of the HTML is regularly connected with the designer of the web Tim Berners-Lee who made the web utilizing HTML as the distributing language (Raggett 22). As the primary maker of the HTML, he was the first to utilize this advancement and an incredible factor in the support of others to expand upon his thought and work on growing further programming for showing HTML and setting up HTML records for get to. Along with Dave Raggett, Tim additionally took a shot at building up the HTML for mass utilization, distinguishing and making the highlights which are favored by clients.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ Chapter 2 Free Essays

‘Oh, yes. He needs us to return and reveal to him where to discover you, so he can ensure the kid is safe.’ ‘If I were you,’ said Joseph, ‘I’d go straight home. We will compose a custom article test on The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ Chapter 2 or on the other hand any comparative theme just for you Request Now The ruler is flighty, you know. He may bring it into his head to rebuff you. We’ll take the kid to him in great time, don’t worry.’ The stargazers thought this was a word of wisdom, and went their direction. Then, Joseph pressed their products hurriedly, and set off that very night with Mary and the youngsters and went to Egypt, since he knew King Herod’s unstable ways, and dreaded what he would do. The Death of Zacharias He was on the right track to do as such. At the point when Herod understood that the celestial prophets were not going to return, he flew into a wrath and requested that each youngster in Bethlehem and the area under two years old ought to be executed on the double. One of the offspring of the correct age was John, the child of Zacharias and Elizabeth. When they knew about Herod’s plan, Elizabeth took him up into the mountains searching for some place to cover up. However, she was old and couldn't walk exceptionally far, and in her despondency she shouted out, ‘Oh pile of God, cover a mother and her child!’ Without a moment's delay the mountain opened and offered her a collapse which to shield. So she and the kid were sheltered, yet Zacharias was in a difficult situation. Herod realized that he had as of late fathered a kid, and sent for him. ‘Where is your kid? Where have you covered up him?’ ‘I am a bustling cleric, Your Majesty! I invest all my energy about the matter of the sanctuary! Taking care of kids is women’s work. I don’t know where my child can be.’ ‘I caution you ?C come clean! I can threaten your wellbeing in the event that I need to.’ ‘If you shed my blood, I will be a saint to the Lord,’ said Zacharias, and that worked out as expected, on the grounds that he was murdered there and afterward. The Childhood of Jesus In the interim, Joseph and Mary were choosing what to call their children. The firstborn was to be named Jesus, yet what to call the other, Mary’s mystery top pick? At long last they gave him a typical name, however taking into account what the shepherds had stated, Mary consistently called him Christ, which is Greek for Messiah. Jesus was a solid and chipper infant, however Christ was regularly sick, and Mary stressed over him, and gave him the hottest covers, and let him suck nectar from at the tip of her finger to stop him crying. Not long after they had shown up in Egypt, Joseph heard that King Herod had kicked the bucket. It was protected to return to Palestine, thus they set off back to Joseph’s home in Nazareth in Galilee. There the kids grew up. Furthermore, as opportunity went there arrived more kids to go along with them, more siblings, and sisters as well. Mary cherished every one of her kids, yet not similarly. The little Christ appeared to her to require exceptional consideration. Where Jesus and different kids were uproarious and played noisily together, getting into insidiousness, taking organic product, yelling out inconsiderate names and fleeing, starting ruckuses, tossing stones, wiping mud on house dividers, getting sparrows, Christ clung to his mother’s skirts and went through hours in perusing and petition. One day Mary went to the place of a neighbor who was a dyer. Jesus and Christ both accompanied her, and keeping in mind that she was conversing with the dyer, with Christ near to her side, Jesus went into the workshop. He took a gander at all the vessels containing diverse hued colors, and plunged a finger in every one, and afterward cleaned them on the heap of fabrics holding back to be colored. At that point he imagined that the dyer would see and be furious with him, so he packaged up the whole heap and push everything into the vessel containing a dark color. He returned to the room where his mom was conversing with the dyer, and Christ saw him and stated, ‘Mama, Jesus has accomplished something wrong.’ Jesus had his hands behind him. ‘Show me your hands,’ said Mary. He brought his hands around to appear. They were hued dark, red, yellow, purple and blue. ‘What have you been doing?’ she said. Frightened, the dyer ran into his workshop. Protruding out of the highest point of the vessel with the dark color was a chaotic stack of fabric, besmeared and recolored with dark, and with different hues also. ‘Oh no! Look what this rascal has done!’ he cried. ‘All this material ?C it’ll cost me a fortune!’ ‘Jesus, you terrible boy!’ said Mary. ‘Look, you’ve pulverized this man’s work! We’ll need to pay for it. How might we do that?’ ‘But I thought I was helping,’ said Jesus. ‘Mama,’ said Christ, ‘I can make everything better.’ What's more, he took a side of material, and said to the dyer: ‘What shading is this one expected to be, sir?’ ‘Red,’ said the dyer. What's more, the youngster hauled it out of the vessel, and it was red everywhere. At that point he pulled out every one of the rest of the materials, asking the dyer what shading it ought to be, thus they were: each piece was impeccably colored similarly as the client had requested it. The dyer wondered, and Mary grasped the kid Christ and kissed him over and over, loaded up with delight at the integrity of the little individual. Some other time Jesus was playing next to the portage over a stream, and he made some little sparrows out of mud and set them all up in succession. A devout Jew who was passing observed what he was doing and went to tell Joseph. ‘Your child has broken the sabbath!’ he said. ‘Do you know what he’s doing somewhere around the passage? You should control your children!’ Joseph rushed to perceive what Jesus was doing. Christ had heard the man yelling, and followed not far behind Joseph. Others were following as well, having heard the upheaval. They arrived similarly as Jesus made the twelfth sparrow. ‘Jesus!’ Joseph said. ‘Stop that immediately. You realize this is the sabbath.’ They would rebuff Jesus, however Christ applauded, and without a moment's delay the sparrows woke up and took off. The individuals were stunned. ‘I didn’t need my sibling to get into trouble,’ Christ clarified. ‘He’s a decent kid really.’ And all the grown-ups were loaded up with reverence. The young man was so unobtrusive and keen, not somewhat like his sibling. Be that as it may, the offspring of the town favored Jesus. The Visit to Jerusalem At the point when the twins were twelve years of age, Joseph and Mary took them to Jerusalem for the dining experience of the Passover. They went down in an organization of different families, and there were numerous grown-ups to watch out for the kids. After the celebration, when they were assembling everybody to leave, Mary ensured that Christ was with her, and said to him: ‘Where is Jesus? I can’t see him anywhere.’ ‘I think he’s with the group of Zachaeus,’ said Christ. ‘He was playing with Simon and Jude. He disclosed to me he was going to travel home with them.’ So they set off, and Mary and Joseph pondered him, envisioning him safe with the other family. Be that as it may, when it was the ideal opportunity for the night supper, Mary sent Christ to Zachaeus’s family to call Jesus, and he returned energized and on edge. ‘He’s not with them! He disclosed to me he was going to play with them, yet he never did! They haven’t seen him anywhere!’ Mary and Joseph looked among their family members and companions, and solicited each gathering from explorers in the event that they had seen Jesus, yet none of them knew where he was. This one said they had last observed him playing outside the sanctuary, that one said they had heard him state he was heading off to the commercial center, another said they were certain he was with Thomas, or Saul, or Jacob. At long last Joseph and Mary needed to acknowledge that he had been abandoned, and they stashed their things and turned around towards Jerusalem. Christ rode on the jackass, since Mary was stressed that he may be drained. They looked through the city for three days, yet Jesus was mysteriously gone. At long last Christ stated, ‘Mama, should we go to the sanctuary and appeal to God for him?’ Since they had looked wherever else, they figured they would attempt that. What's more, when they entered the sanctuary grounds, they heard an uproar. ‘That’ll be him,’ said Joseph. Sufficiently sure, it was. The ministers had discovered Jesus wiping his name on the divider with mud, and were concluding how to rebuff him. ‘It’s just clay!’ he was stating, getting over the earth his hands. ‘As soon as it downpours, it’ll fall off once more! I wouldn’t fantasy about harming the sanctuary. I was composing my name there with the expectation that God would see it and recall me.’ ‘Blasphemer!’ said a minister. Furthermore, he would have struck Jesus, yet Christ ventured forward and talked. ‘Please, sir,’ he stated, ‘my sibling isn't a blasphemer. He was composing his name in mud in order to communicate the expressions of Job, â€Å"Remember that you molded me like earth; and will you go me to tidy again?† ‘ ‘That may be,’ said another, ‘but he realizes beyond any doubt he’s fouled up. Look ?C he’s attempted to wash his hands and hide the evidence.’ ‘Well, obviously he has,’ said Christ. ‘He has done it to satisfy the expressions of Jeremiah, â€Å"Though you wash yourself with lye and utilize a lot of cleanser, the stain of your blame is still before you.†Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ ‘But to flee from your family!’ Mary said to Jesus. ‘We’ve been alarmed! Anything could have transpired. In any case, you’re so narrow minded, you don’t realize thinking of others. Your family makes no difference to you!’ Jesus hung his head. Be that as it may, Christ stated: ‘No, Mama, I’m sure he has good intentions. A

Transporting In Around MIT

Transporting In Around MIT PRIVATE TRANSPORTATION This includes but is not limited to cars, bicycles, skateboards, scooters, and walking. My favorite method, and perhaps the only method I am fully capable of doing after years of training in New York City, is walking. I daresay most people walk. For example, freshman Me walking across the Harvard Bridge in the dead of winter. More students who want quicker transportation use bicycles. MIT has plenty of bike racks around campus near classes and dorms. There is even an auction near the beginning of the year, so its perfectly feasible to get an inexpensive bike here. It also makes it easier to get to really nice places over the weekend, like Walden Pond or Cape Cod. My friend Anthony 10 found that he missed driving terribly. So, not too long ago he bought a used car. Keeping a car around campus is not free of course, but there are a few parking lots around. I hear that driving in the city is no easy feat either PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION You may have heard that Boston has a subway system. The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) runs this subway system, which for some reason is called the T. MIT has its own station on the Red Line at Kendall Square/MIT. The routes the T covers look something like this: In addition to subways (which cost $1.70 to $2.00 a ride), the MBTA also runs buses (these cost $1.25 to $1.50 a ride) and commuter rail trains (costs vary depending on distance). The map for the commuter rail, which covers a fair portion of the state, is here: How often do people at MIT take these things? Well, some of you might remember that Snively used the commuter rail every morning and evening last summer to get to and from his job in Providence. Ive used it to go to Worcester to see a Nightwish concert. Taking the T is essential for getting into Boston and then the buses can be used to go places the subways dont quite reach. The only inconvenience is that here in Boston, like most places, public transportation stops running. Between around 12:30am and 5:30am, the MBTA will not help you get anywhere. Some of MITs shuttles help make up for this. MIT TRANSPORTATION The MIT Department of Facilities Parking Transportation Office runs and coordinates several shuttles available to the MIT community. These include the following: Saferide. This is possibly the highest-volume shuttle at MIT. There are 4 different appropriately-named shuttles: Boston East, Boston West, Cambridge East, Cambridge West. Together, the four shuttles can reach most if not all of the dorms and FSILGs. Saferide is free and operates seven days a week from 6pm to 2:30am or 3:30am all year. Some reasons to use the Saferide include: Returning home safely after the T has stopped running. Getting to that fraternity or sorority party. Visiting your friends in faraway living groups. Visiting your friends in places near those faraway living groups (heh, BU). Quickly getting across the Charles River when its cold. Or rainy. Or both. Tech Shuttle. This operates every 20 minutes Monday through Friday, from 7:15am to 7:15pm during the entire calendar year (except holidays). Its free, and gets you all around MIT perfect for getting to classes quickly when you live in the farthest dorm and its raining outside. Northwest Shuttle. This free shuttle operates every 10 minutes weekdays from 7:25am to 6:42pm during the entire calendar year (except holidays). Its very similar to the Tech Shuttle. The map for the Tech Shuttle (in gold) and Northwest Shuttle (in black) is shown below. Daytime Boston Shuttle. This shuttle runs every 20 minutes from 8am to 6pm weekdays during the school year (September through May). It is also free, and takes people directly between MITs student center and a few of MITs Greek houses in Boston (which also are just a short hop away from all that the City of Boston has to offer). This short route is shown below. Airport Shuttle. Intuitively, these get people to and from Logan International Airport over several days right before Thanksgiving, Winter, or Spring vacations. Seats should be reserved beforehand, and costs $10.00. Perhaps good if you dont want to take (two or fewer) huge bulky suitcases around the T. Additional shuttles run by other parts of MIT or by companies in Cambridge/Boston include the Bates Shuttle, the Grocery Shuttle (Saturday mornings between Eastgate, a graduate dorm, and Star Market, a supermarket), the Lincoln Lab Shuttle, the Wellesley College Shuttle, the EZ Ride (goes to North Station, free with MIT ID), and the M2 Shuttle (goes around Cambridge, tickets for sale at the Parking and Transportation Office). This last photo is part of the Kendall/MIT Station. (Its so clean compared to NYC stations heheh). Travel safely!

7 Things to Do the Night Before The SAT

Study Drugs - 1267 Words

Students in America want to perform well during their school time, so they have a chance of getting a scholarship at best universities in the country. A lot of young Americans spend all their nights preparing for exams, because they can’t do it in the afternoon due to their sports and social life. Therefore many a night are spend studying hard for exams, so the teacher will not fail them and by that prevent them from getting their dream education. However, this tight and packed schedule causes the young Americans to get really exhausted and overloaded, and later on it might even cause cases of stress. In the meantime, this complex of problems seems to have got a solution. A solution that is so effective that most people never would have†¦show more content†¦This risk of getting addicted is something the anonymous girl from the interview in the podcast has experienced herself. She tells the reporter how she felt that every time she took a pill, the lust for another one became bigger. This proves the addiction that David Sack uses as an argument against the young students defending their beloved â€Å"study buddy†, as it is called, the interview in the podcast states. Furthermore, it’s a perfectly rational reason to never do study drugs; because what will good grades matter, if one ends up as a drug user due to ones increased risk of falling into an abuse. This also ï ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼Ã¯ ¿ ¼opens another set of problems that Davis Sack does not mention: Having to get these pills without a prescription from one’s doctor’s office is not possible if it should be done legally. Therefore, a lot of the pills being sold and bought around American college campuses are illegally sold by people with an ADHD-diagnosis, or the pills have been stolen from some who actually has a prescription for them and need them, the article at healthyhors.com states4. This proves that taking any kind of study drugs directly can conflict with criminality. Both steeling and selling the pills and doing drugs later on are felonies punishable with prison. To top it all off the article also mentions the sideShow MoreRelatedDrugs Alcohol Case Study1791 Words   |  8 PagesCASE STUDY Brian is married with two teenage children. He set up his own company, a packaging business 10 years ago, and has worked hard to make it viable. During this time his use of alcohol has increased. He currently uses alcohol on a daily basis and often consumes a 1.5L of bottle of spirits a day. He hides this from his wife, but she has recently wanted to talk about this, and is angry and frustrated with him. A recent back injury prompted him to go to his GP, who prescribed a codeine basedRead MoreCase Study : Club Drugs Addiction1474 Words   |  6 PagesAfterPartyChat: Club Drugs Addiction Beginning with discothà ¨que scene of the 1970s, the recreational and often psychedelic substances commonly known as â€Å"club drugs† maintained their prominence in later decades at nightclubs, concerts, and raves all across the United States. These substances gained their moniker because their use became commonplace in settings where users wanted to enhance their experiences, most frequently used at clubs with loud music, dramatic lights, and countless people dancingRead MoreCase Studies 6.4 Drug Dilemmas799 Words   |  4 Pagessafety. Yes, drug prices reflect a fair and competitive market. Pharmaceutical companies are in the business to provide treatment/cures to diseases that were considered killers just a few years ago. The high cost is misinterpreted as a greed endeavor. 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The direct relationship between violence and economic activity hopes to sharpen our understandingRead MoreDrug Users And Human Services Utilization : An Exploratory Study Essay842 Words   |  4 PagesThe article â€Å"Injection Drug Users, Crack-Cocaine Users, and Human Services Utilization: An Exploratory Study† by Ashery, Rebecca Sager; Carlson, Robert G.; Falck, Russel S.; Siegal, Harvey A. seeks to understand the perception and experiences of drug users upon utilizing Human Social Services. The research problem being addressed is formulated around the usage of social services programs among injection drug users and crack cocaine users during a two-year period. From the abstract of this articleRead MoreCase Study : Prescription Drug Abuse1885 Words   |  8 Pages Research Paper Focus: Prescription Drug Abuse Abuse is a pattern of substance use that results in negative consequences and impairment (Bukstein and Nquyen). 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Read MoreAnalysis Of Vancouver Injection Drug User Study ( Vidus )1918 Words   |  8 Pagesspreading infectious diseases (Bard, 2011). Inmates study Vancouver Injection Drug User Study (VIDUS) is a project that gives a prospective study and has over 1500 IDU s enlisted to assist since 1996 and gathers data on drug use, health, sexual activity, etc. Some of the topics discussed included: prison culture, availability and price of drugs and equipment, drug use, VIDUS shows that the risk of HIV infection indicated that incarcerated injection drug users were associated with a greater risk of 2Read MoreCase Study : The Drug Free Workplace1221 Words   |  5 PagesCase Study: The Drug-Free Workplace Write a statement that clearly defines the issue related to drug testing in the workplace. Drug testing in the workplace was initiated to detect trace amounts of illegal substances in employees, however, the procedures do not take into account individual substances, and it may infringe on the privacy of the employee. What are opiates? How are opiates consumed? What are the physiological effects of opiates? Opiate are a group of drugs that are used typically toRead MoreStudies and Reports of The National Institute on Drug Abuse871 Words   |  4 Pages In this paper I will be discussing five major issues the Nation Drug Abuse institute looked at and had many different groups if people doing surveys. This institute collected all the data through out the years and does graphs and reports the statistics of their findings. I will be discussing the trend with high school students and the drugs most of teens do. Also I will be talking about the nation trend, that most is common and comparing it to other years. And then I will discuss the number of hospital

McDonaldization of American Society and World Free Essays

string(21) " to the main course\." If you have ever had a meal in a restaurant (fast-food/formal dining), used an ATM in a bank, spent your vacation at an amusement park or simply browsed through a mall, you have been exposed to McDonaldization. McDonaldization is â€Å"the process by which the principles of the fast food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of America society as well as the rest of the world† (Ritzer, 1996, 1). Nearly ever aspect of today†s society has been affected by McDonaldization including the restaurant business, education, work, healthcare, travel, leisure, dieting, politics and the family (Ritzer, 1996, 1). We will write a custom essay sample on McDonaldization of American Society and World or any similar topic only for you Order Now I observed three East Side Mario†s Restaurant†s establishments while the dinner menu was being served on Saturday evenings between 6pm and 8pm to evaluate the ways in which McDonaldization has affected their company. On January 29th I visited East Side Mario†s in London, Ontario, on February 19th I visited East Side Mario†s in Plano, Texas (I used to hold a job as a server at this location) and on February 26th I visited East Side Mario†s in Orange, California. With the diversity of locations I was able to observe, I compared and contrasted many angles of the East Side Mario†s concept. East Side Mario†s Restaurants Inc. is one of the millions of business† that has implemented the four principles of McDonaldization, which are: efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. With the assistance of Bernard Platt, Vice President of Marie Callender†s Pie Shops, Inc. , former Vice President of East Side Mario†s Restaurant, Inc. , I will offer a condensed presentation of East Side Mario†s history to get you familiar with the business. East Side Mario†s Restaurants, Inc. , is a wholly owned division of Marie Callender†s Pie Shops, Inc. In 1987 a partnership of restauranteurs developed the ESM (for the remainder of this case study I will us the initial ESM to refer to East Side Mario†s Restaurants, Inc. ) concept in North Miami, Florida featuring the excitement and energy of a New York City street festival, a blend of outstanding American and Italian food, a place where families felt welcome and comfortable offering exceptional value. Today operating as a separate division of Marie Callender†s Pie Shops, Inc. , there are a total of 38 American restaurants – 11 corporate and 27 franchise – and there are over 80 ESM restaurants in The United States and Canada. Efficiency is the first dimension of McDonaldization and â€Å"the optimum method for getting from one point to another† (Ritzer, 1996, 9). The parking lot allows ample amount of parking space for customers, including handicapped spaces directly in front of the building for efficient accessibility. The restaurant offers delivery to those who would like to spend their dinner in the comfort and convenience of their own homes. There is a small server to customer ratio to provide the best service expected throughout a customer†s meal. A kid†s bambino menu is offered for children to enjoy less expensive meals that suit their size, along with a separate lunch menu that offers smaller portions for a lighter meal. Happy Hour items are offered at certain hours for a quick snack fix, providing just enough time to satisfy your thirst with a favorite drink. Customers can pay with cash or credit card, whichever is more convenient for them. To streamline the process of the kitchen work ESM simplified pasta dishes (their biggest items) to take only minutes to cook very large quantities. All employees have specialized jobs to divide the work load/streamline, including: host†s/hostess†, bartender†s, server†s, cook†s, dishwasher†s, salad bar attendant†s, cleaning staff, cocktailer†s and management. To simplify the product the menu is limited and specializes in American/Italian food. They offer easy, quickly made finger food appetizers and unlimited soup/salad and bread which is prepared in just seconds. ESM puts you, the customer, to work the minute you walk into the restaurant. Their may or may not be a host/hostess at the front. In the place of service staff you will definitely find a horn on a taxi stand so that a customer may call for service to the front immediately when they would like to be seated. Take-out boxes are available for the customer to take any leftovers home with them. However there is a catch, the box is merely dropped by the table and the customer is expected to put away their own leftovers. The employees and customers of ESM function efficiently together to produce a profit for the business and satisfy the customer. The second dimension of McDonaldization, calculability, is â€Å"an emphasis on the quantitative aspects of products sold (portion size, cost) and service offered (the time it takes to get the product)† (Ritzer, 1996, 9). Servers are paid $6. 85/hr in Canada and $2. 15/hr in The United States. The rest of their money comes from tips so if they expect to take home cash they will have to work to their greatest ability and place their wages in the hands of the customers. Management usually recruits minorities to work the back of the house because they will work hard for little pay. Emphasizing quantity over quality is an important aspect of calculability. With any entree unlimited homeloaf and soup or salad is offered. For the bar flies free peanuts are always out in buckets for all to enjoy. Specials and promotions occur seasonally, like 15-cent wings on Tuesdays. Bigger is seen as better and ESM has conformed to this idea, establishing this illusion with many of its menu items. Large plates are used to serve most meals and give the idea of large portions, with options of three different sides on dinner items. Customers expect quick and accurate service, which ESM has provided by reducing the processes of production to numbers. To promise quick service, the server will initially take a drink/appetizer order to ensure that you as a customer receive prompt service immediately. The bread is brought out before the meal to snack on and give just enough time for transition to the main course. You read "McDonaldization of American Society and World" in category "Essay examples" Customers do not like to sit in a restaurant without something in front of them. Each item on the menu has a preparation time, which is followed by the staff so customers can expect their food to be promptly served. ESM has successfully involved an emphasis on quantification. As the third dimension of McDonaldization, predictability, gives â€Å"the assurance that their [a company†s] products and services will be the same over time and in all locales† (Ritzer, 1996, 10). ESM has establishments across Canada and The United States and no matter where you go you can expect the same service and quality in each and every store. The logo is a familiar sign that represents a promise†¦. the same meal and experience you had at any other ESM. Every store that is built is a replicate of the previous one. The layout of each restaurant is similar, limiting the dining area to all non-smoking and only the bar area has smoking. The same colors are dominant in each store: red, green and white. The immediate feeling you will get when walking inside is that of a New York street with replica†s of the Brooklyn Bridge, Statue of Liberty, Scallero Bros. and Costello†s Markets (trademarks of ESM). Interaction between the employees and customers is scripted and predictable at each visit to the restaurant. The customer is seated, informed of specials, drink/appetizer orders are taken, bread, soup and salad are brought before the meal, entrees are served with the offering of cheese or pepper, a desert menu is presented, dishes are cleared from the table and the check is presented and paid for. ESM provides each of its employees with a handbook that outlines server etiquette. The employees are expected to have the mindset of â€Å"the customer is always right† which should convince the customer with the notion â€Å"I†ll be back†. Employee behavior is predictably the same. The staff wears the same casual uniform at each restaurant with a rountinized order of operations. You can always expect to have your server offer you fresh ground pepper or parmesan cheese. With respect to birthdays a desert of choice is presented with the East Side Mario†s famous birthday song. The menu remains the same, introducing new items on promotion once in a while, producing the same predictable products. People expect to have the garlic homeloaf with unlimited soup and salad. The routine, uniformity and systematization of operations in ESM prove that predictability has been achieved. The fourth dimension of McDonaldization is â€Å"increased control and the replacement of human with nonhuman technology† (Ritzer, 1996, 101). ESM has integrated all forms of technology to better their establishment. From the fountain pop dispenser to timed broilers and appliances, every process is controlled by some sort of automation. Under control is both the product and process of the business. The menu continually remains the same, limiting the items for customers to choose from. The Micros system is used to input orders which will be sent to the back of the house, organize each table†s order and have the food out and arranged according to the server†s timing. Server†s and bartender†s are expected to id all customers who look as though they are under the age of 30 for alcoholic beverages. In regards to controlling customers, the guest is expected to honk the horn to get the attention of employees to serve them. If there is a wait a pager is given out to customers to be buzzed at the soonest opportunity a table opens up. When the customer is through with a meal, the check is brought promptly to encourage them to leave and allow the next table to be sat. A tip percentage is required for parties of 8 or more to ensure that the time spent on larger parties will be well rewarded in wages. Nonhuman technologies that have been implemented into ESM operations control the nature of the business. The irrationality of rationality is recognized as the fifth dimension of McDonaldization. This is the downside of McDonaldization emphasizing the basic idea that â€Å"rational systems inevitably spawn irrational consequences†, â€Å"serve to deny human reason† and â€Å"are often unreasonable† (Ritzer, 1996, 13). In regards to efficiency people will go to ESM in search of a relaxing meal to find they have an hour-long wait, congested waiting space and loud noise. The efficiency of spending a family meal in a comfortable atmosphere now becomes inefficient. People are unable to sit right away, asked to wait with their families in a smoke filled bar and expected to just be patient while they anticipating the buzzing of their pager number. Employees who are expected to deal with the impatient customers get irritable which reflects on their work and the restaurant as a whole. When ESM business is slow and employees are unable to make tips there is no longer an incentive to put out quality work. The efficiency of paying minimum wage is lost when workers quit because they do not make enough for tips. The cost of a nice dinner for an average size family of 4 at ESM could cost well over $60. In the long run this could be the cost of 3 home cooked meals. The profit a restaurant business makes on pop and such is huge compared to the production price. A family could just as well spend dinner at home, talking/interacting with one another in a much more comfortable, quit, atmosphere. ESM offers the illusion of fun to attract customers and have them coming back. The setting gives the feeling of a New York City street with all of the downtown memorabilia. â€Å"A taste of little Italy† is used to let the prospective guest know that traditional Italian food will be served with popular Italian/American music filling the dining room. The National Television Network, NTN, offers an interactive trivia game to be played in the bar area. Entertainment is brought in on special occasions and the server†s call out loud to the kitchen to fill the atmosphere with a feeling of excitement. The unreality, or illusion of reality, which often goes unheard of in the restaurant business, still exists. The reality is that you aren†t going to see the service staff singing and dancing with customer as they do in the commercial, in fact you†ll be lucky if you can flag them down as they run by your table at top speed. The streets of New York City are not resembled accurately by the miniature landmarks located throughout the restaurant and it†s unlikely a true Italian (person with Italian heritage) will serve your meal. All of this is not reality. Dehumanization recognizes a system that is destructive to human beings. This dehumanization recognized in society is evident through health and environmental hazards, the dehumanization of customers and employers, a negative effect on human relationships and homogenization. The increased concern for the human diet is strongly affected by eating out and Italian food is extremely fattening. A dish known as fettuccine alfredo has been given the nickname â€Å"heart attack on a plate†. To adapt to these concerns ESM has began to offer low fat dressings and deserts. The vegetables have to be used in good time, as does much of the inventory so that contaminated/old food is not distributed. Dishes must be cleaned thoroughly so that germs do not transfer to other customers. ESM provides a fairly environmentally friendly establishment with reusable dishes. The biggest concern is over styrofoam take-out boxes. Customers follow through with the same routine every time they enter a restaurant. ESM encourages the employees to follow script but at the same time get comfortable and act interested in the customer. But that†s just it†¦ an act. Servers really are not interested in the lives of every stranger who steps foot in the building. Scripting brings employees and customers down to a primitive dehumanizing level of interaction. Turnover rates at ESM are not as high as those in the fast food industry however it is unlikely that the same person will ever serve you. There is little, impersonal contact between people. ESM offers benefits for staying with the company, employee incentives, and employee events to encourage longer lasting relationships with the company and fellow workers, thus increasing the likelihood of establishing a relationship with customers. ESM is a chain with franchises and individually owned stores. With its diversity of location it gives people the opportunity to recognize a familiar place and limiting the appeal to ever try anything new. Because ESM is the same no matter where you go you could virtually enter one restaurant and not know whether you were in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, or Phoenix, Arizona, USA. This is limiting the diversity of our world and proves that McDonaldization is homogenizing every aspect of society into one. All of these dehumanizing effects of McDonaldization apply to ESM and add to the irrationality that actually exists. â€Å"As McDonaldization comes to dominate ever more sectors of society, it will become ever less possible to ‘escape† from it† (Ritzer, 1996, 143). In other words McDonaldization imprisons people into an iron cage. Max Weber referred to it as the â€Å"iron cage of McDonaldization† implying that the systems of society will become so inhuman that the systems will eventually have control of everything. To make it in a McDonaldized society higher profits and lower costs will continue to be the goals of all businesses. The best ways to reach this goal is to conform to McDonaldization and strive for efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. ESM increases profit by taking each of these steps so that it can keep up with the competition. People have come to value the individual dimensions of McDonaldization and insist on relating to them even if they are not rewarded with economic gains. ESM has fallen into the trap and chosen locations on busy street corners surrounded by its competitors where a huge concentration of McDonaldization resides. The process of McDonaldization is so desirable that it is pursued as an end to itself (Ritzer, 1996, 145). Fordism is the ideals Henry Ford projected into society. Mass production of a single product, using a simple assembly line process, standardized routines, deskilling, and more demanding and expanding markets have arisen as the result of Fordism. ESM came out of the woodwork with the idea of bringing New York City†s Little Italy to any city. They became part of the restaurant market and had to adopt Fordism principles in order to reach high profitability with low costs. Post-Fordism arose later on and is characterized by more customized/specialized products, smaller systems for specialization, technologies that will produce a range of products, requiring more workers, which in turn leads to diversity once again. ESM has also incorporated post-Fordism characteristics. They use one computer system to run the security systems, kitchen appliances, run credit charges and place orders. They cater to each individual customer, giving them what they ask for. Finally, postmodernism, the idea that we are entering a more irrational and flexible era. The spread of different cultures throughout all of society is a product of postmodernism. ESM brought Little Italy to all kinds of cities. In fact, this American/Italian restaurant does not even exist in Italy. This society is superficial; people pass through McDonaldized systems without even being phased by them. No one walks into ESM and thinks; â€Å"wow this is a superficial McDonaldized system†. Every product and service has been presented before. ESM doesn†t have the original calamari al† diavolo sitting in a glass case to display. We now live in an n impersonal world. Even though employees approach customers with interest and a smile, they do not have a personal relationship with them. There no longer exists much emotion or expression in the postmodern society. We have to work hard at impressing people these days, having to always find something new and exciting to keep a customer hooked. Events of the past and present blur together. It is hard to distinguish between each visit to a restaurant, eventually all the visits blur together. Reproductive technologies have taken over. Computers and TV†s dominate industry and the lives of every individual. In the restaurant business if the computers were to crash†¦. there goes the payroll, power, cash registers; the entire operation is over in the blink of an eye. Just like nearly all institutions in our society ESM is trapped in an â€Å"iron cage of McDonaldization†. I believe McDonaldization has invaded every sector of society and as someone who grew up with McDonaldization at every corner of my life I would have to say it†s been productive. It has allowed society to evolve. Every aspect of life has consequences and downfalls; it†s just a matter of dealing with them. I like moving at a fast pace. Why do people have to make friends with every person they encounter? It†s nice to have companionship but not from your server in a restaurant. McDonaldization has served as a directing force, another stage in our history. We adapt to every turn the world makes and change is good. When all of the aspects of McDonaldization are intertwined society runs smoothly. East Side Mario†s was an example of a company that followed all the rules, aimed for a goal and made it. I believe that†s all that it should take in anything you do in life to make it, just follow the rules and reach for your goals. McDonaldization is a positive contribution to society. How to cite McDonaldization of American Society and World, Essay examples

Miles City Montana By Munro Essays - Point Of View, Style

Miles City Montana By Munro The monotony of life has waged war against the narrator in Alice Munro's "Miles City, Montana." The author depicts the narrator as a brittle woman in search of a personal identity among a community of conformity. This battle between domestic responsibility and personal satisfaction reeks havoc on the soldier of this mother and wife. Munro is a master of characterization, and through the protagonist she depicts the complexities of human nature. Now, as the family of four travels across the continent, the narrator is able to slough off all the obligations which society has dumped on her. Almost relieved, "we shed our house, the neighborhood, the city, and...our country" (378). On the road, she is no longer forced to hide from the friendly phone calls or household chores. The narrator has been freed on the highway to Ontario, Canada. The Prisoner of War, held under siege in her own home, is liberated to be "hopeful and lighthearted" (378). This trip becomes a break from the life that she's is currently leading, a life which society thinks should make her content. With this new bit of freedom the narrator is able to form an identity for herself. Tragedy, however, almost strikes as the narrator takes this break from reality. As the family reaches Miles City, Montana, the two young children become captivated by the thought of swimming in a refreshing pool. No adults are aloud into the pool area during the lunch break, but the children are still able to take a swim with the lifeguard present. As the narrator steps out of sight, the youngest girl's curiosity captures her, and she almost drowns in the pool. Meg had nearly submerged before the mother had a vague premonition that something on this afternoon is very wrong. Running toward the pool, the girl's parents reach her in time, but this incident seeps much deeper as the mother gains wisdom and identity from the experience. She is a mother. The narrator has now accepted this responsibility, and will probably embrace other obligations within her community. As the narrator and her husband discuss which route to take on the way back to Vancouver, she is filled with "relief" (388) at the thought of home. That which was a prison before this fateful vacation has become a sanctuary, and there is a "surprising pleasure" (388) within this thought. Bibliography Meyer, Michael. The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. 5 ed. Bedford Books. 1997.

The Baroque Period and Henry Eccles essays

The Baroque Period and Henry Eccles essays During the Baroque period (1600-1750), music evolved amid religious wars between the Protestants and Catholics as well as the exploration and colonization of the New World. With the rise of middle class cultures throughout Europe, much of music-making centered in the home. As musical instruments developed technically, the level of expertise and virtuosity improved. The major-minor tonality system was established in this period and harmony was written with figured bass, so the performer had more freedom to improvise the chords. The basso continuo, or bass part, was often played by harpsichord and cello. Well known composers of the Baroque period include Henry Purcell (1659-1695), Vivaldi (1678-1741), Jean-Joseph Mouret (1682-1738), Johann sebastian Bach (1685-1750), and George Frideric Handel 1685-1759). A lesser known composer and violinist was Henry Eccles (1670-1743). By the time Joseph Handel entered the music scene in England, Henry Eccles (1670-1742) was already a respected London composer and violinist. He was the second son of Solomon Eccles and brother of John Eccles, who were both composers and musicians. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Henry Eccles played in the court of King Louis XIV from 1694 to 1710.1 By 1716, he's no longer on the list of Chamberlayne's Notitia in the British Museum, which implies that this is when he moved to Paris. Eccles produced in two volumes the Twelve Excellent Solos for the Violin in 1720. The first book contains sonatas that are adaptations from Italian Giuseppe Valentini's Alletamenti (op. 8). 2 Eccles felt under appreciated in England, which may be why he moved to Paris. There he became a member of the King's band. In 1732, he published Twelve Sonatas for Gamba and Figured Bass. Most notable is the Bass Sonata in G minor. These sonatas were also heavily influenced by Valentini. 3 There were no copyright laws back then. Since Eccles was greatly influenced...

One Word Can Mar Your Meaning

One Word Can Mar Your Meaning One Word Can Mar Your Meaning One Word Can Mar Your Meaning By Mark Nichol Each of the three sentences shown below contains a minor error that nevertheless muddles the intended meaning. The discussion following each example identifies the problem and sets up a resolving revision. 1. â€Å"Instead of focusing on rebuilding the Republican Party, she said that party leaders should focus on rebuilding the middle class.† This sentence implies that the person referred to opted to make the recommendation to party leaders in lieu of focusing on rebuilding the party; the action of focusing is erroneously assigned to her. What the writer meant to write is that the subject recommended that party leaders rebuild the middle class rather than the party. Omission of that after the attribution â€Å"she said† clarifies this meaning: â€Å"Instead of focusing on rebuilding the Republican Party, she said, party leaders should focus on rebuilding the middle class.† 2. â€Å"The project would cost $250 million to $300 million to build and receive a $400 million endowment upon opening.† According to this sentence, the project’s $250–$300 million budget would be used to build and receive an endowment. But two distinct facts are mentioned about the project: It would require $250–$300 million to build, and it would receive an additional $400 million as an endowment after completion of the building. To clearly state this meaning, the sentence’s parallel structure must be bolstered with a second use of would, between the conjunction and and the verb in the second clause: â€Å"The project would cost $250 million to $300 million to build and would receive a $400 million endowment upon opening.† 3. â€Å"If you’re interested in learning more about her work, the scholar who has delved most deeply into it is John Smith.† OK, this revision involves swapping in two words for one, but the mistake is as small and as easy to overlook as those in the examples above. This statement illustrates a subtle error known as a false conditional: The sentence is structured so that the identity of the most deeply delving scholar is contingent on your interest in learning more about someone else’s work; if you’re not interested, apparently, John Smith loses that distinction. By changing the way the sentence refers to your potential interest, this logical fallacy is erased: â€Å"In case you’re interested in learning more about her work, the scholar who has delved most deeply into it is John Smith.† Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Writing Basics category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Grammar Test 1225 Foreign Phrases to Inspire YouWhat Is a Doctor?

KaiFu Lee Case Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

KaiFu Lee Case - Essay Example In an attempt to mitigate the damages a company incurs by the loss of a valuable employee-one who also holds a great deal of its trade secrets, companies such as Microsoft often include a non-compete clause in their employee contracts. In the case of Kai-Fu Lee, Mr. Lee was prohibited from working with the competitors of Microsoft for a period of one year after the termination of his employment. In July, 2005 Mr. Lee left the employ of Microsoft and went to work for its competitor, Google. As a direct result a law suit was initiated. This research paper examines all the relevant factors in the case of Kai-Fu Lee as well as its implications with regards to the hiring practices of many other companies. The Kai-Fu Lee case represents the culmination of Microsoft's efforts to put an end to what many consider to be a long-standing and unethical practice of Google. This practice involves the attraction and retention of the most qualified employees irrespective of their contractual obligations to its competitors or any other companies. This practice is one that represented an overall strategic plan on the part of Google. An integral part of its strategy was to establish offices in close proximity to Microsoft's headquarters. In so doing, Google was in a position to offer the employees a better overall financial package while ensuring that there is minimal interruption in the personal lives of the employees. In fact, in November of 2004 Google hired Mark Lucovsky who was at the time one of Microsoft's top engineers (Elgin, 2005). Kai-Fu Lee as a Valuable Employee In order to examine the case of Kai-Fu Lee and the suit incited by his engagement by Google it is prudent that we look into the background of Kai-Fu Lee and how and why he was recruited by Google. This coupled with Microsoft's efforts aimed at preventing him from being employed by its competitors will serve to establish the rationale behind the entire case. First and foremost, Mr. Lee was a Chinese immigrant who migrated to the United States in 1973. He graduated from Columbia University in 1983 at the top of his class and went on to Carnie Mellon University where he earned a Ph.D. in computer science in 1988. While at Carnie Mellon he established himself as one of the up-and-coming leaders in the field by pioneering the development of an artificial intelligence based system for playing the famous board game Othello. His development won him the top award at the U.S. National tournament of computer players in 1989. During the course of his academic career he made many significant acco mplishments which were responsible for launching his career as a faculty member of Carnegie Mellon and subsequently as a research and development executive for Apple Computer. While at Apple he was spearheaded the team of developers responsible for developing PlainTalk, Apple Newton and QuickTime. He then left Apple Computer for Silicone Graphics where he served as the president of their Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) division. After working for Silicone Graphics for only a bit over a year, he was recruited by Microsoft and founded the Microsoft Research Division in Beijing China in 1998 where he worked until 2000 when he returned to the United States and served as the Vice President of Interactive Services for Microsoft (Microsoft,

Discussion Questions on Ethics Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Discussion Questions on Ethics - Assignment Example This is the case as witnessed in many of the societies. It is due to this that it is important for the people around us to offer nurturing and support. This support is important for the development of the mind and other natural characteristics. Advice is that nurturing takes place at a young age. This is for the best results in the character of the kid as he matures. Question 2 It is the duty of all human beings to show care and concern for others. This is due to the fact that the kind of help and assistance offered to others is the same one reciprocated to us. This is also for the assurance of an environment conducive enough for their thriving. When showing the care and concern, its direction is to anybody that requires it. This should not only go to the people that we are related to. The reason as to why we do this is for the achievement of proper coexistence of people who can rely on each other in times of need having the fact that human beings are interdependent. Human character receives judgment from the deeds that they carry out. It is from this that the natural behavior observed and categorized. There are the various people who do not show any care or concern for their fellow human beings. This is taken to be very unjust and is naturally treated with a lot of reckoning from the society. However, for the people that act up and offer the kind of support needed not only to their families but also to the people around them, they rewarded in many ways. Question 3 When people claim that murder is wrong, they just believe that it is wrong and do not necessarily believe in what they say. They believe it is wrong arising from the many ethics and related studies offered in life. Few people acknowledge that murder is wrong due to knowledge. This is because the education offered to people directs them to knowing the notion against the idea of murder. It is important to recognize the fact that people carry out activities from the experience that they have getting gui dance and majorly not out of their own mentality. Human beings possess this natural characteristic. Question 4 To qualify people as immortal, they must possess very indifferent human characteristics. The people I have in mind died a short while ago and their deaths took me by surprise. This is due to the characteristics that they possessed. An example of the characteristic is that very few times did the fall ill and even never visit the hospital even once. However, after their diagnosis of sickness, they died rather fast and this came as a shocker to many. Question 5 It is not morally permissible to use the human and animal DNA in the manner in which it is done. This is due to the fact that it defies all codes of character that are majorly against the alteration of human and any other beings. This is also against the bible that strongly preaches against these acts. The bible is the source of people’s judgment of morality and hence the manipulation of the human genes for creat ion of hybrids is ethically wrong. 1) For Plato, what kind of ability is necessary for one to entertain higher-level concepts or moral ideas? Like the rest of the early philosophers, Plato upholds a virtue-based eudaemonistic ethics. That is to mean, human well-fare, is regarded as the highest endeavor of moral thought and behavior; the qualities are the necessary skills and traits. If

Tracking Developments in Media Industry

Tracking Developments in Media Industry Abstract These days the media business is witnessing the next structural transformation in its business model. Due to the reduction of revenues[1] from printed media and advertisements, industry giants are looking for other ways for penetrating additional revenues. The traditional strategy of cost reduction that was previously widely applied does not seem to be sustainable. On the contrary, most key players in the media world see the biggest opportunity in the invention of new models which will contribute to the boost of revenues. To a large extent media executives agree that monetization of online content is the decision they should go for more insistently[2]. One of the reasons why online monetization is a financially attractive way of growth is that, it has zero marginal cost, and as opposed to print media, revenue increase will not induce proportional increase in costs[3]. Another advantage which online news have compared to the traditional printed media is that they can provide news in r eal time regime which is extremely important in this particular industry as â€Å"news is very costly and at the same time highly perishable product†[4]. So far there have been some attempts of online monetization like the Kindle and micropayments but these strategies cant balance the all the losses that the industry bears because of the before mentioned reasons. Up to date, unfortunately for the industrys decision makers, choosing the right model for online monetization was not the only challenge they had to face. Challenges like search engines, which are generating their content and giving it out to customers for free, are not easy to overcome. In fact, bloggers and social networks like Facebook and Tweeter could be considered as posing similar risks for traditional media companies. However in chapter 4 we will see that the attempts of transforming these risk bearing factors into opportunity and getting some kind of revenues from them has started, which logically should lead us to some type of â€Å"business to business† model which will become beneficial for both parts. In this thesis, because of different reasons[5] I will not claim to have found the ideal model for content monetization, but rather will present several alternative models for monetizing online media content, and whats more important, will discuss the most successful models employed thus far which are applied by leading players in the industry. I will compare their features to each other, analyze their advantages and disadvantages. I will also look empirical data of results of each model to give the reader a better sense of each models financial success and the importance of online content in their business, to have better understanding what role content monetization might mean for these news providers. Besides I will help the reader to have knowledge about the obstacles which should be taken in consideration by stakeholders, if they want to find the best match pay model for their news web-site. 1. Introduction Throughout its history the media business, which is one of the most dynamic and fast-developing industries, has passed through many development cycles, each prone to tremendous changes in terms of strategy, structure and model it operated with. The reasons of these changes in different times were different processes taking place in parallel, e.g. advances of post-delivery system, facilitating transportation and logistics around the world, various technological innovations etc. However, without any doubt, the emergence of the Internet and the subsequent development of digital media is the greatest change of at least last two decades. It has once again revolutionized the whole industry dramatically, more than any previous development. Currently we are witnessing a transformation process which might become a ground for the conceptual change of the whole media industry. â€Å"Due to the reduction of revenues[6] from print media[7] (one of the reasons of this is decreased circulation of print newspapers, Exhibit 1) and online advertisements, industry giants have started to explore new ways to restructure their portfolios of income, and how to make their readers pay for the information they get online†[8]. The latest financial crisis played a role in accelerating this process. The downturn of revenues pushed the media companies to sharpen cost cuttings first of all indicated by the massive layoffs of the staff. However as many industry experts like freelance photojournalist Mike Fox believes, massive layoffs itself is not a sustainable strategy for the future[9]. The same view is shared by management consulting firm Booz Company in their research about the media industry. They admit that cost cutting is an imp ortant tool for managers, but in order to stay capable of growing in the long run, companies cant focus only on the expenditures side of their income statement.[10] Media executives are still optimistic about the future. As the survey in the same research from Booz Company shows, â€Å"most of the respondents (nearly 70%) believe that their companies are financially healthy. The which even higher to 80 percent when it comes to the opinion of integrated players (Exhibits 2), and surprisingly just one forth of the surveyed executives expected they would meet the end of recession with a deteriorated situation (Exhibit 3). Moreover, more than half of media executives (57%) believe that they still hold the wheels to control situation despite financial crisis and think that with structural trends developing in the industry they can outperform the negative results of economic downturn. Print executives are even more optimistic, this opinion is shared by 67 percent of them†. Booz Co sees the future of media companies in their ability to identify the markets where they can compete successfully and the business models which will help them to do s o. In the June of 2009, at the Cable Show[11] in Washington D.C, American News Corps owner Rupert Murdoch gave a speech, which also covered the current challenges of media industry, where he specifically underlined the inevitable need of content monetization. He underlined that times when people where reading news online for free should be over, and thus gave a hint to the whole industry that the process of â€Å"online content monetization† is not only non-reversible process, but indeed it should accelerate whether somebody likes it or not. Murdoch mentioned that only online ads cannot cover media companies costs and named New York Times, as a vivid example of that. NYT has one of the most popular U.S newspaper websites, but still their online ad revenues are not sufficient for cost coverage[12]. The signal form the industry guru was correctly understood by other giant players of media world and many of them like Axel Springer and New York Times[13] already second time, started thinking how to charge their readers for online news in the way not to harm online traffic and ad revenues. Finding the balance among these two will be the biggest challenge for the â€Å"followers of the trend†. In the process of monetizing online media choosing the right type of model which will fit to one or another news providers overall strategy and values is a big deal of question. Currently most news online is free, but there are some existing newspapers successfully charging their readers at least for the part of the information they provide to them. 1 shows the increased consumer spending (black curve) and penetration (grey curve) in online content. The research conducted by Online Publishers Association shows the same trend, that the money spent by consumers on online content in United States increase from 1.31 billion USD in 2002 to 1.78 billion USD in 2004, which meant annual growth rate of 17%. However this growth occurred in the entertainment area such as adult material, music, gaming and sports[14]. Currently, among them most successful in terms of revenues generated from online media content, are American The Wall Street Journal and the British Financial Times. Both of these newspapers are providing financial news and are most direct competitors of each other. Finance is one of those few areas which experts consider possible to monetize. The Booz Co research mentioned before makes focus on prior experiments of publishers who tried to monetize content and boost sales with which such an innovative tools as Kindle (Exhibit 4) sales, multi-title subscriptions and micropayments are, but as the results show these methods cant regain all the revenues lost which the media industry faced in the last two years. It also shows that inevitable steps are needed from the whole industry to look for new business models and as the survey in the same research shows, media executives expect most increase of revenues from the innovations in the digital media, from the new innovative models. (Exhibit 5). Expectations towards online monetization is a great, at least from the side of news providers, however the way on which they will have to go does not seem smooth and easy. There are various challenges monetizing volunteers will have to deal with; on the one hand there is a problem of search engines and bloggers â€Å"stealing† news from their web sites and offering them to readers on aggregate web-sites, and on the other hand there is a psychology of people and understanding their personal motivations, what would make them to pay money in online news. Furthermore, it will not be easy to make people pay for the information which they were used to get for free previously[15]. However despite all challenges and obstacles which is expected for industry players, Booz Co concludes that process of media digitization is on its way and nothing can stop it. Mathias Dà ¶phner comes up with same opinion: â€Å"I do not share this kind of pessimism that content business is dying. The opposite is right. Thats the tremendous opportunity through the digitization.†[16] One more factor which theoretically should give more hope to media magnates is psychological: as various studies about personality drivers during online purchase show, the experience of using internet and reading news online are positively correlated with purchase intention. Once the usage of internet and reading news online is a growing tendency in current reality, and the age of internet usage is also shifting fast, we can say that time works on media companies. In this research I will analyse existing online paying models which successfully operate and give the hope to industry players for the â€Å"brighter† future in that prospect. 2. Review of search methodology The aim of this thesis is to find out the features of existing paid models in online news which are already operating successfully. I will also try to measure their effectiveness/importance by various criteria, both objective such as existing financial and quantitative data, and also more partly-objective, such as different expert opinions[17]. The research will be developed in three main parts: Review of types of content which can be monetized, where people show some willingness to pay money (or are already paying) As related to the previous chapter, analysis of the personality drivers and its importance while consumers conduct online purchase Analysis of existing successful models, their features and their effectiveness in terms of empirical results For the sake of development of this three-pillar structure, the information will be obtained through various sources such as existing literature researches, articles, blogs, expert opinions and the consulting project ran by me and my classmates during our practice project[18]. 2.1. Sources for identifying online-chargeable content and consumers personality drivers The biggest contribution for the author in understanding of this issue were insights from consulting project workshop conducted by the ESMT Practice Project of which the author was a team member[19] in the late 2009. During this project, besides analyzing already available literature regarding topic, the team interviewed different kind of experts and also ran a representative survey among 300 German online readers to understand the areas where customers showed some willingness to pay. According to the results, there are not many areas which can be monetized, but only: Deeper analysis of specific articles as an addition to the more general one Old archives; plus specific interest areas of some readers Local news Online sports events The point is almost completely shared by Mathias Dà ¶phner, the CEO of German media company Axel Springer, who held a discussion around the topic at Monaco Media Forum 2009: â€Å"There are not many areas where people are willing to pay money: 1) This is finance, which is related to power; 2) Plus sports or games 3) Regional environments, people around you; 4) And then we are coming to two existential areas: sex and crime, or love and death. â€Å" â€Å"These are areas where people are generally interested in and why should that change in digital business?† asks Dà ¶phner rhetoric question. The CEO of Axel Springer also commented the fact that currently most news online is free and called this fact a â€Å"structural mistake† which has to be corrected step by step. According to Dà ¶phner there is not need of revolution, once most appropriate rules and procedures in legislation already exist. They just need some moderation and then execution. Continuing on the issue Dà ¶phner summed up with the hope that in the long run, for hundreds of years, people are willing to pay for things they are interested in. â€Å"Commodity news will be for free, but special information, added value services, exclusive information should be charged†. Currently, there are already obvious movements in the industry towards fixing the â€Å"structural mistakes† Mr Dà ¶phner talked about. This will be discussed more detailed in chapter 3.2, named â€Å"challenges†. 2.2. Personality drivers of consumers to purchase online Understanding and analyzing consumer drivers while conducting online purchase, is critical for building prominent, profitable business model. However until today there is no perfect study in the area which could claim on being perfect in identifying and analyzing of all motivators which make consumers to pay money online, and whats more important, all researchers would agree on that claim of this study. One of the best researches in this field conducted by Wang et al claims that the main factors which affect consumers willingness to pay money online and are positively correlated with the one, are consumers perceived convenience, essentiality, added-value and service quality. However another research on the same topic e.g. from Choi, Lee and Soriano focuses on following factors: perceived consequences after purchase of product, easiness of use of internet, social factors such as environment around person, satisfaction of the reader after purchase and existing alternative sources to get the same particular information. As we see on this example two group academics have completely different approach and beliefs towards one topic. These two researches are clear evidence how diverse is different researchers approaches to the issue. To all of these factors I looked also form the prospective of researches which are dedicated to analyzing a bit broader field consumers purchasing drivers in whole online market rather than only in online media. In these researches, some of above mentioned factors are considered to be important but others are doubted. Its hard for someone to persist himself not to criticize some of the factors mentioned above, e.g. the word â€Å"perceived† is already very dubious and at the same time very subjective, however very important one. As Barkhi, Belanger and Hocks claim in their â€Å"model of the determinants of purchasing from virtual stores†, the notion perceived/perception has already enormous importance itself, as it defines consumers later attitude towards whole online purchase procedure. To continue analysis, factor such as social community is neglected in Bosnjiaks research, where he referring to Senecals 2005 research claims that recommendations made from close community make decision making process more complex but it does not affect final choice of consumer. Regarding service-quality we can say that, the word quality itself already induces some confusion because its pretty subjective notion. For different people quality might mean different things. For some people service-quality might mean the urgent delivery of hottest news and the exclusivity of this information, whereas for another person the quality of service might be associated with deeper analysis of the article or the easiness of ways to pay money online. Such an arguing can continue further, but what is more important, arguable are not only factors on which researchers build their different models, but also some general statements which are made by them. For example, the work of Wang et al claim the business model is sustainable if revenue-generating method is accepted by majority of the potential customers. However despite all the respect towards the authors and research itself, such a claim can easily become a reason of discussions, because still, the success of any model depends on the ideal proportion of ad revenues and online subscription revenues and for different newspapers the ideal conversion rate of readers to paid customers might be different. Even this research itself contradicts to its statement when brings an example of Wall Street Journal Online and Hoovers Online telling that they managed to make e-content portal profitable by only 10% of conversion rate. While conducting our consulting project, we also got results th at some high circulated newspapers would make their portals profitable even by 3% conversion ratio. Further more, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, has only 0,8% conversion rate of subscribers on its niche site for hardcore Green Bay Packers fans, making revenues of 600,000 USD annually. In other words, depending on the content offered by particular newspaper, and the number and type of readers they have, the effective proportion of online content and ad revenues should be found. More analysis should be conducted to understand the price of lost customers amount versus converted ones and the ideal balance of subscription revenues versus lost ad revenues. To this issue has dedicated his discussion Jeff Jarvis, on the blog-web BuzzMachine. Jeff Jarvis is an American Journalist, former television critic, editor, publisher and columnist. Among the companies he has been working are: New York Daily News, San Francisco Examiner, New York Times Company, MediaGuardian a supplement of British newspaper The Guardian. Besides he is an associate professor at the City University of New Yorks Graduate School of Journalism directing its new media program. He is also creator of weblog BuzzMachine[20]. Jeff Jarvis in his article about paid content published on Weblog BuzzMachine is more persuasive about the complexity of the issue[21] and based on his vast experience highlights for the readers how many different factors should be taken in consideration for identifying one or another model for particular newspaper. For those who will catch in Jeff Jarvis approach some â€Å"sense and consciousness† will become clear that based only on the analysis of psychological traits of people and their purchasing drivers, it will not be easy to find an ideal model, and that the issue needs rather practical approach. Findings of Jeff Jarvis will be discussed more detailed in the 5.1 chapter named â€Å"Expert opinions and Conclusions†. Before moving to the following chapter, we should conclude the started topic and mention that there is still needed some research in the area of personal motivators for online purchase, in order we could claim by 100% confidence that we are using the best model for identifying the online paid model. 2.3. Discussed models and criteria for their comparison Once we are analyzing the existing models, the criteria for assessment of one or another method is the time of their existence and their results shown throughout their lifetime. Besides looking at the thematic differences in the features of the models both in Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) models, we will look at their financial results, their generated income through online sales and he dynamics in online subscription amount. The biggest attention the author paid was to the models of Financial Times and Wall Street Journal as the most successful financial players in B2C business. In addition, the author took a look at Bloomberg and Reuters as successful players of B2B model. New York Times was an interesting case for the author because it is a case, when after first unsuccessful trial, they are going to try monetizing online content already second time. Taking in consideration their prior experience it should be important to track which model they will choose for the second attempt. Finally, the author took a quick look at some other examples of successful and unsuccessful attempts of monetizing online content so far. Information was gathered from reviews of their websites as well as from articles about these news-providers, and various expert opinions about their models. 3. Possible models which can help to monetize online content Technological advancement has made most news content widely available for free online, which pushed most newspapers to give up subscription fees in the hope of getting more readers and hence by increasing traffic, get more advertisement revenues. However such movements contribute even more to the availability of free content in the web and hence induce decrease in print media circulation and advertisement revenues[22]. Charging for online news is very hard. The biggest risk that media companies face is loosing the visitors, because reduced traffic will induce less interest of advertisement providers on the particular site. Ads are still major source of revenues for most media companies and it will remain so in the nearest future. As Rupert Murdoch commented previously on the example of Wall Street Journal, â€Å"charging online content is not bad but still its not a gold mine†[23]. However, recently after presenting the idea at WSJ to impose premium paid model, Murdoch Justified their decision with telling that, in their case, ad revenues are no any more critical part in revenues and they pay more attention to subscription based revenues[24]. The high risk of loosing switching is easily explainable for SearchDNA founder John Straw, who admits that he himself would never pay for online content if he could get it somewhere else[25]. 3.1. Findings from consulting project While working on our consulting project[26], our group consisting from four MBA participants, I and my three classmates, identified four different types of models which could imposed during presenting the pay wall. The consulting project itself and its results is based on the basis of numerous articles and literature about previous experience, industry expert interviews and representative survey conducted among 299 German media readers. In column 1, table 1 explains four different pay-wall models which are possible to impose on online content in different situation, and column 2 explains the situations in which these different models would have chance to work â€Å"keeping other conditions constant†. Table 1: Types of models applicable in monetized online media[27] Types of Possible Models Situation explaining the feasibility of model Locking down the whole content Really unique content Locking down selected articles Unique content should be part of broader content Limiting the number of customers Very high overall quality, breadth of content offering Locking down the niche articles Want to monetize only highly specific â€Å"hidden† articles Source: consulting PP final draft Its upon news providers which type of model they will choose to match with the content they want to lock down. As we already discussed, there are few things which would motivate people to pay money online for, in other words online readers show at least some willingness to pay in following areas: * Deeper analysis of specific articles as an addition to the more general one * Old archives; plus specific interest areas of some readers * Local news * Online sports events Here we can provide some examples of successfully using some of these methods of pay-wall. The method of locking down selected articles is used by Wall Street Journal. In this case most daily news including political are considered as commodity information and they are given out for free, however if some specific interest area, e.g. finance, have deeper expert analysis, which you cant meet in other newspapers, the articles are locked down in this case. The method of limiting the number f articles is successfully used by Financial Times. New York Times decided to go on the same way from 2011. A good example of locking down niche content is Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and its Packer Insider: The journal locks down specific information, deep content about football club Green Bay Packers, for its fans. In deep content in this case is counted e.g. chat sessions with players. As the same Practice project showed, locking down whole content, â€Å"keeping other conditions equal†, is p ossible if the whole content is really unique. Here we have also to mention that during consulting project about online content monetization, we had some more interesting insights about the factors which increase readers willingness to pay: To our surprise content is not always the thing which might make readers to pay online: 35% of surveyed 299 German readers named following three factors as the possible motivators in increasing willingness to pay: Promotions/ Give-aways Customization Specific additional content As a conclusion of this chapter we should say many experts predict for the future that, free content will be used primarily as a marketing ploy: a complementary trial period is strictly used for purposes of enticing customers to subscribe to a service or buy a product online. (Wang et al). Alternatively some sites attract customers by offering a limited amount of free content. They then hope to convince their customers to shift to a variety of â€Å"premium†, fee-based content (Outing 2002). (Wang et al) 3.2. Challenges Innovative online ways of distributing news like news aggregate sites, blogs, social networks (Facebook, Tweeter, etc.) which are free to access, become more and more of a threat for media companies, because news is a costly product to produce, as well as it its distribution in traditional way. But distribution of news in online has zero marginal cost, as it takes nothing to the person to copy and paste a particular article or link it to the other page (Exhibit 6). Traditional media companies demand from these innovative producers of news â€Å"fair ways of playing†, which means either they should produce their own information or they should pay to original producers some fees for utilizing their articles. In his interview, Mathias Dà ¶phner mentioned that they are not demanding banning of these alternative sources. â€Å"We understand that future is mixed model, mutual existence of both of us declared Dà ¶phner. We also do not request something new and innovative. We just need fairness, respecting each other, respecting copyright rules, paying royalties as it is supposed to be done and for of all this playing rules are already there, we just need to make them better and then follow to†. Rupert Murdoch went even further and called search engine Google stealers, as they take others information without permission and put it on their pages. Regarding this phenomenon, Axel Springer CEO Dà ¶phner told very appropriate example to the Huffington Post co-founder. â€Å"If you want to give others your beer for free, please brew your own beer and then you are welcomed to do so, but please stop taking my costly beer and then giving it to others for free†. Recently there is a clear evidence of starting changes in this regard: Google agreed with several news-provider companies to restrict their articles readerships through Google to maximum amount of five. Another web-site YouTube started removing from their site unlicensed videos. In other words, Mathias Dà ¶phners prediction that the current reality would start changing step by step has obviously started to become true. Thus in nearest future we should anticipate emergence of new pay-models, when media companies will have to think, how to share the cake with news aggregate web-sites, social networks and bloggers. We are witnessing enormous changes not only because of monetization, but because of establishment new type of relationships between industry participants, which ideally should bring in new opportunities. (Exhibit 9) 4. Existing paying models, analysis Studies claim[28] that in order managers found ideal subscription business model for online monetization they need to understand their subscribers personality drivers, their perceptions and attitudes, what makes them purchase news online? In fact there is not breadth of information about consumers personality drivers, indeed the researchers actively continue investigating this area and thus provide us with new and new models. Non-existence of ideal model in this area is one of the reasons why we cant predict ideal online pay model. The other reasons are â€Å"closer† to business. Referring to Jeff Jarvis argumentation in his article about paid content models, there are plenty of criteria which determine the success of one or another model. Once these criteria are individual and very specific for each newspaper, no one can/should claim yet, on identifying one general ideal model which will fit to all news-providers. As director of Association of online publishers, Lee Baker commented in News Media, half of their members already charge for online content and another 19% is going to do so in the nearest 12 months. â€Å"Paid content modelling is important to our members†, continues Mr. Baker. â€Å"Our members are trying to penetrate new areas such as mobile apps. More than half of them express desire to create paid-for apps†. Despite we cant claim on building the ideal model as a proxy for the future, we can cover the most successful news providers and their models which are currently successfully used, both in B2C and B2B business. 4.1. Financial Times VS The Wall Street Journal Currently the most distributed B2C pay models in online media are two: one is Financial Times way restricting the definite amount of free articles for subscribers and then charge the readers if they exceed this amount, and another is Wall Street Journals way offering readers only one or two paragraph for reading and making available the rest only for subscribers[29]. To compare these two models in more details lets take a more detailed look at the ways which they are used by their most successful implementers. Of course there is some room for deviations and different news providers can apply to some minor changes, e.g. in the amount of text which should be given out for free, but the concept remains the same. Table 2 below shows clear distinctions between the features of these two models in the case of FT and WSJ. The essence of difference of these two models is the amount of information provided for free and the ways how it is done: The Wall Street Journal makes clear distinction between commodity and high-value content. The so ca Tracking Developments in Media Industry Tracking Developments in Media Industry Abstract These days the media business is witnessing the next structural transformation in its business model. Due to the reduction of revenues[1] from printed media and advertisements, industry giants are looking for other ways for penetrating additional revenues. The traditional strategy of cost reduction that was previously widely applied does not seem to be sustainable. On the contrary, most key players in the media world see the biggest opportunity in the invention of new models which will contribute to the boost of revenues. To a large extent media executives agree that monetization of online content is the decision they should go for more insistently[2]. One of the reasons why online monetization is a financially attractive way of growth is that, it has zero marginal cost, and as opposed to print media, revenue increase will not induce proportional increase in costs[3]. Another advantage which online news have compared to the traditional printed media is that they can provide news in r eal time regime which is extremely important in this particular industry as â€Å"news is very costly and at the same time highly perishable product†[4]. So far there have been some attempts of online monetization like the Kindle and micropayments but these strategies cant balance the all the losses that the industry bears because of the before mentioned reasons. Up to date, unfortunately for the industrys decision makers, choosing the right model for online monetization was not the only challenge they had to face. Challenges like search engines, which are generating their content and giving it out to customers for free, are not easy to overcome. In fact, bloggers and social networks like Facebook and Tweeter could be considered as posing similar risks for traditional media companies. However in chapter 4 we will see that the attempts of transforming these risk bearing factors into opportunity and getting some kind of revenues from them has started, which logically should lead us to some type of â€Å"business to business† model which will become beneficial for both parts. In this thesis, because of different reasons[5] I will not claim to have found the ideal model for content monetization, but rather will present several alternative models for monetizing online media content, and whats more important, will discuss the most successful models employed thus far which are applied by leading players in the industry. I will compare their features to each other, analyze their advantages and disadvantages. I will also look empirical data of results of each model to give the reader a better sense of each models financial success and the importance of online content in their business, to have better understanding what role content monetization might mean for these news providers. Besides I will help the reader to have knowledge about the obstacles which should be taken in consideration by stakeholders, if they want to find the best match pay model for their news web-site. 1. Introduction Throughout its history the media business, which is one of the most dynamic and fast-developing industries, has passed through many development cycles, each prone to tremendous changes in terms of strategy, structure and model it operated with. The reasons of these changes in different times were different processes taking place in parallel, e.g. advances of post-delivery system, facilitating transportation and logistics around the world, various technological innovations etc. However, without any doubt, the emergence of the Internet and the subsequent development of digital media is the greatest change of at least last two decades. It has once again revolutionized the whole industry dramatically, more than any previous development. Currently we are witnessing a transformation process which might become a ground for the conceptual change of the whole media industry. â€Å"Due to the reduction of revenues[6] from print media[7] (one of the reasons of this is decreased circulation of print newspapers, Exhibit 1) and online advertisements, industry giants have started to explore new ways to restructure their portfolios of income, and how to make their readers pay for the information they get online†[8]. The latest financial crisis played a role in accelerating this process. The downturn of revenues pushed the media companies to sharpen cost cuttings first of all indicated by the massive layoffs of the staff. However as many industry experts like freelance photojournalist Mike Fox believes, massive layoffs itself is not a sustainable strategy for the future[9]. The same view is shared by management consulting firm Booz Company in their research about the media industry. They admit that cost cutting is an imp ortant tool for managers, but in order to stay capable of growing in the long run, companies cant focus only on the expenditures side of their income statement.[10] Media executives are still optimistic about the future. As the survey in the same research from Booz Company shows, â€Å"most of the respondents (nearly 70%) believe that their companies are financially healthy. The which even higher to 80 percent when it comes to the opinion of integrated players (Exhibits 2), and surprisingly just one forth of the surveyed executives expected they would meet the end of recession with a deteriorated situation (Exhibit 3). Moreover, more than half of media executives (57%) believe that they still hold the wheels to control situation despite financial crisis and think that with structural trends developing in the industry they can outperform the negative results of economic downturn. Print executives are even more optimistic, this opinion is shared by 67 percent of them†. Booz Co sees the future of media companies in their ability to identify the markets where they can compete successfully and the business models which will help them to do s o. In the June of 2009, at the Cable Show[11] in Washington D.C, American News Corps owner Rupert Murdoch gave a speech, which also covered the current challenges of media industry, where he specifically underlined the inevitable need of content monetization. He underlined that times when people where reading news online for free should be over, and thus gave a hint to the whole industry that the process of â€Å"online content monetization† is not only non-reversible process, but indeed it should accelerate whether somebody likes it or not. Murdoch mentioned that only online ads cannot cover media companies costs and named New York Times, as a vivid example of that. NYT has one of the most popular U.S newspaper websites, but still their online ad revenues are not sufficient for cost coverage[12]. The signal form the industry guru was correctly understood by other giant players of media world and many of them like Axel Springer and New York Times[13] already second time, started thinking how to charge their readers for online news in the way not to harm online traffic and ad revenues. Finding the balance among these two will be the biggest challenge for the â€Å"followers of the trend†. In the process of monetizing online media choosing the right type of model which will fit to one or another news providers overall strategy and values is a big deal of question. Currently most news online is free, but there are some existing newspapers successfully charging their readers at least for the part of the information they provide to them. 1 shows the increased consumer spending (black curve) and penetration (grey curve) in online content. The research conducted by Online Publishers Association shows the same trend, that the money spent by consumers on online content in United States increase from 1.31 billion USD in 2002 to 1.78 billion USD in 2004, which meant annual growth rate of 17%. However this growth occurred in the entertainment area such as adult material, music, gaming and sports[14]. Currently, among them most successful in terms of revenues generated from online media content, are American The Wall Street Journal and the British Financial Times. Both of these newspapers are providing financial news and are most direct competitors of each other. Finance is one of those few areas which experts consider possible to monetize. The Booz Co research mentioned before makes focus on prior experiments of publishers who tried to monetize content and boost sales with which such an innovative tools as Kindle (Exhibit 4) sales, multi-title subscriptions and micropayments are, but as the results show these methods cant regain all the revenues lost which the media industry faced in the last two years. It also shows that inevitable steps are needed from the whole industry to look for new business models and as the survey in the same research shows, media executives expect most increase of revenues from the innovations in the digital media, from the new innovative models. (Exhibit 5). Expectations towards online monetization is a great, at least from the side of news providers, however the way on which they will have to go does not seem smooth and easy. There are various challenges monetizing volunteers will have to deal with; on the one hand there is a problem of search engines and bloggers â€Å"stealing† news from their web sites and offering them to readers on aggregate web-sites, and on the other hand there is a psychology of people and understanding their personal motivations, what would make them to pay money in online news. Furthermore, it will not be easy to make people pay for the information which they were used to get for free previously[15]. However despite all challenges and obstacles which is expected for industry players, Booz Co concludes that process of media digitization is on its way and nothing can stop it. Mathias Dà ¶phner comes up with same opinion: â€Å"I do not share this kind of pessimism that content business is dying. The opposite is right. Thats the tremendous opportunity through the digitization.†[16] One more factor which theoretically should give more hope to media magnates is psychological: as various studies about personality drivers during online purchase show, the experience of using internet and reading news online are positively correlated with purchase intention. Once the usage of internet and reading news online is a growing tendency in current reality, and the age of internet usage is also shifting fast, we can say that time works on media companies. In this research I will analyse existing online paying models which successfully operate and give the hope to industry players for the â€Å"brighter† future in that prospect. 2. Review of search methodology The aim of this thesis is to find out the features of existing paid models in online news which are already operating successfully. I will also try to measure their effectiveness/importance by various criteria, both objective such as existing financial and quantitative data, and also more partly-objective, such as different expert opinions[17]. The research will be developed in three main parts: Review of types of content which can be monetized, where people show some willingness to pay money (or are already paying) As related to the previous chapter, analysis of the personality drivers and its importance while consumers conduct online purchase Analysis of existing successful models, their features and their effectiveness in terms of empirical results For the sake of development of this three-pillar structure, the information will be obtained through various sources such as existing literature researches, articles, blogs, expert opinions and the consulting project ran by me and my classmates during our practice project[18]. 2.1. Sources for identifying online-chargeable content and consumers personality drivers The biggest contribution for the author in understanding of this issue were insights from consulting project workshop conducted by the ESMT Practice Project of which the author was a team member[19] in the late 2009. During this project, besides analyzing already available literature regarding topic, the team interviewed different kind of experts and also ran a representative survey among 300 German online readers to understand the areas where customers showed some willingness to pay. According to the results, there are not many areas which can be monetized, but only: Deeper analysis of specific articles as an addition to the more general one Old archives; plus specific interest areas of some readers Local news Online sports events The point is almost completely shared by Mathias Dà ¶phner, the CEO of German media company Axel Springer, who held a discussion around the topic at Monaco Media Forum 2009: â€Å"There are not many areas where people are willing to pay money: 1) This is finance, which is related to power; 2) Plus sports or games 3) Regional environments, people around you; 4) And then we are coming to two existential areas: sex and crime, or love and death. â€Å" â€Å"These are areas where people are generally interested in and why should that change in digital business?† asks Dà ¶phner rhetoric question. The CEO of Axel Springer also commented the fact that currently most news online is free and called this fact a â€Å"structural mistake† which has to be corrected step by step. According to Dà ¶phner there is not need of revolution, once most appropriate rules and procedures in legislation already exist. They just need some moderation and then execution. Continuing on the issue Dà ¶phner summed up with the hope that in the long run, for hundreds of years, people are willing to pay for things they are interested in. â€Å"Commodity news will be for free, but special information, added value services, exclusive information should be charged†. Currently, there are already obvious movements in the industry towards fixing the â€Å"structural mistakes† Mr Dà ¶phner talked about. This will be discussed more detailed in chapter 3.2, named â€Å"challenges†. 2.2. Personality drivers of consumers to purchase online Understanding and analyzing consumer drivers while conducting online purchase, is critical for building prominent, profitable business model. However until today there is no perfect study in the area which could claim on being perfect in identifying and analyzing of all motivators which make consumers to pay money online, and whats more important, all researchers would agree on that claim of this study. One of the best researches in this field conducted by Wang et al claims that the main factors which affect consumers willingness to pay money online and are positively correlated with the one, are consumers perceived convenience, essentiality, added-value and service quality. However another research on the same topic e.g. from Choi, Lee and Soriano focuses on following factors: perceived consequences after purchase of product, easiness of use of internet, social factors such as environment around person, satisfaction of the reader after purchase and existing alternative sources to get the same particular information. As we see on this example two group academics have completely different approach and beliefs towards one topic. These two researches are clear evidence how diverse is different researchers approaches to the issue. To all of these factors I looked also form the prospective of researches which are dedicated to analyzing a bit broader field consumers purchasing drivers in whole online market rather than only in online media. In these researches, some of above mentioned factors are considered to be important but others are doubted. Its hard for someone to persist himself not to criticize some of the factors mentioned above, e.g. the word â€Å"perceived† is already very dubious and at the same time very subjective, however very important one. As Barkhi, Belanger and Hocks claim in their â€Å"model of the determinants of purchasing from virtual stores†, the notion perceived/perception has already enormous importance itself, as it defines consumers later attitude towards whole online purchase procedure. To continue analysis, factor such as social community is neglected in Bosnjiaks research, where he referring to Senecals 2005 research claims that recommendations made from close community make decision making process more complex but it does not affect final choice of consumer. Regarding service-quality we can say that, the word quality itself already induces some confusion because its pretty subjective notion. For different people quality might mean different things. For some people service-quality might mean the urgent delivery of hottest news and the exclusivity of this information, whereas for another person the quality of service might be associated with deeper analysis of the article or the easiness of ways to pay money online. Such an arguing can continue further, but what is more important, arguable are not only factors on which researchers build their different models, but also some general statements which are made by them. For example, the work of Wang et al claim the business model is sustainable if revenue-generating method is accepted by majority of the potential customers. However despite all the respect towards the authors and research itself, such a claim can easily become a reason of discussions, because still, the success of any model depends on the ideal proportion of ad revenues and online subscription revenues and for different newspapers the ideal conversion rate of readers to paid customers might be different. Even this research itself contradicts to its statement when brings an example of Wall Street Journal Online and Hoovers Online telling that they managed to make e-content portal profitable by only 10% of conversion rate. While conducting our consulting project, we also got results th at some high circulated newspapers would make their portals profitable even by 3% conversion ratio. Further more, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, has only 0,8% conversion rate of subscribers on its niche site for hardcore Green Bay Packers fans, making revenues of 600,000 USD annually. In other words, depending on the content offered by particular newspaper, and the number and type of readers they have, the effective proportion of online content and ad revenues should be found. More analysis should be conducted to understand the price of lost customers amount versus converted ones and the ideal balance of subscription revenues versus lost ad revenues. To this issue has dedicated his discussion Jeff Jarvis, on the blog-web BuzzMachine. Jeff Jarvis is an American Journalist, former television critic, editor, publisher and columnist. Among the companies he has been working are: New York Daily News, San Francisco Examiner, New York Times Company, MediaGuardian a supplement of British newspaper The Guardian. Besides he is an associate professor at the City University of New Yorks Graduate School of Journalism directing its new media program. He is also creator of weblog BuzzMachine[20]. Jeff Jarvis in his article about paid content published on Weblog BuzzMachine is more persuasive about the complexity of the issue[21] and based on his vast experience highlights for the readers how many different factors should be taken in consideration for identifying one or another model for particular newspaper. For those who will catch in Jeff Jarvis approach some â€Å"sense and consciousness† will become clear that based only on the analysis of psychological traits of people and their purchasing drivers, it will not be easy to find an ideal model, and that the issue needs rather practical approach. Findings of Jeff Jarvis will be discussed more detailed in the 5.1 chapter named â€Å"Expert opinions and Conclusions†. Before moving to the following chapter, we should conclude the started topic and mention that there is still needed some research in the area of personal motivators for online purchase, in order we could claim by 100% confidence that we are using the best model for identifying the online paid model. 2.3. Discussed models and criteria for their comparison Once we are analyzing the existing models, the criteria for assessment of one or another method is the time of their existence and their results shown throughout their lifetime. Besides looking at the thematic differences in the features of the models both in Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) models, we will look at their financial results, their generated income through online sales and he dynamics in online subscription amount. The biggest attention the author paid was to the models of Financial Times and Wall Street Journal as the most successful financial players in B2C business. In addition, the author took a look at Bloomberg and Reuters as successful players of B2B model. New York Times was an interesting case for the author because it is a case, when after first unsuccessful trial, they are going to try monetizing online content already second time. Taking in consideration their prior experience it should be important to track which model they will choose for the second attempt. Finally, the author took a quick look at some other examples of successful and unsuccessful attempts of monetizing online content so far. Information was gathered from reviews of their websites as well as from articles about these news-providers, and various expert opinions about their models. 3. Possible models which can help to monetize online content Technological advancement has made most news content widely available for free online, which pushed most newspapers to give up subscription fees in the hope of getting more readers and hence by increasing traffic, get more advertisement revenues. However such movements contribute even more to the availability of free content in the web and hence induce decrease in print media circulation and advertisement revenues[22]. Charging for online news is very hard. The biggest risk that media companies face is loosing the visitors, because reduced traffic will induce less interest of advertisement providers on the particular site. Ads are still major source of revenues for most media companies and it will remain so in the nearest future. As Rupert Murdoch commented previously on the example of Wall Street Journal, â€Å"charging online content is not bad but still its not a gold mine†[23]. However, recently after presenting the idea at WSJ to impose premium paid model, Murdoch Justified their decision with telling that, in their case, ad revenues are no any more critical part in revenues and they pay more attention to subscription based revenues[24]. The high risk of loosing switching is easily explainable for SearchDNA founder John Straw, who admits that he himself would never pay for online content if he could get it somewhere else[25]. 3.1. Findings from consulting project While working on our consulting project[26], our group consisting from four MBA participants, I and my three classmates, identified four different types of models which could imposed during presenting the pay wall. The consulting project itself and its results is based on the basis of numerous articles and literature about previous experience, industry expert interviews and representative survey conducted among 299 German media readers. In column 1, table 1 explains four different pay-wall models which are possible to impose on online content in different situation, and column 2 explains the situations in which these different models would have chance to work â€Å"keeping other conditions constant†. Table 1: Types of models applicable in monetized online media[27] Types of Possible Models Situation explaining the feasibility of model Locking down the whole content Really unique content Locking down selected articles Unique content should be part of broader content Limiting the number of customers Very high overall quality, breadth of content offering Locking down the niche articles Want to monetize only highly specific â€Å"hidden† articles Source: consulting PP final draft Its upon news providers which type of model they will choose to match with the content they want to lock down. As we already discussed, there are few things which would motivate people to pay money online for, in other words online readers show at least some willingness to pay in following areas: * Deeper analysis of specific articles as an addition to the more general one * Old archives; plus specific interest areas of some readers * Local news * Online sports events Here we can provide some examples of successfully using some of these methods of pay-wall. The method of locking down selected articles is used by Wall Street Journal. In this case most daily news including political are considered as commodity information and they are given out for free, however if some specific interest area, e.g. finance, have deeper expert analysis, which you cant meet in other newspapers, the articles are locked down in this case. The method of limiting the number f articles is successfully used by Financial Times. New York Times decided to go on the same way from 2011. A good example of locking down niche content is Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and its Packer Insider: The journal locks down specific information, deep content about football club Green Bay Packers, for its fans. In deep content in this case is counted e.g. chat sessions with players. As the same Practice project showed, locking down whole content, â€Å"keeping other conditions equal†, is p ossible if the whole content is really unique. Here we have also to mention that during consulting project about online content monetization, we had some more interesting insights about the factors which increase readers willingness to pay: To our surprise content is not always the thing which might make readers to pay online: 35% of surveyed 299 German readers named following three factors as the possible motivators in increasing willingness to pay: Promotions/ Give-aways Customization Specific additional content As a conclusion of this chapter we should say many experts predict for the future that, free content will be used primarily as a marketing ploy: a complementary trial period is strictly used for purposes of enticing customers to subscribe to a service or buy a product online. (Wang et al). Alternatively some sites attract customers by offering a limited amount of free content. They then hope to convince their customers to shift to a variety of â€Å"premium†, fee-based content (Outing 2002). (Wang et al) 3.2. Challenges Innovative online ways of distributing news like news aggregate sites, blogs, social networks (Facebook, Tweeter, etc.) which are free to access, become more and more of a threat for media companies, because news is a costly product to produce, as well as it its distribution in traditional way. But distribution of news in online has zero marginal cost, as it takes nothing to the person to copy and paste a particular article or link it to the other page (Exhibit 6). Traditional media companies demand from these innovative producers of news â€Å"fair ways of playing†, which means either they should produce their own information or they should pay to original producers some fees for utilizing their articles. In his interview, Mathias Dà ¶phner mentioned that they are not demanding banning of these alternative sources. â€Å"We understand that future is mixed model, mutual existence of both of us declared Dà ¶phner. We also do not request something new and innovative. We just need fairness, respecting each other, respecting copyright rules, paying royalties as it is supposed to be done and for of all this playing rules are already there, we just need to make them better and then follow to†. Rupert Murdoch went even further and called search engine Google stealers, as they take others information without permission and put it on their pages. Regarding this phenomenon, Axel Springer CEO Dà ¶phner told very appropriate example to the Huffington Post co-founder. â€Å"If you want to give others your beer for free, please brew your own beer and then you are welcomed to do so, but please stop taking my costly beer and then giving it to others for free†. Recently there is a clear evidence of starting changes in this regard: Google agreed with several news-provider companies to restrict their articles readerships through Google to maximum amount of five. Another web-site YouTube started removing from their site unlicensed videos. In other words, Mathias Dà ¶phners prediction that the current reality would start changing step by step has obviously started to become true. Thus in nearest future we should anticipate emergence of new pay-models, when media companies will have to think, how to share the cake with news aggregate web-sites, social networks and bloggers. We are witnessing enormous changes not only because of monetization, but because of establishment new type of relationships between industry participants, which ideally should bring in new opportunities. (Exhibit 9) 4. Existing paying models, analysis Studies claim[28] that in order managers found ideal subscription business model for online monetization they need to understand their subscribers personality drivers, their perceptions and attitudes, what makes them purchase news online? In fact there is not breadth of information about consumers personality drivers, indeed the researchers actively continue investigating this area and thus provide us with new and new models. Non-existence of ideal model in this area is one of the reasons why we cant predict ideal online pay model. The other reasons are â€Å"closer† to business. Referring to Jeff Jarvis argumentation in his article about paid content models, there are plenty of criteria which determine the success of one or another model. Once these criteria are individual and very specific for each newspaper, no one can/should claim yet, on identifying one general ideal model which will fit to all news-providers. As director of Association of online publishers, Lee Baker commented in News Media, half of their members already charge for online content and another 19% is going to do so in the nearest 12 months. â€Å"Paid content modelling is important to our members†, continues Mr. Baker. â€Å"Our members are trying to penetrate new areas such as mobile apps. More than half of them express desire to create paid-for apps†. Despite we cant claim on building the ideal model as a proxy for the future, we can cover the most successful news providers and their models which are currently successfully used, both in B2C and B2B business. 4.1. Financial Times VS The Wall Street Journal Currently the most distributed B2C pay models in online media are two: one is Financial Times way restricting the definite amount of free articles for subscribers and then charge the readers if they exceed this amount, and another is Wall Street Journals way offering readers only one or two paragraph for reading and making available the rest only for subscribers[29]. To compare these two models in more details lets take a more detailed look at the ways which they are used by their most successful implementers. Of course there is some room for deviations and different news providers can apply to some minor changes, e.g. in the amount of text which should be given out for free, but the concept remains the same. Table 2 below shows clear distinctions between the features of these two models in the case of FT and WSJ. The essence of difference of these two models is the amount of information provided for free and the ways how it is done: The Wall Street Journal makes clear distinction between commodity and high-value content. The so ca