Junot Diaz Biography

Junot Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic and raised New Jersey. He is a creative writing teacher at MIT and fiction editor at the Boston Review. He also serves on the board of advisers for the Freedom University, a Volunteer organization in Georgia that provides post-secondary instruction to undocumented immigrants. From what I have read I have gathered that he really had to rely on himself. Getting him through college working the jobs where you have to do the dirty work, dishes, and pumping-gas. Supposedly Drown reflects Diaz’s strained relationship with his own father, with whom he no longer keeps in contact with. Diaz was born in Villa Juana, a neighborhood in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He was the third child in a family of five.Through most of his childhood he lived with his mother and grandparents while his father worked in the United States. Diaz emigrated to Parlin, New Jersey, in December of 1974, where he was able to reunite with his father. He lived clos e to what he considered one of the largest landfills in New Jersey. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker magazine, which listed him as one of the 20 top writers for the 21st century.He has also been published in Story, The Paris Review, and in the anthologies The Best American Short Stories four times (1996, 1997, 1999, 2000), The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories (2009), and African Voices. He is best known for his two major works: the short story collection Drown (1996) and the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007). Both were published to critical acclaim and he won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the latter. Diaz himself has described his writing style as â€Å"[†¦] a disobedient child of New Jersey and the Dominican Republic if that can be possibly imagined with way too much education.†Dà ­az has received a Eugene McDermott Award, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a Lila Acheson Wallace Readers Digest Award, th e 2002 PEN/Malamud Award, the 2003 US-Japan Creative Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was selected as one of the 39 most important Latin American writers under the age of 39 by the Bogotà ¡ World Book Capital and the Hay Festival.[18] In September 2007, Miramax acquired the rights for a film adaptation of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.The stories  in Drown focus on the teenage narrator's impoverished, fatherless youth in the Dominican Republic and his struggle adapting to his new life in New Jersey. Reviews were generally strong but not without complaints. Dà ­az read twice for PRI's This American Life: â€Å"Edison, New Jersey† in 1997 and â€Å"How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie† in 1998. Dà ­az also published a Spanish translation of' Drown, entitled Negocios . The arrival of his novel (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) in 2007 prompted a noticeable re-appraisal of Dà ­az's earlier work.Drown became widely recognized as an important landmark in contemporary literature—ten years after its initial publication—even by critics who had either entirely ignored the book or had given it poor reviews. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was published in September 2007. New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani characterized Dà ­az's writing in the novel as: a sort of streetwise brand of Spanglish that even the most monolingual reader can easily inhale: lots of flash words and razzle-dazzle talk, lots of body language on the sentences, lots of David Foster Wallace-esque footnotes and asides.And he conjures with seemingly effortless aplomb the two worlds his characters inhabit: the Dominican Republic, the ghost-haunted motherland that shapes their nightmares and their dreams; and America (a.k.a. New Jersey), the land of freedom an d hope and not-so-shiny possibilities that they’ve fled to as part of the great Dominican diaspora. Dà ­az said about the protagonist of the novel, â€Å"Oscar was a composite of all the nerds that I grew up with who didn’t have that special reservoir of masculine privilege. Oscar was who I would have been if it had not been for my father or my brother or my own willingness to fight or my own inability to fit into any category easily.† He also has said that he sees a meaningful and fitting connection between the science fiction and/or epic literary genres and the multi-faceted immigrant experience.

Demontration Speech

Demonstration Speech Outline Title: Best Mexican Guacamole Dip Specific purpose: To present you all to one of the best Guacamole recipes to of enter your life. Thesis: Guacamole is simple to make and most of all healthy. I. Introduction A. Attention materials: Did you know that Guacamole dates back to the Aztecs. They were particularly fond of it because of its high fat content. But don’t be alarmed! The avocado contains good fat you want incorporated into your body. B. Tie to the audience: Oh and the best part are its nutritional facts.For all you ladies who enjoy counting your calories. I bet it will put a smile on your face to know that this only contains around 190 calories. C. Credibility material: This Guacamole is so good, that’s every time there is a family event or party, I am expected to bring the Guacamole. I don’t even get asked anymore. I guess I just have that touch. D. Preview: There are only three very simple steps in the making of this tasty snac k. Which involve the following, 1. Mashing the Avocado. 2. Mixing the ingredients. 3. Serving itII. Body A. The first step is to gather your ingredients. You will need, 1. 2 large Avocados 2. 2 tbsps of Onions 3. 2 tbsps of Tomatoes 4. 2 tbsps of Jalapenos 5. 2 tbsps of Cilantro 6. Salt 7. Lime 8. Tortilla chips B. Your second step is to gently mash the Avocados with a fork until chunky smooth in a bowl. C. The third step involves mixing all of your ingredients in the bowl. 1. Pour 1 tablespoon of Onions into the bowl containing the mashed Avocados, and mix. 2. Pour 1 tablespoon of Tomatoes into the bowl, and mix. 3.Pour 1 tablespoon of Jalapenos into the bowl, and mix. 4. Pour 1 tablespoon of Cilantro into the bowl, and mix. 5. Sprinkle some salt into the bowl, adjust seasoning to taste. 6. Squirt ? of a lime, to prevent Avocado from turning brown. D. Serve the Guacamole with Mexican style tortilla chips, and enjoy! III. Conclusion A. Final Review: Today you learned how to make a d elicious Mexican style Guacamole following three easy steps. 1. Mash the Avocados until chunky smooth. 2. Mixing all of you ingredients into a bowl. 3. Serve it with Mexican Style Tortilla Chips. B.Tie back to the audience: Now that summer is coming, everyone is trying to get rid of those extra pounds they gained during the holidays and watch what they eat. Well, most of the ingredients in this Guacamole are vegetables. Which make us that much less guilty to enjoy it. C. Concluding remarks: So next time you have a craving for something yummy and healthy, make yourself a Mexican Style Guacamole dip. It never fails to satisfy. Work Cited: http://www. food. com/recipe/guacamole-real-authentic-mexican-guac-135048 http://guacamole-recipe. net/simple-and-quick-guacamole-recipe-with-pictures/

Income Inequality Essay

Nowadays, China has become the second largest economy in the world. The GDP (gross domestic product) of china was growing at 9. 7% per year in average since 1978, which the year of Chinese â€Å"open door† politic founded. China also has become the biggest producer and consumer in many key agricultural and industrial markets and the largest FDI recipient among the developing countries. The performance of china in developing of economy is called â€Å"china’s economic miracle†, which be studied by many economists. However, there are also bad results with the development of economy in china such as environment disruption, corruption and income inequality, which have been seen as important issues to Chinese society and its future economic growth. The income inequality in china The rising income inequality in china is seen as the most important issue to Chinese society and its future economic growth by many economists recently. The income inequality in china is complex and multi-dimensional, which is divided to four aspects that rural-urban income inequality, regional inequality, marginalisation and class formation. The rural-urban income inequality actually has been existed in china since 1949. However, with the economic focus from agriculture shift to industry, the rural-urban income inequality gets large increased from 1984. These data which followed significantly showed the huge increasing of urban-rural income inequality in china Figure 1 Urban and rural incomes per capita (1978-2006) Figure 2 Ratio of urban/rural incomes per capita (1978-2006)  As shown in figure 1, the urban-rural income inequality per capita increased from 200 Yuan at 1978 to about 8,000 Yuan at 2006. The figure 2 also showed about the increasing urban-rural income inequality that the ratio of urban to rural income per capita increased from 2. 5 at 1978 to 3. 3 by 2007 though it lower to 1. 8 at 1984. The regional income inequality is mainly caused by the â€Å"open door† policy. The provinces near coast in china such as Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang have geographical advantage to get FDI (foreign direct investment) and export products. At the same time, the Chinese government made these places as special economic zones, which provided preferential tax policy to foreign investors to â€Å"make a few people rich first†. As the figure 3 showed below, the east only accounted for 42. 8% population but get 86. 9% FDI and 92. 6% exports in china. The centre and west just get very little FDI and exports. Therefore, this policy tendency and geographical advantage made a deep gap between regional areas, mainly the southeast and northwest areas. Figure 3 Regional income inequalities in GDP, FDI, and exports in China in 2006  Figure 4 Regional income inequalities in per capita GDP, 1992 and 2007 at current prices As shown in figure 4, the regional income inequality in per capita GDP was not significant in 1992 except few cities like Beijing and shanghai. However, the data showed that in 2007, there is an obvious income inequality per capita GDP between east and west, which the highest number is 7 times to the lowest number. The Marginalisation and class formation are the other important aspects of income inequality in China. Economists usually use the Gini coefficients to describe the income inequality in a significant way. The Gini coefficient can range from 0 to 1; it is sometimes multiplied by 100 to range between 0 and 100. A low Gini coefficient indicates a more equal distribution, with 0 corresponding to complete equality, while higher Gini coefficients indicate more unequal distribution, with 1 corresponding to complete inequality. Generally, the income inequality is acceptable if the Gini coefficient range from 0. 2-0. 4, and we can see the Gini coefficients of China bellowed.

See instructions Personal Statement Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

See instructions - Personal Statement Example This mutiny has led to a permanent dissolution of civil wars at least in Angola and Sudan. The Democratic Republic of Congo is experiencing conflict in terms of distribution of wealth which directly goes to those who are more powerful. The unemployed local miners swear to join militias for a living. Bloodshed will continue if the economy of the countries is not sustained. The collapsing economy is the pivotal point in the course of history which leads to an uprising. What is most concerning and at the same time interesting to observe in the article is the analysis made by the author about how the uprising had stirred up a large number of protest movements where the sub-Saharan rulers might have felt threatened to be dethroned. Africa is experiencing a rare moment according to the author quite agreeably that the country is high on prices of food and less in terms of employability. All the benefits from the resources sold go to those in power and this is not at all justified. One considers asking the author as to why he believes that this uprising in North Africa will not allow the past larger-scale conflicts to never return? He does back this with the evidence that the civil wars are ending but it remains questionable. There is no doubt that the north is much more promising as the sub-Saharan Africa. No protest can alter this fact. For the foreign investors, places like Ghana and South Africa have more in store because they have remained comparatively stable in terms of politics and leadership. Overall, the article is a good read since it opens up to the recent and future possibilities of trade in Africa. Agriculturalists and economist must definitely read and criticize it for broader perspectives since this will not only help them gain insight but also allow journalists to pick from their point onward to build on their hypothesis. There is always a better way to look at the political situation. Oliver August has done

Strength of Material Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Strength of Material - Essay Example Stress can be defined as the force acting on a given area. This is mathematically represented as Robert hook investigated the behavior of material under tensile force and found out that the extension on materials was proportional to the applied load. This is called the hooks law. Hooks law apply up to the elastic limit. Continued application of load beyond the elastic limit results to the material becoming plastic, That is, its elongation is not proportional to the applied load and does not regain its original shape once the force is removed. The concept of stress was introduced by Cauchy in 1822; Cauchy found out that a body was subjected to surface and internal forces. These caused the deformation on the body. When stress is uniformly distributed over the cross-sectional area of a body, it can be calculated using the formula (1), however, the stress is not uniformly distributed. Cauchy calculated the state of stress at a given point and found it to be given by the second order tensor given below. Another version of the Mohr stress circle is using the polar approach method. The Mohr stress circle can also be used for the determination of stress in the three dimensional plane. A special Mohr circle is drawn to calculate the nominal and shear stress in the three dimensional plane. ... Are the normal stresses. Where: Are the shear stresses Stress can also be calculated using the Mohr stress circle; this is the graphical representation of the stress. The diagrammatic representation of the Mohr stress circle is as shown below Fig 1 showing the Mohr stress circle Another version of the Mohr stress circle is using the polar approach method. The Mohr stress circle can also be used for the determination of stress in the three dimensional plane. A special Mohr circle is drawn to calculate the nominal and shear stress in the three dimensional plane. Other methods used in the determination of stress include the Biot stress tensor and the Kirchhoff stress tensor (Dieter, 1989). In general the determination of stress using the graphical methods was laborious and complex, one required a lot of skills to draw these circles and determine the normal and shear stress. The method had many mathematical errors. These methods have largely been replaced by computerized material strength analysis (Marsden & Hughes1994). Current methods for the evaluation of stress include the use of software's. Software's such as AutoCAD and solid works enable engineers to have a detailed analysis of the behavior of the designed product under loading. This helps in developing products that don't fail easily. Another program that is widely used is the Finite element analysis program. It enables the graphical representation of a designed engineering component under load. References Dieter, G. (1989). Mechanical Metallurgy. New York: McGraw-Hill. Ferdinand, P. (1992). Mechanics of Materials. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional Marsden, J. & Hughes, T. (1994). Mathematical Foundations of Elasticity. New York: Dover

Exam Cheating As An Ethical Breach Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Exam Cheating As An Ethical Breach - Essay Example Is it a situation where the hunted raising their game than the hunter? One thing for sure is that exam cheating is real although the extent to which it cuts through human morality or ethical standards is what can be argued. Some people consider exam cheating as a way of survival in college and ignore any ethical breach that could be associated with it. However, a keen perception of this matter reveals otherwise. Thesis statement: Exam cheating is an indication of decay in societal morals. The manner in which the society responds to exam cheating is a manifesto that indeed there is a problem. It is possible to find someone ignoring and deeming it normal when they see a close friend or family member cheating in an exam. As long as the ‘cheater’ is away from the instructor or lecturer, they have nothing to worry about. This is because everywhere else is ‘safe’ except the surroundings of the lecturer. No one cares about the society if you cheat or not. Integrity and honesty are key principles in any society’s moral provisions. At work or business, employees are expected to show high integrity level as well as honesty (Anderman and Tamera, 133). At school the same principles apply, one is supposed to honest in every endeavor they engage in. How they are you honest when you sneak in with unwanted materials into the examination room to copy and lie to the examiner it is your own work? In the society, exam cheating is well distinguished to be a wrong action that is ethically unaccepted. Children have been socialized into knowing what is good and what is bad. It, therefore, means that the people who engage in cheating understand pretty well that they are taking unethical steps. All they do is to make what is wrong to look right. They understand that their ego would ‘eat’ them up if they never deploy a strong defense mechanism. They, therefore, have devised excuses and untrue opinions about cheating. Some call it a normal college action while others claim it is not an ethical issue or if it is then it must be very mild. How mild can it be mild when one gets a degree that is not theirs? Doesn’t it feel bad to be employed in an organization with someone’s ‘knowledge’?

Regional Attitudes and American Identity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Regional Attitudes and American Identity - Essay Example I actually agree with the findings in the article regarding this matter. The issue behind this is that the regional attitudes found in this region being related to what the American identity is. There are two interesting things that caught my attention regarding this matter. First, it might be interesting to note that the idea of the American identity in the southern states is actually very exclusive to culture of the earliest settlers of this area of the United States, specifically the settlers originating from Great Britain and those from Northern Europe. Any other cultural diversity from this would be viewed as an outsider and would not be completely or comfortably integrated. The second interesting fact is that southern states are not aware that the United States is actually composed of different ethnic groups that share land with but have different cultures. It is sad a note that the tendency for white supremacist thinking tends to swing towards discrimination and

Position Paper 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Position Paper 2 - Essay Example Therefore, it keeps friends and relatives abreast of the happenings in college through the same. The classroom is an area in which social media has a significant impact besides being the core of the higher education experience. According to Kist (2009, p.218), the Pearson Social Media Survey indicated that the lecturers use social media to some extent in their courses. One may employ social media in a classroom setting in various aspects as explained below. Marquis says that social media is majorly used in the classroom as a channel for communication between the instructor and the student. This is true and the link may be created using Facebook whereby the instructor or lecturer posts course syllabus and assignments and can even take attendance. The World Wide Web complements the lecturers’ information that students get. The internet is where students can get in touch with other learners, experts and experiences in the real world, which an individual teacher may not match. A teacher can provide additional insights by using the web to connect students to others. In addition, the teacher may express alternative points of view via the internet. This is the best way to engage students in a much deeper level with the content of the course. Often, teachers assign students work that require them to research from books and other sources to get the required information. With the internet, students can obtain information at a lower cost with regard to time. They also get information that is up-to-date, and from a wide scope. This is because topics such as education, commerce, religion, politics, or even medicine can be accessed on the internet. Thus, allowing students to access and conduct research through the internet aids their learning. As students conduct research in the internet, they also gain skills on how they too can share their own media or critique work done by others; which helps students to participate in their own knowledge of

Oreo Multiple National Corporation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Oreo Multiple National Corporation - Essay Example Oreo Multiple National Corporation Recently, the unusual has happened whereby human emotions have been used and exploited. An example of this is the emergence of sick animals on television in order to stir up emotions and winning hearts for financial support that can treat these poor animals. Children have also been used in the commercials in order to attract attention to some of the products that are being advertised. This is evidenced by the Oreo Company which uses advertising to market their product which is the cookie. Oreo Multiple National Corporation used their staff all over the world to deploy multiple television commercials, in order to capture the different cultures and languages all over the world. The objective of this act is to ensure that the same technique is not used again or repeated in some of the regions in the world. In other words it has deployed a range of Video in different languages ​​to countries that do not speak the original languages used in advertising the cookie, and thus ensure that human nature is not exploited and the people are impacted with the necessary knowledge. This method of marketing the cookie is effective especially when the peers vision how the kids enjoy the taste of Oreo. The ways in which the product is advertised pushes the children to buy the product or even makes them persuade their parents to purchase the cookie for them instead of having any other type of biscuit.

The financial impact upon Menzies Hotel Dissertation

The financial impact upon Menzies Hotel - Dissertation Example Financial Ratios 36 Financial Impact of the Takeover 38 Chapter 6: Conclusions and recommendations 42 Bibliography 45 Appendices 51 Appendix A. Ten people crimes and Organisational result 52 Appendix B. Key Issues to Address in Post-Merger Integration 53 Appendix C. Trompenaars' Theories on culture 54 Appendix D. Survey Questionnaire 55 Tables 57 Table 1.1. Financial Ratios of Menzies Hotels PLC as of January 2005 58 Table 1.2. Financial Highlights Queens Moat Hotels Ltd. as of December 2004 59 Table 2. Criteria on Interviewee Selection 60 Table 3. Summary of responses to Interviews 61 Table 4. Summary of Secondary Data on Relevant Theories 63 List of terms Acquisition: When one business takes control of another, this is known as an acquisition. Investment banks and other financial institutions often have mergers and acquisitions (M & A) departments, to provide financial and other forms of support for these activities. Some acquisitions, like Daimler Benz's of Chrysler in 1998, are disguised as a merger for political reasons. Due Diligence: An internal analysis by a lender, such as a bank, of existing debts owed by a borrower in order to identify or re-evaluate the risk; an independent analysis of the current financial state and future prospects of a company in anticipation of a major investment of venture capital or a stock-exchange flotation; a Venture Capitalist firm's examination by its lawyers and auditors of the records, accounts and any legal documents of an existing business. Four-Star hotel: Stars are used to give the traveller an indication of the very least they can expect from the hotel. A four-star hotel is fully en-suite, with a Restaurant for cooked breakfast and dinner, often smallish with 50-80 bedrooms and friendlier places to... This discussion talks that people-related risks and liabilities have a substantial effect on the acquisition value - and the price. These need to be discovered with due diligence before the deal is closed. Suggests using a 360-degree due diligence to give the buyer a complete look at value and risk.Examined benefits accruing to target shareholders in the five-year period after the combination and recommend getting paid in cash, favor investing in acquirers that use tender offers, and that stock payments be used if overpriced. Target shareholders who receive cash must buy acquirer stock. Shows three ways to determine the value of something through financial valuation: an income approach, a cost approach, or a market approach. Companies that pay attention to revenues and delivering on total return to shareholders instead of focusing exclusively on cost cutting are more successful at acquisitions. Problems with receivables can eat into the cash flow - and future revenues - of a newly fo rmed company. Buyer must ensure all supporting documentation on receivables sent as fast as possible to the new company's consolidated credit group. Should pooling of interests accounting be allowed In essence, when two firms combine, there are two methods that can be used to account for the combined value of the firm? They are the purchase method and the pooling of interests method. In most cases, they yield radically different outcomes - with pooling resulting in a much better-looking income statement for years to come.

Remote connectivity solution Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Remote connectivity solution - Essay Example On the other hand, these both issues have direct influence on workers’ efficiency as well as the company’s profits. In order to deal with these issues, a large number of technologies and tools are extensively available, and Cisco’s Virtual Office solution is one of the most excellent solutions that offers a wide variety of capabilities such as safety, administration, agility, large scale deployment IP telephony, complete tool and service suite accessibility and resiliency. In addition, Cisco’s Virtual Office offers a visible end-to-end solution that allows business workers to manage jobs remotely as if they were on-site at a business center, which ultimately leads to improved efficiency and minimizes functional costs (Cisco Systems, 2008; Davis & Dhillon, 2006; Tomur, Deregozu, & Genc, 2008; Cascio, 2000). Best Practice The Cisco technology system has developed Virtual Office to provide a solid foundation and a model for how it visualizes corporation and h ow to assist and maintain remote/distributed workers to improve efficiency, increase worker happiness, and reduce security threats along with overall corporate operational expenses. In addition, the Cisco technology community expects that this project application will openly tackle 4 major aspects of change: a site-to-site â€Å"for all time on† VPN (virtual private network) link with the client, that is completely incorporated into the business network. The implementation of this technology will facilitate with a complete variety of communication technology based systems. In this scenario, a firm can communicate via voice, transfer data, real-time communication and video collaboration services all work effectively over the systems. Moreover, these practices will offer a capability to remotely apply, handle, and implement business strategies/standards across a network of extensively dispersed remote access points, at the same time as facilitating the development of the teleco mmuting network with an effective solution to deal with security vulnerabilities (Landau, Vollath, & Chen, 2002; Cisco Systems, 2008; Tyson, 2013). Advantages The implementation of this technology renovates a number of traditional practices of a business organization. Basically, the implementation of this technology will offer a capability to remotely handle and push business policies/standards throughout a network of extensively scattered remote access points, at the same time as allowing for the development of the telecommunication network without creating new network security based issues and vulnerabilities. This solution encompasses a variety of best practices to improve the capability to offer complete visibility of the communication through remote site and remotely organized router in a way that is transparent to the end user. Additionally, these practices also offer excellent support for a wide variety of converged systems. In addition, with this solution a business organiza tion puts together IP telephony into the remote site/home. This offers the capability in "single-number reach-ability," with workers having the same phone number at the business desk and in the home office, which results in less additions and telephony\ accounts to handle and considerably lower

All human interaction Essay Example for Free

All human interaction Essay All human interaction is powerplay. How is powerplay represented in Antigone? Powerplay involves the complex struggle and manipulation for authority and dominance between opposing ideologies. Several diverse forms of powerplay through human interaction are experienced, however power is a tortuous process to attain and retain due to its tangible and allusive nature. Sophocles Antigone delves into this convoluted interplay of powers through investigating the relationship between political and personal power. Not only does Antigone explore the consequences when divine power is challenged, but also when state law and male authority are challenged. Thus the texts utilisation of powerplay through human interaction enhances its intricate nature. Antigones act of defiance to Creons edict is due to her belief that man-made laws are inferior to the unwritten laws of God, whereas Creon views that an enemy of state is not deserving of an honourable burial. This powerplay is primarily a conflict of point of view between Creon and Antigone arising directly from their differing values, perspectives and personalities. Creon, who values to establish his reign of power after an acrimonious battle between the two brothers vying for political control, depicts a politic and pragmatic attitude. He believes that he is restoring stability and peace to his kingdom by establishing such an inhumane law. He also reinforces his view to not give equal honour to good and bad which portrays Creon nature to reward the loyalty and punish the rebellion. Furthermore, Creon contends that he must appear to be a powerful and tenable leader of Thebes. He explains to Haemon that letting Antigone go with impunity for defying his laws would make him a traitor as stated in How if I tolerate a traitor at home, shall I rule those abroad? . This is ironic as Creon himself develops into a traitor since he refuses to comply with divine law. Antigone however values to abide higher law as she has the duty to the dead to bury them, keeping with divine law. She believes that as a sister, she has the duty to bury her family members regardless of the laws that are implemented against it. The citizens of Thebes create powerplay in support of her perception that divine law overrules Creons decree. For example, Haemon expresses that Antigones action is noble in Know how the people mourn this maiden doomed for noblest deeds to die the worst of deaths. Antigone moreover yearns for a noble death to compensate her history of misfortunes as she alliterates in The weird of Oedipus, a world of woes! . Her own initiative of a noble death is ironic as she is incapable of maintaining her composure and reveals her human frailties resulting in her suicidal. Through Creons and Antigones differing views on political power, their conflict of values and beliefs represents powerplay in the tragedy. Sophocles conveys in Antigone the inherently destructive nature to the wielders of power signifying that those who play with power will ultimately lose all power. Creon rules by trepidation in a despotic manner and also by pride in his power, which will not allow him to acquiesce resulting in dire consequences. He firmly believes that his actions are moral contradicting the divine laws of the gods who honour the dead. Teiresias points out that Creon commits an atrocious sin by condemning a living human being to death inside a grave, as he keeps a rotting boy in daylight. Creons actions against Antigone and Polyneices body demonstrate his attempts in inverting the order of nature, defying the gods through the assertion of his political power. Haemon challenges Creons parental power by confrontment on his rational decision of Antigones fate. He uses metaphoric language in See how the trees beside a stream in flood sae, if they yield to force, each spray unharmed, but by resisting perish root and branch, to compare Creons kingly authority to a tree representing how he governs his kingdom. Haemon advises that even though his decisions were for the good of the people, in the end his obstinate and unyielding nature towards Antigone will perish him. Creons ignorance to these confrontments is symbolic of his blindness to the catastrophic events he was creating, thus losing all power over controlling his fate. Antigone creates powerplay in her confrontation with Creon as she attempts to use her power to prevail over his male and kingly authorities. Her determination and courage derives from her belief that she did not commit a crime. She declares that the laws of the state are not binding as they have been laid down by a man and men are not infallible. Antigones statement is a direct challenge to male dominance and Creons political power, showing her critical involvement in the powerplay.

Political Communication Concepts

Political Communication Concepts The term political communication has proved to be continually difficult to define with any decisions since both components of the phrase are open to a variety definitions, more or less broad. Communication is and always been a central component in political processes whether it is leaders communicating with the public, candidates competing for votes, combatants struggling for international attention and sympathy, or citizens debating public issues  [1]  . Classic definition of political communication focus on the source and motivation, political communication flows out from the political sphere and must have a political aims. Nevertheless, such definition would not be completely suitable for many of modern sate, particularly given the role of media. Therefore modern texts focus on three on three actors, some of whom operate beyond the boundaries of any singe state, each of whom produce political communication  [2]  . These are: the political sphere itself (they communicate their actions to the society in order to gain legitimacy), secondly non-state actors where we would include a range of organizations with political motivations as well as corporate bodies and the voters  [3]  . Each of these actors communicate message into the political sphere, in hope of having an influence on public life. Finally media which communicate about politics, and influence both: the public as well as political scene. Within the free and pluralis tic societies each of these communicates independently in the same time cooperates with one another. Denton and Woodrow for example provide one definition of political communication as: Pure discussion about the allocations of public resources, official authority, and official sanctions  [4]  . Above definition covers verbal and written political rhetoric, but not symbolic communicates acts, that are extremely important for an understanding of the political process as a whole. The American writer Doris Graber develops a more wide-spread definition of what she terms political language, suggesting that it compromises not only rhetoric but paralinguistic signs such as: body language, and political acts such as boycotts and protests  [5]  . It is necessary to characterize the political communication also through the terms of intension of its senders to influence the political environment. According to Brian McNairn the intentionality of political communication should be simply defined as purposeful communication about politics  [6]  . The scope of such a definition includes: Forms of communication undertaken by political dissidents for the purpose of achieving specific objectives; Communication that is addressed to these actors by non-politicians ( citizens, journalists, and so on); Communication about these actors and their actions, which are contained in the various forms of media. In this case we cannot explore only verbal or written statements, but also visual means of signification (dress, haircut, make-up, outfit) that constitute a political image. The scope of political communication: The problem of political communications directs the attention towards the relationship between three main elements of it by which political communication is initiated and achieved : Political organizations (definition of it) they may seek to do this by attaining institutional, to influence the decision-making process The audience The media Non- elective organisations: Pressure groups, bussines sector, public organistains, terrorist groups Elective political officials : president, prime minister, national and local government, political parties Media (broadcast and print) Public citizens and voters Source: Key concepts in political communication. How communications is made may vary and how audible the message is can be upon the size of any group or level of support for a party, group or cause and the tactics used to get the messages across. In a pluralistic society all groups will communicate among themselves and between one another and will be both learning from and competing with one another. The greater the number of voices competing, the more intense the competition, the better communication groups must be in order to be heard. Thus, we hear about professionalization of political communication, that it has become better in some way in order to be heard by more groups and individuals. The process by which political communication is carried out has evolved, become more technically and technologically sophisticated. (6) and adopted techniques from the world of corporate advertising and marketing in order to compete in the modern information-rich society. Previously form of direct or non-mediated political communication involved public meetings in church halls, cinemas and other places, political campaigns. Such meetings are now few and mainly limited to countries where technology does not allow for the message to be directly to homes  [7]  . Largely, political communication has become an activity aimed at a mass audience using the mass media of television. Direct political communication has become less of a feature in recent elections. As communication technology allowed mass communication, this phenomenon increasingly changed. Mass media not only chose what to broadcast as news but also pick the way it portrays groups in society. Political communication has then moved from being a direct, personal, face to face activity to being conducted indirectly via the mass media of mass communication  [8]  . Changes in communication technology inevitably have a significant influence in all of these areas. The ability to predict the direction, forms, intensity of them is very limited. Consider the example of the proliferation of the internet, that is one of the most spectacular technological developments of the last decades, the internet first represented the revolution for democracy. Citizens and groups have greater access t o political information than ever before which in turn rises the ability to distribute information, views, images, and sounds around the worldà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ Everyone with a computer can become a mass medium  [9]  . The three ages in political communication Blumler and Kavanaugh 1999- the first age took place before the start of television when the primary communication channels were strong and stable political institutions such as political parties. In the second age focus shifted to passing on messages through the mass media and increased the demand for communication professionals who were adept at exploiting these channels. In the third still emerging, age of media, the professionalization of political communication becomes even more pronounced. Political actors find themselves attempting to send messages through the multitude of channels of each of which has its own set of demands and formats,

Effect of the Marketing Environment on Company Strategy

Effect of the Marketing Environment on Company Strategy I . INTRO Economics today has a term of market environment which involves points and impacts permitting a business to create sucessful relationship with customers as well as to keep it lasting longer. The market enviroment can be categorized into two levels: micro and macro. The first one refers to small impacts in the business with the affection of serving the company customers, whereas the second one has larger societial impacts on the mirco environment. As a result, both of them differ from many points. The organizations, suppliers, customers market,and the intermediaries and competitors are concerned in the micro environment. On the contrary, the Macro environment involves such factors as Demographic, natural, technological, cultural, political, and economics effects. However, these can be altered by the variety of many kinds of companies. All companies are affected by macro environmental factors which form chances and threats in the business environment. Such elements often leaving a mark on long – term strategic management, or even the goals of a firm as prior research and innovation, political stability changes or cultural framework are difinited as macro factors. An environmental analysis are used for look for the existing macro impacts and potential chances carefully by most strategic management modals. Moreover, a situation analysis assess the impacts related to internal factors, for the purpose of forming an separate firm’s restrictions and competitiveness. In contrast, Micro economics has the environmental factors which is less popular than the Maro, only resulting in a particular sector of companies or industry. They can be listed as competition, suppliers, customer, and labour and competition. To understand the micro environment, the firms apply the â€Å"Porter’s Five Forces† sample as an industrial analysis. This makes management strategy more powerful to against alters in micro factors because those can have a strong impact on the entire industry. 2. External Environment analysis 2.1. Macro Environment 2.1.1. Political and Legislation Developments in political and legal field greatly affect the marketing decisions. sound marketing decision cannot be taken without taking into account, the government agencies, political party in power and in opposition their ideologies, pressuregroups, and laws of the land. These variables create tremendous pressures on marketing management. Laws affect production capacity, capability, product design, pricing and promotion. Government in almost all the country intervenes in marketing process irrespective of their political ideologies. The political environment consists of laws, government agencies, and pressure groups with the power to influence or limit the behavior of individuals and organizations in a given society. Changes within the political and legal arena can affect business. Therefore, it is important for marketers to understand public policy and legislation, and the implications presented for business and marketing. Legislation can encourage or discourage competition, and it can ensure (or not) fair markets for goods and services. Political corruption can influence marketing success or failure. Over the years, legislation affecting business around the world has increased steadily. Companies must be aware of changes in the political and legal environment so that decision-making can respond to the current political climate, and so that the firm can make any needed adjustments in corporate marketing policy. In addition to legislation, marketers must understand that many consumer groups are now watching the political and legal landscape as it relates to business, to ensure that business is government by social codes and rules of professional ethics. To demonstratetheirsocial responsibility and build more positive images, many companies are now linking themselves to worthwhile causes. Legislation from the government can affect markets through the organizations and consumers. Some marketers simply adjust to these political forces. Others try to influence political decisions by supporting politicians that can positively affect them . Industrial Relations laws affecting agreements between organizations and employees. Federal laws and regulation agencies affect marketing activities and decisions. Laws such as the Trade Practices Act and the Privacy Act set rules, which organizations must abide by or risk suffering penalties and / or punishment. These laws can be enforced by regulatory agencies who also assist in directing rules and regulations. 2.1.2. Economy The economic environment consists of macro-level factors related to means of production and distribution that have an impact on the business of an organization. Factors within the national and international economic environment can have a resounding effect on consumer purchasing power and spending patterns. Major U. S. economic trends include: Personal consumption and personal debt, both of which have risen Effects of credit trends and interest rates on buying Unemployment and recession forcing consumers to be more careful as shoppers Effects/expectations related to value marketing and value-conscious consumers Income distribution skewed positively toward the rich; prosperity not evenly distributed among classes An important factor affecting the short- and long-term economic outlook in the U.S. is prolonged periods of unemployment. Unemployment can exert marked and far-reaching effects on any economy. When millions of people are unemployed, there is less money for spending that can lift the economy. When spending is down, sales taxes will be down as well, further handicapping the economic outlook. Unemployed people, also, tend to cut out buying items they simply want while cutting down on things they need to survive. Consumers spending less money leads to businesses having to cut prices, which lessens revenue, leading to more unemploymentat best, and to merchants going out of businessat worst. In addition, the unemployed may have to use or even drain retirement savings. When income tax revenue is down, the government may have to borrow money, or cut back on spending on needed programs. At the same time, more is being spent to pay unemployment benefits, and to provide food and medicaid assistance. The social costs to individuals include erosion of work skills at the same time that society is being deprived of a lot of good talent. Uninsured individuals also face worsening physical health, leading to shortened life spans. 2.1.3. Socio-cultural This concept has crept into marketing literature as an alternative to the marketing concept. The social forces attempt to make the marketing socially responsible. It means that the business firms should take a lead in eliminating socially harmful products and produce only what is beneficial to the society. These are numbers of pressure groups in the society who impose restrictions on the marketing process. The socio-cultural environment is made up of institutions and other forces that affect a society’s basic values, attitudes, perceptions, preferences, and behaviors. People grow up in a particular society that shapes their basic beliefs and values, helping to establish beliefs and expectations related to how people should behave. Marketers often segment consumer target audiences for products and services based on cultural values. The overriding beliefs and attitudes of a society can change over a period of time due to different environmental factors. Some of these factors might include such things as changing ethnic/racial mix of the population, more widespread acceptance and occurrence of single-parent families, and more consumers beginning to desire simpler, more meaningful lives. Businesses must be able to identify important trends that are driven by the macro environment. They must understand the need to embrace widespread environmental changes and learn how to use them to their advantage. At the same time, marketing management must know and understand macro-level environmental issues and concerns as well, to be able to use them to predict (with a great degree of accuracy) their possible immediate and long-term impact on consumers buyer behavior. 2.1.4. Technology The technological environment covers all stuff that used for producing goods and services.Technology shapes our destiny dramatically. It changes the communication way of consumers and marketers. New markets and chances are created by new technologies which also replace itself. Thus, it is true that many old industries are got rid of nowadays. Marketrs must pay special attentions on technologial trends to predict impacts/influences on consumers.. 2.2. Micro Environment 2.2.1. Customers Customers of an organization can be varied from one to various markets. Three first common type of market are consumer, business and reseller markets. The first one includes persons and households that consume goods and services personally. The second refers to those who buying good and services for further procession or for use in their production process. The last one is for the aim of profitable reselling. Besides, government market is the term used for illustrating the agencies the buy goods and services to produce public services or transfer those to needed others. Last but not least, those buyers who are consmers, producers, resellers, and governments in other contries also form an international market. 2.2.2. Suppliers Suppliers mean someone providing the needed resources to a firm to produce products or services. They plays a critically important role in lasting firm’s life. Without suppliers, no value is created and delivered to customers. Supply availability is the most noticable factor for marketing companies. Since the suppliers are partners in producing and transfering customer value, the firms have to put pricing trends under their consideration. Those can range from material suppliers to energy suppliers or even suppliers of labour and capital. That means they can vary its competitive position and marketing capabilities. The association between suppliers and the firm may be a perfect example of a strong equation that depends on the industry condition and the the extent to their each other dependence. There are some cases in which the bargaining strength of the suppliers may increase critically. For instance, when the seller company is unique or it supplies important inputs , the choices of buyer company are restricted. Consequently, the seller business strength reachs maximum level. 2.2.3. Financial Institutions The aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis witnessed a surge on the discussion of  financial stability issues. In some countries the focus of the debate is on the role of the  shadow financial system, its relationship with banks, and the regulatory and  supervisory failure to address the problem of regulatory arbitrage. In Europe, the main  concerns lies on the lack of a European safety net, mainly due to the absence of a  European lender of last resort. In emerging countries, however, the discussion is  centered around the impact of the crisis on the volatility of capital flows and the  architecture of the international financial system. Though some of the phenomena  underlying the origins and depth of the financial crisis were either new or located in  new instruments and markets, most of the issues that were raised during this episode  can be traced back to the first financial crisis of the world. In the following lines, we  develop the argument that e ven though financial stability concerns are as old as  financial systems, and despite some of the main lessons of the recent crisis look pretty  much alike the lessons of several financial episodes of the past (to which many  jurisdictions have already reacted), there are good reasons to highten our concern with  financial stability. 2.2.4. Government Agencies Government agencies’ demands often exceed the needs of a firm’s customer. The government can play numerous roles as stakeholder such as receiving taxation revenue from commercial institutes, getting them to be responsible from the public sector, and achieving many economic and social goals. 2.2.5. Competitors Market combines a veriety of competitors. Most companies have to be run sucessfully to take a strategic advantage. Marketing planners are forced to decide the best way to powerfully site the firm’s products and services againts that of competitors. To do that the marketers need put the company’s size and standing into their consideration. What’s more, making differences and keeping them up is a core of any problems so the firm should analyze and check for its competitor carefully. Those are never enough for success. Besides, according to Philip Kotler, the company must create customer value and satisfaction greater than that of its competitors. Hence, markets’ role is more complicated instead of adapting the customers’ needs. The companies must make up their offerings to be greater in customers’ minds than its competiors can do. In the end, competition game never end. In fact, business organizations always compete in both direct and indirect ways. 3. Conclusion In this assignment I have tried to figure out what marketing environment is and does marketing environment really affect the company strategy. Basically Marketing environment is divided into Micro-environment and Macro-environment. Micro-environment influences may demand urgent attention, but Macro-environment influences can have a more profound long-term effect on an organization’s marketing. Marketing environment gives us lot of opportunities as well as we have got lots of threat. It’s true that marketing has got both option but I think that every organization has got a lot to do with marketing environment because every giant and vital companies knows the vital importance of their marketing research and intelligence to watch and adopt the changing marketing environment. The question is what happens to those companies who don’t realize the importance of marketing environment? It’s so simple you can see IBM and General Motors they ignored the environmental changes and now they are in crises. Actually marketing environment takes place with a board system of economic, social and technology relationships. In marketing environment a firm creates its value through interaction with other individuals and organization to make up marketing environment. You can’t divide marketing environment into distinct areas .A good firms seeks to understand the complex linkage between different parts of marketing environment. Marketing environment is acting as a pillar for the organization and if somebody neglect the importance of marketing environment it quite hard for that organization to sustain in market. So in my assignment I have tried to analyze that on what ground marketing environment is based and what effect it has got on an organization .

The west :: essays papers

The west The West was a form of society rather than an area. It is the term applied to the region whose social conditions result from the application of older institutions and ideas to the transforming influences of free land. By this application, a new environment is suddenly entered, freedom of opportunity is opened, the cake of custom is broken, and new activities, new lines of growth, new institutions and new ideals, are brought into existence. The wilderness disappears, the "West" proper passes on to a new frontier and, in the former area, and a new society has emerged from this contact with the backwoods. Gradually this society loses its primitive conditions, and assimilates itself to the type of the older social conditions of the East; but it bears within it enduring and distinguishing survivals of its frontier experience. Decade after decade, West after West, this rebirth of American society had gone on, and left its traces behind it, which reacted on the East. The history of our political institutions, our democracy, is not a history of imitation, of simple borrowing; it is a history of the evolution and adaptation of organs in response to changed environment, a history of the origin of new political species. In this sense, therefore, the West has been a constructive force of the highest significance in our life. The West, as a phase of social organization, began with the Atlantic coast, and passed across the continent. But the colonial tidewater area was in close touch with the Old World, and soon lost its Western aspects. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the newer social conditions appeared along the upper waters of the tributaries of the Atlantic. Here it was that the West took on its distinguishing features, and transmitted frontier traits and ideals to this area in later days. On the coast were the fishermen and skippers, the merchants and planters, with eyes turned toward Europe. Beyond the falls of the rivers were the pioneer farmers, largely of non-English stock, Scotch-Irish and German. They constituted a distinct people, and may be regarded as an expansion of the social and economic life of the middle region into the backcountry of the South. These frontiersmen were the ancestors of Boone, Andrew Jackson, Calhoun, Clay, and Lincoln. Washington and Jefferson were profoundly a ffected by these frontier conditions. The forest clearings have been the seed plots of American character.

Libertarianism Essays -- essays research papers

For centuries philosophers have debated over the presence of free will. As a result of these often-heated arguments, many factions have evolved, the two most prominent being the schools of Libertarianism and of Determinism. Within these two schools of thought lies another debate, that of compatibilism, or whether or not the two believes can co-exist. In his essay, Has the Self â€Å"Free Will†?, C.A. Campbell, a staunch non-compatiblist and libertarian, attempts to explain the Libertarian argument.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To achieve this, Campbell first sets out the two pre-suppositions necessary to the Libertarian argument. Firstly, he defines which kind of freedom he is discussing when he speaks of free will. Campbell characterizes â€Å"the freedom at issue† as one that predominantly concerns a person’s inner acts and decisions (377). A person’s observable acts are important only as they show an inner â€Å"life of choice†(377). Therefore the moral freedom assumed is that freedom which concerns inner acts. The second, and more complicated, of Campbell’s requirements is to define what constitutes a â€Å"free act.† There are two parts to this definition. The first necessitates â€Å"that the act must be one of which the person judged can be regarded as the sole author† (378). This point raises the question of how one can determine authorship. For certainly â€Å"the raw material of impulses and capacities that constitute [one’s] hereditary endowment† cannot be determined by the individual and surely have an impact on his inner acts (378). Further, the individual cannot control â€Å"the material and social environment in which he is destined to live† and these factors must influence his inner acts as well (378). Campbell allows that, while these aspects do have an impact on one’s inner acts, people in general â€Å"make allowances† for them, and still feel morally responsible for one’s self (378). In other words, one recogni zes the effects of hereditary and environment on his inner acts, but acknowledges that his self can and should still be held morally responsible, as it can overcome these factors. Thus, Campbell claims, sole authorship of an act is possible. The second part of this definition of a â€Å"free act† requires that one could have acted otherwise because one could have chosen otherwise (380). With this final presupposition, Campbell states that an act is a free act if and only if... ...† in that it is a â€Å"creative act of moral decision† and is only significant from the inner standpoint (387/389)). With these criticisms dispelled, Campbell can finally claim Libertarianism as the leading philosophical viewpoint. With Campbell’s argument entirely laid out, the final question remains: is it sound? Based on the premises of his arguments as I see them, I believe I am safe in saying that yes, his argument is sound. Campbell has explained his premises clearly enough to persuade me into his manner of thinking. The only threat to his argument that I see lies in the his rebuttal of the meaninglessness criticism. I feel that he did not respond to this critique head on. Campbell claims that only the person making the moral choice can be aware of the reasons he made that choice. He, also, claimed that even a Determinist placed in a position of moral choice, has to be aware of his freedom of decision, but, if that is true, how do the advocates of meaninglessness fail to see the reason behind the choices they have made? This is the only point I am aware of that can jeopardize the soundness of Campbell’s argument. If he can explain this, he will have made a libertarian out of me.

The Tale of Troy :: essays research papers

Book Report The Tale of Troy was written by Padraic Colum, it has 132 pages, and takes place in the ancient islands of Greece. The Tale of Troy is a fiction story. Even though Athena and Poseidon helped the Greeks during the Trojan War, Athena turns against the Greeks and convinces Poseidon to do the same. The Greeks are hit by storms on the way home and many ships are destroyed and the fleet is scattered. The war and his troubles at sea keep Odysseus away from Ithaka, for twenty years. While he was gone, his son, Telemachus, has grown into a man, and his wife, Penelope, is overwhelmed by wooers who think Odysseus is dead. While Poseidon is away from Olympus, Penelope convinces the other gods to help Odysseus return home. In disguise in Ithaka, she convinces Telemachus to look for his father. Telemachus goes to Pylos and finds out that Odysseus is being held prisoner by Calypso. Zeus orders that Odysseus be allowed to go home so he leaves on a raft. When he is almost home, Poseidon sees him and sends a storm that sinks his raft. Ino helps Odysseus by giving him her veil which protects him from any harm in the water. After two days of swimming, Odysseus reaches the Phaeacians and their kind king, Alcinoà ¼s. The king’s daughter, Nausicaà ¤, finds Odysseus and takes him to the king. Odysseus tells how he and his crew first saw the Lotus-Eaters, then they docked in front of a cave to search for food. There is wine, food, and pens full of sheep in the cave, but the cave’s owner, the giant Cyclops Polyphemus, comes back and seals the cave with a giant boulder. Odysseus planned to escape by giving Polyphemus wine until he passed out. The men poke out the monster’s only eye. Polyphemus can’t find the men and finally rolls the boulder that was blocking the cave and puts his arms in front of it to catch the men as they try to run outside. Odysseus thought Polyphemus might do this so they hang onto the undersides of the sheep as they go out to pasture. When the men passed the entrance, Polyphemus felt only the sheep’s backs and the men escaped. Aeolus, the keeper of the Winds, gave Odysseus a le ather sack that holds all the storm winds as a gift. Odysseus can sail home safely as long as he keeps the bag closed, but his crew opened the bag, that started a storm that blew them to the land of the Laestrygons, cannibals who destroy every ship in the fleet except one.

Key Success Factors for Online Advertising

Social Advertising Catherine Tucker? February 15, 2012 Abstract In social advertising, ads are targeted based on underlying social networks and their content is tailored with information that pertains to the social relationship. This paper explores the e? ectiveness of social advertising using data from ? eld tests of di? erent ads on Facebook. We ? nd evidence that social advertising is e? ective, and that this e? cacy seems to stem mainly from the ability of targeting based on social networks to uncover similarly responsive consumers.However, social advertising is less e? ective if the advertiser explicitly states they are trying to promote social in? uence in the text of their ad. This suggests that advertisers must avoid being overt in their attempts to exploit social networks in their advertising. Catherine Tucker is Associate Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA. and Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER. Thank-you to Google for ? nancial suppor t and to an anonymous non-pro? t for their cooperation.Thank-you to Jon Baker, Ann Kronrod, Preston Mcafee, and seminar participants at the George Mason University Roundtable on the Law and Economics of Internet Search, the University of Rochester, UCLA and Wharton for valuable comments. All errors are my own. ? 1 Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn. com/abstract=1975897 1 Introduction Recent advances on the internet have allowed consumers to interact across digital social networks. This is taking place at unprecedented levels: Facebook was the most visited website in the US in 2010, accounting for 20% of all time spent on the internet, a higher proportion than Google or Yahoo! ComScore, 2011). However, it is striking that traditional marketing communications have been at the periphery of this explosion of social data despite the documented power of social in? uence on purchasing behavior. Much of the emphasis on marketing in social media, so far, has been on the achievement o f ‘earned reach,’ whereby a brand builds its subscriber base organically and also hopes that this will in? uence others organically through sharing links with their social networks (Corcoran, 2009). However, recent research by Bakshy et al. 2011) has emphasized that this kind of organic sharing is far rarer than previously supposed, and that there are very few examples of a commercial message being consistently transmitted across social networks. Further, Tucker (2011a) shows that in order to achieve virality, an advertiser may have to sacri? ce the commercial e? ectiveness of their message. This means that advertisers may need to use paid advertising to facilitate the sharing of their commercial message through social networks. Both Facebook and LinkedIn have recently introduced a new form of advertising called ‘social advertising. A social ad is an online ad that ‘incorporates user interactions that the consumer has agreed to display and be shared. The res ulting ad displays these interactions along with the user’s persona (picture and/or name) within the ad content’ (IAB, 2009). This represents a radical technological development for advertisers, because it means that potentially they can co-opt the power of an individual’s social network to target advertising and engage their audience. This paper asks whether social advertising is e? ective, and what active steps advertisers themselves should take in their ads to promote social in? ence. 2 Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn. com/abstract=1975897 We explore the e? ectiveness of social ads using data from a ? eld experiment conducted on Facebook by a non-pro? t. This ? eld experiment compared the performance of social ads with conventionally targeted and untargeted ads. The social ads were targeted to the friends of ‘fans’ of the charity on Facebook. The ads featured that fan’s name and the fact that they had become a fan of this charity . We ? nd that on average these social ads were more e? ective than demographically targeted or untargeted ads.Further, this technique is useful for improving both the performance of demographically targeted and untargeted campaigns. Comparing the performance of these ads that contained the name of the fan and were targeted towards the fan’s friends with those that were simply targeted to that fan’s friends suggests that their e? ectiveness stems predominantly from the ability of social targeting to uncover similarly responsive consumers. We present results that suggest that as well as being more e? ective at gathering clicks, social advertising is also more e? ective at promoting actual subscriptions to the newsfeed and is more cost-e? ctive. We then turn to investigate how advertisers should word their social advertising. Through randomized ? eld tests, we investigate the e? ectiveness of advertisers deliberately promoting social in? uence in their advertising copy t hrough including a statement that encourages the viewer to, for example, ‘be like their friend. ’ We ? nd that consumers reject attempts by advertisers to explicitly harness or refer to a friend’s actions in their ad copy. This result contrasts with previous empirical research that ? nds consistent bene? ts to ? rms from highlighting previous consumer actions to positively in? ence the consumers’ response (Algesheimer et al. , 2010; Tucker and Zhang, 2011). This rejection is reasonably uniform across di? erent wording, though slightly less severe for ads that make a less explicit reference to friendship. We then present additional evidence to rule out two potential explanations for our ? ndings. First, we rule out that the overt mention of social in? uence simply made people aware they were seeing an ad rather than something organic to the site. We do this by comparing an ad that states it is an ad with an ad that does not, and ? nding no di? rence. 3 Seco nd, to investigate whether it was simply bad advertising copy, we examined how the ads perform for a group of Facebook users who have shown a visible propensity for social in? uence. We identify such users by whether or not they have a stated attachment to a ‘Fashion Brand’ on their Facebook pro? le. These users, in contrast to our earlier results, react more positively to the advertiser explicitly co-opting social in? uence than to a message that did not. This suggests that it was not simply that the message was badly communicated, but instead re? cts a taste (or more accurately distaste) for explicit references to social in? uence among most, though not all, consumers. This research builds on a literature that has studied the interplay between social networks and word of mouth. Zubcsek and Sarvary (2011) present a theoretical model that examines the e? ects of advertising to a social network, but assume that a ? rm cannot directly use the social network for marketing purposes. Instead, ? rms have to rely on consumers to organically pass their advertising message within the social networks. There has been little work on advertising in social networks.Previous studies in marketing about social network sites have questioned how such sites can use advertising to obtain members (Trusov et al. , 2009), and also how makers of applications designed to be used on social network sites can best advertise their products (Aral and Walker, 2011) through viral marketing. Hill et al. (2006) show that phone communications data can be used to predict who is more likely to adopt a service, Bagherjeiran et al. (2010) present a practical application where they use data from instant messaging logs at Yahoo! to improve online advertising targeting, and similarly Provost et al. 2009) show how to use browsing data to match groups of users who are socially similar. Tucker (2011b) explores how privacy controls mediate the e? ectiveness of advertising on Facebook. However, to our knowledge this is the ? rst academic study of the e? ectiveness of social advertising. Managerially, our results have important implications. Social advertising and the use of online social networks is e? ective. However, when advertisers attempt to reinforce this social 4 in? uence in ad copy, consumers appear less likely to respond positively to the ad. This is, to our knowledge, the ? st piece of empirical support for emerging managerial theories that emphasize the need for ? rms to not appear too obviously commercial when exploiting social media (Gossieaux and Moran, 2010). 5 2 Field Experiment The ? eld experiment was run by a small non-pro? t that provides educational scholarships for girls to attend high school in East Africa. Without the intervention of this non-pro? t, and other non-pro? ts like them, girls do not attend secondary school because their families prioritize the education of sons. Though the non-pro? t’s main mission is funding these educational scholarships, the non-pro? has a secondary mission which is to inform young people in the US about the state of education for African girls. It was in aid of this secondary mission that the non-pro? t set up a Facebook page. This page serves as a repository of interviews with girls where they describe the challenges they have faced. To launch the ? eld experiment, the non-pro? t followed the procedure described in ‘A/B Testing your Facebook Ads: Getting better results through experimentation’ (Facebook, 2010) which involved setting up multiple competing campaigns. These ad campaigns was targeted to three di? erent groups as shown in Table 1. The ? st group was a broad untargeted campaign for all Facebook users aged 18 and older in the US. The second group were people who had already expressed interest in other charities. These people were identi? ed using Facebook’s ‘broad category targeting’ of ‘Charity + Causes. ’ The third group were people who had already expressed an interest in ‘Education + Teaching. ’ Previously, the charity had tried such reasonably broad targeting with little success and was hopeful that social advertising would improve the ads’ performance (Tucker, 2011b). In all cases, the charity explicitly excluded current fans from seeing its ads.For each of these groups of Facebook users, the non-pro? t launched a socially targeted variant. These ads employed the Facebook ad option that meant that they were targeted only to users who were friends of existing fans of the charity. This also meant that when the fan had not opted-out on Facebook, the ad also displayed a ‘social endorsement’ where the name of the friend was shown at the bottom of the ad as shown in Figure 1. 6 Table 1: Di? erent Groups Targeted Condition Untargeted Baseline: Only Shown Baseline text All people in US over age of 18 who are not fans of the non-pro? t already.All people in US over age of 18 w ho state a? nity with charities on their Facebook pro? le who are not fans of the non-pro? t already. All people in US over age of 18 who state a? nity with education on their Facebook pro? le who are not fans of the non-pro? t already. Social Variant: Shown all 5 texts from Table 2 All people in US over age of 18 who are friends of the non-pro? t’s supporters who are not fans of the non-pro? t already. All people in US over age of 18 who state a? nity with charities on their Facebook pro? le who are friends of the non-pro? t’s supporters who are not fans of the nonpro? already. All people in US over age of 18 who state a? nity with education on their Facebook pro? le who are friends of the non-pro? t’s supporters who are not fans of the nonpro? t already. Charity Education The non-pro? t varied whether the campaign was demographically targeted and whether the campaign was socially targeted, and also explored di? erent ad-text conditions. Table 2 describes the d i? erent ad-copy for each condition. Each di? erent type of ad-copy was accompanied by the same picture of an appealing secondary-school student who had bene? ted from their program.The socially targeted ads displayed all ? ve variants of the advertising message depicted in Table 2. For each of the non-socially-targeted campaigns, we ran the baseline variant of the ad text which, as shown in Table 2, simply says ‘Help girls in East Africa change their lives through education. ’ The non-pro? t could not run the other four conditions that refer to others’ actions, because federal regulations require ads to be truthful and they did not want to mislead potential supporters. The di? erent ad conditions were broadly designed to cover the kinds of normative and informational social in? ence described by Deutsch and Gerard (1955); Burnkrant and Cousineau (1975). 1 We want to be clear that we do not argue that these advertising measures 1 Other forms of social in? uence s tudied in the literature involve network externalities where there is a performance bene? t to multiple people adopting (Tucker, 2008). However, that does not seem to be relevant 7 Table 2: Di? erent Ad-Text Conditions Condition Baseline Be like your friend Ad-Text Help girls in East Africa change their lives through education. Be like your friend.Help girls in East Africa change their lives through education. Don’t be left out. Help girls in East Africa change their lives through education. Your friend knows this is a good cause. Help girls in East Africa change their lives through education. Learn from your friend. Help girls in East Africa change their lives through education. Don’t be left out. Your friend knows Learn from your friend. capture all types of social in? uence or are necessarily successful at distinguishing between the di? erent types of social in? uence that are possible. The literature on social in? ence has emphasized that the underlying mechanism i s nuanced and complex. Obviously, di? erent types of social in? uence relate and interact in ways that cannot be teased apart simply with di? erent wording. However, the variation in messages does allow us to study whether explicit advertising messages that attempt to use di? erent types of wording to evoke social in? uence are e? ective in general. Figure 1: Sample Ad Figure 1 displays an anonymized sample ad for a social ad in the ‘be like your friend’ condition. The blacked-out top of the ad contained the non-pro? t’s name. The grayedhere. out bottom of the ad contained a supporter’s name, who had ‘liked’ the charity and was a Facebook friend of the person who was being advertised to. It is only with developments in technology and the development of automated algorithms that such individualized display of the friend’s name when pertinent is possible. Table 3 describes the demographics of the roughly 1,500 fans at the beginning of the campaign. Though the initial fans were reasonably spread out across di? erent age cohorts, they were more female than the average population, which makes sense given the nature of the charity.At the end of the experiment, the fans were slightly more likely to be male than before. The way that Facebook reports data means that we have access to the demographics only of the fans of the charity, not of those who were advertised to. Table 3: Demographics of the non-pro? t’s fans before and after the ? eld experiment Age 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55+ Total Before Male 5 5 6 3 3 22 Experiment After Experiment Female Male Female 13 8 14 14 6 14 17 6 16 13 3 13 10 4 10 67 27 67 The ‘Total’ row does not add up to 100% because fans who are below 18 years of age are omitted. 9 3 DataThe data that Facebook shares with advertisers is both anonymous and aggregate. This means that we cannot trace the e? ects of social advertising on the friends of any one individual. It also mean s that we cannot examine heterogeneity in the degrees of in? uence across individuals, as is studied, for example, by Godes and Mayzlin (2009) in their study of o? ine ? rm-sponsored communications. However, given that the central research question of the study is whether, on average, di? erent types of social advertising are more e? ective, the aggregate nature of the data is su? cient.Table 4 reports daily summary statistics for the campaigns in our data. Over a 5-week period, there were 630 observations. There were 18 campaigns in total that consisted of a) The three baseline conditions that were demographically targeted to everyone, charity-lovers and education-supporters and used the baseline text, and b) The ? fteen social ad conditions that had all the ? ve di? erent types of text, and socially targeted separately to everyone, charity-lovers and education-supporters. Table A2 in the appendix provides a summary of these campaigns. Table 4: Summary Statistics Mean Std Dev Min M ax Average Impressions 13815. 13898. 6 1 98037 Average Clicks 5. 06 5. 17 0 37 Connections 2. 70 3. 52 0 24 Unique Clicks 5. 04 5. 14 0 36 Daily Click Rate 0. 11 0. 10 0 1. 27 Impression Click Rate 0. 045 0. 047 0 0. 50 Cost Per Click (USD) 0. 98 0. 40 0. 31 3. 90 Cost Per 1000 views (USD) 0. 52 1. 37 0 24. 5 Ad-Reach 6165. 7 6185. 0 1 60981 Frequency 2. 32 0. 82 1 9. 70 18 ad variants at the daily level for 5 weeks (630 observations) There are two click-through rates reported in Table 4. The ? rst click-through rate is the proportion of people who clicked on an ad that day. The denominator here is the 10Ad-Reach measure that captures the number of people exposed to an ad each day. The second click-through rate is per ad impression. We focus on the former in our econometric analysis, because impressions can be a function of person refreshing their page or using the back button on the browser or other actions which do not necessarily lead to increased exposure to the ad. We show robu stness subsequently to using this click-through rate per impression measure. Due to the relatively small number of clicks, these click through rates are expressed as percentage points or sometimes as fractions of a percentage point.In our regression analysis we also use this scaling in order to make our coe? cients more easily readable. 2 The data also contains an alternative means of measuring advertising success. The connection rate measures the number of people who liked a Facebook page within 24 hours of seeing a sponsored ad, where the denominator is the ad’s reach that day. We compare this measure to clicks in subsequent analysis to check that the click-through rate is capturing something meaningful. We also use the cost data about how much the advertiser paid for each of these ads in a robustness check.The data reassuringly suggests that there were only ? ve occasions where someone clicked twice on the ads. Therefore, 99. 8% of the click-through rate we measure capture s a single individual clicking on the ad. 2 11 Figure 2: Social advertising is e? ective 4 4. 1 Results Does Social Advertising Work? First, we present some simple evidence about whether social advertising is more e? ective than regular display advertising. Figure 2 displays the basic comparison of aggregate (that is, across the whole ? ve-week period) click-through rates between non-socially-targeted ads and ads that were socially targeted.Since these are aggregate click-through rates they di? er from the daily click-through rates reported in Table 4. These are expressed as fractions of a percentage point. It is clear that social advertising earned far larger click-through rates. The di? erence between the two bars is quite striking. To check the robustness and statistical signi? cance of this relationship, we turn to econometrics. The econometric analysis is relatively straightforward because of the randomization induced by the ? eld tests. We model the click-through rate of campa ign j on day t targeted to demographic group k as: 2 ClickRatejt = ? SocialT argeting Endorsementj + ? k + ? t + j (1) SocialT argeting Endorsementj is an indicator for whether or not this campaign variance was socially targeted and displayed the endorsement. Since Facebook does not allow the testing of these di? erent features separately, this is a combined (rather than separable) indicator. ?k is a ? xed e? ect that captures whether this was the untargeted variant of the ad. This controls for underlying systematic di? erences in how likely people within that target and untargeted segment were to respond to this charity.We include a vector of date dummies ? t . Because the ads are randomized, ? t and ? k should primarily improve e? ciency. We estimate the speci? cation using ordinary least squares. Though we recognize that theoretically a click-through rate is bounded at one hundred since it is measured in percentage points, click-through rates in our data are never close to this u pper bound or lower bound. 3 Table 5 reports our initial results. Column (1) presents results for the simple speci? cation implied by equation (1) but without the date and demographic controls.The point estimates suggest that social targeting and a friend’s endorsement increased the average daily clickthrough rate by around half. Column (2) repeats the analysis with the controls for date. It suggests that after controlling for date, the result holds. This is reassuring and suggests that any unevenness in how ads were served across days does not drive our results. It also suggests that our result is not an artifact of a failure of randomization. Column (3) adds an extra coe? cient that indicates whether that campaign was untargeted rather than being targeted to one of the customer groups identi? d as being likely ‘targets’ by the non-pro? t We also tried alternative speci? cations where we use the unbounded clicks measure (rather than a rate) as the dependent vari able and show that our results are robust to such a speci? cation in Table A1, in the appendix. 3 13 – Educational and Charity supporters. It suggests that indeed, as expected, an untargeted campaign was weakly ine? ective, though the estimate is not signi? cant at conventional levels. We speculate that the apparent weakness of demographic targeting may be because target markets of charity and educational supporters is reasonably broad, and consequently may have ontained many individuals who would not support an international charity. An obvious question is what explains the success of social advertising. One explanation is that the endorsement of a friend is informative. Another explanation is that social targeting uncovers people who will be more likely to be interested in their charity as they are similar, in unobserved ways, to their friends who are already fans of the charity. Manski (1993) pointed out that this particular issue of distinguishing homophily (unobserved ch aracteristics that make friends behave in a similar way) from the explicit in? ence of friends on each other is empirically problematic. Ideally, to address this we would simply randomize whether users saw the endorsement or not. However, Facebook’s advertiser interface does not allow that. What we can do is take advantage of the fact that sometimes ads are shown to people without the endorsement if that fan has selected a privacy setting which restricts the use of their image and name. The interface which users use to do this is displayed in Figure A1; all users do is simply select the ‘No One’ rather than the ‘Only my friends’ option.Of course, this will not represent perfect randomization. It is likely that the fans who select stricter privacy settings di? er in unobserved ways from those who do not, and that therefore their social networks may di? er as well. However, despite this potential for bias, this does represent a useful opportunity to tr y to disentangle the power of social targeting to enable homophily and the power of personal endorsements. Column (4) displays the results of a speci? cation for equation (1) where the dependent variable is the conversion rate for these socially targeted but not socially endorsed ads.Here for ads that were being shown to friends, the click-through rate was only calculated for occasions when the endorsement was not shown. A comparison of Column 14 (3) and Column (4) in Table 5 makes it clear the ads that were displayed to friends of fans but lacked a clear endorsement were less e? ective than those that had a clear endorsement. However, they were still measurably more e? ective than non-socially-targeted ads. It appears that, roughly, the endorsement accounted for less than half of the persuasive e? ect and the ability to use social networks to target the ad accounted for slightly more than half of such ads’ e? acy. Columns (5) and (6) of Table 5 estimate the speci? cation sep arately by whether the campaign was targeted or untargeted. Though the point estimate for the targeted campaigns is higher, it is notable that social advertising improved the performance of both targeted and untargeted campaigns. Given the widely reported lack of e? cacy of untargeted campaigns (Reiley and Lewis, 2009), the increase in e? ectiveness allowed by social advertising appears large for untargeted campaigns. 15 Table 5: Social Targeting and Endorsement is E? ective (4) No Endorsement Click Rate SocialTargeting EndorsementAll (1) Click Rate 0. 0386 (0. 0123) (2) Click Rate 0. 0385 (0. 0108) 0. 0287 (0. 0143) -0. 000275 (0. 0122) 0. 0794 (0. 0116) 0. 0132 (0. 0166) (3) Click Rate 0. 0386 (0. 0125) Untargeted (5) Click Rate 0. 0297 (0. 00755) Targeted (6) Click Rate 0. 0376 (0. 00927) SocialTargeting Untargeted Constant 16 Date Controls No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Observations 630 630 630 630 210 420 Log-Likelihood 542. 1 610. 3 610. 3 427. 8 187. 7 452. 3 R-Squared 0. 0221 0. 212 0. 212 0. 119 0. 317 0. 228 OLS Estimates. Dependent variable is the percentage point of people who click on the ad.Dependent variable in Columns (4) for social ads is the percentage point daily click-through rate of ads that did not display the endorsement. Robust standard errors. * p < 0. 10, ** p < 0. 05, *** p < 0. 01 4. 2 Robustness Table 6 checks the robustness of the ? nding that social targeting and endorsement are effective, to di? erent de? nitions of the dependent variable. Column (1) reports the results of using a dependent measure which is the percentage click-through per impression. Again, we ? nd that social advertising is more e? ective, though the e? ectiveness is less pronounced and less precisely estimated than before.This suggests that the appeal of social advertising is not necessarily enhanced by multiple exposure. It could also, of course, merely re? ect noise introduced into the process by someone refreshing their browser multiple times. The results so far s uggest that consumer privacy concerns or the intrusiveness of such ads do not seem to outweigh the appeal of social advertising for consumers. 4 There is always the possibility of course that people clicked on the ads because they were annoyed or wanted to understand more the extent of privacy intrusion rather than because the ads were actually e? ective.To explore this, we estimate a speci? cation where the dependent measure was the proportion of clicks that became subscribers of the newsfeed. The results are reported in Column (2). We see that again social advertising appears to be more e? ective at encouraging Facebook users to take the intended action as well as simply clicking. This is evidence that people are not clicking on social ads due to annoyance at their intrusiveness but instead are clicking on them and taking the action the ads intend to encourage them to take. Untargeted ads are less likely to lead to conversions than those targeted at appropriate demographics.This m akes sense – these people are being targeted precisely because they are the kind of people who have signed up for such news feeds in the past. A ? nal question is whether ads that are socially targeted and display endorsements are more expensive for advertisers, thereby wiping out their relative e? ectiveness in terms of return on advertising investment. We explore this in Column (3) of Table 6. There are This may be because Facebook users ? nd it reassuring that these ads, though narrowly targeted, are not overly visually intrusive (Goldfarb and Tucker, 2011). 4 17 everal missing observations where there were no clicks that day and consequently there was no price recorded. In Column (3), we report the results of a speci? cation where our explanatory variables is the relative price per click. The results suggest that advertisers pay less for these clicks that are socially targeted. This suggests that Facebook is not charging a premium for this kind of advertising. Though Face book shrouds in secrecy the precise pricing and auction mechanism underlying their advertising pricing, this result would be consistent with a mechanism whereby advertisers pay less for clicks if they have higher clickthrough rates.In other words, prices paid bene? t from an improved ‘quality-score’ (Athey and Nekipelov, 2011). The results also suggest that advertisers pay less for demographically untargeted clicks which is in line with previous studies such as Beales (2010). Table 6: Social Advertising is E? ective: Checking robustness to di? erent dependent variables SocialTargeting Endorsement (1) Click Rate (Multiple) 0. 0108 (0. 00501) 0. 00526 (0. 00582) Yes 630 1086. 5 0. 150 (2) Clicks to Connections Rate 0. 433 (0. 0997) -0. 321 (0. 0768) Yes 554 -467. 5 0. 163 (3) Cost Per Click (USD) -0. 95 (0. 0480) -0. 177 (0. 0520) Yes 559 -129. 0 0. 426 Untargeted Date Controls Observations Log-Likelihood R-Squared OLS Estimates. Dependent variable is the click-through ra te (expressed as a fraction of a percentage point) for impressions in Column (1). Dependent variable in Column (2) is the clicks to conversions rate. Dependent variable in Column (3) is cost per click. Robust standard errors. * p < 0. 10, ** p < 0. 05, *** p < 0. 01 4. 3 What Kind of Social Advertising Messages Work? We then go on to explore what kind of advertising message works in social ads.We distinguish between ads that rely simply on the Facebook algorithm to promote social in? uence by featuring the automated endorsement at the bottom of their ad, and ads that explicitly refer to this endorsement in their ad copy. 18 Table 7: Social Advertising is Less E? ective if an Advertiser is Too Explicit (3) No Endorsement Click Rate SocialTargeting Endorsement All (1) Click Rate 0. 0577 (0. 0139) (2) Click Rate 0. 0571 (0. 0113) 0. 0333 (0. 0168) -0. 0287 (0. 00886) -0. 000463 (0. 0122) -0. 0136 (0. 0115) -0. 0189? (0. 01000) -0. 0378 (0. 0115) -0. 0429 (0. 0144) -0. 101 (0. 0124) Yes 630 615. 4 0. 225 Yes 630 618. 1 0. 232 Yes 630 429. 5 0. 124 Yes 210 189. 6 0. 329 Yes 420 461. 0 0. 260 -0. 000281 (0. 0177) 0. 0161 (0. 0169) -0. 0303? (0. 0167) -0. 0284 (0. 0124) Untargeted (4) Click Rate 0. 0498 (0. 0245) Targeted (5) Click Rate 0. 0527 (0. 0130) SocialTargeting SocialTargeting Endorsement ? Explicit Untargeted SocialTargeting Endorsement ? Don’t be left out SocialTargeting Endorsement ? Be like your friend SocialTargeting Endorsement ? Learn from your friend 19 SocialTargeting Endorsement ? Your friend knows SocialTargeting ? ExplicitDate Controls Observations Log-Likelihood R-Squared OLS Estimates. Dependent variable is the percentage points of people who click on the ad. Dependent variable in Columns (3) adjusted for social ads so that is the percentage point daily click-through rate of ads that did not display the endorsement. Robust standard errors. * p < 0. 10, ** p < 0. 05, *** p < 0. 01 We use the additional binary indicator variable Explicitj to indicate when the advertiser uses a message that evokes social in? uence explicitly in their ad copy, in addition to the social endorsement automated by the Facebook algorithm.This covers all the non-baseline conditions described in Table 2. We interact this with the SocialT argeting Endorsementj , meaning that SocialT argeting Endorsementj now measures the e? ect of the baseline effect, and the interacted variable measures the incremental advantage or disadvantage of mentioning the friend or the potential for social in? uence in the ad. Column (1) of Table 7 reports the results. The negative coe? cient on the interaction between Explicit and SocialT argeting Endorsementj suggests that explicit reference to a social in? uence mechanism in the ad a? ected the performance of the ad negatively.That is, when the advertiser themselves were explicit about their intention to harness social in? uence, it back? res. Further, the large point estimate for SocialT argeting Endorsementj sugge sts that the baseline message is even more e? ective than the estimates of Table 5 suggested. Column (2) in Table 7 reports the results of a speci? cation where we break up Explicit by the di? erent types of ‘social in? uence’-focused advertising messages featured in Table 2. It is striking that all measures are negative. It is also suggestive that the one message that was not statistically signi? ant and had a smaller point estimate than the others did not refer to the friend explicitly but instead referred obliquely to the friend’s action. This is speculative, since the point estimate here is not statistically di? erent from the others due to its large standard error. Column (3) repeats the exercise for the click-through rate for the ads that did not display an endorsement that we investigated in Table 5. Since these ads did not display the friend’s name at the bottom, it should not be so obvious to a viewer that the ? rm is explicitly trying to harness the social in? uence that results from the friend being a fan of the charity.We recognize that there may of course be some confusion at the mention of a friend when no name is displayed, but this confusion should work against us rather than for us. In this case, 20 we do not see a negative and signi? cant e? ect of the ‘Explicit’ advertising message which referred to a friend. This suggests that it was the combination of the friend’s name and the mention of social in? uence which was particularly o? -putting. The results in Column (3) suggest that what is damaging is the combination of an advertiser making it explicit they are trying to harness social in? ence and the algorithmic social advertising message. We next explored whether this ? nding that attempts by advertisers to explicitly harness social in? uence in their ad text damaged the e? ectiveness of social advertising di? ered by the target group selected. Column (4) presents the results for the campaign t hat was targeted at friends of fans who were simply over 18 years old and based in the US. Column (5) presents the results for the group of users whom the charity selected as being in the target ‘demographic’ groups for the campaign – that is users whose Facebook pro? e revealed their support for other educational and charitable causes. What is striking is the similarity of the estimates for the e? cacy of social advertising and the damage done by the advertiser being overly explicit about social in? uence across Columns (4) and (5). Again, similar to the results reported in Table 5 social advertising appears to be able to o? er as nearly as large a lift to ad e? cacy for an untargeted population as a targeted one. 4. 4 Behavioral Mechanism We then collected additional data to help rule out alternative explanations of our ? nding that the explicit mention of social in? ence was undesirable in social ads. One obvious potential explanation is that what we are measu ring is simply that people are unaware that what they are seeing is actually an ad, rather than part of Facebook. When a non-pro? t uses a message such as ‘Be like your friend’ then it becomes obvious that this is an ad, and people respond di? erently. To test this, we persuaded the non-pro? t to run a subsequent experiment that allowed us to explicitly tease this apart. In this experiment we compared the performance of ads that said ‘Please read this ad. Help girls in East Africa 21 change their lives through education. , and ads that simply said ‘Help girls in East Africa change their lives through education. ’5 If it is was the case that Facebook users were simply mistaking socially targeted ads for regular content and the explicit appeals to social in? uence stopped them making this mistake, we would expect to also see a negative e? ect of wording that made it clear that the message was an ad. However, it appears that adding ‘Please read thi s ad’ if anything helped ad performance, which suggests that it was not the case that Facebook users were simply mistaking socially targeted ads for content if there is no explicit message.Obviously, though, the sample size here is very small, making more de? nitive pronouncements unwise. Table 8: Not Driven by Lack of Awareness of Advertising or Universally Unappealing Ad Copy Knowledge (1) Click Rate 0. 0312? (0. 0160) 0. 0114 (0. 0288) Fashion (2) Click Rate 0. 0194 (0. 0208) 0. 0376? (0. 0221) 0. 0449? (0. 0254) -0. 00448 (0. 0218) 0. 0172 (0. 0254) 0. 127 (0. 0584) (3) Click Rate 0. 0182 (0. 0208) SocialTargeting Endorsement SocialTargeting Endorsement ? Explicit SocialTargeting Endorsement ? Don’t be left out SocialTargeting Endorsement Be like your friend SocialTargeting Endorsement ? Learn from your friend SocialTargeting Endorsement ? Your friend knows Date Controls Yes Yes Yes Observations 20 60 60 Log-Likelihood 55. 43 91. 77 103. 7 R-Squared 0. 916 0. 267 0 . 508 OLS Estimates. Dependent variable is the percentage point of people who click on ad that day. Robust standard errors. * p < 0. 10, ** p < 0. 05, *** p < 0. 01 Recent research has questioned the use of the imperative in advertising copy, which is why we used ‘please’ (Kronrod et al. , 2012) 5 22 Another alternative explanation for our ? dings is that the messages referring to the friend were poorly-written or unappealing. To test whether this was the case, we selected an alternative set of users whom might be expected to react in an opposite way to potential presumptions of social in? uence. Speci? cally, the charity agreed to run test conditions identical to those in Table 2 for the people who expressed a? nity with ‘Fashion’ goods on their Facebook pro? les. The Fashion category of users were chosen because typical models of social in? uence have focused on fashion cycles (Bikhchandani et al. , 1992).These models emphasize the extent to which people who participate in Fashion cycles receive explicit utility from conformity, even when this conformity is provoked by a ? rm. In other words, they may ? nd advertiser-endorsed social in? uence more persuasive and advertiser attempts at emphasizing the power of social in? uence more acceptable than the general population does. This group of users exhibits a very di? erent pattern to that exhibited by the general population. They appear to respond somewhat positively to social advertising, though this estimate is imprecise and the point estimate is smaller than for the other conditions.However, strikingly, they reacted particularly positively to advertising messages that emphasized social in? uence and the actions of the friend in the ad copy. In other words, social advertising for this group worked even when the advertiser explicitly embraced the potential for social in? uence. This result suggests that there may be heterogeneity in consumer responses to the wording of social advertis ing messages depending on their previous consumption patterns. This is evidence against an alternative explanation for our results in Table 7 based on these advertising messages which explicitly refer to the potential for social in? ence being confusing or overly wordy, since they were e? ective for this group of Fashion fans. In general, the results of Tables 7 and 8 suggest that there is heterogeneity in distaste for advertiser attempts to harness social in? uence given previous consumption patterns, but that for the average person the e? ects are negative. 23 5 Implications How helpful is data on social relationships when it comes to targeting and delivering advertising content? This paper answers this question using ? eld test data of di? erent ads on the large social network site Facebook. We ? nd evidence that social advertising is indeed very e? ctive. This is important, as for the past few years social network websites have often been dismissed by advertisers as venues for à ¢â‚¬Ëœpaid media’, that is, paid advertising. Instead, the emphasis was on ‘earned’ or organic media whereby social networks were venues for organic word of mouth. This dismissal of paid advertisements was echoed in the popular and marketing press with headlines such as ‘Online Social Network and Advertising Don’t Mix’ and ‘Facebook Ad Click-Through Rates Are Really Pitiful’ (Joel, 2008; Barefoot and Szabo, 2008). Our results suggest, however, that as social advertising develops this will change swiftly.In particular, social networks will be able to exploit their considerable inherent network e? ects to enlarge their share of advertising dollars. Strikingly, we ? nd that the average Facebook user appears to ? nd social advertising as done by the standard Facebook algorithm appealing. However, when advertisers attempt to emulate or reinforce this social in? uence, consumers appear less likely to respond positively to the ad. Specul atively, the results suggest that intrusive or highly personal advertising is more acceptable if done algorithmically by a faceless entity uch as a computer than when it is the result of evident human agency. Very speculatively, there is perhaps a parallel with users of web-based email programs accepting an algorithm scanning their emails to serve them relevant ads when the interception of emails by a human agent would not be acceptable. Our results suggest that social advertising works well for both targeted and untargeted populations, which may mean that social advertising is a particularly useful technique when 24 advertising to consumers outside the product’s natural or obvious market segment since their are less obvious ways of targeting in these settings.The majority of this e? cacy appears to be because social targeting uncovers unobserved homophily between users of a website and their underlying receptiveness to an advertising message. There are of course limitations to our study. First, the non-pro? t setting may bias our results in ways that we cannot predict. 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Management Science 57 (5), 828–842. Zubcsek, P. and M. Sarvary (2011). Advertising to a social network. Quantitative Marketing and Economics 9, 71–107. Social Networks, Personalized Advertising, and Privacy Controls. 28Figure A1: Control interface for switching o? Endorsement A-1 Table A1: Robustness of Table 5 to using number of clicks as dependent variable OLS (1) Average Clicks SocialTargeting Endorsement 1. 991 (0. 394) -0. 0385 (0. 422) 0. 000405 (0. 0000443) Poisson (2) Average Clicks 0. 258 (0. 0746) 0. 134 (0. 0817) 0. 0000327 (0. 00000638) Negative Binomial (3) Average Clicks 0. 230 (0. 0922) 0. 187 (0. 123) 0. 0000455 (0. 0000135) Untargeted Ad-Reach Date Controls Yes Yes Yes Observations 630 630 630 Log-Likelihood -1484. 8 -1417. 6 -1394. 7 R-Squared 0. 755 OLS Estimates in Columns (1)-(2).Dependent variable is the Number of clicks on the ad in Columns (3)-(4). Robust standard errors. * p < 0. 10, ** p < 0. 05, *** p < 0. 01 A-2 Table A2: Summary of 18 Campaigns Campaign 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Social Ad? Social Advertising Social Advertising Social Advertising Social Advertising Social Advertising Social Advertising Social Advertising Social Advertising Social Advertising Social Advertising Social Advertising Social Advertising Social Advertising Social Advertising Social Advertising Non-Social Advertising Non-Social Advertising Non-Social Advertising Demo Targeting?Demo 1 Targeted Demo 1 Targeted Demo 1 Targeted Demo 1 Targeted Demo 1 Targeted Demo 2 Targeted Demo 2 Targeted Demo 2 Targeted Demo 2 Targeted Demo 2 Targeted Untargeted Untargeted Untargeted Untargeted Untargeted Demo 1 Targeted Demo 2 Targeted Untargeted Message Baseline Message 1 Message 2 Message 3 Message 4 Baseline Message 1 Message 2 Message 3 Message 4 Baseline Message 1 Message 2 Message 3 Message 4 Baseline Baseline Baseline A- 3