Hispanic Groups Living in US Essay Example for Free

Hispanic Groups Living in US Essay It is very common for someone walking down the streets of any American city and hears Spanish spoken. The federal government of America coined this term ‘Hispanic’ way back in 1970’s to refer people tracing their origin in Spanish speaking countries which were former Spanish colonies or those who can trace their origin to Spain or its territory. This represents a varied range of countries and ethnic groups with different social, political and emotional experiences. A large part of Hispanics still try to characterize themselves in terms of their individual ethnic identity as Mexican, Cuban, and others rather the whole term ‘Hispanic’. Hispanic Americans, n. d. ) The wide range of the Hispanic group includes Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, El Salvadorians, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Columbians, Central and South Americans among others. The Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and Cubans form the largest part of the Hispanics living in America. (Tienda and Mitchell, 2006) America’s cultural canvas is very vivid as each group brought their respective culture’s specialty with them which has totally mingled in the main force. The Hispanic community has left their mark over traditions, customs and cultures throughout the country and the bilingual education structure of America displays the growing importance in the country as they are the largest minority community. It has been noticed that people from the Hispanic groups have done well in various fields and their progress is something to be watched. The 2002 census showed the Mexicans forming the largest part of the population with 66. 9%, followed by Central and Latin Americans at 14. 3%, third position held by Puerto Ricans, others 6. % and last Cubans at 3. 7%. (The Hispanic Population, 2002) Majority of the Hispanics are native born neutralizes citizens or have acquired legal residency status. They are largely concentrated in the west part of the country especially the urban areas of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, and Texas. There is a tendency among them to live in family units which are generally large in size unlike the non-Hispanic Whites. In comparison to Whites communities, the rate of unemployment and poverty is much more in the Hispanic groups. Mexican Americans are the one to form the largest part of the Hispanic population living in America and they are also the largest group of White Hispanics. The Mexican immigration could be traced in the past decades as they started establishing themselves in the 1600s in southwestern parts of the country who later became New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado and Texas. (Stacy, 2002) The work at railroads and steel industry of the Midwest America attracted them in the 1800s and this immigration is still continued to the present time. Today majority of Mexican Americans are U. S. born citizens. The major causes behind the migration of Mexicans to America are self-liberty, quality education, modes to improve economic condition and achieve good living standard. Spanish is the main language for Mexican Americans, some of them are monolingual. But most can fluently speak both English and Spanish. The attitude of the Mexican Americans is something to be watched as more than 90% of them are literate. Their respect towards others is also acclaimed as their communications are respectful in manner. They are one of the strict believers in the concept of familism (Nash, 2007) and value family considerations over individual as well very much rely on family in times of crisis. Patriarchy is the trend of Mexican American family. Earlier, they used to neglect family planning but at present time they have been active in that. Largely they are the followers of Roman Catholicism. They look at churches as powerful source of hope, faith and strength while spirituality and religion play significant role in times of illness, health and life. Their housing conditions are really bad as they live in colonies not appropriate for living to low-income. Central and South Americans stand second in the American Hispanic population. They owe their origin to different countries such as Guatemala, Venezuela, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, and Argentina among others. These groups of people display a vast diversity due to their different origins. Most of them migrated from their respective countries in the period of 1970s and 1980s when the region was going through political turbulence. Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala were suffering from civil wars that made their people to flee in search of stable life. In the present time too, the immigration is on due to different causes. Although many of them arrived in U. S. as refuges, gradually they acquired political asylum from the state. Cheap accommodation and easy immigrant services made most of the Central and South Americans settle in California. They speak other languages rather than Spanish, which is a main language, such as French and Portuguese. Though Catholicism is the main religion, Protestants and Jews as well as other beliefs are followed by this group. They have high religious values. Males are treated as the head of the family. Due to intermarriage among this group and other Hispanics or Europeans, they have become much diversified. The education level of Central and South Americans is much appreciable than other Hispanics but still they lack behind in employment tin respects of other groups. Third largest group belonging to Hispanic community are the Puerto Ricans as they became U. S. citizens after Jones Act of 1917. (Stacy, 2002) But they are not allowed to vote in U. S. Presidential elections. They are mainly settled in industrial areas such as the states of Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, and New York due to the availability of employment opportunity. Wherever they settled, they tried to hold on their tradition and culture and formed various groups and organizations to support them. Puerto Rican Americans pay huge respect to education but still they maintain a low level than other Hispanics which makes parents encourage their children to pursue good education for better future. They are bilingual speaking both Spanish and English. The expressive nature of Puerto Ricans and their hospitality is well known. They possess high respect for women, parents and elderly people and family units that they even allow more than one family living together. Puerto Ricans are followers of Catholicism and seek support from religion and spiritualism in tough situations. Their approach to health and illness is based on these beliefs. Cubans too comprise a significant part of the Hispanic community. Cuban immigration to America can be traced back to history but the major wave was created during the political turmoil of 1959 which still continues today. They have their bases at Miami, Florida and New Jersey. They can be considered as the most affluent among all the Hispanic groups due to their well performance in education, which led to better employment opportunities and a good quality lifestyle. Till recent past they faced problem in speaking English, but nowadays they have overcome that. The Cuban Americans are very much into their culture that they most often do not show much interest in the Anglo culture. They hold a rather conservative outlook towards politics due to their experience in their native country. They possess diverse beliefs of religion; still Catholicism is more prevalent among them. They stand against communism holds much important place in U. S. The Hispanic groups in spite of their various origins share some commonalities as well some major differences among them. Spanish is a bond that binds all of them, while most of them are bilingual. Approach towards education is another common factor between them as all the groups show very much respect to education as they know it is the only key to good living. Religion too makes them stand on a common platform as most of the Hispanic Americans are followers of Catholicism. Political perspective is one thing that creates differences among these groups as each of them has their respective political idea. Cuban Americans support Republicans as they are inclined towards conservative idea of politics whereas Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Central and South Americans have a liking for democrats. Still, Catholic faith, language and belief in their respective culture make them stand on a single platform.

A Life Worth Living in Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse-Five :: Slaughterhouse-Five Essays

A Life Worth Living in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut (1922- ) is an author with a unique perspective on life. He sees in a vivid technicolor things in this world that the rest of humanity may only see in black and white. By the same token he sees life as a rather dark subject, it's the ultimate joke at our expense (Lundquist 1). His life experience has been one of hardship. His mother committed suicide in 1942. Two years later he was captured by Nazis in World War II's epic Battle of the Bulge. In 1943 he survived the massively destructive fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany. He returned with the distinguished Purple Heart. In 1958 his sister and brother-in-law died, leaving him to raise their children, along with his own (Campbell 2). Despite these hardships, however, to Vonnegut life is still worth living. It shows through in his novels. Vonnegut utilizes black humor and irony to show many recurring themes noted in his works which are we, as a race, must learn to keep happy illusions over evil ones and that a soothing lie is sometimes the best truth (Lundquist 1). To say that Vonnegut feels life is worth living despite the horrors of the world is to say that Vonnegut really longs for the life of his childhood. It was a life of family and good, Midwestern upbringing. Wholesome morals like self-respect and pacifism were fed to him along with other staples of the Midwest. America was an idealistic, pacifistic nation at the time. I was taught in the sixth grade to be proud that we had a standing army of just over a hundred thousand men and that generals had nothing to say about what was done in Washington. I was taught to be proud of that and to pity

Cvs – Web Strategy

Running head: CASE ANALYSIS – CVS: THE WEB STRATEGY Abstract CVS decided to expand its services by opening a Web -based drugstore. Initially, there were many doubts concerning how to do it â€Å"right†; building it from start, or acquisition were the options on hand. After studying the possibilities CVS decided to acquire Soma. com and gradually (less than 3 months) turn it into CVS. com. There were many challenges during the process: coordinating a bicoastal organization (Soma. om headquarters were in Seattle and CVS headquarters were in Rhode Island), determining how the reimbursement were going to be handle for online purchases, building brand awareness and increasing traffi c and sales on the new channel (the Web). This paper intends to analyze CVS’ Web strategy and provide some recommendations on that area. 1 CASE ANALYSIS – CVS: THE WEB STRATEGY 2 CASE ANALYSIS – C VS: THE WEB STRATEGY After carefully studying how to venture in a new distribut ion channel (the Web), CVS decided to acquire an established company (Soma. com). The goal was to re -launch Soma. com as CVS. om, in just a few months. The pressure was high since the competition was fierce and constantly increasing. By the time CVS acquired Soma. com there were already strong competitors in the market: Drugstore. com and Planet Rx. Venturing on a Web-based drugstore was based on the fact that â€Å"the market for drugstore products was four times the combined sales of books and CD’s, two sectors that had flourished on the web† (Shah, 1999, p. 1). Everyday more and more drugstores were thinking about the possibility of venturing with online presence, the Internet was flourishing and everyone wanted to take advantage of it.According to Shah (1999), CVS decided to acquire Soma. com for several reasons: speed, human resource quality, fully automated warehouse, and similar health -care-focused beliefs. Speed was crucial to respond to the fast -growing com petition, â€Å"it would have taken [them] 3 to 4 months to build what [they] bought for the same cost† (Shah, 1999, p. 6). In fact, Soma. com used top notch technology to operate and control its business, managing up to 3,000 SKUs of just prescription medicines. Moreover, Soma. com’s huma n resource was a great asset that came ‘with the price’.Soma. com was especially careful about hiring people â€Å"with mail order prescription backgrounds† (Shah, 1999, p. 6). Therefore, hiring qualified employees to manage the new distribution channel was not a concern for CVS. The following table was design to summarize the analysis of the provided information about CVS web venture. The table summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of the organization and the opportunities and threats of its environment. CASE ANALYSIS – CVS: THE WEB STRATEGY 3 Table 1 CVS Web-based Drugstore SWOT Analysis Strengths ?CVS brand equity: second drugstore in the US, Weaknesse s ? Bicoastal organization: Soma. com and the one with more number of stores. Detailed and well-design operation process from headquarters were in Rhode Island. Time dispensing to shipping: registration required, ? headquarters were in Seattle and CVS difference is a challenge. specified reimbursement need from the customer, ? Privacy issues: user sensibility to sharing different options to present the prescription, free shipping of orders that included prescription reminders were not in sync with brick -and- edicines. ? medical information online, e-mail prescription mortars drugstores. â€Å"E-mail prescription refill reminders for registered ? Making a product available on cvs. com was users, and 24-hour access to pharmacists via email or telephone† (Shah, 1999, p. 6) Top-notch automated technology in the can click on the dosage, indications and description of ingredients† (Pigott as cited in prescription medicines. ? to web-enable each product to make sure you wareh ouse, able to deal with up to 3,000 SKU of ? time consuming: To add a new SKU â€Å"we haveShah, 1999, p. 8) Xtra! : CVS’ frequent shopper program, which ? Difficulty to agree on joint developing could be implemented online. Making cvs. com a tool to facilitate physic ians’ enable more products for purchase through the jobs: â€Å"A physician could visit cvs. com site to website (such as cosmetics, other related prescribe, confirm a prescription or learn a healthcare products, greeting cards), but the patient’s formulary†¦ [CVS] need[s] to make it website team management constantly wa s in easier to prescribe through CVS than elsewhere† ? trategies for the website: CVS wanted to disagreement with this idea. (Shah, 1999, p. 7) ? ? Different delivery options: â€Å"an order could be mailed to the customer’s home or picked up at the Undefined long-term pricing strategy for the website. ? Inability to successfully draw customers to use local CVS † (Shah, 1999, p. 8) Cvs. com site was treated as a SBU. It had its own strategies implemented for it (free shipping, marketing team and manager, who responded to ? the website, despite the different marketing lower prices, 24-hour service, etc. ). CVS marketing director. Online pricing strategy: lower than in stores. CASE ANALYSIS – CVS: THE WEB STRATEGY 4 Opportunities ? Great market possibility: four times as big as Threats ? Online drugstores were a novelty. No one books and CD’s, products that successfully were being sold online. ? knew how profitable and feasible they really were. Increased negotiation power due to mergers and ? There was a risk of losing the reimbursement acquisitions in the drugstore industry, leaving only to online drugstores: PBM’s have threatened four major drugstores and the rest as industry with that. ndependents. ? ? Strong and increasing direct competition Possibility of being able to have an ‘online (Drugstore. com, P lanet Rx, Walgreens. com pharmacy’ built within the PBM’s dispensary and e-pharmacy. com), as well as indirect (Shah, 1999, p. 9). (healthcare sites without prescription filling such as WebMD, which later became Healtheon). ? Mail-order companies created by PBMs to fill long-term prescriptions created a conflict of interest between suppliers and online drugstores. CVS had everything figured out for a smooth launching and operation of cvs. om: detailed and careful design purchasing process, differentiated prices, and quality customer service. All these were supported on CVS’ brand equity. However, they forgot to truly integrate both companies not only technol ogically but functionally. Even though it appeared to be the best way to do it, having different marketing teams on different time zones created an issue for the company. That was onl y one of CVS integration issues, another one was that the website database was not synchronized with the stores database, whi ch made the e – mail reminder tool ineffective.It appears to be that the main cause of cvs. com issues was the rush of launching the site; no long-term strategies were planned. There was uncertainty in pri cing strategies for the CASE ANALYSIS – CVS: THE WEB STRATEGY 5 website, as well as expansion in product offerings. I t was challenging to look for common ground between CVS and the team managing cvs. com. To make cvs. com a successful distribution channel, CVS needed to start working on long term strategies for growth. CVS needed to take advantage of the great amount of product possibilities available under the drugstore market.There were already other online healthcare sites without prescription filling services (WebMD or Healtheon) offering rela ted products. Hence, more products needed to be introduced for online purchase, and the frequent -shopper program ‘ Xtra! ’ should have been implemented online as well. It was a fact that the â€Å"hybrid ord er -and-delivery offering create[d] an advantage over pur e online competition† (Foulkes as cited in Shah, 1999, p. 8), however, i f they offered different delivery options, they should offer different pricing strategies.Therefore, a discount based on the amount purchased could be designed to increase the website traffic, or a double-point system could be developed for those customers that were Xtra! users. Another major issue that needed attention was the PBMs’ relationship. Conflicts of interest were rising due to the similarities in the delivery process between the PBMs’ mail -order prescription program and the online drugstores. Contract’s liabilities with the PBMs were at risk under this new distribution channel. In conclusion, cvs. com built its foundation but forgot to plan for growth.More efforts need to be made on long-term, consistent marketing strategies; strategies that are a ble to attract loyal customers to the site. Moreover, CVS’ lac k of planning is putting at risk the relationship with the suppliers (PBMs). To avoid failing and committing greater mistakes, CVS should set a marketing plan that allows them to know the profile of the online customer, their needs and wants. Based on that r esearch, they should r e-design a nd implement features on the website. Moreover, they need to develop strategies to keep their suppliers ( PBMs) satisfied, withoutCASE ANALYSIS – CVS: THE WEB STRATEGY 6 feeling at risk of losing business from their mail -order programs. For that specific issue, maybe a joint strategy could be implemented to increase awareness among their customers about whom their PBMs are. By doing so, all the 30 -day refills could be made through them. I f CVS is able to design a nd implement a long-term marketing plan for cvs. com, the website as a new distribution channel would be a complete success. CASE ANALYSIS – CVS: THE WEB STRATEGY 7 Reference Shah, A. (1999). CVS: The web strategy. Harv ard Business School.

Art Is Everything You See - 928 Words

Advertising Art Art is everything you see. That favorite brand of yours; an artist made their logo and look. Many children growing up aspire to be an artist when they are older, but they are a lot of the time oblivious to what the word artist or art means. It is not just simply painting and drawing on a piece of paper. While using those mediums is very acceptable as a means of artistry, a computer is another tool that can broaden any artist’s portfolio. Art majors are looked down upon in colleges a lot of the time, because it s supposedly not a â€Å"real job.† Being an artist is not only just a job, but a lifestyle. One of the best things someone can do as an artist is to pursue advertising. In the field of advertising, there are many options†¦show more content†¦In web design it is typical that one must know the very basics of coding. Typically, they use a form of coding that is very standardized and is known as CSS and X/HTML (â€Å"What is Advertising Art?†). There are also production artists in the field of advertising. A production artist â€Å"digitally completes the design of any given advertising and prepare the files for printing.† They also work very closely with their clients to ensure that everything is up to par (â€Å"What is Advertising Art?†). One more subject in the field of advertising is photography. Photography is a very important aspect when it comes to advertising. It is all over the place in magazines, billboards, on the internet, almost everywhere. Photographers meet with their clients, scout for locations, find the perfect lighting, and set up the rest of their equipment and props (â€Å"What is Advertising Art?†). After several years of being an advertising artist, becoming an art director will become an option. Being an art director requires immense amount experience in the art industry. Art directors supervise other designers in the art industry and the production of the art (â€Å"What is Advertising Art?†). There is also the option to start a business. A business owner, however, has a great amount of responsibility along with simply owning the business. Their responsibilities include both artistic and administrative duties, along with overseeing the development of their company