Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Proposed Lyrics for the Spanish National Anthem

Spain has long been one of the few countries with no lyrics for its national anthem, known as La marcha real (The Royal March). But the Spanish national anthem does have unofficial lyrics, which have been written not only in Spanish, but also in Basque, Catalan, and Galician. Source of Proposed Anthem Lyrics Spains national Olympics committee held a contest in 2007 to come up with suitable lyrics, and the words below are those penned by the winner, a 52-year-old unemployed resident of Madrid, Paulino Cubero. Unfortunately for the Olympics committee, the lyrics immediately became the subject or criticism and even ridicule by political and cultural leaders. Within a few days of the lyrics becoming known it became clear that they would never be endorsed by the Spanish parliament, so the Olympics panel said it would withdraw the winning words. They were criticized, among other things, for being banal and too reminiscent of the Franco regime. Lyrics to La Marcha Real  ¡Viva Espaà ±a!Cantemos todos juntoscon distinta vozy un solo corazà ³n. ¡Viva Espaà ±a!Desde los verdes vallesal inmenso mar,un himno de hermandad.Ama a la Patriapues sabe abrazar,bajo su cielo azul,pueblos en libertad.Gloria a los hijosque a la Historia danjusticia y grandezademocracia y paz. La Marcha Real in English Long live Spain!Let us all sing togetherwith a distinctive voiceand one heart.Long live Spain!From the green valleysto the immense seaa hymn of brotherhood.Love the Fatherlandfor it knows to embrace,under its blue sky,peoples in freedom.Glory to the sons and daughterswho give to Historyjustice and greatness,democracy and peace. Translation Notes Note that the title of the Spanish national anthem, La marcha real, is written with only the first word capitalized. In Spanish, as in many other languages such as French, it is customary to capitalize only the first word of composition titles unless one of the other words is a proper noun. Viva, often translated as long live, comes from the verb vivir, meaning to live. Vivir is often used as a pattern for conjugating regular -ir verbs. Cantemos, translated here as let us sing, is an example of the imperative mood in the first-person plural. The verb endings of -emos for -ar verbs and -amos for -er and -ir verbs are  used as the equivalent of the English let us verb. Corazà ³n is the word for the heart. Like the English word, corazà ³n can be used figuratively to refer to the seat of emotions. Corazà ³n comes from the same Latin source as English words such as coronary and crown. Patria and Historia are capitalized in this hymn because they are personified, treated as figurative persons. This also explains why the personal a is used with both words. Note how the adjectives come before the nouns in the phrases verdes valles (green valleys) and inmenso mar (deep sea). This word order provides an emotional or poetical component to the adjectives in a way that isnt readily translatable to English. You might think of verdant rather than green, for example, and fathomless rather than deep. Pueblo is a collective noun used in much the same way as its English cognate, people. In the singular form, it refers to multiple persons. But when it becomes plural, it refers to groups of people. Hijo is the word for son, and hija is the word for daughter. However, the masculine plural form, hijos, is used when referring to sons and daughters together.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Why Australia Survived the Global Economic Recession Assignment

Essays on Why Australia Survived the Global Economic Recession Assignment ï » ¿Why Australia Survived the Global Economic Recession? China’s economic boom: Australia is blessed with natural resources. Developing countries like China and India frequently import raw material from Australia. â€Å"Indian and Chinese demand for resources from Australia, world’s largest exporter of coal, iron ore and alumina, has helped the A $ 1.2 trillion economy skirt recession during the global financial crisis.† (www.phongpo.com, 2010). In turn, these countries have managed to be cheap exporters of good quality products. Australia imports the final products from China and India. Since China is in the developing phase, it would keep purchasing metals from Australia to build factories and machineries. The economy of developed countries is largely based on the services, while that of the developing countries depends on the materialization of sources to generate those facilities. Therefore, to construct those sources, the developing countries like China have to import raw materials to build the sources. Mining: In order to satisfy the growing dependence of the world on Australia’s natural resources and to meet the demands of the developing countries, Australia has put large emphasis on the mining. This called for an increase in the working-age population ratio. Australia has planned strategically to tackle the laborer deficiency that might surface as a result of the growing need of workers in the mining sector. The market flexibility allowed an increase in the working hours. The wages of workers were also enhanced as an incentive so that the workers would work for longer periods. The migrated workers also played a big role in mitigating the labor deficiency. In fact, the deficiency has largely been overcome by the immigrants who had no difficulty in shifting to the states of concentrated mining operations as compared to the local workers who were reluctant to move to those states given the high traveling and living expenses. Fiscal policy: Australian government structure enjoys a high political stability that facilitates a continuous exploration of mineral resources. Besides, the Australian government’s fiscal strategy also tends to eliminate the economic imbalances likely to emerge as a result of an increase in the ageing population in Australia by constraining the expenditures. The fiscal strategy also serves to enhance national saving. Despite the concentration of mining operations in few regions, the benefits drawn are evenly distributed among all regions through a sound political structure. State governments charge tax on the resources in their respective regions and the revenues are shared with the governments of other states. Also, the tax-transfer mechanism is designed in a way that would ensure equal distribution of revenues in the states. This serves to eliminate the differences among the states and stabilize the political and social structure which is vital for the stable economy of a country. Investment: Mineral resources require infrastructure development that requires policy change. Sound policies require flexible markets and public investment. Large investment in mining which is vital for high resource productivity has led to an account deficit that calls for a foreign investment. Investment has caused economic deficit which is likely to increase even further in 2011/12. However, this deficiency is overcome with the aid of foreign investors. Besides, the microeconomic reforms help allocate the budget to the right investment areas. The compulsory superannuation savings since 1992 and the government’s medium term fiscal strategy have also served to enhance the national savings. One good step toward global financial regulation was Australia’s involvement in the G 20 which tends to keep the external factors from affecting Australia’s external economy. Government’s reaction: The most unproductive tax in Australia which tends to lower the GDP significantly is the one which is charged by the government to the private firms which explore non-renewable resources upon government’s permission. However, the government tends to apply the uniform resource rent tax, also referred to as the Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) from 1st July 2012 on the non-renewable resources which will make up to 40% of the released value of resources. Also, the royalties will be refunded to let the States draw revenue from them. Marginal mines will have to pay lesser so that it would be easy for them to invest in other projects. Being sensitive to profitability, the collection of revenue by RSPT will be proportional to economic boom. Owing to its high income tax rates as compared to OECD countries, the government intends to reduce taxes on companies to encourage productivity and raise capital stock to increase GDP. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) has also enforce d the Seamless National Economy reform agenda that serves to minimize the impact of regulations on the contest among different interstate governments. Employment: The tax reform, which is an important part of the microeconomic reform agenda, is likely to result in an increase in the investment, employment and productivity in the resource sector in coming years. Also, the revenues from RSPT will be utilized to develop infrastructures that will raise employment opportunities for the workers. Besides, Australia aims at educating the workers in order to enhance their productivity through polishing their skills through the â€Å"Skills for Sustainable Growth strategy†. The OECD has mentioned that Australia needs to focus upon the development of regulations associated with the change in reforms in order to exercise even better regulatory practices. References: www.budget.gov.au. â€Å"Statement 4: Benefiting from our mineral resource: Opportunities, challenges and policy settings†. 2010. Web. 26 May 2010. www.phongpo.com. â€Å"Australian Government plans to raise taxes on the profits of mining companies†. 2 May 2010. Web. 26 May 2010.

Monday, December 9, 2019

Market Research Religion and Luxury Brand

Question: Discuss about the Market Research for Religion and Luxury Brand. Answer: Background of the study: The type of luxury consumption depends on the behavior of the consumer and the way they consume the good. There are a number of products that might not be considered as a luxury product but it can be a product that is desired. The product tends to transcend their utility. The objects that are desired will be helpful in communicating the status and others who we are. The concept of status, desire and luxury is the concept that is discussed a hundred years ago. The well known economist Thorstein Veblen in the book The Theory of Leisure Class was able to explain that the act of purchasing of the expensive items was a way of communicating by the people their social status (Schade et al. 2016). He has implied that the purchasing of the luxury goods like expensive houses, gold and diamonds was a form of Wealth signaling (Butcher and Phau 2015). The preferences of the consumer are the outcome of the individualistic choices of the human intellect and a more complex behaviour with unclear de sire as a part of something bigger. The consumption that is made is not done in vacuum. The purchases that is made by the people, the people associated, the place we live, the places we visit helps in possessing meaning for the social identity and self identity. Researchers have shown a contradiction in the desired good purchase and the luxury goods purchase (Hurriyetdailynews.com 2016). Some of the research has shown that women they buy luxury bags to express style but some women used it for preventing stealing of men by other women. The characteristic for possessing luxury items is present in not only women but also men, young people, rich and poor. Problem Definition: The main purpose of the study is to see the way the consumers they interpret the concept luxury. There is unlimited variety of goods that is offered by the customers in the modern world. The way the buyers they make choices in the modern market with so many products and services is something that is to be looked into. Consumer behaviour is seen to be affected by the motives and the motivation. The proper definition of luxury consumption is subjective. The luxury consumption might be dependent upon the brand, price or the advertisement (Lloyd and Cheah 201). There is no universal meaning of luxury across the world. Luxury depends on the amount of money earned, the spending capacity and spending done on consumption (Joy et al. 2014). Class is an important factor that governs the purchasing decision of the people. In case of the Australian population, the younger population desires more of luxury goods for flaunting. The older generation is not much concerned with the usage of the expensive item (Liu et al. 2012). The luxury groups of consumers are divided into the number of extroverts and the introverts. It is very important to measure the luxury that is consumed by the people as this helps in reflecting the taste patterns of the people. Luxury consumption of the people can be measured through the amount of money that is spent by the people or that they possess (Lloyd and Cheah 2015). In order to conduct the research, the data will be generated from both the young and the old population in Australia. It is very important for the researcher to conduct a research on the type of goods consumed then this will be helpful in the marketing agents to decide on the type of consumers they are going to target. The following are the research questions: How do the consumers determine luxury consumption? What are factors that affect the luxury consumption? Literature Review: The identification and the understanding of the consumer passion based on the luxury brand are called the art and is a part of science. With the rise of the social media , the luxury type of brand has been able to engage more number of consumers with a deeper level of sentiments and gauge that is based on the interaction. With a number of comments on the product it is very important to understand the brands having insight the way the people they think and feel of the product, happening and the campaigns (Sikkel 2013). The term conspicuous consumption was coined by Veblen, which has shown that the wealthier consumers they are able to distinguish themselves from the masses who are not able afford the commodity (Lloyd and Cheah 2015). Term luxury has changed to new luxury. New luxury is the proliferation in the mass market, affordability, divorced status from the social class and availability in the mass market can show the luxury brand status (Kim, Lloyd and Cervellon 2016). The term luxury is the reciprocal of the appeal of conspicuousness as the upper end of the market. There are evidences that shown that with the rise in the price the conspicuousness of the brand also increases (De Barnier, Falcy and Valette-Florence 2012). The luxury brand has shown the conspicuous and the inconspicuous shift in the brand. It is getting difficult in the modern day, to locate the person with luxury, as there are people who rent luxury car for pleasure. With the presence of the anonymity in the urban life, it is a ffordable to sacrifice the less visible necessities care , food and shelter to afford the visible type of luxuries like watches , designer clothes , mobile phone which is terms as leaping luxuries by Belk (Chan et al. 2014). The person who does not make this type of sacrifices then there is availability of counterfeits and knockouts. These types of trends tend to dilute the status, which help in signalling status ability of luxury goods. There are evidences that have shown that well-established status will be seeking for the luxury consumption not for the status signal but the pleasure that is provided (Clift, Sim, and Sinclair 2013). It is very important to understand the shift from the conspicuous to inconspicuous consumption. The data of the economy will help in understanding the purchasing patterns. In the US data , it was seen that the Hispanics and the blacks they devote a large amount of their income in case of the conspicuous consumption of automobiles , jewellery and clothing than the whites. The differences are based on racial difference group. Since the blacks have lower income and come from lower status than whites so to flaunt their status they purchase more visible goods to flaunt (Patino, Pitta and Quinones 2012). The term luxury is very confusing as there are commodities that is used for the own personal taste or is based on the family. Since the item is affordable to that person then it is considered a normal good but a person with a lower income might be thinking eating in expensive hotels as luxury (De Barnier, Falcy and Valette-Florence 2012). Halo effect is the usage of the global evaluation for making the judgments regarding some particular type of traits. The global characteristics are used for applying specific type of personality traits. The personality qualities have been only seen but these qualities have not been met. This phenomenon occurs unconsciously (Craik, 2015). Biases are unaware of due to the attractiveness of the person. The metaphor Halo is a type of phenomenon where in a particular type of characteristic outshines the other and this tends to affect the perception when the additional traits are considered (Featherstone 2013). The qualities that is associated with the attractive and the unattractive trait deal with social interation. There is a mentality that the beautiful are outgoing and friendly and the less attractive are shy and reserve. When there is positive network externality then there is a rise in the Bandwagon Effect. The Band Wagon effect is referred to as the demand or desire for a good who want to be stylish as the possessing of the particular type of good is in fashion (Arli, and Tjiptono 2015). The bandwagon effect is a very important concept for framing the advertising and the marketing strategies for the manufacturing companies who appeals to go for a good people of style and purchasing it. When there are negative network externalities then there is a rise of the snob effect. The term snob effect shows the desire for purchasing the unique type of commodity, which holds a prestigious value. The work of snob effect is in contrary to that of the Bandwagon effect. The quantity demanded of the commodity with greater amount of snob value then there will be lesser number of people who would be owning it. The gap that is present in the research is that there is no well-defined definition of luxury. Luxury tends to differ from the person to person. Research Methodology: Research methodology is a very important part of the research study. The researcher needs to apply the right research design so that the research objective can be met (Flick, 2015). In order to understand the luxury consumption pattern of the people there is a need for asking questions regarding their lifestyle , the class they belong to and the income pattern of the respondents. This would be helpful in distinguishing the type consumption. The questions that would be asked would be close ended and quantitative in nature (Cechanowicz et al. 2013). The responses of the people will be measured in the five point likert scale. There would be collection of the primary as well as secondary data for the research. The secondary research is based on the literature review, which is gathered from different type of different journal articles, books and the magazines (Blumberg, Cooper and Schindler 2014). Primary research is done on the consumers of luxury items. For primary collection of the data, it would be done through the distribution of the questionnaire 50 respondents from Australia who indulges in the consumption of the luxury goods (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault 2015). The data would be collected within a timeframe of 3 to 6 months, which is June to December. Sampling: The sources for the data in case of the secondary research would be ideally collected from the recent journal articles on the luxury consumption behavior pattern of the people of Australia. The targeted populations among the respondents were mainly the young population who are within the age group of 25 to 30. This group mainly concentrates on luxury consumption. The 50 respondents who were selected through the simple random sampling so that there is people with almost all the age group. This will help in lowering the biasness in the result (Panneerselvam 2014). Report Type: The marketing managers will read this report as type of consumption pattern of the people is very important for them to decide the type of commodity to be designed for a particular segment. The manager on the basis of their luxury consumption will be deciding upon the advertising of the products. The manager might advertise a particular type of a product in a particular city while it might not promote that brand in another city as the latter city might have consumers who are not having the similar taste patterns or income. Thus, the Veblen effect, snob effect and the personality traits will help in deciding the products to be sold. Over all Evaluation: In order to perform any type of research, there is a quite amount of effort invested for it. The research would be done for 3 to 4 hours on a daily basis for a period of 3 to 6 months. During this time frame the data will be collected and the report will be written. The research would be taking around 12 weeks to complete. This is an acceptable period as primary collection of data is quite time consuming than conducting secondary research. The quantitative form of the research will help in gathering accurate amount of data, which would fulfil the objective. The research will be conducted during the time of June to December. References: Arli, D. and Tjiptono, F., 2015. Religion and Luxury Brand: Friend or Foe? Exploring the Impact of Religiousness on Luxury Brands Possession among Youth. In2015 Academy of Marketing Conference: The Magic in Marketing (Lisa O'Malley 7 July 2015 to 9 July 2015)(pp. 1-13). Academy of Marketing. Blumberg, B.F., Cooper, D.R. and Schindler, P.S., 2014.Business research methods. McGraw-hill education. Butcher, L. and Phau, I. (2015). Brand Prominence and Status in Luxury Consumption.GFMC, 3(2), pp.318-323. Cechanowicz, J., Gutwin, C., Brownell, B. and Goodfellow, L., 2013, October. Effects of gamification on participation and data quality in a real-world market research domain. InProceedings of the First International Conference on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications(pp. 58-65). ACM. Chan, W.W., To, C.K., Chu, A.W. and Zhang, Z., 2014. Behavioral Determinants that Drive Luxury Goods Consumption: A Study within the Tourist Context.Research Journal of Textile and Apparel,18(2), pp.84-95. Clift, R., Sim, S. and Sinclair, P., 2013. Sustainable Consumption and Production: quality, luxury and supply chain equity. InTreatise on sustainability science and engineering(pp. 291-309). Springer Netherlands. Craik, J., 2015. Challenges for Australian fashion.Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management,19(1), pp.56-68. De Barnier, V., Falcy, S. and Valette-Florence, P. (2012). Do consumers perceive three levels of luxury? A comparison of accessible, intermediate and inaccessible luxury brands.J Brand Manag, 19(7), pp.623-636. Featherstone, M., 2013. The Rich and the Super-rich: Mobility, Consumption and Luxury Lifestyle.Consumer Culture, Modernity and Identity, pp.3-44. Flick, U., 2015.Introducing research methodology: A beginner's guide to doing a research project. Sage. Hurriyetdailynews.com. (2016).Fashion - Luxury Consumption. [online] Available at: https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/luxury-consumption.aspx?pageID=500eid=154 [Accessed 3 Jul. 2016]. Joy, A., Wang, J., Chan, T., Sherry, J. and Cui, G. (2014). M(Art)Worlds: Consumer Perceptions of How Luxury Brand Stores Become Art Institutions.Journal of Retailing, 90(3), pp.347-364. Kim, J.E., Lloyd, S. and Cervellon, M.C., 2016. Narrative-transportation storylines in luxury brand advertising: Motivating consumer engagement.Journal of Business Research,69(1), pp.304-313. Liu, F., Li, J., Mizerski, D. and Soh, H., 2012. Self-congruity, brand attitude, and brand loyalty: a study on luxury brands.European Journal of Marketing,46(7/8), pp.922-937. Lloyd, J. and Cheah, I. (2015). Factors Affecting Consumer Attitude and Purchase Intention of Luxury Brands.GFMC, 5(2), pp.728-733. Panneerselvam, R., 2014.Research methodology. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.. Patino, A., Pitta, D.A. and Quinones, R., 2012. Social media's emerging importance in market research.Journal of Consumer Marketing,29(3), pp.233-237. Schade, M., Hegner, S., Horstmann, F. and Brinkmann, N., 2016. The impact of attitude functions on luxury brand consumption: An age-based group comparison.Journal of business research,69(1), pp.314-322. Sikkel, D. (2013). Brand relations and life course: Why old consumers love their brands.J Market Anal, 1(2), pp.71-80. Taylor, S.J., Bogdan, R. and DeVault, M., 2015.Introduction to qualitative research methods: A guidebook and resource. John Wiley Sons.

Monday, December 2, 2019

Reaction Toward Formation of Malaysia free essay sample

The proposal for the formation of the federation of Malaysia aroused various reactions from various segments whitin each of the potential Member State as well as neighbouring countries. Within potential member states, the proposal stimulated the sudden rise in political activities. Within the next several month following the Tunku’s announcement, several political parties had be formed to cater to various stands that began to emerge. Among the neighbouring countries, Indonesia and Philippines were among those whose reactions were clearly stated and expressed. There are many reactions from Sabah,Sarawak,Brunei,Indonesia and Philippines. In Sabah, there are political parties such as UNKO and USNO in Sabah gave a reaction on the issue of Formation of Malaysia. Sabah made several claims as a condition for joining the formation of Malaysia. They want to be joined to the new constitution of Malaysia to protect the rights of Sabah people. At the same time, they want to enter the extra-territorial rights manmade formation of the Constitution of Malaysia such as the national language. We will write a custom essay sample on Reaction Toward Formation of Malaysia or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Finally, Sabah agreed to become part of the Malaysia because the leader’s solidarity and tolerance attitude had attracted Sabah to be with Malaysia. Next is in Sarawak. SUPP was facing internal division between its moderate wing led by Ong Kee Hui and the more radical wing led by Stephen Yong. Panas supported Malaysia on the basis that Malaysia would provide the security of Sarawak against communists and as mean of attending independence. Another Malay-dominated party, was formed in December 1961. It was led by Datu Tuanku Haji Bujang. The party declared its opposition to communist but made no clear stand about Malaysia. SNAP opposed to Malaysia and PESAKA supported Malaysia but this support was not unreserved. Among the Chinese, another political party, the Sarawak Chinese Association (SCA) was formed in July 1962. It was to provide an alternative to SUPP and the leadership was more amenable to the Malaysia idea. The next reaction came from Singapore. Singapore still retained its initial interest in Malaya and was therefore, eager to merge with Malaya when Tunku Abdul Rahman made the proposal in 1961. The only opposition came from the Communist-dominated party, Barisan Socialis. Despite this, Lee Kuan Yew actively campaigned to support the merger. His efforts paid off and a referendum held on 1 September 1962 indicated that 71. 1% of the population of Singapore supported the merger. Singapore was promised autonomy in education, revenue and labour while the central government would be operating in Kuala Lumpur. Its free entreport status would also be maintained. Like Singapore, Brunei was equally keen on the merger, since its ruler, Sultan Ali Saifuddin was hoping to gain protection from a larger country like Malaya. A. M. Azahari, the leader of the opposition party, Parti Rakyat, however, strongly opposed the merger and led a revolt against the government of Brunei, in which he was defeated. Azahari had an ulterior motive – to merge all the North Borneo territories and place them under the reins of Brunei. Eventually, Brunei changed its mind after the Sultan realized that he wouldn’t be given special rights above the other Sultans in Malaya and would have only limited oil reserves if Brunei merged with Malaya. Next is the Philippines. They opposed the idea of the formation of Malaysia because of several misgiving which is the first one is the Philippines President, Macapagal argued that the British had no right to transfer Sabah over which it had a claim that Sabah is a part of Philippines. This is because Sabah once was a part of Sulu Sultanate. Second, it argued that Malaysia was an artificial and unstable federationthat Malaysia cannot protect North Borneo from communism either from China or Indonesia but they can. Third, the was a ready a plan for MAPHILINDO, a loose confederation of Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. MAPHILINDO was described as a regional association that would approach issues of common concern in the spirit of consensus. However, it was also perceived as a tactic on the parts of Jakarta and Manila to delay, or even prevent the formation of the Federation of Malaysia. The Iast one is the reaction from Indonesia. Indonesia disapproved of the new establishment due to their own ulterior motives. Indonesia, was hoping to merge with Malaya to form Indonesia Raya and at the same time, establish an independent North Borneo Federation comprising Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei. Sukarno at that time declared a Confrontation policy of on Malaysia from January 1963 to August 1966 to voice his objection of the formations of Malaysia. During this period, Indonesia put a halt to all diplomatic relations with Malaysia and launched an attack. Agents were sent to overthrow the Malaysian government and at the same time, create misunderstanding among Malays and Chinese. The confrontation came to an eventual end when Sukarno was replaced by Suharto as the president of Indonesia. Consequently, a peace treaty was signed between both countries in June 1966. As a conclusion, there are reactions that came from Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei, Singapore, Philiphines and Indonesia about Tunku’s idea to form Malaysia. In my opinion, the reaction from these countries did jeopardized Tunku’s effort to build a new nation consist of Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei, Singapore and Tanah Melayu and these reactions also threatened Tanah Melayu’s security at that time.