Introduction of Festival Walk free essay sample

1. 0 A convenient site: Festival Walk is located at 80 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, directly connected to the MTR interchange in Hong Kong (take Exit â€Å"C† at Kowloon Tong MTR station). In additional, the bus station provide terminal service from different district achieve to Festival Walk. Moreover drivers can direct parking at festival walk which provides over 800 spaces, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The car park offer 3 levels and set up the complete security facility for 24-hours monitoring. Located in the centre of Kowloon, Festival Walk offers direct entrance to public and private transport. Located near by the traditional upper class residential area, Festival walk offers an extraordinary upper class level of accessibility. Opposite Festival Walk is the City university and Industrial Technology Centre are next door. Took a walk few minutes, the Baptist University can be achieved. 1. 1 A breathtaking design: As a Hong Kong’s largest ice rink, over 220,000 square feet of office space, Festival Walk introduce the realization of a unique concept and provide an energized environment of innovation, originality and pleasure. We will write a custom essay sample on Introduction of Festival Walk or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Festival Walk brings together some of the world’s most sought-after brand and services. Another great point is that a lot of these brands and services are completely new to Hong Kong, and many others have opened flagship stores here. Dining is also a big draw, with big names in both Oriental and Western fusion. 1. 2 A great food: To seek for quality, recreation, best-value, impulsive, social stage, or it’s a sandwich on the run, an important business lunch, dinner with friends or a romantic meal for two, Festival Walk has just the place for you. Over 27 restaurants actually offer international fusion ensure that every taste and budget catered to – from the old-fashioned and authentic Italian-American cuisine at Amaroni’s Little Italy, to a cappuccino at Starbucks or dim sum at Jasmine. Whatever your mood, Festival Walk is a variety and fashionable venue with a world of exciting culinary affective. Target customers of Simplylife Bakery Cafe 2. 1 Segmentation Refer to the location of Simplylife Bakery Cafe – Festival Walk, where is a big shopping mall provided eating, shopping and playing places. Nearby, there are many offices, the City University, Secondary schools. Moreover, it provided a rage of exciting offers exclusively for the students and staff in university with due date of 31 August 2008, which stated that once the students and staff wearing union or presented the ID card, or the International students, teachers professors presented ID card or U card at the period of time may enjoy a great offering of purchase within some of the stores in Festival Walk. Its convenient transportation which has the MTR station, bus stations and provided parking area can attracted many different kinds of potential customers, like, staff work at Festival Walk, office people, students and teachers from University and secondary schools, people who love shopping and branding supporters. As the Festival Walk has many International brands, it promoted some exclusive offers from over 100 international brands to the foreign visitors simply required them to present their passport at the Customer Service Desk on LG2 or UG to redeem a Festival Walk Tourist Passport. This policy may helpful in attracting more foreigner and Individual visitors to come and shopping. Also, these groups of people are willing to pay more money onto the branding products and they are mostly having enough financial abilities. 2. 2 Targeting Within the segmented customers of Festival Walk, there are some of them may suit with the style of Simplylife Bakery Cafe. The potential target segment would be the office people, especially for women and the foreign tourists. It is because Simplylife Bakery Cafe’s main theme is healthy food, especially low level of oil, fat, sweet and calories breads, even the breads are turned cold and it still tastes good. Furthermore, breads are the product which can satiate hungry, fast and convenient. These may be a great benefit for those emphasize healthy life’s people and who are not able to have enough time to eat breakfast or lunch. On the other hand, the food at Simplylife Bakery Cafe costs in a high price ith comparing the average price of other stores, therefore, the potential customers may needed to have at least a middle level and steady income. Office people may be suitable for these requirements. The reason for tourists may be the potential target groups would because most foreign tourists may have a standardized eating habit which close to the cafe’s product contained with a high relationship with European food. And they are more willing to pay money to what they want than local peop le. Another likely market would be the shoppers in Festival Walk. Most of the shoppers are having basic financial abilities, have extra time in shop around the shopping mall. After a period of time spend on shopping and consumption may want to have a place to sit down to relax for a moment and eat or drink something. Cafe may be a good choice for them. 2. 3 Positioning The Simplylife Bakery Cafe would position itself to the customers who seek for healthy and relaxing life. Those people may have a great demand in selecting food, drinks and their own quality of life. They are enjoying the European style, no matter the environment and the eating habit. Thus, the machine used in Simplylife Bakery Cafe required all its decoration, machinery of bakery and the food they produced must meet the stylish of European style. Such as the stove are produced from European. The environmental design used sunny umbrellas and open-air restaurant style can fulfill the needs of those customers who enjoy sunshine and sight-seeing but afraid of basking in the sun or rainy days will get dirty when eating or having tea time at the street. Also, the air-conditioning environment can make customers more comfortable. Theories applied For a marketing stimulus to have an impact, consumers must be exposed to it, allocate some attention to it, and perceive it. Consumers do some processing of a stimulus once they have been exposed to it, pay attention to it, and perceive its characteristics. Once it is perceived, consumers may examine it more closely. Thus, exposure, attention, and perception all affect the decisions consumers make and the actions they take. 3. 1 Exposure Before any type of marketing stimulus can affect consumers, they must be exposed to it. Exposure reflects the process by which the consumer comes in to physical contact with a stimulus. Marketing stimulus are messages and information about products or brands communicated by either the marketer (via ads, salespeople, brands symbols, packages, signs, prices, and so on) or by non-marketing sources (e. g. , the media, word of mouth). Consumers can be exposed to marketing stimuli at the buying, using, or disposing stages of consumption. Because exposure is critical to consumers’ subsequent processing of any stimulus, marketers must ensure that consumers are exposed to stimuli that portray their offering in a favourable light. 1] Therefore, marketers start the process of gaining exposure by selecting media, such as radio, product placements, and the Internet, and by developing promotions for the targeted customers. [2] Although Simplylife has opened for about six to seven months, there are many people left down messages or comments onto the online blog and some newspaper had introduced this cafe to the readers, such as the Sing Tao Newspaper and Ming Pao Newspaper had introduced it to the readers, some websites had even rated it into the top 20 restaurants by an online voting system. These had attracted many different people went there and tried the food and drinks at Simplylife Bakery Cafe. 3. 2 Attention Attention occurs when the consumer allocates processing capacity to the stimulus. A certain amount of attention is necessary for information to be perceived-for it to activate our senses. [3] Attention is selective, divided, and limited. Even tactics such as product placement do not guarantee that consumers will directly attend to marketing stimuli, although consumers may attend to them pre-attentively. Making a marketing stimulus personally relevant, pleasant, surprising, or easy to process enhances its attention-getting properties. Consumers perceive a stimulus using one of their sensory organs. [4] 3. 3 Sensation In psychology, sensation is the first stage in the biochemical and neurologic events that begins with the impinging of a stimulus upon the receptor cells of a sensory organ, which then leads to perception, the mental state that is reflected in statements like I see a uniformly blue wall. [5] Sensory system A sensory system is a part of the nervous system responsible for processing sensory information. A sensory system consists of sensory receptors, neural pathways, and parts of the brain involved in sensory perception. The human bodys senses[6] are divided into eight: visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, cutaneous, kinesthetic, vestibular, organic. [7][8] The ways in which these senses are divided from one another in concept, and combined in varying ratios in perceiving the world, differs based on individual physiology, social and cultural context, and physical surroundings. The whole sensory system, including both physical sensation and interpretation (or cognition) of information from the senses, is referred to as a sensorium[9]. [10] Inputs picked up by our senses are the raw data that begin the perceptual process. [11][12] 3. 4 Perception In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. [13] Passive perception and active perception There are two basic theories of perception: Passive Perception (PP) and Active Perception (PA). 14] The passive perception (conceived by Rene Descartes) is addressed in this article and could be surmised as the following sequence of events: Surrounding ; Input (senses) ; Processing (brain) ; Output (re-action) Although still supported by mainstream philosophers, psychologists and neurologists, this theory is nowadays losing momentum. [15] The theory of active perception has emerged from extensive research of sensory illusions w ith works of Professor Emeritus Richard L Gregory in a lead. This theory is increasingly gaining experimental support and could be surmised as dynamic relationship between:[16] â€Å"Description† (in the brain) ; ; Senses ; ; Surrounding Perceptual thresholds Perceptual thresholds determine the point at which stimuli are perceived. The absolute threshold is the lowest point at which an individual can experience a sensation. The differential threshold is the minimal difference in stimulus intensity needed to defect that two stimulus are different. The differential threshold is important both when marketers do not want consumers to notices a difference between two stimuli (as in a size decrease) and when they do (as in the case of product improvements). [17] Perception and action Human beings gather information about the world and interact with it through our actions. Perceptual information is critical for action. Perceptual deficits may lead to profound deficits in action. [18] Introduction of Simplylife Bakery Cafe 4. 1 A new European style at L2-42: For taking a break at rush hour or renewal under the pressure, the aroma of freshly baked goods filling the air, you shell is able to energize as soon as possible. Simplylife Bakery Cafe is a new European style restaurant providing bread as the principal theme at Festival Walk, L2-42 which established at July of 2007. Its former is full of Continental Europe bread fragrantly, wrap up the full land wind simplylife bakery cafe of Europe, where has a sophisticated atmosphere is decorated to restaurant by the chi European-style. It is divided into for meal in the room area or in the open area. The open-air position is the outdoor location of the indoor shop under glass variola and the sunshine shines on the desk through the glass. The air conditioning is put in place at the same time thus it will not be felt too hot. Yet, the relaxing environment coupled with comfortable furniture evokes a romantic dining experience. Moreover, the semi-opened kitchen is able to stimuli your vision, smell, taste sensory; and the gentle trendy music let you perceive as if settle at Europe with the infinite pleasures. . 2 A great dining: The food is looked like cases of fine art and jewelry and the flavors are comparably precious. Simplylife Bakery Cafe offers a range of European-style delectable bread, cakes chocolates and patisseries made by their renowned pastry chef. All the breads baked by Simplylife Bakery Cafe are made with the minimum use of oil and sugar. Also, the bread that Simplylife Cafe sold can remain great tas te even the breads turned to cool and the mouthfeeling may get more better which is the different point of Simplylife’s bread with the others. Moreover, the stove of simplylife and fermented machine are import from the European. the constant temperature function and time control, can be close to the European taste, offer the genuine flavor of Continental Europe. Customers can take a seat and choose a drink to accompany these fine sweet experiences, or of course customer may prefer something savory, a sandwich or homemade pastry. SimplyLife Bakery Cafe also offers a wide selection of meatless rice, pasta dishes, wild rice, hamburger and organic spaghetti of dishes, which are cooked with olive oil, also include ten valley rice, organic noodles,etc. n the cuisine and take health as the purpose. Furthermore, they offer a wide variety of wines that will complement customers’ meal. Likewise, choose to occidentalize in cuisin add with the indoor light is weak, mix the light music, inside and outside of shop, such ooze over Continental Europe flavor. 4. 3 Decoration: The cafe has adopted the continental designing concept for the decoration, such as the brazier and fermentation machine are brought from Europe to ensure the breads made and tastes are entirely filled with the European-styles. Also, brown, black and white color tone is used for the main coloring for the cafe which can promote the thinking of clean, simple, fashionable and classical to customers. And the wooden floor design can give customers the warm and friendly feeling. Moreover, the environment of the cafe is divided into two sections and it has divided into two parts. First part is indoor section where mainly have the semi-opened kitchen, refrigerator, cash counter, toilet and some small tables and chairs. The semi-opened kitchen is showing how the chefs make the bread in European type, also the cafe may produce about ten numbers of breads for each kind which may give the feeling of friendly, kindly, hygiene, confidence, excitement, etc. to the customers and let them know the breads they brought were fresh and healthy. It also can give them a good appetite when they smell the scent of bread and stimulate their emotion to eat after smelling them or impetus them to have further consumptions even they do not hungry at that moment. The materials and equipment were clearly showed at the open-kitchen, all the breads are tidily placed on the baskets and covered with the transparent bread cabinet, and these are the main factors to let customers to have confidence in purchasing and promoting hygiene concepts. At the top right corner of the kitchen has a well-equipped visual aids that showed all the information of each kind of foods the cafe sold and the pricing can convent the customers and let reduced the time for them in search such information and feeling of high-technological. On the other hand, the refrigerator inside the store placed some drinks and packed sandwiches can let customers to take and consume by themselves which can increase the involvement with customers towards the consumption. Therefore, consumers can choose the products by themselves with freely selection, like they can take the product on hand to feel the product and smell it, see it clearly. Moreover, the store played some soft and English song, combined with the yellow and dark lighting can give customers a relaxing and comfortable eeling. Except these, the cafe has its own toilets for the customers, inside is well-cleaned and mirrors, soaps, rubbish bins, tissues and other basic materials are provided. The second part on Simplylife Bakery Cafe is the outdoor section is designed as an European-stylish open-air teahouse, all the tables had installed the big sunny umbrellas. The sunshine can be projected onto the desk and seats through the glasses. Included with the moderate air-conditioning, customers can be satisfied with their needs of eating and drinking at the open-air places and feel relaxing after shopping or walking around the shopping mall. Also, such kind of design can let the customers to enjoy the outside scenery like the sunshine, rainy days, afternoon sunshine or stars shine at night, which can increase the sight seeing to the customers in except of the tasting, smelling, hearing satisfactions. Strengthen, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat of Simplylife Bakery Cafe Strengthen Simplylife Bakery Cafe used the stoves and fermented machines are made in European. This made their breads more similar to European-style, which can constant the temperature function and to be more exactly in time controlling from producing breads. The characterics of European-style’s bread need not to eat the bread when it is hot, it also can be tasted good even it is cold. This would be one of the differentiation of its products and convience to those people who are working in the central city – Hong Kong. Simplylife Bakery Cafe dividend into two parts which is the indoor cafe and outdoor restaurant. The indoor cafe include the semi-opened kitchen to show the process of baking the breads and the clear environment may help in promoting hygiene and let customers to feel more confidence in purchasing; the outdoor restaurant with the incorporating glasses and the big sunny umbrellas attract people who are willing to enjoy the sunshine and the air-conditioning at the same time. Weakness Even Simplylife Bakery Cafe has such advantages to attract customers, it is not perfect enough. The cafe does not provide any set meals for lunch or dinner. There is a clearly additional cost for ordering dishes separately. It seem that the prices of the cafe are highest when compare to others. It may not easily to attract the student group and new customers. And the desks in the cafe are only suitable for two to three people use and too small when the customer is ordering much more dishes. Therefore, customers who like to have a gathering with many friends may be difficult as the table is too small and they are forced to divide sitting in different desks. Opportunity It seems that Simplylife Bakery Cafe does not have any set meal of lunch and dinner; it can offer some set lunch and set dinner each week per day; it also can offer some promotions to attract the student to expand the target market. As nearby may have the University and Secondary schools, students are willing to spend time after school and sitting in the cafe to gathering with friends or discussing project at these kind of place. Threat In Festival Walk, there are nine cafes (included Simplylife Bakery Cafe) to let customer to choose which are Agnes b. e pain grille be Cafe, Bistro Delifrance, McCafe, Olivers Super Sandwiches, Pacific Coffee Company, Page One Cafe, Queens Konditorei, Simplylife Bakery Cafe and Starbucks Coffee. The style of Simplylife Bakery Cafe is similar with Agnes b. le pain grille be Cafe, it may not easier to stick out the differences of Simplylife Bakery Cafe. The prices is another important factors for customers to choose one of nine cafe; the pri ce is not popularity to the public when compare with other cafe in Festival Walk and difficult to develop customer loyalty. Executive Summary Festival Walk is a world’s best known shopping mall which have had over 200 shops and 27 restaurants, the largest ice rink of Hong Kong, over twenty-two million square feet of office space, etc. It located at the central point of Kowloon Tong, direct access to the buses, taxis, and the MTR station, nearby the universities; those factors can be attracted the travelers from all over the worlds, students, white-collar, etc. Simplylife Bakery Cafe have had a similar target segment with Festival Walk, within the above segment, the mainly segment which Simplylife Bakery Cafe focus is the health conscious and enjoying European life styles’ customers. The purpose of Simplylife Bakery Cafe is to promote healthiness, simple, clean and comfortable thinking to customers after they came and purchased from the cafe. The bread is one of the selling points of Simplylife Bakery Cafe. To make it more similar to the European-style, the stoves and fermented machines are import from European so that it can easy to constant the temperature function and time control. Also, all the breads are made with the minimum use of oil and sugar; wild rice and organic spaghetti are used in the dishes. And from the content of the report, there will discuss how the environment and decoration be a critical factor in attracting customers to come and purchase, or even have further purchase. The Simplylife Bakery Cafe’s products are mainly on European-style food and based on this reason, the style of decorating the store also adopted such kind of styling, from the machinery to the environment design. The outdoor part of the cafe with the incorporating glasses and big sun umbrella just like the tea-stall in the open air let people feel that they are eating and relaxing under the sunshine in Europe. The semi-open kitchen in the indoor cafe allows people to see the whole process of producing breads. This can increase the interest from customers to take a look and then after they saw it, smell it, they may be pushed by these stimuli and then purchase. Even Simplylife Bakery Cafe has had so many advantages to attract the customers, especially by its environment factors, like there is a comfort place for customers to relax, eat and gathering with friends, also, the music and decoration let customers can have the feeling of located in Europe, help in reducing pressure and the semi-open kitchen can raise their interests and stimuli their sensory systems (e. g. Eat) in purchasing. However, we found that it could be difficult to build up a customer loyalty and attract the new customer. It is because the price of Simplylife Bakery Cafe is higher and the prices of breads are higher than the local bakeries. Simplylife Bakery Cafe does not offer any set meals for lunch and dinner to let customer chosen. [1] Hoyer W. D. Maclnnis D. J. : Consumer Behaviour, 4th edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007 [2] Hoyer W. D. Maclnnis D. J. : Consumer Behaviour, 4th edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007 [3] James, W. , The Principles of Psychology. New York: Henry Holt, Vol. 1, pp. 403-404 [4] Hoyer W. D. Maclnnis D. J. : Consumer Behaviour, 4th edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007 [5] http://en. ikipedia. org/wiki/Sensation [6] Senses are the physiological methods of perception. A sense is a faculty by which outside stimuli are perceived. [7] Kolb Whishaw: Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology, 2003 [8] http://www. eioba. com/a70192/senses [9] The term sensorium (plural: sensoria) refers to the sum of an organisms perception, the seat of sensation where it experiences a nd interprets the environments within which it lives. [10] Kolb Whishaw: Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology, 2003 [11] Hoyer W. D. Maclnnis D. J. : Consumer Behaviour, 4th edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007 [12] James. J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston, 1966 [13] Hoyer W. D. Maclnnis D. J. : Consumer Behaviour, 4th edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007 [14] http://www. simplypsychology. pwp. blueyonder. co. uk/perception-theories. html [15] http://www. simplypsychology. pwp. blueyonder. co. uk/perception-theories. html [16] http://www. simplypsychology. pwp. blueyonder. co. uk/perception-theories. html [17] Hoyer W. D. Maclnnis D. J. : Consumer Behaviour, 4th edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007 [18] http://www. roblesdelatorre. com/gabriel/GR-IEEE-MM-2006. pdf

The Gold Standard vs. Fiat Money

The Gold Standard vs. Fiat Money An extensive essay on the gold standard on The Encyclopedia of Economics and Liberty defines it as: ...a commitment by participating countries to fix the prices of their domestic currencies in terms of a specified amount of gold. National money and other forms of money (bank deposits and notes) were freely converted into gold at the fixed price. A county under the gold standard would set a price for gold, say $100 an ounce and would buy and sell gold at that price. This effectively sets a value for the currency; in our fictional example, $1 would be worth 1/100th of an ounce of gold. Other precious metals could be used to set a monetary standard; silver standards were common in the 1800s. A combination of the gold and silver standard is known as bimetallism. A Brief History of the Gold Standard If you would like to learn about the history of money in detail, there is an excellent site called A Comparative Chronology of Money which details the important places and dates in monetary history. During most of the 1800s, the United States had a bimetallic system of money;  however, it was essentially on a gold standard as very little silver was traded. A true gold standard came to fruition in 1900 with the passage of the Gold Standard Act. The gold standard effectively came to an end in 1933 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt outlawed private gold ownership. The Bretton Woods System, enacted in 1946 created a system of fixed exchange rates that allowed governments to sell their gold to the United States treasury at the price of $35/ounce: The Bretton Woods system ended on August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon ended trading of gold at the fixed price of $35/ounce. At that point for the first time in history, formal links between the major world currencies and real commodities were severed. The gold standard has not been used in any major economy since that time. What system of money do we use today? Almost every country, including the United States, is on a system of fiat money, which the glossary defines as money that is intrinsically useless; is used only as a medium of exchange. The value of money is set by the supply and demand for money and the supply and demand for other goods and services in the economy. The prices for those goods and services, including gold and silver, are allowed to fluctuate based on market forces.   The Benefits and Costs of a Gold Standard The main benefit of a gold standard is that it  ensures  a relatively low level of inflation. In articles such as What Is the Demand for Money? weve seen that inflation is caused by a combination of four factors: The supply of money goes up.The supply of goods goes down.Demand for money goes down.Demand for goods goes up. So long as the supply of gold does not change too quickly, then the supply of money will stay relatively stable. The gold standard prevents a country from printing too much money. If the supply of money rises too fast, then people will exchange money (which has become less scarce) for gold (which has not). If this goes on too long, then the treasury will eventually run out of gold. A gold standard restricts the  Federal Reserve  from enacting policies which significantly alter the growth of the money supply which in turn limits the  inflation rate  of a country. The gold standard also changes the face of the foreign exchange market. If Canada is on the gold standard and has set the price of gold at $100 an ounce, and Mexico is also on the gold standard and set the price of gold at 5000 pesos an ounce, then 1 Canadian Dollar must be worth 50 pesos. The extensive use of gold standards implies a system of fixed exchange rates. If all countries are on a gold standard, there is  then  only one real currency, gold, from which all others derive their value. The stability of the gold standard cause in the foreign exchange market is often cited as one of the benefits of the system. The stability caused by the gold standard is also the biggest drawback in having one.  Exchange rates  are not allowed to respond to changing circumstances in countries. A gold standard severely limits the stabilization policies the Federal Reserve can use. Because of these factors, countries with gold standards tend to have severe economic shocks. Economist  Michael D. Bordo  explains: Because economies under the gold standard were so vulnerable to real and monetary shocks, prices were highly unstable in the short run. A measure of short-term price instability is the coefficient of variation, which is the ratio of the standard deviation of annual percentage changes in the price level to the average annual percentage change. The higher the coefficient of variation, the greater the short-term instability. For the United States between 1879 and 1913, the coefficient was 17.0, which is quite high. Between 1946 and 1990 it was only 0.8. Moreover, because the gold standard gives the government little discretion to use monetary policy, economies on the gold standard are less able to avoid or offset either monetary or real shocks. Real output, therefore, is more variable under the gold standard. The coefficient of variation for real output was 3.5 between 1879 and 1913, and only 1.5 between 1946 and 1990. Not coincidentally, since the government could not have discretion over monetary policy, unemployment was higher during the gold standard. It averaged 6.8 percent in the United States between 1879 and 1913 versus 5.6 percent between 1946 and 1990. So it would appear that the major benefit to the gold standard is that it can prevent long-term inflation in a country. However, as  Brad DeLong  points out: ...if you do not trust a central bank to keep inflation low, why should you trust it to remain on the gold standard for generations? It does not look like the gold standard will make a return to the United States anytime in the foreseeable future.