International marketing exam Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

International marketing exam - Essay Example How accessible is the segment? Can the business obtain real data to consider the potential of the segment? Is it measurable? Market segmentation is done to clearly identify the various categories of customers in terms of needs and behaviour to better satisfy their needs. When the sellers and firms create separate segments of customers, it makes sense and provides customers with better solutions. Different customers have different amounts of disposable income and thus different in how they view price. Through segmentation, firms raise their average prices and thus enhanced profits for the business and builds up sales. Customer circumstances change, for instance they may shift necessitating change in buying patterns (Gunderson, 2008). When the sellers market products appealing to customers at different stages will help the firm in retaining their customers who might otherwise be tempted to switch to different products. In marketing, firms need to deliver the right message to the relevant customer segment. If the target group is too broad, there is likelihood that the main customers will be missed and that the cost of communication will rise rendering the business unprofitable. Through segmentation, the target customers are reached at a lower cost. Firms always target to increase their market share in the industry in a bid to maximize profits. Careful market segmentation and targeting will enable the businesses to achieve competitive production and costs of marketing therefore increasing the market share. There are various types of segmentation criteria including geographic segmentation; psychographics segmentation; demographic segmentation; and behavioralistic segmentation (Weinstein, 2004). When a company Toyota Motor Company produces cars for example, it segments its market into high, low and medium income earners and produces cars that customers in each segment can afford. The company determines which vehicle features are loved by people

Ancient Greek Ceramics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Ancient Greek Ceramics - Essay Example The decorations in the so-called marine style, has the dynamic vitality typical of Minoan art. The popularity of the octopus as a decorative motif on Minoan ware can hardly be divorced from the role of the octopus in the Minoan diet and economy. But did it have another purpose Octopus are traditionally caught by lowering a ceramic vessel into the water which the octopus is likely to enter and remain in as a safe lair (Bush and Brewer). Although this jar has too narrow a neck for that purpose, one wonders if the motif did not originate on jars made for just such fishing, the image perhaps as a sort of magic charm. In the Mycenaean period between about 1450 and 1100 BC, the Minoan world came to be dominated by Greek speaking invaders who, however, did not make major changes in the society of Greece as reflected in its physical remains. The pottery of mainland Greece in this period is generally called by archaeologists late Helladic III. Many Mycenaean ceramic pieces imitate the style of Minoan pottery, though usually with an inferior and derivative execution. Others, such as the chariot krater (vessel for mixing wine and water) now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (), have much more in common with later geometric vases and show the beginning of that tradition. This piece, though manufactured in the Argolid (i.e. near Tiryns, Mycenae, Argos, or Corinth) was discovered in a tomb in Cyrus. It uses a light color of clay marked with a dark brown slip. The rendering in relatively crude but shows a definite figurative scene of two chariots being driven (the context, such as a race, or in combat, or just a pairing for symmetry, cannot be determined). But elements like spots used to decorate the figures' clothing, as well as the ox skin that covers the body of the chariot, and the crosshatching on the horses' harness, is becoming abstract. Moreover, a great deal of the otherwise empty surface of the case is taken up with geometric designs completely unrelated to the realistic depiction of space and beginning to serve as abstract geometric representation. In the Geometric period between about 1100 and 800 BC, Greek culture was disrupted by further waves of invaders and every urban center in Greece was destroyed by warfare. Greek culture became illiterate and isolated both from the larger Mediterranean world and within itself as trade and contact between isolated settlements declined. The period is called Geometric because of the abstract, regular character of its decorative arts. No exception among thework of this era is the terracotta centaur from Lekfandi on Euboea (Thomas 1999, 99-100). It shares the geometric decorations of contemporary ceramic vessels. At 36 centimeters high, this is the largest surviving Geometric sculpture. From the point of view of sculpture, the execution is somewhat cartoonish, which features that suggest rather than copy the proportions of the human face and equine body. The painted decoration departs from that of both earlier and later Greek polychroming of sculpture as well as pottery decoration in not r elating in any discernable way to features like the musculature or hair of the centaur (certainly not any form of clothing), but in showing abstract patterning that is meant to add to the decorative value of the piece rather than realistically