Circuit City Essays

Circuit City Essays Circuit City Paper Circuit City Paper Circuit City is currently the number two store in the consumer electronics industry and the number three seller of consumer electronics products. Circuit City operates exclusively in the United States.  Circuit City has been falling into trouble in the past few years. There have been extensive layoffs as well as reconfiguring of the management system in order to cut costs.  The external force that is greatly affecting Circuit City is the economic times; the disposable income of the consumer is key to the consumer electronics industry. There is intense pressure from rivals Best Buy and Wal-Mart, without change Circuit City will continue to fall below its competitors. In the internal environment of Circuit City the marketing aspect of the supply chain is very weak. The service aspect is where the value is located. For Circuit City to fully take advantage of their core competency it is necessary for them to create more value in the marketing segment.  Circuit City must address the customers, competitors, suppliers, and economic forces in order to succeed in the consumer electronics industry. Strategic alternatives that will address these issues include updating and controlling technical and operating systems, shifting management from top-down to bottom up, and creating an identifiable brand. The key strategic alternative that Circuit City must address in order to succeed in the industry is creating a brand. A marketable image must be created that will create loyalty among consumers. In order to successfully implement this Circuit City must update its image, create buzz, increase marketing efforts, and create their own niche.  If Circuit City successfully implements and carries though the recommendations to re-brand itself, they will succeed in the consumer electronics industry. By creating a new image they will successfully secure the number two spot behind Best Buy, with distant goals of surpassing their competitor. Issues and Outlook Profile Budi In a year of 2000, Circuit City has a physical store in 45 different states. Circuit City operates more location in more than any other consumer electronics specialty retailer. The company has more than 600 retail outlets, 7 service centers, and 10 distributions center. In a year of 2002, Circuit City Stores, Inc. completes the separation of CarMax. The separation eliminates the companys tracking stock structure and two common stock series Circuit City Group Common Stock and CarMax Group Common Stock. Effective October 1, 2002, the Circuit City Group Common Stock is renamed Circuit City common stock and represents an ownership interest only in the Circuit City business, and CarMax, Inc. becomes an independent, separately traded public company. In a year of 2003, given the strong sales lift and internal rate of return seen with relocated stores after their first six months, Circuit City accelerates its relocation program. In fiscal 2004, Circuit City relocates 18 stores and opens eight new stores. In a year of 2004, Circuit City agrees to sell its private-label credit card operation, including both its private-label Circuit City credit card accounts and its co-branded Circuit City Plus Visa credit card accounts, to Bank One Corporation. Circuit City and Bank One will enter into an ongoing arrangement under which Bank One will offer private-label and co-branded credit cards to both new and existing customers. Circuit City announces it has purchased the assets of MusicNow, a leading digital music platform. InterTAN, Inc., a leading consumer electronics retailer of both private-label and internationally branded products with headquarters in Barrie, Ontario, becomes a subsidiary of Circuit City following a tender offer in which Circuit City acquired the outstanding shares of InterTAN, Inc. As part of its store revitalization program, Circuit City plans to open 60 to 70 new Superstores with a fairly even split between store relocations (circuitcity.com/cccareers /about/history .html). Recently in 2007, Circuit City Stores Inc., which is cutting jobs and restructuring to fend off competition, swung to a fiscal first-quarter loss and withdrew its financial forecast for the year.The results came a day after rival Best Buy Co. reported sharply lower first-quarter profit and downgraded its 2008 earnings outlook. Both retailers say shoppers are turning away from high-margin items such as flat-screen televisions. Circuit City said sales fell 4.3% in the quarter ended May 31; sales at stores open at least a year fell 5.6%.The Richmond, Va., company said in March it would replace 3,400 highly paid workers with lower-paid employees. In the first quarter, the amount of change that we introduced to the company led to significant volatility, which we expect to continue through the summer, Chief Executive Philip Schoonover said. Combined with an uncertain macroeconomic environment, for the time being, it is difficult to project sales and earnings performance for the balance of the fiscal year, he said. Circuit City said it still expects to open 60 to 65 new and relocated domestic stores this fiscal year. It said more than half of them would be in a 20,000-square-foot format. UBS analyst Brian Nagel said the results show Circuit City is still struggling to turn around. We remain disappointed with the continued slow pace of recovery at Circuit City, he wrote to clients. The loss is the latest dismal news for the company, which has lost several top executives while battling for market share with Best Buy. The companies and others engaged in a price war during the holiday season and slashed prices, particularly on LCD and plasma televisions. Goldman Sachs analyst Matthew Fassler called the results predictably problematic. Circuit City is experiencing the same problems as Best Buy, but at amplified levels, across sales growth and margin rate, Mr. Fassler wrote to clients. Moreover, as Circuit City invests aggressively in systems, an understandable priority, it subjugates near-term results to longer term investment. In the most recent quarter, consolidated gross profit margin narrowed to 22.5% from 24.5% in the same period last fiscal year. At the end of March, the retailer turfed 3,400 employees in the U.S. and Canada because it thought they were overpaid and announced plans to replace them with cheaper workers. Betty Owen, 56, of El Paso, Texas, was one of them. Owen, a part-time worker logging full-time hours, was pulling in $10.10 per hour (all figures U.S.).According to published reports, the company decided to get rid of workers whose wage level was at least 51 cents above Circuit Citys established pay rates. From a dollars and cents perspective, the move seems to make sense. Take 3,400 workers, assuming they work 40 hours per week, slash their wages by the lowest amount (51 cents) and the company will save at least $3.6 million every year in labor costs. Thats not small change. Or is it? Considering Circuit City had 42,000 workers and $11.6 billion in revenue in 2006 and net income of $162.5 million, $3.6 million doesnt seem like much. And from a public relations standpoint, its a disaster. The announcement was met with calls to boycott the store and at least one lawsuit. Three employees in California have filed an age discrimination suit theyre trying to have certified as a class-action lawsuit. Fighting that battle alone could dissolve the savings from the wage cuts. The repercussions are bound to echo beyond bad PR. Most of the workers being let go have been on the job awhile, and their experience is walking out the door with them. Training costs will increase and customer service will undoubtedly suffer. And exactly what kind of workers are going to be filling these roles? When it made the very public announcements about wage cuts and terminations, Circuit City might as well have hung a sign on all its stores stating that, good, talented workers need not apply. But thats the new reality in retail, right? The Wal-Martization of the business means retailers have to keep wages low to stay competitive and theres no room for good HR practices, right? Wrong. A little outfit called Costco is punching all kinds of holes in that thinking. The Issaquah, Wash.-based warehouse club pays its workers generously. By some reports, they start at about $10 per hour and their earnings rise to about $44,000 per year after four years. They also get a strong benefits package. The result is low turnover and a very loyal staff. In 2004, Business Week decided to put Costcos labor practices to the test. It compared Costco to Sams Club, the membership warehouse operated by Wal-Mart. It found that by compensating employees generously to motivate and retain good workers Costco actually keeps its labor costs lower than Wal-Marts as a percentage of sales. Costco pulled in $13,647 in operating profit per hourly employee versus $11,039 at Sams Club. Jim Sinegal, Costcos CEO and founder, has resisted pressure from investors to cut costs, shrugging off comments that its better to be an employee at Costco than a shareholder. We think its good business. In the final analysis, you get what you pay for. Better employees mean higher productivity. Weve proven that with our business model. We want to turn our inventory faster than our people, he said. (Paying low wages) doesnt keep employees happy. It keeps them looking for other jobs. Plus managers spend all their time hiring replacements rather than running your business. The lesson? Better paid employees are more productive and happy, and that translates into a healthy bottom line. Thats an idea that seems to be lost on Circuit City.

Archaeological Hearths - Features With Benefits

Archaeological Hearths - Features With Benefits A hearth is an archaeological feature that represents the remnants of a purposeful fire. Hearths can be extremely valuable elements of an archaeological site, as they are indicators of a whole range of human behaviors and provide an opportunity for obtaining radiocarbon dates for the period that people used them. Hearths are typically used to cook food, but may also have been used to heat-treat lithics, burn pottery and/or a variety of social reasons such a beacon to let others know where you are, a way to keep predators away, or simply provide a warm and inviting gathering place. The purposes of a hearth are often discernible within the remnants: and those purposes are key to understanding the human behaviors of the people who used it. Types of Hearths Over the millennia of human history, there have been a wide variety of intentionally-built fires: some were simply piles of wood stacked on the ground, some were excavated into the ground and covered to provide steam heat, some were built up with adobe brick for use as earth ovens, and some were stacked upwards with a mix of fired brick and potsherds to act as ad hoc pottery kilns. A typical archaeological hearth falls in the middle range of this continuum, a bowl-shaped soil discoloration, within which is evidence that the contents have been exposed to temperatures between 300-800 degrees centigrade. How do archaeologists identify a hearth with this range of shapes and sizes? There are three crucial elements to a hearth: inorganic material used to shape the feature; organic material burned in the feature; and evidence of that combustion. Shaping the Feature: Fire-Cracked Rock In places in the world where rock is readily available, the defining characteristic of a hearth is often plenty of fire-cracked rock, or FCR, the technical term for rock thats been cracked by exposure to high temperatures. FCR is differentiated from other broken rock because it has been discolored and thermally altered, and although often the pieces can be refit together, there is no evidence of impact damage or deliberate stone working. However, not all FCR is discolored and cracked. Experiments recreating the processes that make fire-cracked rock have revealed that the presence of discoloration (reddening and/or blackening) and spalling of larger specimens depends both on the kind of rock being used (quartzite, sandstone, granite, etc.) and the kind of fuel (wood, peat, animal dung) used in the fire. Both of those drive the temperatures of a fire, as does the length of time the fire is lit. Well-fed campfires can easily create temperatures up to 400-500 degrees centigrade; long-sustained fires can get to 800 degrees or more. When hearths have been exposed to the weather or agricultural processes, disturbed by animals or humans, they can still be identified as scatters of fire-cracked rock. Burned Bone and Plant Parts If a hearth was used to cook dinner, the leftovers of what was processed in the hearth may include animal bone and plant matter, which can be preserved if turned to charcoal. Bone which was buried under fire becomes carbonized and black, but bones on the surface of a fire are often calcined and white. Both types of carbonized bone can be radiocarbon-dated; if the bone is large enough, it can be identified to species, and if it is well-preserved, often cut-marks resulting from butchery practices can be found. Cut-marks themselves can be very useful keys to understanding human behaviors. Plant parts can also be found in hearth contexts. Burned seeds are often preserved in hearth conditions, and microscopic plant residues such as starch grains, opal phytoliths and pollen may also be preserved if conditions are right. Some fires are too hot and will damage the shapes of plant parts; but on occasion, these will survive and in an identifiable form. Combustion The presence of burned sediments, burnt patches of earth identified by discoloration and exposure to heat, is not always macroscopically apparent, but can be identified by micromorphological analysis, when microscopically thin slices of earth are examined to identify tiny fragments of ashed plant material and burnt bone fragments. Finally, non-structured hearthshearths that either were placed on the surface and were weathered by long-term wind exposure and rain/frost weathering, made without large stones or the stones were deliberately removed later and are not marked by burned soilshave still been identified at sites, based on the presence of concentrations of large quantities of burnt stone (or heat-treated) artifacts. Sources This article is a part of the About.com guide to the Archaeology Features, and the Dictionary of Archaeology. Backhouse PN, and Johnson E. 2007. Where were the hearths: an experimental investigation of the archaeological signature of prehistoric fire technology in the alluvial gravels of the Southern Plains. Journal of Archaeological Science 34(9):1367-1378. doi: 10.1016/j.jas.2006.10.027Bentsen SE. 2014. Using Pyrotechnology: Fire-related features and activities with a focus on the African Middle Stone Age. Journal of Archaeological Research 22(2):141-175.Fernndez Peris J, Gonzlez VB, Blasco R, Cuartero F, Fluck H, Saà ±udo P, and Verdasco C. 2012. The earliest evidence of hearths in Southern Europe: The case of Bolomor Cave (Valencia, Spain). Quaternary International 247(0):267-277. Goldberg P, Miller C, Schiegl S, Ligouis B, Berna F, Conard N, and Wadley L. 2009.Bedding, hearths, and site maintenance in the Middle Stone Age of Sibudu Cave, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 1(2):95-122. Gowlett JAJ, and Wrangham RW. 2013. Earliest fire in Africa: tow ards the convergence of archaeological evidence and the cooking hypothesis. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 48(1):5-30. Karkanas P, Koumouzelis M, Kozlowski JK, Sitlivy V, Sobczyk K, Berna F, and Weiner S. 2004. The earliest evidence for clay hearths: Aurignacian features in Klisoura Cave 1, southern Greece. Antiquity 78(301):513–525.Marquer L, Otto T, Nespoulet R, and Chiotti L. 2010. A new approach to study the fuel used in hearths by hunter-gatherers at the Upper Palaeolithic site of Abri Pataud (Dordogne, France). Journal of Archaeological Science 37(11):2735-2746. doi: 10.1016/j.jas.2010.06.009Sergant J, Crombe P, and Perdaen Y. 2006. The ‘invisible’ hearths: a contribution to the discernment of Mesolithic non-structured surface hearths. Journal of Archaeological Science 33:999-1007.

Financial Market Assessment Bahrain Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Financial Market Assessment Bahrain - Essay Example The Index of Economic Freedom measures countries against a list of 50 independent variables divided into 10 broad factors of economic freedom. Low scores are more desirable. The higher the score, the greater the level of government interference in the economy and the less economic freedom a country enjoys. These 50 variables are grouped into ten categories: Trade policy, Fiscal burden of government, Government intervention in the economy, Monetary policy, Capital flows and foreign investment, Banking and finance, Wages and prices, Property rights, Regulation, and Informal market activity. As shown in Table 1, Bahrain ranked 20th of 155 countries (North Korea is 155th). Using the table, we can make a quick comparison of Bahrain and Hong Kong (HKG), the country with the highest economic freedom, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain's closest competitor for the title of the Middle East's financial capital. As Table 1 shows, Bahrain had the same scores as HKG in five out of ten categories, but in one of these (Fiscal burden), it scored higher (meaning, it performed worse) than the UAE, which is developing Dubai to compete with Bahrain. Since our paper is a study of Bahrain's competitive weaknesses in financial markets, we have a tool we can use to know what it should fix if it wants to win the competition with Dubai. The comparison with the United States gives us a better idea of how Bahrain fares in economic freedom. The U.S. is ahead only by a margin of two: better in three categories: Trade policy, Government intervention, and Informal market; worse in one: Fiscal burden; and tied in the rest. We now look briefly at where Bahrain did well. Then, by focusing on those where it scored badly, we can come out with the basic tools to analyze the degree of openness of Bahrain's financial sector. Bahrain's Good Points1 Bahrain scored well in four areas: monetary policy, banking and finance, wages and prices, and property rights. The main reasons for these are: Monetary Policy. Measured on the basis of the weighted average annual inflation rate of 0.04 percent, Bahrain is stable. Banking and Finance. Bahrain's banking and finance sector has very few restrictions. It is relatively easy to establish a bank; there are few, if any, restrictions or requirements on new banks; and foreign banks are welcome. At the end of 2003, there were 25 commercial banks, mostly foreign, and foreigners and Bahrainis alike have ready access to credit on market terms. The banking system is sound and undergoes examination and supervision by the Bahrain Monetary Agency (BMA), which has a solid international reputation. Efforts are being made to increase the liquidity of the Bahrain Stock Exchange (BSE), which opened in 1989. The government allows Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) nationals to own 100% stakes in firms listed on the BSE and increased the proportion that could be owned by other foreigners to 49%. The Minister of Commerce has announced that ownership for non-GCC nationals will be increased to 100% by end-2005. Wages and Prices. Bahrain, despite issuing a minimum wage law, improved its wages and prices regimes in the past year, reducing its influence over setting of domestic prices. It liberalized its telecommunications sector, where it had monopoly power, and reduced state power over