Effect of Acculturation on Consumer Behaviour

Effect of Acculturation on Consumer Behaviour Acculturation and affect of it on ethnic minorities consumer behaviour. Abstract: This paper presents what acculturation is and its impact on consumer behaviour. Acculturation represents a multifaceted and ongoing process where the continual interactions between the minority and dominant ethnic group iteratively affect cultural attitudes, behaviours and values across society. An important aspect of the acculturation process is often the need for individuals to demonstrate success in life, either to the dominant societal group or to their own ethnic group. This behaviour is consistent with consumer acculturation theories that argue that products imbued with cultural meaning are deliberately consumed by ethnic minorities to demonstrate their cultural adaptation. This is the process of acculturation. Introduction: An alternative consumer acculturation perspective is that ethnic minority individuals who demonstrate conspicuous consumption often do so in order to show their sense of rejection from the dominant society. This rejection may arise from experiences of racism often culminating in poor academic performance, inability to obtain well-paid jobs and struggles to establish a self-identity that is both recognized and valued by their own ethnic group and others. The ethnic minority persons sense of rejection may then be represented by the consumption of products that differentiates them from the dominant group and highlights their differences. A consumption act potentially reflects their perceived sense of rejection and demonstrates their inability and unwillingness to conform to the dominant societal culture. Main body : The contention is that there are variations in purchase decisions of micro cultures. It is thought that the division of subcultures will give academicians and practitioners with better and more correct data from which to understand the customers who acculturate. Research in this area will let greater and more precise intercultural comparisons. We also hypothesize that the currently identified social categories are far and too broad to prove meaningful utilization patterns or be predictive of future consumption behaviour, with the changing ethnic origin county. Dimensional nature of acculturation: To consumer researchers, acculturation is measured by some scale on various items relating to the respondents acculturation process, such as language favourite and knowledge about the host culture.   A respondents scores on all items are then put together (or further averaged) to yield a single score of the respondents acculturation level.   This practice assumes acculturation to be one-dimensional and therefore can be expressed by a single score.   However, research in psychology and sociology has shown that acculturation is a more compound multidimensional idea. A noticeable study from the above is that different researchers have proposed different structures for the acculturation. Some look at only behavioural, some use purely attitudinal elements, yet others join both behavioural and attitudinal elements in the structure. Although these structures differ from each other, they all state that acculturation is a one-dimensional form, but a multidimensional construct.   Therefore, when a researcher declares level of acculturation with a single score, the result may be prejudiced and may not reflect the real influence of the different aspects of acculturation. Way acculturation can influence consumer behaviour is through the maintenance and change of the acculturating individuals self-identity.   The acculturation process obviously has a significant impact on the individuals self.   It is main for the individual to get used to the changes while at the same time maintain an incorporated self.   The conflict between change and continuity in the acculturation process is reflected in the products the customer consumes and the way consumption takes place. Ecological factors and individual characteristics also play a vital role in the acculturation process and in the connection between acculturation and consumer behaviour. Acculturation and Consumer Behaviour One central way to differentiate between members of a subculture is to think the degree to which they keep a sense of identifying with their home country vs. their host country. â€Å"Acculturation refers to the process of progress and alteration to one countrys cultural environment by an individual from another country† (Blackwell, Miniard and Engel, 2007). The nature of this change process is affected by many aspects. Personal differences, such as whether the person speaks the host country language. The persons contacts with acculturation causes people and establishments that educate the ways of a culture are also crucial. Some of these agents are united with the culture of origin (in Sevgis case, Turkey). These factors include family, friends, the mosque, local businesses and Turkish-language; media that keep the shopper in touch with his or her land of origin. Other agents are linked with the culture of migration (in this case, the Netherlands), and help the consumer to learn how to pilot in the new surroundings. These comprise state schools and Dutch-language media. As immigrants become accustomed to their new surroundings, some processes come into work. Movement refers to the things appealing people to pull up themselves physically from one location and move to another. Although many ethnic members all over Europe are second generation (born in the country where they live), their parents are more probable to have been the first to arrive in the new country. On arrival, settlers come across a need for transformation. This means attempting to master a set of rules for functioning in the new situation, whether learning how to interpret a different currency or understanding the social meanings of strange clothing styles. This cultural knowledge directs to a process of adaptation, where new consumption patterns are formed. As clients experience acculturation, several things happen. Many immigrants suffer (at least to some extent) assimilation, where t hey agree to products that are recognised with the mainstream culture. At the same time, there is an effort at maintaining of practices related with the culture of origin. Immigrants stay in touch with people in their country, and many go on to eat ethnic foods and read ethnic news-papers. Their continued credentials with their home culture may cause conflict, as they hate the pressure to plunge their identities and receive on new roles. These processes show that ethnicity is a flowing concept, and that the borders of a subculture are continuously being recreated (Laroche et al. 1998 as cited in Palumbo and Teich, 2004). An ethnic pluralism perspective argues that ethnic groups diverge from the mainstream in shifting degrees, and that adaptation to the dominant society occurs selectively. Research facts argue against the view that assimilation essentially entails losing identification with the persons original ethnic group. For example, Sevgi feels relaxing in conveying her ‘T urkishness in a variety of consumption associated ways: the magazines she buys, the TV programmes on the Turkish network she wishes to watch, her selection of ethnically suitable gifts for events such as weddings and bayram(religious holidays).   Otherwise, she has no problems at all in communicating consumption behaviours of the mainstream culture she loves eating drop (Dutch liquorice), buys ‘Western music and has her favourite clothing for going out to the theatre and clubs. The researchers argue that the best pointer of ethnic assimilation is the scope to which members of an ethnic group have social exchanges with members of other groups in comparison with their own. A consumers way of life refers to the ways he or she decides to spend time and money and how his or her values, attitudes and tastes are reproduced by spending choices. Lifestyle research is helpful to track societal consumption preferences and also to place specific products and services to different sections.   Marketers segment by lifestyle distinctions, often by grouping consumers in terms of their AIOs (activities, interests and opinions). Psychographic techniques try to categorize consumers in terms of psychological, subjective variables in addition to visible features (demographics). A variety of systems, such as RISC, have been developed to identify consumer kind and to distinguish them in terms of their brand or product liking, media usage, leisure time manners, and attitudes towards such broad topics   as politics and religion. Interconnected sets of products and activities are associated with public roles to form consumption gathering. People frequently purchase a product or service because it is associated with a group which, in turn, is linked to a lifestyle they find attractive. Where one comes from is often a significant determinant of lifestyle. Many marketers identify national or regional diversity in product preferences, and develop different editions of their products for different markets. Because a consumers culture exercises such a huge influence on his or her lifestyle choices, marketers must learn as much as possible about differences in cultural rules and preferences when marketing in more than one nation. One important issue is the level to which marketing strategies must be customized to each culture, rather than standardized across cultures. A set of techniques called geo-demography investigates consumption models using geo-graphical and demographic data, and identifies bunch of consumers who exhibit similar psychographic characteristics. Consumers identify with many groups that share general qualities and identities. These large groups that live within a society are called subcultures, and membership in them often gives marketers a important clue about individuals consumption decisions. A large constituent of a persons identity is defined by his or her ethnic origins, racial identity and religious background. The growing numbers of people who argue multi-ethnic back-grounds are starting to blot the traditional peculiarities drawn among these subcultures. Recently, several minority groups have trapped the interest of marketers as their financial power has grown. Segmenting consumers by their ethnicity can be of use, but care must be taken not to depend upon inaccurate ethnic typecasts. Because a consumers culture exerts such a major control on his or her lifestyle options, marketers must discover as much as possible about differences in cultural standards and preferences when marketing in more than one country. The appearance of immigrants as a new market opportunity has discussions of immigrants consumption behaviour by both practitioners and academic researchers.   Studying the immigrants acculturation process and their consumption nature present us both a better view of this specific segment and a better understanding of the cultural dynamics fundamental consumer behaviour. Study of acculturating customers can offer us insight into immigrants consumer behaviour and consumer behaviour in common.   With more research undertaken, it can be expected to see extended knowledge of acculturating individuals consumption experience and a more complete understanding of consumers.   The model suggests two paths through which acculturation can influence consumer behaviour.   One is through consumer re-socialization. The other is through the individuals self- management when faced with remarkable changes in the self regularly characteristic of the acculturation process.   Environmental facto rs and individual demographic, socioeconomic, and psychological characteristics can influence both paths and therefore temperate the relationship between acculturation and consumer behaviour. Several orders for future research can be immediately seen.   First, most research has seen acculturation as a one-dimensional construct.   Future research should recognize the fact that individuals accepting the new culture do not necessarily throw away their original cultures.   They can adopt a variety of acculturation strategies including separation and integration.   Psychologists and sociologists have developed multidimensional methods of acculturation that can be adapted to consumer research.   Consumer researchers can also incorporate measures of assimilation and measures of ethnic identification to form a two-dimensional measure of acculturation.   Both construction and corroboration of acculturation measures fitting for consumer research are needed. Second, consumer researchers can study acculturating individuals consumption experience from consumer socialisation outlook.   Some research has been undertaken in this direction.   Penaloza (1989) projected a mo del of consumer acculturation based on consumer socialization.   There are also studies on acculturating individuals information probing behaviour and their dealings with socialization agents such as mass media (DRozario and Douglas 1999; Lee 1989).   More research is needs that study the influence of other socialization agents such as peers and institutions on an acculturating individual and how he or she interacts with them.  Ã‚   Studies on mass media can also be approved further to learn acculturating individuals media use pattern and how different patterns show the way to different consumption related awareness, approaches and values. Thirdly, how acculturating individuals supervise their self-concept during the acculturating process and how different management strategies are toughened and mirrored in the individuals consumption need to be looked at.   Consumer researchers have apprehended the impact of self-concept in consumption and have argued that belongings are part of an individuals extended self (Belk 1988).   These concepts can be applied to acculturating individuals to find out how dynamics of the self are coupled with consumer behaviour. Lastly consumer researchers should put together more hard work to study how an individuals demographic, socioeconomic and psychological characteristics can influence his or her acculturation process and consumption.   Researchers should go ahead of measuring these variables only for testing external strength, but should also study these variables themselves as they may have important suggestions on how acculturating consumers learn and consume.   Efforts should especially be made to identify variables applicable to consumer research and to establish measures of these variables.   Numerical tests can also be done to test these variables reasonable effects and their indirect effects on consumer behaviour. Conclusion: Consumer acculturation can be studied on the base of consumers socialisation. Ethnic identification and level of assimilation are often used to individuals within these minority groups. Acculturation affects consumer behaviour according to both assimilation and unique behavioural model showing the acculturating individuals in their eagerness to adjust to the culture of residence, may develop different social perceptions and behaviour patterns. The paper has attempted to determine the various aspects of acculturation in relation to different ethnic minorities.   Reference Barnett, H. G., Bernard. J. Siegel, Evon Z. Vogt, James B. Watson. 1954. Acculturation: An Exploratory Formulation From the Social Science Research Council Summer Seminar on Acculturation, 1953. Blackwell, Miniard, Engel, (2007) Consumer Behaviour, Tenth Edition, Thomson South-Western. Palumbo and Teich (2004) â€Å"Market segmentation based on level of acculturation†, Journal of Marketing Intelligence and Planning, Vol: 22, Issue: 4, pp. 472-84.   Jamal (1996) â€Å"Acculturation: the symbolism of ethnic eating among contemporary British consumers†, British Food Journal. Solomon et al, (2008) â€Å"Consumer Behaviour: A European Perspective†, Third edition, Pearson publications, U.K

Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins Essay -- Hemingway Fitzgeral

Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins Although not a writer himself, Maxwell Evarts Perkins holds an auspicious place in the history of American literature. Perkins served as editor for such well-acclaimed authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Ezra Pound, Ring Lardner, James Jones and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Through his advocacy of these modernist writers, he played an important role in the success of that movement. Perkins association with Thomas Wolfe is perhaps his most famous, but his relationships with Fitzgerald and Hemingway are equally note-worthy. He was, at different times, their editor, friend, creditor and the link between them. Born in 1884, Perkins was a Harvard graduate of the class of 1907. He worked as a reporter for the New York Times for several years, but a desire for greater stability led him to a job at Charles’ Scribner’s Sons publishing house in 1910. He began as an advertising manager, but by 1914 Perkins was promoted to the editorial department.[1] There he became known for his ability to recognize upcoming authors, and in 1932 he was made a vice president.[2] When Perkins died in June of 1947, he was considered the most important editor in America.[3] Perkins first learned of F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1919. Another author, Shane Leslie, regretted that Scribners had been sued for libel because of his works, and to make amends Leslie forwarded a promising manuscript to Perkins. The manuscript was â€Å"The Romantic Egotist,† written by Fitzgerald before his entrance into World War I.[4] Perkins was stunned by the vitality of the piece, but he did not feel that it was complete enough for publication. After two more versions a... ...s.htm [2] Malcolm Cowley, Unshaken Friend: A Profile of Maxwell Perkins (Boulder, CO: R. Rinehart, Inc., 1985), 24. [3] A. Scott Berg, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius (New York: Dutton, 1978), 5. [4] Cowley, 30. [5] Berg, 15-16. [6] Ibid., 16. [7] Ibid., 63. [8] Malcolm Cowley, Unshaken Friend: A Profile of Maxwell Perkins (Boulder, CO: R. Rinehart, Inc., 1985), 32. [9] â€Å"Maxwell Perkins,† www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/sections/hs/wolfe/perkins.htm [10] John Hall Wheelock, Editor to Author, the Letters of Maxwell E. Perkins (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1979), 30. [11] Berg, 6. [12] Ibid., 4. [13] Ibid., 324. [14] Ibid., 41-2. [15] Ibid., 389. [16] Ibid., 392. [17] Ibid., 395. [18] Ibid., 390. [19] Ibid., 67. [20] â€Å"Maxwell Perkins,† www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/sections/hs/wolfe/perkins.htm [21] Berg, 449-50. Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins Essay -- Hemingway Fitzgeral Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins Although not a writer himself, Maxwell Evarts Perkins holds an auspicious place in the history of American literature. Perkins served as editor for such well-acclaimed authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Ezra Pound, Ring Lardner, James Jones and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Through his advocacy of these modernist writers, he played an important role in the success of that movement. Perkins association with Thomas Wolfe is perhaps his most famous, but his relationships with Fitzgerald and Hemingway are equally note-worthy. He was, at different times, their editor, friend, creditor and the link between them. Born in 1884, Perkins was a Harvard graduate of the class of 1907. He worked as a reporter for the New York Times for several years, but a desire for greater stability led him to a job at Charles’ Scribner’s Sons publishing house in 1910. He began as an advertising manager, but by 1914 Perkins was promoted to the editorial department.[1] There he became known for his ability to recognize upcoming authors, and in 1932 he was made a vice president.[2] When Perkins died in June of 1947, he was considered the most important editor in America.[3] Perkins first learned of F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1919. Another author, Shane Leslie, regretted that Scribners had been sued for libel because of his works, and to make amends Leslie forwarded a promising manuscript to Perkins. The manuscript was â€Å"The Romantic Egotist,† written by Fitzgerald before his entrance into World War I.[4] Perkins was stunned by the vitality of the piece, but he did not feel that it was complete enough for publication. After two more versions a... ...s.htm [2] Malcolm Cowley, Unshaken Friend: A Profile of Maxwell Perkins (Boulder, CO: R. Rinehart, Inc., 1985), 24. [3] A. Scott Berg, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius (New York: Dutton, 1978), 5. [4] Cowley, 30. [5] Berg, 15-16. [6] Ibid., 16. [7] Ibid., 63. [8] Malcolm Cowley, Unshaken Friend: A Profile of Maxwell Perkins (Boulder, CO: R. Rinehart, Inc., 1985), 32. [9] â€Å"Maxwell Perkins,† www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/sections/hs/wolfe/perkins.htm [10] John Hall Wheelock, Editor to Author, the Letters of Maxwell E. Perkins (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1979), 30. [11] Berg, 6. [12] Ibid., 4. [13] Ibid., 324. [14] Ibid., 41-2. [15] Ibid., 389. [16] Ibid., 392. [17] Ibid., 395. [18] Ibid., 390. [19] Ibid., 67. [20] â€Å"Maxwell Perkins,† www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/sections/hs/wolfe/perkins.htm [21] Berg, 449-50.

The Breedloves in Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye Essay -- American Lit

In the third chapter of The Bluest Eye, entitled "Autumn", Toni Morrison focuses on Pecola's family, the Breedloves. Morrison goes in depth about the family dynamic of the Breedloves and how it affects Pecola and her self-image. The passage starts after one of many arguments between Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove, Pecola's parents, turns violent. Mrs. Breedlove wants Cholly to fetch some coal from the outside shed. Cholly spent the last night drinking and does not want to get out of bed. The passage begins with the children becoming aware of the argument. Mrs. Breedlove starts to hit him with cooking pans while Cholly mostly used his feet and teeth. After the fight is over Mrs. Breedlove just lets Cholly lie on the ground and she goes about her business like nothing happened. Pecola starts off this passage with a sick feeling as she relaxes and stops feigning sleep during her parents' argument. It seems that these arguments happen a lot, for while "she had tried to prevent [the sick feeling] by holding in her stomach, [the sick feeling] came quickly in spite of her precaution" (Morris...

Cost Accounting Essay

Origins All types of businesses, whether service, manufacturing or trading, require cost accounting to track their activities.[1] Cost accounting has long been used to help managers understand the costs of running a business. Modern cost accounting originated during the industrial revolution, when the complexities of running a large scale business led to the development of systems for recording and tracking costs to help business owners and managers make decisions. In the early industrial age, most of the costs incurred by a business were what modern accountants call â€Å"variable costs† because they varied directly with the amount of production.[citation needed] Money was spent on labor, raw materials, power to run a factory, etc. in direct proportion to production. Managers could simply total the variable costs for a product and use this as a rough guide for decision-making processes. Some costs tend to remain the same even during busy periods, unlike variable costs, which rise and fall with volume of work. Over time, these â€Å"fixed costs† have become more important to managers. Examples of fixed costs include the depreciation of plant and equipment, and the cost of departments such as maintenance, tooling, production control, purchasing, quality control, storage and handling, plant supervision and engineering.[2] In the early nineteenth century, these costs were of little importance to most businesses. However, with the growth of railroads, steel and large scale manufacturing, by the late nineteenth century these costs were often more important than the variable cost of a product, and allocating them to a broad range of products lead to bad decision making. Managers must understand fixed costs in order to make decisions about products and pricing. For example: A company produced railway coaches and had only one product. To make each coach, the company needed to purchase $60 of raw materials and components, and pay 6 laborers $40 each. Therefore, total variable cost for each coach was $300. Knowing that making a coach required spending $300, managers knew they couldn’t sell below that price without losing money on each coach. Any price above $300 became a contribution to the fixed costs of the company. If the fixed costs were, say, $1000 per month for rent, insurance and owner’s salary, the company could therefore sell 5 coaches per month for a total of $3000 (priced at $600 each), or 10 coaches for a total of $4500 (priced at $450 each), and make a profit of  $500 in both cases. Cost Accounting vs Financial Accounting See also: Financial accounting Financial accounting aims at finding out results of accounting year in the form of Profit and Loss Account and Balance Sheet. Cost Accounting aims at computing cost of production/service in a scientific manner and facilitate cost control and cost reduction. Financial accounting reports the results and position of business to government, creditors, investors, and external parties. Cost Accounting is an internal reporting system for an organization’s own management for decision making. In financial accounting, cost classification based on type of transactions, e.g. salaries, repairs, insurance, stores etc. In cost accounting, classification is basically on the basis of functions, activities, products, process and on internal planning and control and information needs of the organization. Financial accounting aims at presenting ‘true and fair’ view of transactions, profit and loss for a period and Statement of financial position (Balance Sheet) on a given date. It ai ms at computing ‘true and fair’ view of the cost of production/services offered by the firm.[3] (In some companies, machine cost is segregated from overhead and reported as a separate element) Classification of costs Classification of cost means, the grouping of costs according to their common characteristics. The important ways of classification of costs are: 1. By Element: There are three elements of costing i.e. material, labor and expenses. 2. By Nature or Traceability:Direct Costs and Indirect Costs. Direct Costs are Directly attributable/traceable to Cost Object. Direct costs are assigned to Cost Object. Indirect Costs are not directly attributable/traceable to Cost Object. Indirect costs are allocated or apportioned to cost objects. 3. By Functions: production,administration, selling and distribution, R&D. 4. By Behavior: fixed, variable, semi-variable. Costs are classified according to their behavior in relation to change in relation to production volume within given period of time. Fixed Costs remain fixed irrespective of changes in the production volume in given period of time. Variable costs change according to volume of production. Semi-variable Costs costs are partly fixed and partly variable. 5. By control ability: controllable, uncontrollable costs. Controllable costs are those which can be controlled or influenced by a conscious management action. Uncontrollable costs cannot be controlled or influenced by a conscious management action. 6. By normality: normal costs and abnormal  costs. Normal costs arise during routine day-to-day business operations. Abnormal costs arise because of any abnormal activity or event not part of routine business operations. E.g. costs arising of floods, riots, accidents etc. 7. By Time: Historical Costs and Predetermined costs. Historical costs are costs incurred in the past. Predetermined costs are computed in advance on basis of factors affecting cost elements. Example: Standard Costs. 8. By Decision making Costs: These costs are used for managerial decision making. Marginal Costs: Marginal cost is the change in the aggregate costs due to change in the volume of output by one unit. Differential Costs: This cost is the difference in total cost that will arise from the selection of one alternative to the other. Opportunity Costs: It is the value of benefit sacrificed in favor of an alternative course of action. Relevant Cost: The relevant cost is a cost which is relevant in various decisions of management. Replacement Cost: This cost is the cost at which existing items of material or fixed assets can be replaced. Thus this is the cost of replacing existing assets at present or at a future date. Shutdown Cost:These costs are the costs which are incurred if the operations are shut down and they will disappear if the operations are continued. Capacity Cost: These costs are normally fixed costs. The cost incurred by a company for providing production, administration and selling and distribution capabilities in order to perform various functions. Other Costs Standard cost accounting In modern cost account of recording historical costs was taken further, by allocating the company’s fixed costs over a given period of time to the items produced during that period, and recording the result as the total cost of production. This allowed the full cost of products that were not sold in the period they were produced to be recorded in inventory using a variety of complex accounting methods, which was consistent with the principles of GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). It also essentially enabled managers to ignore the fixed costs, and look at the results of each period in relation to the â€Å"standard cost† for any given product. For example: if the railway coach company normally produced 40 coaches per month, and the fixed costs were still $1000/month, then each coach could be said to incur an Operating Cost/overhead of $25 =($1000 /  40). Adding this to the variable costs of $300 per coach produced a full cost of $325 per coach. This method tended to slightly distort the resulting unit cost, but in mass-production industries that made one product line, and where the fixed costs were relatively low, the distortion was very minor. For example: if the railway coach company made 100 coaches one month, then the unit cost would become $310 per coach ($300 + ($1000 / 100)). If the next month the company made 50 coaches, then the unit cost = $320 per coach ($300 + ($1000 / 50)), a relatively minor difference. An important part of standard cost accounting is a variance analysis, which breaks down the variation between actual cost and standard costs into various components (volume variation, material cost variation, labor cost variation, etc.) so managers can understand why costs were different from what was planned and take appropriate action to correct the situation. The development of throughput accounting Main article: Throughput accounting As business became more complex and began producing a greater variety of products, the use of cost accounting to make decisions to maximize profitability came into question. Management circles became increasingly aware of the Theory of Constraints in the 1980s, and began to understand that â€Å"every production process has a limiting factor† somewhere in the chain of production. As business management learned to identify the constraints, they increasingly adopted throughput accounting to manage them and â€Å"maximize the throughput dollars† (or other currency) from each unit of constrained resource. Throughput accounting aims to make the best use of scarce resources(bottle neck) in a JIT environment.[4] Mathematical formula Activity-based costing Main article: Activity-based costing Activity-based costing (ABC) is a system for assigning costs to products based on the activities they require. In this case, activities are those regular actions performed inside a company.[5] â€Å"Talking with customer regarding invoice questions† is an example of an activity inside most companies. Companies may be moved to adopt ABC by a need to improve costing accuracy, that is, understand better the true costs and profitability of  individual products, services, or initiatives. ABC gets closer to true costs in these areas by turning many costs that standard cost accounting views as indirect costs essentially into direct costs. By contrast, standard cost accounting typically determines so-called indirect and overhead costs simply as a percentage of certain direct costs, which may or may not reflect actual resource usage for individual items. Under ABC, accountants assign 100% of each employee’s time to the different activities performed inside a company (many will use surveys to have the workers themselves assign their time to the different activities). The accountant then can determine the total cost spent on each activity by summing up the percentage of each worker’s salary spent on that activity. A company can use the resulting activity cost data to determine where to focus their operational improvements. For example, a job-based manufacturer may find that a high percentage of its workers are spending their time trying to figure out a hastily written customer order. Via ABC, the accountants now have a currency amount pegged to the activity of â€Å"Researching Customer Work Order Specifications†. Senior management can now decide how much focus or money to budget for resolving this process deficiency. Activity-based management includes (but is not restricted to) the use of activity-based costing to manage a business. While ABC may be able to pinpoint the cost of each activity and resources into the ultimate product, the process could be tedious, costly and subject to errors. As it is a tool for a more accurate way of allocating fixed costs into product, these fixed costs do not vary according to each month’s production volume. For example, an elimination of one product would not eliminate the overhead or even direct labor cost assigned to it. ABC better identifies product costing in the long run, but may not be too helpful in day-to-day decision-making. Integrating EVA and Process Based Costing Recently, Mocciaro Li Destri, Picone & Minà   (2012).[6] proposed a performance and cost measurement system that integrates the Economic Value Added criteria with Process Based Costing (PBC). The EVA-PBC methodology allows us to implement the EVA management logic not only at the firm level, but also at lower levels of the organization. EVA-PBC methodology plays an interesting role in bringing strategy back into financial performance measures. Lean accounting Main article: Lean accounting Lean accounting[7] has developed in recent years to provide the accounting, control, and measurement methods supporting lean manufacturing and other applications of lean thinking such as healthcare, construction, insurance, banking, education, government, and other industries. There are two main thrusts for Lean Accounting. The first is the application of lean methods to the company’s accounting, control, and measurement processes. This is not different from applying lean methods to any other processes. The objective is to eliminate waste, free up capacity, speed up the process, eliminate errors & defects, and make the process clear and understandable. The second (and more important) thrust of Lean Accounting is to fundamentally change the accounting, control, and measurement processes so they motivate lean change & improvement, provide information that is suitable for control and decision-making, provide an understanding of customer value, correctly assess the financial impact of lean improvement, and are themselves simple, visual, and low-waste. Lean Accounting does not require the traditional management accounting methods like standard costing, activity-based costing, variance reporting, cost-plus pricing, complex transactional control systems, and untimely & confusing financial reports. These are replaced by: lean-focused performance measurements simple summary direct costing of the value streams decision-making and reporting using a box score financial reports that are timely and presented in â€Å"plain English† that everyone can understand radical simplification and elimination of transactional control systems by eliminating the need for them driving lean changes from a deep understanding of the value created for the customers eliminating traditional budgeting through monthly sales, operations, and financial planning processes (SOFP) value-based pricing correct understanding of the financial impact of lean change As an organization becomes more mature with lean thinking and methods, they recognize that the combined methods of lean accounting in fact creates a lean management system (LMS) designed to provide the planning, the  operational and financial reporting, and the motivation for change required to prosper the company’s on-going lean transformation. Marginal costing See also: Cost-Volume-Profit Analysis and Marginal cost The cost-volume-profit analysis is the systematic examination of the relationship between selling prices, sales, production volumes, costs, expenses and profits. This analysis provides very useful information for decision-making in the management of a company. For example, the analysis can be used in establishing sales prices, in the product mix selection to sell, in the decision to choose marketing strategies, and in the analysis of the impact on profits by changes in costs. In the current environment of business, a business administration must act and take decisions in a fast and accurate manner. As a result, the importance of cost-volume-profit is still increasing as time passes. CONTRIBUTION MARGIN A relationship between the cost, volume and profit is the contribution margin. The contribution margin is the revenue excess from sales over variable costs. The concept of contribution margin is particularly useful in the planning of business because it gives an insight into the potential profits that a business can generate. The following chart shows the income statement of a company X, which has been prepared to show its contribution margin: Sales $1,000,000 (-) Variable Costs $600,000 Contribution Margin $400,000 (-) Fixed Costs $300,000 Income from Operations $100,000 CONTRIBUTION MARGIN RATIO The contribution margin can also be expressed as a percentage. The contribution margin ratio, which is sometimes called the profit-volume  ratio, indicates the percentage of each sales dollar available to cover fixed costs and to provide operating revenue. For the company Fusion, Inc. the contribution margin ratio is 40%, which is computed as follows: The contribution margin ratio measures the effect on operating income of an increase or a decrease in sales volume. For example, assume that the management of Fusion, Inc. is studying the effect of adding $80,000 in sales orders. Multiplying the contribution margin ratio (40%) by the change in sales volume ($80,000) indicates that operating income will increase $32,000 if additional orders are obtained. To validate this analysis the table below shows the income statement of the company including additional orders: Sales $1,080,000 (-) Variable Costs $648,000 (1,080,000 x 60%) Contribution Margin $432,000 (1,080,000 x 40%) (-) Fixed Costs $300,000 Income from Operations $132,000 Variable costs as a percentage of sales are equal to 100% minus the contribution margin ratio. Thus, in the above income statement, the variable costs are 60% (100% – 40%) of sales, or $648,000 ($1,080,000 X 60%). The total contribution margin $432,000, can also be computed directly by multiplying the sales by the contribution margin ratio ($1,080,000 X 40%). See also Accountancy Cost overrun Fixed asset turnover Management accounting IT Cost Transparency Kaizen costing Profit model References 1. Principles of Cost Accounting – Edward J. Vanderbeck – Google Books. Books.google.co.uk. Retrieved 2013-03-01. 2. Performance management, Paper f5. Kapalan publishing UK. Pg 3 3. Cost and Management Accounting. Intermediate. ICA. p. 15. 4. Performance management, Paper f5. Kapalan publishing UK. Pg 17 5. Performance management, Paper f5. Kaplan publishing UK. Pg 6 6. Mocciaro Li Destri A., Picone P. M. & Minà   A. (2012), Bringing Strategy Back into Financial Systems of Performance Measurement: Integrating EVA and PBC, Business System Review, Vol 1., Issue 1. pp.85-102. 7. Maskell & Baggaley (December 19, 2003). â€Å"Practical Lean Accounting†. Productivity Press, New York, NY. Books and journals Maher, Lanen and Rahan, Fundamentals of Cost Accounting, 1st Edition (McGraw-Hill 2005). Horngren, Datar and Foster, Cost Accounting – A Managerial Emphasis, 11th edition (Prentice Hall 2003). Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing-International Kaplan, Robert S. and Bruns, W. Accounting and Management: A Field Study Perspective (Harvard Business School Press, 1987) ISBN 0-87584-186-4 Sapp, Richard, David Crawford and Steven Rebishcke â€Å"Article title?† Journal of Bank Cost and Management Accounting (Volume 3, Number 2), 1990. Author(s)? â€Å"Article title?† Journal of Bank Cost and Management Accounting (Volume 4, Number 1), 1991. External links Accounting Systems, introduction to Cost Accounting, ethics and relationship to GAAP. National Conference on College Cost Accounting Cost accounting is a process of collecting, analyzing, summarizing and evaluating various alternative courses of action. Its goal is to advise the management on the most appropriate course of action based on the cost efficiency and capability. Cost accounting provides the detailed cost information that management needs to control current operations and plan for the future.[1] Since managers are making decisions only for their own organization, there is no need for the information to be comparable to similar information from other organizations. Instead, information must be relevant for a particular environment. Cost accounting information is  commonly used in financial accounting information, but its primary function is for use by managers to facilitate making decisions. Unlike the accounting systems that help in the preparation of financial reports periodically, the cost accounting systems and reports are not subject to rules and standards like the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. As a result, there is wide variety in the cost accounting systems of the different companies and sometimes even in different parts of the same company or organization.

Differences Between The Impacts Of Hurricane Katrina And Cyclone Nargis

Tropical revolving storms have a marked influence on the areas they consume. Whether it’s at the point of striking (our primary effects) or the secondary factors days/months/years afterwards: they impact on the social, environmental and economic stature of an area. This is evident when comparing two of the most notable tropical revolving storms in the last decade. Hurricane Katrina hit the MEDC coast of Louisiana and the Mississippi in the form of a category 5 storm and the category 4 cyclone Nargis hit the LEDC nation, Burma, particularly the Irrawaddy delta.Despite similar magnitudes the impacts of these two tropical revolving storms varied- so how and why was this? A telling factor of the impacts is the initial effect on the people in the event of the storms. Significantly hurricane Katrina had its most serious effect on the densely populated area of New Orleans. The storm burst the banks of the Mississippi with gusts of wind up to 345km/h and caused widespread flooding par ticularly to the vulnerable low lying regions of the lower 9nth ward, this quickly became the major cause of death with up to 90% of initial deaths as a result of drowning with powerful current s sweeping people away.In total with the combined force of floods and wind up to 1 million people became homeless and 1,833 died. When looking at the same factors in the Irrawaddy delta, Nargis caused almost 10x the amount of death: 138,000 lost their lives with 2. 4million immediately homeless as a result of again strong 220km/h winds and flooding. Immediately then we can see a profound difference on a relatively similar impact region. This is where the infrastructure of an MEDC comes into place.To reduce the initial impacts 50% of the New Orleans population evacuated using their private cars or school buses after being warned by advanced early warning systems in place across the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally many buildings around New Orleans many of the buildings were high-rise brick/concret e constructions therefore escaped the effects of flooding, so not as many homes were completely destroyed. Alternatively in a LEDC (Burma) the area has little infrastructure or no means of evacuation: helicopters, cars, buses were not available.Buildings too did not meet the same building regulations in the USA so strong winds destroyed many homes. So how did these initial social impacts conspire to the coming days/months/years? What were the secondary effects on the people? There is evidence that shows political influences of both the USA and Burma actually worsened the social impact on the people. In Burma the state is controlled by the military or ‘Junta’ and to preserve national pride (amongst other reasons) they did not initially allow for emergency aid. This resulted in a weak slow response leaving over 2. 4 million people with no shelter, water or food, and basic sanitation.Finally 7 days later the Junta allowed the most basic supplies from the UN and other East Asian countries. Added with the poor infrastructure of an LEDC by this time thousands more had died from starvation as well as outbreaks of waterborne diseases such as cholera so in terms of long term social affects those who had survived grew weaker by the day. Moving further in the future it’s believed more than 7% of the current Burmese population are living permanently in plastic shelters as a result of low GDP per capita, characterising LEDCs as a whole, the secondary social impacts were large also.How about the MEDC then? In the event of hurricane Katrina we can see how the USA’s- despite the world’s largest economy (at the time) – government influences slowed the relief effort which in result impacted the social impact. Firstly the federal government’s relief budget could not be accessed immediately due to no emergency congress occurring before the storm hit. The Louisiana state government too were criticised for reacting slowly as well as t he overall amount of relief workers was reduced by up to 60% as a result of the war in Afghanistan.So similarly with Burma the areas with up to 90% destruction faced shelter, water, food and sanitary issues. However with the economic power of USA and improved infrastructure and advanced emergency services including the US coast guard and fire services many people homeless initially took refuge in emergency shelters and even the New Orleans super dome meant over 100,000 found the basic needs quickly- reducing the death and disease characteristic in cyclone Nargis. Although with MEDC’s capacity of wealthy property: crime and looting was a real problem in New Orleans especially after one of the main prisons being evacuated.Something that was less prominent Burma. Socially then, both long and short term, for the basic needs cyclone Nargis had a more profound impact on the people as New Orleans suffered differently as a result of different economic stature in the USA. From the soc ial effects then, we can clearly see that many homes in both the Irrawaddy delta and New Orleans were destroyed to leave so many homeless, yet the impact of both Katrina and Nargis had a wider spread effect on the environment.The US geological survey has estimated 217 square miles of land was transformed by flooding caused by Katrina- and within this many communities, businesses, and public services were destroyed, with 80% of all dwellings damaged in some way. Other significant effects include 20% of all local marshes being permanently damaged, 16 national wildlife refuges damaged and 7 million gallons of oil being leaked into water systems.Drawing in the social effects again we can see how the effect on the initial environment impacts made up to 1 million people homeless however when we start to look at the secondary factors I believe the impacts where minor. Once the people were evacuated and received emergency aid the main environmental impact in the coming weeks/years (evidence d above) was on the wildlife or the economy- despite this being important (as I will elaborate later) it did not have any immediate danger to the people long term.In stark contrast the vast flat environment of the Irrawaddy delta is the life support system that feeds, cleans and pays the people of south Burma. The 3 main environmental factors were impacted on hugely by cyclone Nargis: the shrimp industry was 100% damaged immediately with the destruction of boats and shallow delta waters, over 200,000 livestock were killed which were used for meat or milk or as crop harvesters, and 80-90% of all rice crops were destroyed by sea waters.This then immediately meant people died so the primary environmental impacts were huge. Unlike Katrina in the USA the environmental impact then worsened in the secondary stages. With no boats the shrimp industry has still not returned to full strength to this day and the rice paddies damaged could not be used up to 12 months afterwards with no full harv est till the following year- today many of the paddies have been completely destroyed and there was a large shortage of livestock in the years following Nargis.So then the impact on the environment for the people of Burma was far more detrimental than the environmental impacts of Katrina again enhanced by the LEDC status, but we can see how these effects transpired into the social effects we saw before and indeed economic impacts. Economic impacts always tend to be a secondary issue but both Katrina and Nargis were given an estimated figure for the scale of damage on the economy- and this is certainly telling when looking at the differences in impacts of the two tropical storms. Cyclone nargis was estimated to cost $10 billion –Katrina: $150 billion.This is a clear difference and in many ways, unlike the social and environmental impacts, the LEDC is far better off. AS I mentioned before LEDCs have less infrastructure therefore when cyclone Nargis hit Burma there was far less in terms of economic value to destroy, eventually to replace. Whereas in the USA the sustained infrastructure (distinctive in a MEDC) means there is far more to destroy: so there’s more to replace. Even 8 years after Katrina both on and an individual basis and internationally the USA are still paying for Katrina.The richer people were forced to use savings and insurance to rebuild homes, whereas federal run development programmes, such as the reconstruction of the lower 9nth ward are still taking place putting a huge burden on the federal and state governments. Smaller businesses have gone bust and even public services, like fire stations or forensic labs have shortfalls of millions of dollars to once again become operational. Nationally the economic impact is thought to have also influenced the prolonging of USA’s national recession to, which in turn has affected other trading national like the UK.On the other side in the LEDC of Burma despite similar shortfalls of mo ney to restore the nation to former ‘glory’ the process has more simple. International aid has eventually covered a much higher percentage of the damage costs because of this simplicity and overall cheaper cost- therefore with this aid money pledged by the UN and the Junta it has been a much easier process for the nation and individually. so we can see how long term these economic impacts are actually more ‘manageable’ for Burma after Nargis than those for the USA after Katrina.Concluding then, we can clearly highlight the differences in impacts as a result of hurricane Katrina and Cyclone Nargis: socially, environmentally, and economically- both primarily and secondarily. I have noticed a difference in impacts based on the previous economic state of a country, when looking at these two tropical storms. Socially the impacts of Nargis far superseded that of Katrina both primarily and secondarily and I do not think this would have differed removing the poor p olitical influence both nations had.Whereas environmentally despite the initial impacts seeming worse in New Orleans as a result of Katrina, we can see that in Burma as with many LEDC’s the effect on the environment is far more detrimental in the years/months to come. I think this is because of the pure economic power of an MEDC like USA, it has the money to rebuild the environment in a matter of years- nevertheless this is the downfall of MEDC’s as we saw when looking at the superior economic impacts of Katrina compared to Nargis’s. Thus the severity of impact of these two tropical storms differs, not because of the magnitude, but because of the economic state.

Dividend Policy and Share Prices

Introduction In this paper the impact of dividend policy of the companies on the firm’s share prices is analysed and different views in the context of the semi-strong form of the efficient market hypothesis are contrasted. The overview of the traditional and most recent empirical investigations of the stock market reaction to the dividend announcements is provided and different findings are discussed and compared. Three companies have been selected from the FTSE All share price index. These companies are Tesco, Burberry and Vodafone. These firms belong to different sectors of the economy.Tesco is the largest retailer in the UK, Burberry is a fashion firm and Vodafone is the telecommunication services company. The dividends and accounts have been retrieved from annual reports of the companies (Tesco, 2011; Burberry, 2011; Vodafone, 2011). The share prices were sourced from Yahoo Finance (2012). The copies of the company accounts are provided in the appendices. Dividend Policies of Companies These three companies were chosen for the following reasons. Firstly, it was intended to choose large companies that have an established dividend policy and revenue of more than ? billion a year. Secondly, the companies from different industries had to be analysed. Thirdly, both services sector and goods sector were intended to be analysed. Finally, it was interesting to compare both pro-cyclical firms (e. g. Burberry) and counter-cyclical firms (e. g. Vodafone). The former are very sensitive to the effects of the economic recession whereas the latter are less sensitive because consumers would still have to use mobile phones and services regardless of their financial position.The dividend payout ratio has been calculated for these companies for the period from 2007 to 2011. The following formula was used: Dividend payout ratio = dividends per share / earnings per share The results are summarised in the following figure. Figure 1 Dividend Payout Ratios Source: Annual Re ports of Tesco (2011), Burberry (2011) and Vodafone (2011) The payout ratios indicate different dividend policies adopted by the three companies. Tesco’s policy is aimed at maintaining a constant dividend payout ratio, which is very common for mature industries such as retailing.In these industries the majority of the large companies are â€Å"cash cows† for the investors and therefore the dividend policy tends to show constant payout ratios, which inspires trust in the company and expectation of future stability. In contrast, the dividend policies of Vodafone and Burberry are not aimed at a constant payout ratio. In fact, as the following figure demonstrates, the policies of Vodafone and Burberry are aimed at dividend growth. Figure 2 Final DividendsSource: Annual Reports of Tesco (2011), Burberry (2011) and Vodafone (2011) However, whereas Vodafone demonstrates a â€Å"steady dividend growth strategy†, Burberry demonstrates the a strategy that does not show a specific pattern but can be interpreted as a signal to the market because in 2009 the company announced the dividends that were equal to the dividends announced in the previous year in spite of the accounting losses suffered by the firm which were reflected in negative earnings per share (Appendix C).This move can be interpreted as a sign that the management attempted to signal the market that the losses are temporary and the company was expected to recover quickly. It is interesting to note that the latter policy is inconsistent with the position that dividends should be paid out of earnings rather than accumulated capital or reserves. Furthermore, the companies could undertake an alternative dividend policy which would imply linking the dividend payout to the investment opportunities that could be managed by firms (Brealey and Myers, 2003).If the company has many projects that offer positive net present value, then it would be recommended that dividends could be retained and reinv ested in the firm. Only residual earnings, which are left after investments in all positive NPV projects could be distributed as dividends (Bodie et al, 2009). Dividend Announcements and Share Prices Dividend announcements and their impact on share prices can be explained by the semi strong form of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH).Efficient market hypothesis implies that the only thing that may impact the stock prices is new information, since all other possibly influencing parameters are already included in the firm’s stock price (Palan, 2004). The efficient market hypothesis may be divided into three forms: the weak form, the semi-strong form, and the strong form. The weak form implies that share prices bear or reflect the past prices and trade volume information, the semi-strong form adds publicly available information to the weak form, and the strong form adds even insider information to the efficiency approach (Harder, 2008).Empirical evidences show that successive changes in stock prices are independent and this independence is in line with the efficient market hypothesis, as markets promptly react to the new information (Fama et al. , 1969). In this context it may be assumed that dividend announcements convey particular positive information about the company and provide signals about future performance of the firm. The decision about paying dividends is made by the firm’s managers and often supported by shareholders’ voting.Since dividend announcements bear useful information, from the efficient market hypothesis view point this information is reflected in the share price changes immediately after the public announcement (Bodie et al, 2009). The three companies that were chosen have been used to test the semi strong form of the EMH and whether the dividends announcements made by Tesco, Vodafone and Burberry had a significant impact on shareholder returns and share prices. So, the null hypotheses of the analysis are the followin g:H0: Dividends have a positive and significant effect on the share prices H0: Dividends have a positive and significant effect on the weekly stock returns. The alternative hypotheses are the following: Halt: Dividends do not have a significant effect on the share prices Halt: Dividends do not have a significant effect on the weekly stock returns. According to EMH in its semi strong form, the information on dividends should be quickly absorbed into the stock prices during the first week and hence the acceptance of the null hypotheses will be consistent with the semi strong efficiency.However, if abnormal returns persist in the longer run, e. g. three months, the EMH in the semi strong form can be rejected. Empirical evidences also provide support for the semi-strong efficient market hypothesis, implying that stock market efficiently and quickly adjusts to new information about dividends (Aharony and Swary, 1980). However, the research of Amihud and Li (2006) finds that the reaction of stock market to dividend announcement is not constant. It is concluded that cumulative abnormal returns promoted by dividend announcements decline to zero in due course.The findings suggest that dividend announcement are less informative over time, and this may be related to the reluctance of managers to pay extra expenses related to dividends (Amihud and Li, 2006). Moreover, the recent decrease in propensity of companies to pay dividends is sometimes related to the lower informational contend of dividend announcements. Since institutional investors are normally better informed and tend to play key roles in public firms, the costly dividends have become a less popular way to provide information (Baker, 2009).The study of Asquth and Mullins (1983) also suggests that stock prices and shareholders’ wealth are impacted by initiation and increase of dividends. Moreover, the effect of dividend increase is stronger than the influence of dividend initiation. The results are in lin e with assumption that dividend announcements bear valuable information for investors. Dividend policy may be used as a simple way to signal managers’ view of the company’s recent and future performance (Asquth and Mullins, 1983). However, it must be stated that dividend policies are not directly influencing share prices and lead to their changes.Instead, dividend policies are changed by managers when some fundamental developments in company’s performance are expected, and these developments cause the change of the share prices. Thus, dividend announcement is only the way for investors to obtain information about these fundamental developments. Similarly, there are no evidences that a company value may be increased through increase of dividends, since dividends only convey signals about fundamental changes in the company and are viewed as only by-products of the changes (Moles et al. 2011). Nevertheless, the study of Shiller (1981) challenges the efficient marke t hypothesis suggesting that the volatility of stock prices are too high to be explained by the future dividends. A more recent investigation of Mehnidiratta and Gupta (2010) supports the semi-strong form of efficient market hypothesis concluding that stock prices promptly and accurately react to the publicly available information, particularly to dividend announcements. The two-stage study tests the share prices response to dividend announcement.The first stage included the evaluation of beta based on post facto returns on stock and market index and predicted returns on every of the stocks. The second stage these values were used to calculate abnormal returns around the day of announcement. The results provide information that though investors do not obtain significant value prior to the dividend announcement day or on the event day, they do gain value after the announcement. Investors move their security positions on the announcement day which implies that after the event day ther e is informational value in dividend announcement.The evidences prove that the increases in dividends imply more positive abnormal stock returns, and this supports the efficient market hypothesis (Mehnidiratta and Gupta, 2010). But there are also empirical evidences of little stock market reaction to dividend announcements at some periods (Hasan et al. , 2012). The event study methodology was used to evaluate the effect of cash dividend announcements on the share prices. The data about abnormal returns around the event day was analysed and the events before, on, or after the announcement day were pooled.The tested assumption states that payment of cash dividends is the most significant factor that impacts all prices around the event days (Hasan et al. , 2012). In the following figures the results of the regression analysis and statistical tests applied to the regressions are presented. Table 1 Effects of Dividends on Investor Weekly Return Coefficientsa Model Unstandardized Coeffici ents Standardized Coefficients t Sig. B Std. Error Beta 1 (Constant) .012 .009 1. 375 .175 Dividend -. 002 .002 -. 143 -1. 030 .308 Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate imension0 1 .143a .020 .001 .03489 a. Predictors: (Constant), Dividend According to the first regression, dividends do not have a significant impact on the weekly stock returns and hence the null hypothesis related to stock returns is rejected. However, the output from the regression of share prices on dividends demonstrates that the former have a statistically significant positive influence on the share price performance. This was evidenced with the t-test. Table 2 Effects of Dividends on Share Prices Coefficientsa Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients Sig. B Std. Error Beta 1 (Constant) 151. 362 47. 949 3. 157 .003 Dividend 45. 955 9. 186 .574 5. 003 .000 Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate dimension0 1 .574a .329 .316 191. 66266 a. Predictors : (Constant), Dividend Thus, the null hypothesis related to the effects of dividends on the share prices is accepted. R-squared test has revealed that the second regression had a better fit. Conclusion As the semi-strong efficient market hypothesis suggests, new information including dividend announcement is quickly reflected in the company’s stock prices.Some empirical evidences support the hypothesis (Fama et al. , 1969; Aharony and Swary, 1980). Other findings suggest that the impact of the announcements may decline in the course of time (Amihud and Li, 2006). The recent empirical studies that were reviewed support the semi-strong efficient market hypothesis and find that dividend announcements produce abnormal returns and are positively related to the share prices (Mehnidiratta and Gupta, 2010). But another event study displays different reaction of stock prices to dividend announcement in different years (Hasan et al. , 2012).The analysis in the paper was conducted in th e context of three UK based companies from different sectors. The dividend policies of these companies have been analysed. Furthermore, the relationships between the share prices and the dividends were tested. It was found that the dividends produced a positive and statistically significant effect on the share prices but no significant effect on weekly returns. References Aharyny, J. and Swary, I. (1980) â€Å"Quarterly Dividend and Earnings Announcements and Stockholders’ Returns: An Empirical Analysis†, The Journal of Finance, 31 (1), pp. 1-12. Amihud, Y. nd Li, K. (2006) â€Å"The Declining Information Content of Dividend Announcements and the Effects of Institutional Holdings†, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 41, pp. 637-660. Asquith, P. and Mullins, D. W. Jr. (1983) â€Å"The Impact of Initiating Dividend Payments on Shareholders’ Wealth†, The Journal of Business, 56 (1), pp. 77-96. Baker, H. K. (2009) Dividends and dividend po licy. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Bodie, Z. , Kane, A. and Marcus, A. (2009) Investments, Hoboken: McGraw Hill Professional. Brealey, R. and Myers, S. (2003) Principles of Corporate Finance, New York: McGraw Hill.Burberry (2011) Annual Reports and Accounts, [online] Available at: www. burberryplc. com/bbry/results-centre/respre/rep2011/ [Accessed 6 February 2012]. Fama, E. F. , Fisher, L. , Jensen, M. C. and Roll, R. (1969) â€Å"The Adjustment of Stock Prices to New Information†, International Economic Review, 10 (1), pp. 1-21. Field A. (2005) Discovering Statistics Using SPSS, London: Sage Publications. Gujarati, D. (1995) Basic Econometrics. 3rd ed. , New York: McGraw-Hill. Harder, S. (2008) â€Å"The Efficient Market Hypothesis and Its Application to Stock Markets†, Scholarly Research Paper, Germany: GRIN Verlag.Hasan, S. B. , Akhter, S. and Huda, H. A. E. (2012) â€Å"Cash Dividend Announcement Effect: Evidence from Dhaka Stock Exchange†, Research J ournal of Finance and Accounting, 3 (2), pp. 12-24. Maddala, G. S. (2001) Introduction to Econometrics. 3rd ed. , Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. Mehnidiratta, N. and Gupta, S. (2010) â€Å"Impact of Dividend Announcement on Stock Prices†, International Journal of Information Technology and Knowledge Management, 2 (2), pp. 405-410. Moles, P. , Parrino, R. and Kidwell, D. (2011) Fundamentals of Corporate Finance – European Edition. UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Palan, S. 2004) â€Å"The Efficient Market Hypothesis and Its Validity in Today's Markets†, M. A. Thesis. Germany: GRIN Verlag. Shiller, R. J. (1981) â€Å"Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends? †, NBER Working Paper No. 456. Tesco (2011) Annual Report and Accounts [online] Available at: ar2011. tescoplc. com/ [Accessed 6 February 2012]. Vodafone (2011) Annual Report and Accounts [online] Available at: http://www. vodafone. com/content/index/investors/reports/ann ual_report. html [Accessed 6 February 2012]. Yahoo Finance (2012) Weekly Share Prices [online] Available at: finance. yahoo. co. uk [Accessed 6 February 2012].

Annotated Biography Essays - Sport Club Do Recife, Sport

Annotated Biography Dayton, Kels. "Ask a Coach: Should I Specialize in One Sport in High School?"SportzEdge. News 8, 16 Sept. 2013. Web. 27 Dec. 2015. http://sportzedge.com/2013/09/16/ask-a-coach-should-i-specialize-in-one-sport-in-high-school-2/>. I used this article to support my claim that playing more than one sport in high school is good for athletes. You get a firsthand look at what college coaches look for from an actual college coach who knows about recruiting and has been doing so for 20 plus years. You also get examples of great athletes who played multiple sports in high school who are sports super stars such as LeBronJames Fakehany, Tom. "ONE-SPORT HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETES."1 Sport Athletes. 18 Dec. 1995. Web. 27 Dec. 2015. http://home.earthlink.net/tfakehany/1sport.html>. This article counters my claim that playing multiple sports is beneficial. The article states that even though schools support playing multiple sports focusing on one main sport is the best way to get recruited forthatsport.Frollo, Joe. "Playing Multiple Sports Builds Better Athletes." Playing Multiple Sports Builds Better Athletes. 24 Oct. 2014. Web. 27 Dec. 2015. http://usafootball.com/blogs/health-and-safety/post/8942/playing-multiple-sports-builds-better-athletes>. This article supports my claim that playing multiple sports will benefit more than hurt athletes in the long run. In the article there are examples of how playing multiple sports can help them develop duplicate skills to help them a better all-around athlete. "One Sport Athletes."High School Sports Stuff. 20 Jan. 2015. Web. 27 Dec. 2015. http://highschoolsportsstuff.areavoices.com/2015/01/20/one-sport-athletes/>. This article supports my claim that playing multiple sports is good.thearticle includes great points about skills picked from different sports that can be used in another sport. It also includes points about athletes who are not looking to be recruited, but who play for the fun of playing. Oz, M.D., Mehmet, and Michael Roizen, M.D. "Kids Should Play More Than One Sport."Newsmax. 8 Oct. 2014. Web. 27 Dec. 2015. http://www.newsmax.com/health/Dr-Oz/oz-dr-sports-children/2014/10/08/id/599330/>. This article supports my claim that playing multiple sports is good. The article includes facts from doctors about over repetitiveness from playing just one sport is a very high risk for injury. Satterfield,Lem. "Coaches Recognize Competitiveness in Players Who Play Multiple Sports."ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 4 Oct. 2011. Web. 27 Dec.2015. http://espn.go.com/high-school/lacrosse/recruiting-road/story/_/id/7057666/coaches-recognize-competitiveness-players-play-multiple-sports>. This article supports my claim that playing multiple is very beneficial for athletes. In this article collegecoaches give their reasons for wanting to recruit multiple sport athletes because of their competitiveness. Wippel, Teresa. "Should Your Child Play Just One Sport?"-ParentMap. 1 Mar. 2007. Web. 27 Dec. 2015. https://www.parentmap.com/article/should-your-child-play-just-one-sport>. This depicts my claim that playing more than one sport is beneficial. The article includes points about the pressure being too much for kids to handle with doing more than one sport.