The Resort Town :: Descriptive Essay About A Place

The Resort Town When the eye has tired of the human scenery of the resort town, and the body is weary of the town's repetitive entertainments, the visitor may finally notice the fury of alien plants. The misting systems at every resort, designed for cooling rows of prostrate bodies, also provide the right conditions for equatorial jungles. The resort had made the most of this opportunity. I started to feel the more patient offerings of botanical companionship. To greet these plants, though, I needed to know their names. For that, I would need a nursery, and only one was close enough to walk to. From the front, it looked normal enough. I wandered in past the unattended outdoor register and into the usual towers of annual trays -- petunia, impatiens, salvia, and so on -- the same seventeen brief and predictable thrills that scream from annual-towers everywhere. Behind them, a small display of cactus, unlabeled but neat. Behind that, the beginnings of a jungle of larger containers. Along the side of the property, a large unkempt man drove in a golf cart with a tree in the seat beside him. The proprietor. At once, I saw some of the plants that I had come to identify. I looked for their labels. There were none. Glancing around, I realized that I hadn't seen a label anywhere. No prices. No identities. No instructions for planting and care. No customers either. I moved alone through a containerized wilderness, all sights obscured by overgrown but anonymous vines, trees, shrubs. Finally, there, a label! A low, greyish shrub cowered in a hexagonal pot whose nursery tag still clung to its side. Making my own path through the sea of containers, I bent down to read. "Strelitzia," it said. My mind flashed a picture of Strelitzia, the "bird of paradise," a soaring tropical plant with foot-long leaves and an audacious backward-leaning orange and blue flower that has always made me think of Marilyn Monroe reclining ever so slowly onto a great divan. Flashy and tender, Strelitzia was the perfect opposite of the tough and humble desert shrub that actually grew in this container. Well, I thought, at least they transplant things here. Perhaps one pot in a hundred bore any label at all, and each label was not just wrong but perfectly so. A screaming red honeysuckle vine was labeled Opuntia -- prickly pear, the familiar cactus that grows in rounded flat pads.

Marketing Debate

Is Consumer Behavior More a Function of a Person’s Age or Generation? MKT 6661 Strategic Marketing Management Troy University Introduction A heavily debated issue between marketers is what drives consumer behavior? There are two noted positions in this debate, one that believes that age differences are the deciding factors of a consumer’s wants and needs and others make the case that cohort and generation effects are better suited to uncover the consumer’s desires. Marketers have a major responsibility to identify and reach out to the marketplace and find out what influences an individual’s purchasing decisions.Rather these decisions can be sorted based on a group of individuals shared experiences or by simply bunching these individuals into their respective generations but a system has to be in place to provide insight to what is the best way to channel into the consumer’s buying methods. So what’s all the Fuss About? The question that we ar e trying to answer is, is consumer behavior more a function of a person’s age or generation? There has been inclusive research on the driving forces of what drives consumer choice.A pattern has been discovered that people who make similar purchases may also share other specific social-economical similarities. This gives way that there is some background to be learned about these purchasing groups. Cohorts, or Aged-Based Marketing, tend to share a significant number of experiences, goals, and values. (Bidwell 2009) The main principle behind a cohort is that individuals make purchasing decisions based on events that they experienced through their lives, such as their childhood, adolescents, early adulthood and so forth.These events, called defining moments, influence attitudes, preferences, values, and buying behaviors, and these attitudes, values, and buying-behavior motivations for each cohort remain virtually the same throughout their lives. (Bidwell 2009) In contrast to coh orts, on the other side of the debate, the method of evaluating consumer behavior by placing consumers in a group of individuals born and living about the same time. This is the practice of multi-generation marketing. Each generation has unique expectations, experiences, lifestyles, values, and demographics that influence their buying behaviors.Multi-Generational marketing has a broader platform in which individual consumers are placed. Some specifics of these two marketing segments can draw some contrast between the two. To use the cohort model most effective there must be a combination of people’s ages and information about their particular life stages. Some examples of different life stages are empty nesters, retirees, young families, and your careerist. (Bidwell 2009) Most consumers’ life stages are fairly predictable so it provides for their purchasing habits to be predictable.There can be contrast amongst different cohorts as well, depending on the unique events that an individual shared with others in the same cohort. According to Charles D. Schewe, a professor of marketing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and consultant to numerous companies, there are seven American cohorts. The first cohort being the Great Depression cohort, born between the years of 1912 and 1921 and represent approximately seven percent of the U. S. population, secondly is the World War II cohort born between the years of 1922-1927 and represent about five percent of the U.S. population, the third cohort is known as the post WWII cohort, this group was born between the years of 1928-1945 and represent about twenty three percent of the U. S. population, next are the Baby Boomers I and Baby Boomers II cohorts, they represent together about forty three percent of the U. S. population and were born between the years of 1946 to 1964, the sixth cohort are the Generation X’ers who were born between the years of 1966 and 1976 and make up approximately twen ty two percent of the U. S. opulation, and lastly there are the N-Gens, born from 1977-1987, and make up twelve percent of the U. S. adult population. ( Bidwell 2009) Though these cohorts span over a number of years they are all linked by a series of events that follow a chronological order. Even though a cohort places consumers in segments based on lifestyles but the time in which these events occurred can have drastic effect on their purchasing choices. Looking at the metrics of generational marketing on surface can resemble age-based marketing very closely.This is not an intentional consequence to be vague in practice or by definition but help narrow the message down that the marketer is trying to relay. Take a look this table that depicts the six U. S. Generations. Generation| Date of Birth| Number| Age (in 2010)| Pre-Depression| Before 1930| 12 MM| 81 and above| Depression| 1930-1945| 28 MM| 65-80| Baby Boom| 1946-1964| 80 MM| 46-64| Generation X| 1965-1976| 45 MM| 34-45| Gener ation Y| 1977-1994| 71 MM| 16-33| Generation Z| After 1994| 29 MM| Less than 16| (Marketing to the Generations 2010)Looking at the table, generation analysis and Cohort effects follow a very similar chronological order and demographics but generation analysis is a much broader form of marketing intelligence. At best we have put a group of consumers at the same place at the same time using this method. By knowing the generation the consumer was born it does help the marketer pin point the most effective way to communicate with the consumer taking a macro overlook of the consumer. Based on what generation a consumer was born in gives insight of how techno savvy or financially conservative, education level the consumer received.Conclusion As I really think about the original question and look for the answer it seems to me that these two methods work in tandem with each other. The bigger picture is understanding the holistic approach to getting your message across the consumer. Cohort i s a much more defined process, in that it outlays the needs of the consumer at different times in their lives but knowing the generation that the consumer helps to point the marketer in the right direction when extrapolating data from individual.Undoubtedly to me both are instrumental in a effective and efficient marketing information system References Bidwell. 25 March 2009 Cohorts: Age-Based Marketing. http://www. bidwellid. com/resources/white_papers/Bidwell_ID_Cohorts. pdf Williams, K; Page,R 2010 Marketing to the Generations http://www. aabri. com/manuscripts/10575. pdf Kotler, P. , & Keller, K. (2012). In K. Keller, & P. Kotler 14th ed, Marketing Management

The Ymca Of Greater Pittsburgh Essay - 927 Words

The YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh received a 1.5 million dollar grant from the Heinz Endowments (December of 2015) to re-purpose the Homewood Brushton YMCA into a Creative Youth Center. Presently, we have a youth program the Lighthouse Project, which is about nine years old and currently housed at Westinghouse High School. The YMCA Lighthouse Project is an afterschool program for teens that teaches leadership and career readiness through the media arts of film, photography, graphic design and music production. The students participate in workshops with a focus on photography, journalist, fashion design, visual arts, music production, dance, graphic design and the Bridge to College workshop. â€Å"With the repurpose of the YMCA the Lighthouse Project will move from its present location at Westinghouse High School. Starting with the 2016-2017 school year, the program will be relocated to the YMCA,† said Williams. The transformation will involve conference rooms, the Family Support Center and the multipurpose room. These rooms will be repurposed into a commercial kitchen and performance stage. When asked if the repurpose of these rooms would be enough to hold the anticipated student enrollment in the 2016-2017 program, Williams replied, â€Å"The program generally serves between 50 and 60 students per school year (October thru June); with the upcoming school year we plan to double that number.† The students will not be lumped into one common area, but move from module to moduleShow MoreRelatedMonsanto: Better Living Through Genetic Engineering96204 Words   |  385 Pagesdifferently. For instance, with deregulation of the airline industry in the United States, older, established airlines had a signiï ¬ cant decrease in proï ¬ tability, while many smaller airlines, such as Southwest Airlines, with lower cost structures and greater ï ¬â€šexibility, were able to aggressively enter new markets. Porter’s ï ¬ ve forces model is a useful tool for analysing the speciï ¬ c industry (see Chapter 2). Careful study of how the ï ¬ ve competitive forces (that i s, supplier power, buyer power, potential