PRICE FLUXUATION Essays - Pricing, Marketing, Consumer Theory

PRICE FLUXUATION There are many factors that can cause the price of a product to fluctuate. The product that we are examining is a high quality mountain bike that has been set at a price of fifteen hundred dollars. This price was reached by taking into consideration all of the Laws of Demand. The need of a product to consumers greatly reflects the percent of markup over the initial cost of production. A product is not always sold at a specific percent above cost; many different factors are taken into consideration. There are numerous research teams whose job is to study the economy and provide advice to larger companies on how greatly their product is needed. Although consumers may not approve, quite often prices increase without notice or explanation. The distance between where the product was manufactured and where it is sold has a minute effect on the price. For example, if the mountain bike were made in Sweden it would roughly cost fifty dollars for it to be sent over to the United States. Sometimes an event might occur and the popularity of a once unknown sport may increase and therefore the price increases with the consumer's wants. A two hundred-dollar increase in the price of a mountain bike would not be unheard of around the time of Tour de France. A much more serious increase, like a five hundred-dollar increase, occurs only in extreme circumstances and not as often as the less expensive price fluctuation. If the mountain bike became extremely popular and most of the stores were sold out and not expecting more until the next year, a dealer might hold a few a side with a very hefty markup. A much more widely accepted price change is that of a price decrease. A fifty-dollar decrease could occur with competition between two businesses. Sometimes when a business is just beginning and they are trying to get their product out on the market they lower the price. Such a decrease of two hundred-dollars would be seen in such a promotion. The decrease in the price by five hundred-dollars doesn't happen as often as hoped. Such an event like a recall on a product could cause the price to decrease by one-third of the original price. In the world market it is not unlikely for a product's price to increase and decrease rapidly due to many factors. However, the bigger the amount of increase or decrease the less often the occurrence. It should be highly evident that any event can cause a product to gain or loose value. For example, the increase in gas prices could cause more people to ride bikes, therefore increasing the need for bikes and increasing the price. The factors that effect prices of certain products are often not related.

Social Learning Theory Essays

Social Learning Theory Essays Social Learning Theory Paper Social Learning Theory Paper Social Learning Theory: Social Learning is on the nurture side of the Nature Vs Nurture debate. The main concept of the social learning approach is that you learn by observing the behaviour of others and the outcomes of those behaviours. For example, if a child was to see someone getting positively rewarded, they would copy the behaviour to receive the reward. Whereas, if they were to see someone being punished they wouldnt copy it. (Van Wagner K, 2005) Social learning theory explains human behaviour in terms of continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioural, and environmental influences. (Learning-Theorists, 2009) Albert Bandura stated in 1977 that Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately, most human behaviour is learned observationally through modelling: from observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviours are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action. Modelling is a method used where the client learns from imitation alone, without any specific verbal direction by the therapist. (Wikipedia, modelling, 2008) The conditions that must be in place for effective modelling are: * Attention A persons characteristics determine their attention level; such as sensory capacities, arousal level, perceptual set, past reinforcement. (Learning-Theorists, 2009) * Retention Retention is remembering what you paid attention too, such as mental images, sounds, symbolic coding. (Learning-Theorists, 2009) * Reproduction This is when you reproduce what it is you paid attention too, such as physical capabilities and self-observation of reproduction. (Learning-Theorists, 2009) * Motivation Motivation is having a good enough reason to imitate what you paid attention to in the beginning. Motivation can be past, promised and vicarious. (Learning-Theorists, 2009) Albert Bandura Albert Bandura was born on the 4th December 1925, and is a Canadian psychologist that created the Social Learning theory. (Wikipedia, Albert Bandura, 2008) He first started research on the Social Learning theory whilst he worked in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. Working along side one of his students Richard Walters; they studied human motivation, thought and action which he then furthered to social learning and aggression. This all interlinks to his most famous experiment The Bobo Doll Experiment. Bobo Doll Experiment The Bobo Doll experiment was first conducted in 1961. Its main goals were to help understand behavioural learning in the form of aggression. The experiment involved 72 children aged between 3 and 6, divided equally by gender, watching a model acting in a certain manner towards the Bobo Doll. The children were then split into groups that were divided by gender, aggressive behaviour and non-aggressive behaviour. They were then split between models that were the same gender or different gender. In total, there were 8 experimental groups. (Wikipedia, Bobo Doll Experiment, 2008) The children were taken individually into a room which contained a Bobo Doll, lots of toys and a model. The child watched the model for 10 minutes whilst they played with the toys for a minute and then acted aggressively towards the Bobo Doll for the rest of the time, using physical and verbal abuse and also hitting it with a mallet from one of the other toys. (Wikipedia, Bobo Doll Experiment, 2008) The model would then leave and the child would be taken to a second room which contained the same equipment as the previous room, but this time the model would only play with the toys and completely ignore the Bobo Doll. (Wikipedia, Bobo Doll Experiment, 2008) The child would then be taken to a third room which contained many appealing toys and a Bobo Doll. The child would only be allowed to play with the toys for a short amount of time until someone would enter the room tell them that those toys were for the other children and that they werent allowed to play with them. This was to make the child angry, hoping to cause aggression. (Wikipedia, Bobo Doll Experiment, 2008) Finally, the child would be taken to a fourth room with contained toys of aggressive and non-aggressive nature, such as the Bobo Doll, a mallet, toy guns, a ball, paper and crayons, plastic farm animals and a tea set. (Wikipedia, Bobo Doll Experiment, 2008) Bandura recorded the results of the Bobo Doll experiment in 8 different measures of aggression ranging from kicking the doll, shouting insults they heard from the model and using the mallet. After studying the results Bandura found out that children do learn from watching the behaviour of others, discovering that the children that saw the aggressive model imitating the physical aggression, 38.2 from boys and 12.7 from girls. The same results were found for verbal abuse, with boys using it 17 times and girls 15.7 times. It was also proved that males tended to be more aggressive than females, after finding out that there were 270 incidents of males showing aggression, against females showing aggression 128 times. (Wikipedia, Bobo Doll Experiment, 2008) Social Learning in Health and Social Care Social Learning is present in school education from teachers and fellow students. Teachers have to help students believe they can do the work and watch others be successful and develop self-efficiency to experience success themselves. Teachers also have to show appropriate behaviour and language whilst around students; this is so they get an understanding of what is right and wrong. (Teachnet) Teachnet states that Modelling provides an alternative to shaping for teaching new behaviours. Instead of using shaping, which is operant conditioning, modelling can provide a faster, more efficient means for teaching new behaviour. To promote effective modelling a teacher must make sure that the four essential conditions exist; attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. Social Learning in Health Education In health education, there is no approach that has been specifically said to work better than the rest. Social Learning could be used in health education to try to advise someone to reduce or stop whatever is harming their health. An example of this would be using the peer-led approach to health education, such as if an ex-smoker was to talk to a smoker about giving up, the ex-smoker could explain about all the advantages to their health and wellbeing, like no loss of breath and no lingering smell on their clothes, hands and hair.