The Mapping Of Erecta Genes In Arabidopsis Thaliana Biology Essay

Biology » The Mapping Of Erecta Genes In Arabidopsis Thaliana Biology Essay

Arabidopsis thaliana is used as a model organism for analyzing genetic and biochemical process in higher plants. Due to its small genome size (Approximately 100 Mb) and availability, Arabidopsis is used as a model plant for most of the experiments. In this experiment we have analyzed the function and position of ERECTA gene with respect to expression of trait and genotyping. Genotyping was carried out using PCR analysis. The mapping was done for the whole genome of Arabidopsis RIL’s using the indel markers. By using the recombinant inbred lines of Ler and Col the phenotype and genotype data were compared manually. Furthermore, the QTL analysis was used to identify the location of ERECTA gene on the chromosome along with the help of markers. From the results it is seen that the ERECTA gene is located at the second chromosome of Arabidopsis thaliana between the markers m220 and m251 (~between 22.6 cM and 37.8 cM). However marker m226 was also found to have minimum control on the expression of the trait (silique and pedicle length).

Key words: Arabidopsis thaliana, ERECTA, QTL, PCR, marker

Arabidopsis thaliana is a widely distributed plant which is also used as a model organism in plant science research. Arabidopsis thaliana has more than 700 natural accessions around the world. Among the ecotypes of Arabidopsis Ler and Col are the most common ecotypes which are used for genetic and molecular studies (Anderson and Mulligan, 1992). Among those Ler is isolated from mutagenized seed populations of Arabidopsis (Rédei, 1992) and it lacks ERECTA gene. The ERECTA gene controls many physiological processes during Arabidopsis plant development such as inflorescence, internodes and pedicel elongation and leaf and siliques morphogenesis (Scott J. Douglas, 2002). From the genetic control studies, the stem development with Arabidopsis mutation (erecta) has reduced internode length (Hanzawa et al., 1997) which leads to reduced plant height. These basic morphological characters are used to differentiate the ecotypes. In this experiment our main aim is to identify the position of the ERECTA gene and its linked marker in the genome (five chromosomes) of Arabidopsis. By using the ERECTA mutated ecotype Landsberg erecta and normal ecotype Columbia the Recombinant inbred lines are produced. The phenotyping (morphological character) and genotypic correlation of inbred lines is compared with the molecular markers and the location of the ERECTA is identified. The main application for this type of experiments is to identify the location of genetic factors (quantitative trait loci or QTLs) on the genome using molecular markers and used while making selection and breeding decisions to increase the selection efficiency of the trait.

The two Arabidopsis ecotypes Landsberg erecta (Ler) and Columbia (Col-0) were used as parents to form Recombinant inbred lines.

The initial cross with Ler and Col was done to form F1 generation. After that the F1 went 8 generation of recurrent inbreeding to increase homozygosity. The fig.1 shows the systematic diagram of RIL.

Fig 1. The recombinant inbred line population.

The different RIL samples were collected for DNA extraction. Collected plant samples were grinded in eppendorf tube by placing them in liquid nitrogen. 500 µl of extraction buffer was added and incubated at 650 c for 20 minutes. The extraction buffer contains 100 mM Tris (=Trizma base); M=121.14 g?mol-1, 1.4 M NaCl; M=58.442 g?mol-1, 20 mM EDTA (C10H16N2O8, M=292.24 or C10H14O8N2Na2·2H2O 372.24 g?mol-1), 2% v/v CTAB (N-Cetyl-N,N,N- trimethylammoniumbromide, M=364.46 g?mol-1). Then 500 µl of phenol- chloroform-isoamyl alcohol was added in the ratio of 25:24:1 and centrifuged at 13000 rpm for 5 minutes. The supernatant was transferred to another tube. Equal volume of chloroform- isoamyl alcohol was added in the ratio of 24:1 and centrifuged at 13000 rpm for 5 minutes. 300 µl of supernatant was transferred to a new tube. 30 µl of sodium acetate and 750 µl of 100% ethanol were added. The tubes were placed at -200 c for 10 minutes and centrifuged at 13000 rpm for 15 minutes. The ethanol was decanted. To the sample 175 µl of 70% ethanol was added and centrifuged at 13000 rpm for 5 minutes. The excess ethanol was removed using speed vacuum. The pellet was re-suspended in 50 µl of water. The concentration and purity of the DNA sample was measured on a Nanodrop.

The genotyping of Ler, Col and their recombinant inbred lines (00, 03, 11, 15, 21, 27 and 51) were analyzed by using the known insertion or deletion markers. The markers and the primers with their base pair expression are given in table 1.

m213

GCACCTCATGAAACCGATGCAAGT

ATCTTTGTTTGTGGTGGCAGAGCC

222

176

m251

GCGCACCTCTGTACAGTCTCT

CCTCTGGGTCAAACGAAGAA

477

445

ERECTA

ATCCCCAGCACGAATGTTTA

GGCAAACCAAAGAAAACCAA

1035

413

m220

TTGCGTCATGTGGTGACTCT

CGAGATTGAATGGTGATCCA

513

468

m457

GACCGGTCTTACATGACCAA

AACGGGTGACTTCTGGTTTG

616

533

m600

CTCGCAGTGGTGATGAAGAA

GCAGCTTGGTTCTGTGATGA

502

387

m555

AAAAGCAGAGAAGCAAAACACA

AGTTGGTGAAAGAGCGGCTA

537

310

Table1. The Markers and primers used for genotyping.

The 12x concentration of buffer, water, dNTP, polymerase and primers (Table 2.1) were added to a PCR tubes along with the DNA of different genotypes. The tubes were mixed well (without air bubbles) and placed in ice. Water is used as a negative control. The PCR program was set as shown in table 2.2. The tubes were placed in PCR machine and allowed to run for 35 cycles.

10x ThermoPol buffer

2.5 µl

30 µl

dNTP (10mM)

0.5 µl

6 µl

Taq polymerase (5U/µl)

0.2 µl

2.4 µl

Primer 1 (10µM)

0.6 µl

7.2 µl

Primer 2 (10µM)

0.6 µl

7.2 µl

DNA template

0.5 µl

H2O

20.1 µl

241 µl

96 °C

5 min

94 °C

30 sec

60 °C

30 sec

35 cycles

72 °C

1.5 min

72 °C

10 min

4 °C

hold

Table 2.1 The reagents for PCR Table 2.2, PCR program

5 µl of loading dye was added with the products obtained from PCR. The samples were then loaded into agarose gel. DNA ladders were added to the first and last lanes of the gel. The gel was run at 100 V for 1-2 hrs.

From the grown RIL and ecotypes of Arabidopsis the phenotyping was done. The morphological characters such as short plant, silique width, compact inflorescence and short silique length, pedicle length and petiole length contained plants were considered as landsberg erecta. For the Columbia ecotype tall plant, long silique length, pedicle length, petiole length, thin siliques width and with disperse inflorescence considered as phenotypic characters. The phenotypic data was compared with genotypic data obtained from the electrophoresis. Then the phenotypic data was compared with standard marker data and scoring was done.

The widely-used methods for detecting QTLs such as single-marker analysis, simple interval mapping (Liu, 1998) were used to find, whether the marker is linked to a QTL and the position of the QTL on the map.

The DNA of ecotypes and RIL were analyzed by using the insertion and deletion markers with the help of electrophoresis (Fig .2) and the data obtained was given in table 3. Based on the size of the DNA the ecotypes were differentiated as shown in fig 2. For DNA size refer table 1. For many of the markers there was no DNA band observed for the Parents and RIL’s.

Fig 2. The gel picture of Arabidopsis ecotypes and their RIL’s according to the marker.

From the table (Table 3) it’s clear that some of the markers such as m600, m555 and 457 were more different from the phenotype. Some of the other markers like m220, m213 and ERECTA don’t have clear genotypic results to compare with phenotype. However the marker m457 results have closely related to the phenotypic result. So there may be contamination or practical errors be occurred during the DNA analysis.

m213

Ler

Col

Ler

m251

Col

Ler

Ler

Col

Col

Col

Ler

Ler

Col

ERECTA

Ler

Ler

Ler

Ler

m220

Col

Col

m457

Col

Ler

Col

Col

Col

m600

Col

Ler

Col

Ler

Ler

Ler

m555

Col

Ler

Ler

Ler

Ler

Col

Col

Ler

Col

Phenotype

Col

Ler

Ler

Col

Col

Ler

Ler

Ler

Ler

Table3. The result form agarose gel electrophoresis and phenotyping.

The morphological characters such as type of inflorescence (compact or dispersed), plant height, silique length, silique width, pedicle length and petiole length was analyzed from the recombinant inbred lines of Ler and Col (Table 4). As it was said earlier (methods), based on the morphological characters, the ecotypes were differentiated and noted down. Form the result it was observed that most of the RIL’s expressed Ler phenotype.

CS/N1900

22

1

14

1

6

0

ler

CS/N1901

20

0

16

0

12

1

col

CS/N1903

23

0

18

0

13

0

col

CS/N1905

27.5

0

20

0

11

1

col

CS/N1910

18.5

1

12

1

3

0

ler

CS/N1911

32.5

0

14

0

10

1

col

CS/N1913

8.5

1

6

1

6

0

ler

CS/N1915

18.5

1

15

0

6

1

ler

CS/N1919

35

0

18

0

12

1

col

CS/N1921

13.5

1

9

1

4

0

ler

CS/N1923

20

1

10

1

6

0

ler

CS/N1924

32.5

0

17

0

11

1

col

CS/N1927

16

1

10

1

9

0

ler

CS/N1929

28

0

16

0

13

1

col

CS/N1933

9

1

6

1

3

0

ler

CS/N1934

20

1

10

1

6

1

ler

CS/N1935

20

1

11

1

5

0

ler

CS/N1937

23

1

9

1

5

0

ler

CS/N1938

24.5

1

15

0

4

0

ler

CS/N1942

23.5

1

10

1

4

0

ler

CS/N1945

34

0

16

0

11

1

col

CS/N1946

22.5

0

15

0

10

1

col

CS/N1948

30

0

15

0

11

1

col

CS/N1951

5

1

5

1

2

0

ler

CS/N1953

25

0

16

0

10

1

col

CS/N1954

35

0

18

0

13

1

col

CS/N1957

15

1

11

1

5

0

ler

CS/N1958

17

1

10

1

8

0

ler

CS/N1959

18.5

1

14

1

5

0

ler

CS/N1960

18.5

1

12

1

6

0

ler

CS/N1963

21

1

11

1

8

0

ler

CS/N1966

7

1

10

1

8

0

ler

CS/N1969

12

1

10

1

3

0

ler

CS/N1971

38.5

0

16

0

8

1

col

CS/N1974

25.5

1

11

1

3

0

ler

CS/N1975

11.5

1

8

1

6

0

ler

CS/N1978

36.5

0

19

0

13

1

col

CS/N1980

16.5

1

9

1

6

0

ler

CS/N1984

12.5

1

7

1

8

0

ler

CS/N1985

12

1

12

1

4

0

ler

CS/N1988

13

1

4

1

6

0

ler

CS/N1989

34

0

17

0

14

1

col

CS/N1990

23.5

1

14

1

3

1

ler

Table4. The morphological characters of RIL of Ler and Col. In inflorescence 1 denote compact inflorescence and 0 denote disperse inflorescence. For leaf shape 0 and 1 indicates presence and obscene respectively. Like that, Silique length was also denoted by 0 and 1.

The genotype of the markers was scored with the help of phenotypic data (Table 5). In the table the phenotype observed was compared with the genotype data, by highlighting the similarity between phenotype and genotype. Form the table5 marker m220 had highest value of 37 followed by m251with 36 and m216 & m326 respectively with 29.

Table5. The data of scored marker with observed phenotypic data of RIL’s. Highlighting indicates genotype and phenotype were matching.

The QTL results based on single marker analysis and interval mapping are shown in Fig.3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4. The QTL analysis for height, silique and pedicle length indicated that (Fig.3.1, 3.2 & 3.3) marker m220 had peak above the threshold level. For silique length and pedicle length the QTL showed (Fig 3.2 & 3.3) two peaks (high and low) above the threshold level for the markers m220 and m226 respectively.

Fig. 3) 3.1.The QTL of plant height with peak on m220 (indicated by arrow, 3.2 & 3.3, QTL of silique length and petiole length with two peaks above threshold level on m220 and m226 and 3.4, the marker map of Arabidopsis showing the place of ERECTA gene.

The genotype result gave an idea to eliminate the marker which was not closely related to phenotype such as m600, m555 and 457. But, the genotype result did not given clear conclusion about the marker that closely related to ERECTA gene. The genotype data of m220, m213, m457 and ERECTA did not express DNA band for most of the RILs (Fig. 2). However, the score obtained from the comparison of phenotype with standard genotypic data provide some evidence of the location of ERECTA gene when compared with molecular map of Arabidopsis thaliana. It showed that m220, m251, m216 and m226 were closely related to the ERECTA gene. Still we cannot say clearly that ERECTA is located somewhere between m220, m251, m216 and m226 because the marker m226 and m326 were located at third chromosome of Arabidopsis thaliana. Additionally, the markers m326 and m226 showed some effects on silique and pedicle length which were observed in both QTL analyses and RILs scoring. So it can be said that these genes also have a little effect on controlling the expression of silique and pedicle length of Arabidopsis thaliana. By using QTL analysis the finest details about location of ERECTA gene was obtained. From the QTL data it was clearly shown that the ERECTA gene is located between m251 and m220 (Fig. 3.4).

We thank Tom martin, Jonas Ross and Luisa Ghelardini for providing technical support and assessment during the experiment.



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The Distance Slaters Travel In Different Temperatures Biology Essay

Biology » The Distance Slaters Travel In Different Temperatures Biology Essay

Introduction: The Slater Porcellio Scaber is an Arthropod and is a member of the biological class Crustacea. The Slater has a flattened segmented body and 7 pairs of legs. The Slater is nocturnal and feeds on dead plant matter and vegetables. The Slaters I collected were found in dark and damp places with a temperature of 17.4 degrees Celsius in a gully behind bark on rotting trees and under rocks. The Slaters I found were clumped together as this is a method of conserving water in warmer temperatures or in regions of low humidity. Water loss can lead to desiccation as can the exposure to light so the Slaters I found were unexposed to light. This is due to Slaters being negative photo taxis as exposed to light Slaters can suffer desiccation (“Desiccation is the state of extreme dryness, or the process of extreme drying” quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiccation.) This is because Slaters do not have a waterproof waxy cuticle to keep water/moisture inside there body. Also Slaters lose more water than other Arthropods because their lungs are located on the abdomen and during respiration water is a product which can be lost via a small pore on the outside of the body. Due to losing water more rapidly than other Arthropods Slaters have physical and behavioural adaptations to maximise and maintain their water intake in order to avoid desiccation.

A structural adaptation Slaters have is a pair of uropods. Slaters are able to absorb water through uropods. The uropods are located on the posterior of the insect. To obtain the water the Slater will squeeze the uropods together and touch it against the surface with water on it. Capillaries located inside the uropods ‘suck’ the water up and into the anus.

Slaters are able to absorb water directly through their exoskeleton. However this is only possible in regions of high humidity.

A behavioural adaptation is in hot or dry conditions the Slater is able to release a body odour that attracts other Slaters. The Slaters then clump together as a form of defence to prevent loss of water. They do this because they need to reduce their surface area and for a lone Slater this is not possible. Reducing surface area means reducing the area in which water is lost via diffusion through the exoskeleton due to the lack of the waxy cuticle.

Slaters are nocturnal. Although this is also to avoid predators such as birds, frogs, some beetles and some spiders it is also to avoid sunlight which can lead to water loss and desiccation. Also at night the temperature would be a lot cooler than during the day. Slaters may have developed this behavioural adaptation because being active during the day would lead to significantly more water loss than when they are active at night. A large loss of water can lead to desiccation.

My investigation is based on whether the temperature in which the Slaters live in naturally benefits their survival or not. As warmer temperatures can lead to water loss and for Slaters this can lead to desiccation. I have designed an experiment to measure the activity levels of Slaters by measuring the distance they travel (in cm) at different temperatures (5 degrees Celsius, 10 degrees Celsius, 15 degrees Celsius, 20 degrees Celsius, 25 degrees Celsius and 30 degrees Celsius). The results from this experiment will allow me to determine whether or not Slaters have increased or decreased activity levels in warmer or cooler temperatures. Results will allow me to make a conclusion on whether the temperature in which they live in naturally plays a vital role in the survival of Slater populations. I would expect to see in my experiment Slaters covering a larger amount of distance in the warmer temperatures. I am expecting to observe this behaviour because the Slaters will be trying to avoid these warmer temperatures in order to prevent water loss which could then lead to desiccation.

Aim: To determine whether Slaters (Porcellio Scaber) have an increased/or decreased activity levels in different temperatures measure by the distance they travel in a set amount of time. Using the results make a conclusion on whether temperature plays a vital role in the Slaters survival as a population in their natural environment by reducing the risk of desiccation.

Hypothesis: I think the Slaters will cover more distance in the warmer temperatures (e.g. 20°C, 25°C and 30°C) as an attempt to find an escape to a cooler temperature. This is because in warmer temperatures more water is lost and excessive water loss can lead to desiccation. I think that in the cooler temperatures the Slaters will not cover as much distance because they will not be trying to avoid the temperature as desiccation would occur at a significantly slower rate in colder temperatures.

Equipment List:

Lux meter

Data logger with humidity measure attachment

Ice cream container

Thermometer

Stop watch

Sharpie

String

Boiling water (depends on the temperature you are trialling)

Ice water (depends on the temperature you are trialling)

200 similar sized Slaters (Porcellio Scaber)

Paper (to line the bottom of the ice cream container with)

Cello tape

Question: To measure how temperature affects Slaters activity levels by the distance they travel in a set time. With the results make a conclusion on whether the temperature in which they live in naturally benefits their survival.

Gather 200 similar sized Slaters. Slaters need to be of similar size as larger Slaters may be able to cover further distance than smaller Slaters are able to. Keep Slaters in a tank outside (out of direct sunlight) that replicates their natural environment. Also during the experiment we want to replicate their natural environment as much as possible (e.g. light intensity and humidity). This is to ensure the Slaters respond to the changes in temperature and not other factors.

Collect a sharpie, string, measuring instrument, thermometer, lux meter, humidity meter, boiling water( depends on the temperature), ice water (depends on the temperature), data logger, ice cream container.

Line the bottom of an ice cream container with a sheet of white paper. Ensure you use the same size container for all of the trials during your testing. As a change in size may change the Slaters movement and then it would not be a fair test. Also ensure container is same height as if the container were to be not as high for some temperatures in your experiment the Slater may spend the 2minutes trying to climb out and not moving around the container in response to the temperature.

When carrying out the experiment make the room as dimly lit as possible. This is to prevent the Slaters from moving in response to bright light and not temperature. As Slaters are negative photo taxis (move away from light) having the experiment in a bright room will cause the Slaters to move in response to the light as they will be trying to move away from it. Light is a controlled variable so measure the light intensity using a lux meter before every trial and every change in temperature. Take 5 readings and calculate an average. You must take 5 readings to obtain the average as light intensity is constantly changing so by taking 5 readings and calculating an average you will be getting a more accurate light intensity measure rather than if you were to just use one reading as your light intensity. Also the humidity of the room is another controlled variable. Measure humidity using a data logger with a humidity measurer attachment after every trial and change in temp just to ensure it remains fairly constant (within 10% difference in the humidity readings). We must keep the humidity level as constant as possible as different humidity levels may cause the Slaters to act differently and we want a response form the Slaters due to temperature to which they are exposed to and not humidity levels.

To obtain cooler temperatures (e.g. 5 and 10 degrees Celsius) cool down the inside of the ice cream container by placing it in a water bath containing ice water. Once the temperature has reached the desired coolness and has remained at the desired temperature for 5minutes you are ready to start testing. Measure temperature using a thermometer. Ensuring the temperature maintains the same for 5minutes means when you start the testing it won’t start changing. This is important because if the temperature were to increase or decrease during the testing the Slater would respond to the change in temperature and not to the original temperature which is the one we are testing the Slaters activity levels on.

Place a randomly picked Slater in the ice cream container. (Do not get the Slater from the tank you are keeping it in until you are ready to start the testing). Measure the Slater using a ruler to check it is between 1-1.5cm. The Slaters used for testing must all be between 1-1.5cm because if you were to use smaller Slaters and larger Slaters for the experiment you may receive different results as the larger Slaters may be able to move faster so they could cover a larger distance in the 2minutes. Wait for 2minutes to allow the Slater to adjust to its new environment. If you were to start timing straight away the Slaters response may not be due to the temperature but due to its new surroundings.

After the 2minutes ensure the temperature is still constant. Now start a timer for 2minutes and as the Slater moves around the ice cream container draw a line behind it and line the path it takes. Make sure you do not follow the Slater with the sharpie too closely as it may respond to the sharpie following it and not the temperature. Leave about a 10cm gap between sharpie and the Slater.

Once the 2minutes is up remove the Slater and place in a separate tank to the other Slaters that replicates its natural environment. We don’t want to use the same Slater for the trials as this would not be a large enough sample size to represent a population.

Using a piece of string follow the lines (the path the Slater took) around the piece of paper that lined the bottom of the ice cream container. You may need to use cello tape to keep the string in place along the Slaters path. Once you have the length of string with the distance the Slater travelled in the 2minutes measure it using a ruler and record in a results table. A large amount of distance=high activity levels. A low amount of distance=low activity levels.

Now you are going to repeat the trial again so measure the temperature to ensure it is still constant. You may have to add more ice to the water bath to cool it down to the desired temperature again. Once the temperature is constant again and has remained constant for at least 5minutes you are able to repeat the trial again for 9 more Slaters. Each temperature you test you must have a sample size of Slaters of at least 10. This is because a large sample size will mean more accurate and reliable results that can represent a whole population of Slaters.

For each different temperature you test (5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 degrees Celsius) repeat the same method but to heat up the inside of the ice cream container place the container in a water bath full of hot/boiling water and have the room well heated.

For each temperature use 10 Slaters and each temperature must be trialled 3 times (so 30 similar size Slaters will be used per temperature overall). This is to ensure accurate and reliable results as the sample size must be able to represent a whole population.

Record all results in a table. Remember between each trial and sets of testing record light intensity and humidity to make sure the two controlled variables remain as constant at possible. Also remember to measure temperature before each Slater is tested to make sure it is still at the desired temperature.

With results work out averages from each temperature (using the averages from the 3 trials per temperature). Use the averages to make a conclusion whether Slaters benefit their survival in their natural environment by living in the temperature they live in.

Light intensity: You must maintain a constant low light intensity throughout the testing. Because Slaters are negative photo taxis we want the room as dark as possible whilst performing the experiment so the Slaters respond to the temperature and not to the light intensity.

Humidity: You must maintain a constant humidity reading throughout the testing. You want the Slaters to respond to temperature and not humidity levels.

Perform testing at roughly the same time every day: Because Slaters are nocturnal we must perform the testing if done on different days at roughly the same time. If you were to perform some trials during the evening this is when the Slaters are normally active so if you had done the rest of the tests during the day your results would not be accurate.

Perform testing in same container: Make sure the container is the same length; width and height (preferably keep it the same container throughout the whole testing process). If the container were to change the Slaters may act differently. If the container were to be not as high as the original the Slaters may spend the 2minutes trying to climb out the container and not moving around the container in response to temperature.

Use similar sized Slaters for the testing and the same type of Slater: Make sure all the Slaters you use in your testing are between 1-1.5cm in length. Check this by measuring them with a ruler before you start the testing. The Slaters used for testing must all be between 1-1.5cm because if you were to use smaller Slaters and larger Slaters for the experiment you may receive different results as the larger Slaters may be able to move faster so they could cover a larger distance in the 2minutes. Also make sure you are using the right type of Slater as there are many different types found in New Zealand. You are using Porcellio Scaber, this Slater cannot roll into a ball and it is a little bit blue in colour so it is easily recognisable.

Temperature

Average Distance in cm the Slaters Travelled in the 2 minutes.

5°C

10°C

15°C

20°C

25°C

30°C

1.92cm

11.98cm

23.08cm

65.20cm

83.21cm

95.86cm

As seen on the table the Slaters travelled a very little amount of distance in the 5°C with an average distance of 1.92cm and as the temperature increased so did the amount of distance the Slaters travelled. All the measurements of distance shown are final averages from the 3 trials per temperature.

Conclusion: My aim was to determine whether Slaters have an increased/or decreased activity levels in different temperatures by the distance they travel in a set amount of time. In conclusion from the results of my experiment it shows that as the temperature increases so does the Slaters movement. This is shown by the distance in cm Slaters travelled in the 2minutes. For 5°C the Slaters travelled an average distance of 1.92cm. In 10°C the Slaters travelled an average distance of 11.98cm. In 15°C the Slaters travelled an average distance of 23.08cm. In 20°C the Slaters travelled an average distance of 65.20cm. In 25°C the Slaters travelled an average distance of 83.21cm and in 30°C the Slaters travelled an average distance of 95.86cm. Therefore my hypothesis was correct with my assumption that the Slaters would cover more distance in the warmer temperatures.

Discussion: The purpose of my investigation was to determine whether Porcellio Scaber have increased/or decreased activity levels in different temperatures. A trend was seen in the results I obtained. As the temperature increased by 5°C the Slaters movement increased by 10-20cm with the exception of the temperature change from 15°C to 20°C. The difference of the Slaters movement between the two temperatures was 42.12cm. From the results of my experiment it was clear the Slaters preferred the temperatures between 10°C and 15°C. 5°C was too cold for the Slaters and they moved a very minimal distance (average of 1.92cm). This is because as Slaters are cold blooded and are not self heating so they take in the temperature of their environment. In the cold temperatures Slaters cannot move quickly as particles are denser and thus move slower and enzymes cannot catalyze reactions as quickly in the cooler temperatures. If the Slaters were to live in a cold environment such as 5°C they would struggle to move especially away from predators and it would take them longer to find food as they could not travel as fast. This would be a disadvantage to the survival of Slaters as they would be more likely caught and eaten by predators and they may not be able to find enough food for them to survive as they would be moving very slowly. The other extreme is in the warmer temperatures the Slaters covered a large amount of distance. In 5°C on average the Slaters travelled 1.92cm and in 30°C on average the Slaters travelled 95.86cm. The difference of 93.94cm between the two temperatures for the Slaters movement is a significant difference. In the warmer temperatures (e.g. 20°C, 25°C and 30°C) the Slaters all covered a large distance. This is due to the Slaters trying to find an area that is cooler to escape the heat. Heat causes particles to move more rapidly as they become less dense. Therefore diffusion occurs at a more rapid rate in warmer temperatures and Slaters lose water via diffusion through their exoskeleton. This can then lead to desiccation. Desiccation is the dryness resulting from the removal of water. Slaters are more prone to desiccation than other arthropods as they lack a waxy cuticle on their exoskeleton. The waxy cuticle which is found on other arthropods prevents water loss. Slaters also lose water through respiration as water is a product of the chemical reaction. Also the Slaters lungs which are located on the abdomen open to the outside of the body via a pore. This means Slaters will lose a greater amount of water from their respiratory surfaces than other Arthropods. From my experiment part of my aim was to find out whether temperature plays a vital role in the Slaters survival as a population in their natural environment. From my results of my experiment I have come to the conclusion that temperature does play a vital role in the survival of Slater populations. Optimum temperature for Slaters would be around 15°C because the Slaters were still able to move at a rate and cover a suitable amount of distance (23.08cm) in the 2minutes that would allow them to escape from predators. At around 15°C the Slaters would not have to be concerned of excessive water loss which could lead to desiccation. The jump of the distance travelled by the Slaters between 15°C and 20°C (42.12cm) shows that when the temperature is around 20°C the Slaters start trying to escape and search for an area cooler in temperature so this would not be an ideal temperature as they would be prone to desiccation in this temperature.

Evaluation: My results and conclusion from my experiment are valid because I made sure my method was reliable by controlling any factors that the Slaters could respond to if they were to change. The steps I took to make my experiment a fair test to ensure valid results are:

When I collected the Slaters from the gully and put them into a tank I made sure that the tank replicated their natural environment as much as possible by placing pieces of bark off the tree I found them on in the tank. I also added leaves, dirt and other plant debris. Also each day I added some water into one corner of the tank and also gave the Slaters vegetables such as potatoes to eat. The reason I kept the tank the Slaters were in as similar to their natural environment as possible and fed them is because I did not want the Slaters to become stressed or deprived of food and water as this could have significantly changed my results.

During the testing I controlled light intensity by measuring the light intensity using a lux meter after every trial and before every change in temperature. I also kept the room as dark as possible because Slaters are negative photo taxis which means they move away from light. If I were to perform the testing in a room well lit up the Slaters would respond to the light and temperature not just the temperature which is the only factor we want the Slaters to be responding to in order to receive valid results.

I also controlled humidity levels by measuring humidity before after every trial and before every change in temperature to ensure it remains relatively constant. I tested the humidity levels using a data logger with a humidity reader attachment. The reason for controlling humidity is if the humidity were to change for different temperatures the Slaters may respond to the humidity level but temperature is the only factor we want the Slater to be reacting to.

I performed the test at roughly the same time of the day if I was doing trials on different days. I did this because Slaters are nocturnal which means they are active at night. If I were to perform the testing in the evening the Slaters would already be more active in their natural environment so than if I were to perform the testing during the day so this could cause my results to be unreliable. To eliminate this from happening I ensured that I performed the testing midday-early afternoon as this means that all the Slaters I would have used for testing would be displaying the same activity levels at that time of the day in their natural environment.

During my experiment I used the same size container to perform the testing in. This is important because if I were to change the height of the container the Slaters may spend more time trying to climb out than moving around the container in response to temperature. In the bottom of my container I made sure I used the same surface for all the trials (sheet of plain white paper). If I were to not use paper on the bottom the Slaters may find the surface slippery and not be able to move naturally which could lead to inaccurate results.

During my testing I made sure that when I was dotting/lining the path the Slaters took around the bottom of the container I did not follow them too closely with the pen. I left around a 10cm gap between the sharpie and the Slater. I did this because if I were to line the path the Slater took directly behind the Slater as it moved the Slater may become frightened and try to avoid the pen so it would be moving in response to the pen behind it following too closely and not the temperature.

Another way of ensuring I obtained valid results from my experiment is if I started testing but found the Slater was acting abnormally I did not use the results from that experiment. If I were to use the results from the trial it may make my mean a lot smaller or a lot larger than what it really should be. An example of not using Slaters that act abnormally is I started to test one of the Slaters in 25°C and very quickly I noticed it had 2 legs missing which affected they way it moved and it was not covering the same amount of distance all the other Slaters had in 25°C. So I placed the Slater back into the set up tank and chose another Slater to use for the testing. If I were to use this Slaters results it may have brought down the average distance travelled for 25°C.

The Slaters I used for the testing were all between 1-1.5cm in length. I measured the Slaters I used for the testing because I had to make sure they were all similar in length. This is because if I were to use a large Slater for one test it may be able to cover a larger distance than smaller Slaters are able to. Having the same sized Slaters means that in a constant temperature they should all be able to cover equal amount of distance.

Another way of ensuring I had valid results was I made sure the Slaters got used to the environment before I started testing. I did this by leaving the Slater in the cooled down or heated up ice cream container for 2minutes before I started timing and recording its movement. I did this because if I were suddenly to grab a Slater from its natural environment and place it in an ice cream container and start timing straight away the Slater may respond to all the factors in its new surroundings and not to just the temperature.

For each temperature I tested 10 Slaters and I then repeated that 2 more times so in total I used 30 Slaters per temperature over 3 trials per temperature. So overall I used 180 Slaters for my experiment. I used such a large sample size because I needed to perform a test with enough Slaters so that it could represent a population of Slaters. If I had not of used such a large sample size I may have had inaccurate results as only a few Slaters cannot represent a whole population. If I had used a few Slaters they may have had a disease or not be acting normally due to a change in environment that consists of far less Slaters than what they were used to. This would of affected their natural behaviour because they would not be able to clump together to reduce water loss as there may not be enough Slaters for this to work. If I had then chosen to go ahead with my experiment using only a small sample size my results would be invalid and not be able to represent a whole Slater population. I also repeated my trial per temperature 3 times. I repeated my trials 3 times per temperature using 10 Slaters per trial because repeating the experiment multiple times verifies that your results are accurate and consistent. If I had only used 10 Slaters per temperature and not repeated this 2 more times I may have inaccurate results because some of the Slaters used may have displayed unusual reactions to the temperatures which would have resulted in my final averages being inaccurate. But because of having a large sample size and trialling the experiment 3 times if one Slater had not moved as far or too far in the 2minutes it would not affect the averages or have very minimal effect.

Because of all the precautions I took to ensure my test was a fair test I am positive my results are valid which lead to a valid conclusion.



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The Risks Of Exposure To Radiation Biology Essay

Ionising radiation is commonly utilized in our daily lives in small amounts e.g. X-rays. However, radiation exposure results in harmful effects on DNA structure, leading to base modifications (oxidation, alkylation), cross-link formation or bulky lesions. Repair mechanisms exist to correct these modifications, however, misrepairs may lead to increases in mutations such as base substitutions and single and double-stranded breaks, the latter being the most important.


At present, mouse models are used to measure the effects of exposure to radiation. From this, the risk of gaining harmful mutations is calculated (Bouffler et al, 2006) .This is performed by identifying markers in the mouse genome (Neel, 1990, Sankaranarayanan, 2001). Phenotypical changes can be seen with the different doses of radiation exposure, e.g. fur colour Is dose-dependent. Unfortunately, the frequency of these mutations is very low (about 1 in 100 000) and hence large amounts of radiation needs to be used. Despite this, these experiments were useful as they showed that the mutations occurred at or near the sites of exposure to ionising radiation.


Subsequently, it was discovered that the mouse and human genomes contain tandem repeat DNA loci (TRDLs) which have a higher mutation frequency than the mouse genome markers (Bois 1999), which can be used to induce mutations. The higher mutation frequency of these genes in mice are evidence that these mutations are “untargeted”, that is, the mutations are not limited to the sites of exposure to ionising radiation. Further experiments have shown that exposure to ionising radiation can induce mutations in cells many years after exposure (Little, 1994). Although the exact mechanism of untargeted and delayed mutations is not fully understood, it is thought that radiation exposure results in genome instability. The regions of higher mutation in the human genome are known as “minisatellites”, and in mice, “expanded single tandem repeats (ESTRs)”. The difference in nomenclature is due to the different structures of these regions in mice and humans (Bouffler et al, 2006).


Mammalian TDRLs consist of microsatellites which are 500 base pairs long and repeat sizes of 1-4 base pairs. ESTRs are 0.5-16 kilobases long with repeat sizes of 4-9 base pairs. Human minisatellites are 0.5-10 kilobases long and the repeat sizes are 9 – 60 base pairs (Bois 1999, Ellegren, 2004, Vergnaud, 2000). TDRLs can make up about 10% of human genes. The research significance of these regions of the genome is that any additions or subtractions occur in the repeat units as a whole, and hence are useful to assess the risks of exposure to radiation.


Minisatellites are highly variable sequences (Vergnaud,2000). In humans, they are located in the sub-telomeric locations of the gene (Bouffler, 2006). Not only is this less so in pigs, rats and mice (Jeffreys, 1999), but these genomes also have higher mutation rates. Two approaches can be used to assess mutation rates in human minisatellites. These are pedigrees, where mutations are identified in complete pedigree trees. and the small pool PCR (SP-PCR) method (Tamaki, 1999). The DNA is obtained from lymphocytes and locus-specific probes are used to identify the minisatellite regions. A mutation is a new segment of DNA which does not arise from the parents’ genes and this is easily ascertained because of the high mutation frequencies of these minisatellite loci. For the pedigree method, it is important to avoid errors from non-paternity and other human errors. In the PCR technique, DNA from sperm are diluted and amplified, so that mutations can be detected. Therefore, the pedigree method identifies mutations in the maternal germline and the PCR technique, in the paternal germline. The mutation rate per generation is calculated as follows:


In the case of human minisatellites, a greater number (approximately four fold more) of paternal mutations than maternal mutations have been detected, (Bouffler, 2006). This difference has also been fairly consistent with human microsatellites (Yauk, 2004). Why this occurs is not understood. Studies involving minisatellites have also revealed that mutation rates vary between somatic and germline DNA, with the high frequencies only being seen in the germline DNA (Buard, 2000). A possible explanation could be the “gene conversion-like” processes which occur in the germline DNA, which cause many of the mutations. (Boufler 2006 ). Many additional mutations also occur in germline DNA e.g. DNA double strand breaks, recombination from meiosis at genetic hotspots. (Buard, Shone, Jeffreys, 2000). Nearly half of the minisatellites in the human genome (Denoeud F, 2003) occur in the coding sequences, therefore resulting in alterations to protein structure. The HRAS gene codes for the HRAS protein, a GTPase, which controls cell division in the presence of growth factors. Hence minisatellites within this gene will alter gene expression and thus increase the risk of familial cancer. In addition, minisatellites in the introns can alter gene splicing, due to sequence overlap between the minisatellite repeat and the splice regions. The actual purpose of minisatellites is not known, however the multiple minisatellite loci, heritability and their existence in the genes of higher mammals propose that they do serve an important purpose.


WWII Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb


Mutations in minisatellite loci were studied in the genomes of families that were exposed to ionising radiation during the WWII Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb explosions (Kodaira, 2004). The sample size studied consisted of the children of 30 fathers and 32 mothers who were exposed to the ionising radiation, and 60 children of unexposed parents. The majority of the 62 children from exposed parents were born a decade after the explosions. The Dosimetry System 86 (DS86) was utilized to process the radiation exposed by the parents. The average parental exposure was 1.9Gy and this was seen mostly in the cases where only the mother was exposed (Bouffler, 2006). The initial experiments identified low mutation rate sequences in the genomes of the exposed group (Kodaira, 1995). Subsequently, single-locus probes identified very high mutation rate minisatellite sequences (Kodaira, 2004). However, dramatically-changed mutation rates were not found. Possible reasons could be the insufficient number of exposed individuals, the large number of exposed groups consisting of exposed maternal lines and unexposed paternal lines, possible correction of any mutations in the genome before conception, or finally, a genuinely low mutation rate caused by the exposure to ionising radiation.


Chernobyl Disaster


Mutation frequencies in minisatellite loci were studied in families who were exposed to ionising radiation during the Chernobyl disaster. These families were located in the countryside of Belarus and the Ukraine (Dubrova, Grant, 2002). The sample size consisted of 127 children from exposed parents in Mogilev in Belarus. The control individuals were 120 Caucasian children of unexposed parents in the UK. High mutation frequencies were found within minisatellite sequences, through the use of 2 multilocus and 8 single-locus probes. This showed that the mutation frequency was higher in the exposed group. The mutation frequency also directly correlated to increased exposure to cesium-137, although the individuals were also exposed to other forms of ionising radiation. Another discrepancy is that the control individuals were of a different ethnicity to the exposed individuals, therefore, it cannot be proven that the increase in mutation rate is purely due to radiation exposure (Bouffler, 2006). Hence, to validate these conclusions, mutation frequencies at minisatellite loci were studied in exposed and unexposed individuals who were born in same countryside districts of the Ukraine (Dubrova, Grant, 2002). To ensure the highest degree of validity possible, the exposed and unexposed groups were made sure to have the same ethnicity, lifestyles and maternal age. Single-locus probes was used to identify any germline mutations. However, a significant increase in mutation frequency was only found in the paternal germline. This could be due to the greater early exposure immediately after the Chernobyl incident. In terms of the analogous maternal mutation rates, this could be a result of non-irradiation of the mothers during the meiotic phase of pregnancy in order to result in mutation at the minisatellite loci. These studies support the hypothesis that increased exposure to ionising radiation results in raised germline mutation frequency (Boufller, 2006).


Nuclear Weapons Testing


Semipalatinsk was an area where nuclear weapons testing was executed by the Soviet Union from 1949-1989 . As in the other studies, the frequency of mutations at minisatellite loci were analysed in forty families resident near this area (Dubrova 2002). The main contact with the ionising radiation occurred via the surface explosions executed from 1949-1956. At present, the level of radioactivity in this region is minimal. The control sample comprised 28 families resident in the Taldy Kurgan region in Kazakhstan, where there was no exposure to ionising radiation. It was ensured that all the individuals being analysed were of similar ethnicity, maternal age, occupation and smoking. The eight single-locus probes were used once again for this study. The experiment concluded that exposure to ionising radiation nearly doubled the minisatellite mutation frequency in the irradiated families. Also, the consequence of the reduced exposure during the lack of surface explosions post-1950s resulted in minisatellite mutation frequency not linking with the year that the parents were born. Hence, there is the possibility of confirming that the initiation of minisatellite mutation frequency is dose-dependent, and that exposure to ionising radiation is directly responsible for the raised minisatellite mutation frequency in the exposed group (Bouffler, 2006).


Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy


The very methods used to treat cancer patients, could ironically and potentially have the ability to induce harmful mutations that could also affect neighbouring non-cancerous cells. Hence, genetic experimentation is vital in assessing the level of mutation initiation to the germline caused by chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Once again, minisatellite mutation frequency was analysed in male cancer patients. This was performed using the SP-PCR method (May, 2000). DNA from sperm were diluted and amplified to identify novel mutations within one male patient (Jeffreys, 1994), and therefore requires a much smaller sample size than the pedigree method. However, the disadvantage of the SP-PCR method is that there is a high variation frequency within each locus (Tamaki, 1999). This makes it unsuitable for assessing the differences in mutation frequency between the exposed cohort and controls. As such, this method is used specifically to assess mutation frequencies before and after chemotherapy or radiotherapy in only one man. Another disadvantage of SP-PCR, is that only minisatellite alleles that are less than 5kb can be amplified. Initial experiments concluded that cyclophosphamide, etopside and vincristine did not alter the mutation frequency of the MS205 minisatellite (Armour, 1999). However, cyclophosphamide was shown to initiate alterations to germ cell mutations specifically during post-meiosis. On the other hand, etoposide induces mutations specifically to germ cells during meiosis (Vilarino-Guell, 2003), which creates a narrow window for assessment. Hence, these drugs are meosis stage-specific. A further study involved sperm from ten individuals post-chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s disease (Zheng, 2000). No raised mutation frequency was detected in the patients treated with vinblastine or a combination of adriamycin and bleomycin, which correlates with similar findings with these drugs on mouse models. However, procarbazine, which was shown to affect cells in the pre-meiotic stage in mouse models, raised the genome mutation rate majorly in humans (Zheng, 2000).


In the case of radiotherapy, again, no changes in mutation frequency was seen in the B6.7 and CEB1 minisatellite loci (May, 2000). The dosage delivered to the patients were 15 courses of X ray exposure (0.4-0.8Gy). This is near the doubling dose exposure for mouse models (UN. And Sanakaranarayanan, 2000). However, the results obtained could be due to the fact that the exposure to radiation in this case is fractionated, as opposed to one large dose.


In conclusion, the results of these different studies have not all been consistent with each other. Possible improvements could be to increase the sample sizes. Perhaps a novel method of calculating the effect of ionising radiation could be explored. In addition, transgenerational mutations have been detected in mice, but not in humans. This reflects the possibility that the mechanism of ESTR mutation initiation in mouse models could be different from that for human minisatellite loci. However, the mutations in mice were only seen after high-dose exposure. Research is currently taking-place to understand the possibility of a stress-like response that needs to be activated before transgenerational mutations are seen in mice. Results from these studies could be useful in understanding this process in humans, and hence our understanding of disease processes related to exposure to ionising radiation.



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Literature Suggests Effective Mission Statement Includes Various Features Marketing Essay

Marketing » Literature Suggests Effective Mission Statement Includes Various Features Marketing Essay

Literature suggests effective mission statement includes various features (1).

Our mission at Health-Hab is to enhance the overall quality of life and the health of the community. The variety of fitness programs and sports facilities help our members realise their goals both mentally and physically, improving their health and instilling in them the sense of self-worth. We provide a trained staff and personalised attention to the members with our state of art equipments inspiring life changing experiences. We strive to become synonymous to fitness and good health at London, the hub of fitness conscious people.

Health-Hab is targeting Westminster market which has a substantial residential population, consisting of working class people. Targeted segment are potential customers earning above £20000, almost 55.51% of total households. This segment has few top health clubs as competitors.

Organisation’s current situation needs to be analysed for the planning through environmental scanning, systematic collection and interpretation of data.

Internal audit

This is used to analyse the situation inside the organisation, its Strengths and Weaknesses.

The analysis is based upon Michael Porter’s 5 force model (2).

Women: One third overweight; a fourth are obese. (3)

Men: 41% overweight; 24% are obese.

The incidence of obesity using BMI is steadily rising.(3)

Many consumers are unaware of how much exercise they should be doing. (4)

Childhood obesity on the rise. (5)

Participation in sports increasing.(6)

Owning some type of keep fit equipment, such as an exercise bike or rowing machine, is growing in popularity, especially during the past two years.

The Nintendo Wii games console was launched recently has found in 5.5 million UK households (20.5% of the total).

Traditional Sports club model on decline. Upward trends in activities.

External audit

This is concerned with the uncontrollable variables such as business and economic variables. The analysis is based on Pestle model (7).

UK government has pursued a strategy of public health promotion policies to persuade adults to increase physical activity they do.

Overheads rising inexorably: legislation concerning the National Minimum Wage cost of electricity, rents.

Public awareness of the benefits of regular exercise is an important factor in helping persuade people to sign up to health and fitness club membership. The Fitness Industry Association (FIA) runs a number of national promotions to encourage consumers to become more active.

Falling levels of Personal Disposable Income.(8)

The core target 25-34 age bracket is set to grow between 2009 and 2014, something which augurs well for the industry.

Upward projected trend in retired population.(9)

UK household sizes show a negative trend.

Recession: consumers deal-hungry and they are always on the lookout for special offers, importance of customer service.

Focus on Staying Healthy remains major despite recession. (Just under quarter consumers have cut back on visiting a private health and fitness club)

SWOT Analysis: (10)

A SWOT analysis has been carried out through an external audit of the business environment using the PESTLE model and through an internal audit using Porter’s 5 forces model:

S-O strategies: Pursue opportunities that are fit to company’s strengths.

Increased packages for children, senior citizens.

Introduce budget deals.

Introduction of sports club membership with fitness membership.

W-O strategies: Overcome weakness to pursue opportunities

Follow mix strategies to develop new products for upcoming markets combined with penetration of existing markets.

S-T strategies: Strength to reduce vulnerability to threats

Encourage people to exercise regularly in a social environment.

W-T strategies: Defensive plan against weakness making organisation susceptible to threats

Do not follow a competitive strategy against the leading market players.

Market Structure

UK health and fitness clubs market approaching £3 billion.

Past 6 years show the market growth by quarter in terms of memberships and new openings.

Members

Index

£m

Index

Average revenue

m

per member

2004

4.2

100

2044

100

487

2005

4.35

104

2110

103

485

2006

4.69

112

2268

111

484

2007

5.18

123

2500

122

483

2008

5.24

125

2520

123

481

2009

5.26

125

2525

124

480

2010

5.27

125

2536

124

481

Membership increased by 25% and market size by 23% from 2004 till date.

Market Trends

Records show that past 18 months have seen the emergence of budget health clubs following the ‘no frills’ model. Culture of fitness centres with facilities like 24X7 grocery shop is on rise. This has dramatically increased market penetration.

Lesser market penetration because of cost barrier.

Digital media, social networking sites, member referrals are gaining importance as promotional media.

Majority revenues from joining and membership fees which is increasing as competition eases. (11)

Overweight and obese women are found mainly among the poorest households.

David Lloyd and Fitness First are still the market leaders in terms of fitness business.

Factors such as increase in obesity, per-capita income because of phasing out of the recession shows a positive future for health industry.

The overall market penetration has been constant at 10.5% adults and market value could be approximated to be stable at £2.5 billion since past 2 years.

The product life cycle analysis of the health and fitness clubs in UK would establish the stage of the industry in context to the current market.(12) Health-Hab has been into the market as a significant player for quite some time, being introduced into the market 3 years hence, currently it could be categorised as transiting from “Introduction” to the “Growth” stage which therefore would require more market penetration, product range extension and the market development strategies to be included as product/ market strategy.

The theory of “Diffusion of Innovation” takes into account Rogers (13) classification of adopters which when plotted with time gives an “S” shaped curve and the approximate market share as per the adopter category, time which can be captured or forecasted.

The current market share as in the transiting Introduction- Growth stage targeting the “Early adopters” and “Early majority” could be in range of 10-20% of target market share.

Market Segmentation (14)

It is the means by which company seeks to gain differential advantage over its competitors.

Various criteria for effective segmentation are:

It is distinct from the others.

It exhibits common needs and hence is homogeneous.

It can be divided over Gender, Price or Interests.

The customer segmentation goes as:

Fitness Freaks: These are particular about equipment. As long as appropriate equipments are available, these lock into long term commitments.

Weekend Visitors: These do not lock into long term gym commitment, instead like freedom to visit gym if opportunity exists. They look for special, periodic offers.

Gym dwellers: These love to be in gym for reasonable price and better atmosphere.

Families: A very small percentage of gym market, they look for “something for everyone” packages.

Senior Citizens: Fastest growing membership in last 10 years, due to increased focus on physical activity.

Business Travellers

Tourists

Forecasting:

Market forecast predicts numbers, trends and characteristics in future for the target market.

Based upon the assumptions, the current consumer expenditure and the population trends the market forecast for the fitness clubs is:

The average revenue per member shows an approximate constant value, with an increasing membership which means increasing profits.

Portfolio Summary

The portfolio summary combines information from SWOT and the overall competitive position indicating the relative importance of each customer/ market segment for the business. The idea of a portfolio is to meet company’s objectives by balancing growth, sales and risks. The nature of portfolio would depend upon market size and individual product growth/ decline. ‘Experience effect’, ‘economies of scale’, market growth etc. Hold profound implications for the firm.

Portfolio performance for Health-Hab as analysed using various models is summarised as follows:

BCG matrix (15)

Health-Hab could be currently placed as a “Question mark” as it is categorised with high business growth and a relatively not a dominant market share. The strategies need to be implemented such that it gains a position of ‘Star’ and eventually a ‘cash cow’. The current position is reasoned to be a result of recession hit market which shows bright signs of improvements and thus immediate growth prospects. Also Health-Hab is a relatively new market player, still performing reasonably well as compared to established market leaders. The usage of cash has been high because of the marketing requirements to establish a brand name as its transition from ‘Introduction’ to ‘Growth’ stage.

Directional Policy Matrix (16)

Direction of future growth in terms of ‘Grow’, ‘Invest’, ‘Harvest’, ‘Divest’ could be analysed using a DPM.

A decision could be based upon the following mentioned criteria:

The horizontal axis represents scores in strength and weaknesses.

Vertical axis quantifies attractiveness to the organisation of each important segment.

The circle sizes are relative to current turnover in each year.

The darker circles indicates forecast in next three years.

The above attractiveness has been calculated for Year0, the same has been calculated for Year3 as well to plot the forecast in the DPM.

The key objectives in this stage are to ‘Create value proposition’ by understanding customers’ needs and attractiveness of relative segments. Strategies are then formulated at corporate level to achieve profit objectives.

Gap analysis

The GAP analysis helps to compare actual performance with the potential performance.

It could be categorised into following:

Product Gap: Positioning or segment gap from which the organisation is excluded.

Competitive Gap: Results from competitive performance of the organisation.

The operations gap needs to be filled by increasing market share and improving sales mix.

The strategy gap can be filled by entering new segments, expansion and product developments.

As can be inferred from the above sections and the Directional policy matrix, following gaps exist that needs to be filled using efficient product/marketing mix.

Strategies need to be implemented to improve internal strengths to attract more senior citizens as it is one of the promising markets in near future.

A focus on socialising opportunity to attract Families and other socially inclined gym members may increase the revenue.

The growing need for the personal trainers and personalised training programs including dietician/ health advice need to be tapped.

Special seasonal offers and package deals are required to attract ‘weekend visitors’ segment of the customers.

Health and beauty treatments inclusive of spas, saunas need continuous investment and innovations to keep the competitive edge.

Special weight loss packages with beauty treatments may appeal to the women who are more obese in number than men.

The budget offers for long term commitments need to be introduced to utilise the boom in ‘no frills’ budget gyms.

Price, product, promotion mix should be analysed for the two main competitors.

Increasing trend in sports can be tapped in by introducing sports membership and the concept of sports club.

Packages to attract and fight child obesity would be a Corporate Social Responsibility effort as well.

Any cash invested in promoting plans for tourists, business travellers, may be withdrawn as the market holds extremely less business/ market share.

Health and beauty treatments for ladies including sauna, steam rooms and studio classes need more focus.

Healthy snacks with meal ideas could be implemented in near future; intermediate drinks with calorific focus are found to be the best sellers in the health club research.

An idea of clubbing a super store to facilitate the idea of shopping basic necessities in an idea to be explored in future.

Strategic focus

The objectives could be set for each product/ segment of the Fitness club which would further result into working out the core-strategy.

Ansoff Matrix (17) could be used to identify the courses of actions for Health-Hab:

Realising the strengths of Health-Hab, the forecast as per the DPM and the Ansoff matrix, the marketing strategy for the organisation is to focus on ‘Market Penetration’ for the already lead segment to continue the profit margin and ‘Product Development’ to tap the opportunities in the promising and upcoming market segments.

Product deletion is not required as Health-Hab is not investing separately for any customised packages for low profit segments i.e. tourists, business travellers.

Competitive analysis/Strategies

Michael Porter has suggested the below four competitive positioning strategies:

Overall cost leadership

Differentiation

Focus

Product Leadership

There could be four competitive strategies based on the market positioning:

The current Health-Hab’s position is ‘Market challengers’ hence the strategies it focuses on is increasing its market share not attacking the market leaders. Instead the strategy is to focus on the same size competitors which are locally present. We would focus on weaknesses or gaps in competitor’s market coverage to build upon the strengths and increase endurance before we may set an objective to become a market leader.

Marketing mix generally comprise of the 4 Ps namely: Product, Price, Promotion, Place.

Product Strategies:

The unique features/ packages offered by Health-Hab to its customers are:

For prospective clients:

A free advisory introductory session by a trainer who can give the tour of the club, teach the exercise regimen.

A free 3 sittings pass to the guests to be claimed at any location.

For standard clients:

A standard membership of 3 months duration at a monthly charge of £40, valid only at a single location.

A premium package at £45 monthly can be utilised at any location.

Personal training sessions at £15 per session. A dietician, gym trainer sessions are inclusive.

Family package, i.e. 4 enrolments from a family at £35 monthly at any location.

Sports club membership inclusive of activities like hiking, rock climbing, volleyball, football, swimming etc. In addition to gym membership available at £65 monthly.

We provide crèche facilities for ladies gym members at an additional charge of £5/session.

Budget yearly contracts at £35/yearly.

Customised packages for women with weight loss requirement of 10 kgs or above.

Discount packages for members with 4 or more referrals, seasonal packages introduced frequently to let the people have an ultimate gym experience.

Special packages for obese children also stressing upon the need of physical activities such as sports at £30/monthly.

Discount packages for senior citizens with a free pick and drop facility for members aged 70 years or above. Dedicated attention with personalised exercise regime and trainers aged 45 years or above, priced at £35/monthly.

Frequent social events for all the members with increased frequency for all the members aged 45 years or above.

Online bookings available to book studio classes or personal training sessions.

Telephonic/ Online enquiries available.

Recreational facilities:

Availability of sauna, spa experience.

Other beauty treatments also available.

Healthy and hygienic food available with specialised dietary meals as well.

Packaged diet as advised by dietician also available if ordered an hour in advance.

All above facilities are charged extra as per usage.

The above product strategies are based on the market growth characteristics as depicted in the product/market life cycle model below. It focuses on the mix of characteristics from ‘Unique’, ‘Product Differentiation’ stages.

Pricing Strategies:

Pricing is the key part of marketing strategy and needs to be managed intelligently.

The possible competitive price spectrum is:

Pricing can also influence the position of product in the market e.g. high price may convey an image of exclusivity, better quality or design.

A better positioning provides a competitive edge.

A Price Sensitivity Meter (18) approach has been utilised to find the best perceived price for the standard membership package.

The optimal price as perceived from the PSM turned out to be £35. The prices for Health-Hab have been set at value 14% higher than the OPP i.e. £40 to convey an image and quality message. The strategy followed is ‘Captive’, charging higher products in the product line as high. ‘Special event’, ‘Discount pricing’ are offered as per the existing market conditions. Still, the price could be affordable and is in line with the competitors’ clubbed with higher quality and better deals to the customers. The company follows some level of ‘Penetration pricing’ strategy for few of the newly introduced packages, by a method of discounting the rates to near OPP for a limited period of time, to boost the sales and familiarise customers with the product. Thereafter, the prices are raised gradually once the package has been established.

Prices are reasonable for its offerings and it targets customers from middle and upper middle class residents, with deals for lowers income groups (high duration contracts) as well.

Promotion Strategies:

Following aids would be included in Health-Hab’s promotional strategies:

Print/ Television advertisements

Website

Flyers

Social networking sites e.g. Facebook

Text adverts online, Google click ads

Word of mouth

Brochure in downloadable format (Initiative towards environment conservation)

An online tour of the gym and facilities

Sports magazine

Sports team sponsorship (local, small scale events)

Referrals

Referrals would be used to increase the membership as well as providing attractive discounts to existing customers.

The existing customers would get reimbursed of the registration fees if their referred customer enrols with Health-Hab and continues for 3 months.

If a customer makes more than 4 successful referrals, he would be entitled to premium package at the rates of standard one.

Ten customers would get free one year membership for making maximum successful referrals.

Health Campaigns

Health-Hab will hold regular health campaigns with The Fitness Industry Association (FIA) that runs a number of national promotions to encourage consumers to become more active.

Senior people, children will also be covered under these campaigns.

Corporate Promotions

As the Westmister’s population contain a significant ratio of working population, promotional campaigns would be held at the corporate offices, with a focus on pursuing the importance of good health for improved productivity and increased focus at work. Health-Hab would look for corporate tie-ups.

Customer Care

Known for its superior quality, we would entertain all the suggestions or information about faulty equipments online as well as at front desk.

Place/ Distribution Strategies:

The above strategies hold validity for goods or products in existence not for the service industry.

In addition to above strategies, we assure quality staff including gym instructors, personal experts, dieticians etc. Ongoing training sessions would be held every three months to ensure well motivated and oriented staff including membership consultants and maintenance staff.

The complete marketing plan is based on Malcolm McDonald’s model with different stages supported with related theories and concepts.

The Ashridge Mission Model from Andrew Campbell is a method that can be used to create or analyze a Mission, Sense of Mission and Mission Statement. It contains the following four elements which should be linked tightly together, resonating and reinforcing each other to create a strong Mission:

Purpose

For the benefit of the shareholders

For the benefit of all its stakeholders

For the benefit of a higher ideal, going beyond merely satisfying the needs of its stakeholders.

Strategy

The commercial logic for the company. Strategy links purpose to behavior in a commercial, rational way.

Values

The beliefs and moral principles that lie behind a company's culture.

Values give meaning to the norms and behavioral standards in the company.

Policies and Behavioral Standards

Guidelines to help people to decide what to do on a day-to-day basis.

Michael Porter’s 5 Force Model

Porter's five forces is a framework for the industry analysis and business strategy development. Three of Porter's five forces refer to competition from external sources while the remaining three are the internal threats. It is generally known as Micro environment analysis.

Trends in BMI of adults in England

Trends in body mass index (BMI) of adults in England, 2001-07

Under 25

25-30

Over 30

Men:

2001

32.4

46.6

21

2002

34.5

43.4

22.1

2003

34.6

43.2

22.2

2004

33.5

43.9

22.7

2005

35.3

42.6

22.1

2006

32.9

43.4

23.7

2007

35

41.4

23.6

Women:

2001

43.6

32.9

23.5

2002

43.5

33.7

22.8

2003

44.5

32.6

23

2004

45

33.9

23.2

2005

43.5

32.1

24.3

2006

43.9

31.9

24.2

2007

43.6

32

24.4

Source: Health Survey for England 2007/Mintel

Consumers’ knowledge of how much exercise they should do, compared to government recommendation, 2007

Men

Women

Proportion who thought adults should do:

Equivalent to current minimum recommendation

6

9

More than current minimum recommendation

25

23

Less than current minimum recommendation or did not know

69

68

Source: Health Survey for England 2007/Mintel

Childhood obesity on rise.

Trends in incidence of overweight or obesity among children aged 2-15, 1997-2007

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

% point change

1997-2007

Overweight

13

14.1

14

12.5

15.1

13.8

14.6

15.2

14.3

13.7

14

+1.

Obese

12.6

13.4

15.1

14.3

15

17

16.6

18.8

18.3

16

16.5

+3.9

Overweight and obesity prevalence, by household income and gender, 2007

Highest income group

2nd highest income group

3rd highest income group

4th highest income group

Lowest income group

Men:

Overweight

44

40

39

36

42

Obese

24

22

23

27

17

Women:

Overweight

29

31

33

34

36

Obese

19

23

26

25

24

Source: Health Survey for England 2007/Mintel

Pestle’s Model

PEST analysis stands for "Political, Economic, Social, and Technological analysis" and describes a framework of macro-environmental factors used in the environmental scanning component of strategic management. Further Legal and Environmental factors rearrange the mnemonic to PESTLE.

Falling levels of personal disposable income

Trends in personal disposable income and consumer expenditure, 2004-14

PDI at 2004 prices

Index

Consumer expenditure at 2004 prices

Index

£bn

£bn

2004

808.8

100

776.3

100

2005

833

103

791.8

102

2006

842.9

104

808.2

104

2007

850.9

105

834.1

107

2008

853.5

106

845.8

109

2009

853.5

106

827.2

107

2010

859.4

106

829.7

107

2011

874.9

108

843

109

2012

892.4

110

859.8

111

2013 (proj)

909.4

112

869.3

112

2014 (proj)

925.7

114

884.1

114

Upward trend in retired population

Forecast adult population trends, by lifestage, 2004-14

2004

2009 (proj)

2014 (proj)

% change

% change

2004-09

2009-14

Pre-/no family

13531

14080

14357

+4.1

+2.

Families

13476

13766

13762

+2.2

0

Third age

12442

13170

13446

+5.9

+2.1

Retired

9531

10065

11357

+5.6

+12.8

Total

48980

51081

52922

+4.3

+3.6

SWOT Analysis

Strengths:

Extensive experience of the owners in the fitness industry.

Well renowned and established in various parts of UK.

Qualified staff and personal attention to the members.

State of art modern equipments.

Thorough safety measures approved by the UK sports council.

Customised packages for all major market segments.

Weaknesses:

Less packages for upcoming market segments.

Less focus on Senior citizens.

Relatively newer player in the market.

More cash requirements to penetrate the existing markets and diversify further.

Opportunities

Child obesity on rise.

Health’s focus increasing amongst senior citizens.

Increasing inclination towards sports.

Consumers unaware of exact exercising needs.

Large population of men/ women are obese.

Core target 25-34 age bracket is set to grow between 2009 and 2014.

Upcoming trend of budget ‘no frills’ model.

Threats

Potential economic downturn.

Growing trend of keeping household exercising equipments.

Presence of well established competitors.

Nintendo Wii games may appeal to those in need to lose a bit of weight.

Revenues from joining fees/registration

2004 (£m)

2006 (£m)

2008 (£m)

% change

Membership/joining fees

1615

79

1769

78

1966

78

21.7

Other revenue (e.g. beauty, sun beds, bar, food, shop, etc)

429

21

499

22

554

22

29.1

Total

2044

100

2268

100

2520

100

23.3

Product Life Cycle (PLC)

Product life cycle (PLC) deals with the life of a product in the market in terms of commercial / sales measures. Products require a mix of financial, marketing, human resource, manufacturing strategies as per the stage in which it falls. The concept could be extended to intangible products/ industries as well.

Diffusion of Innovation

Diffusion of Innovations states how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures.

Various elements of diffusion of innovations are:

Innovation

Communication channels

Time

Social system

The adoption process involves 5 stages: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, confirmation. The adopters could be categorised into Innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.

Market Segmentation

Identification of a proper market segment is essential as unless a company succeed in identifying a viable market segment for the product it would fail to achieve differential advantage and would just become a company selling ‘me too’ products. It falls into natural groups or segments which contain customers exhibiting the same broad requirements.

Target Market

Multi segment /Differentiated

BCG Matrix (Boston Consulting Group)

The theory is used to determine the priorities to be given in the product portfolio to ensure long term value creation. The company should have a portfolio of products which may generate and use cash. The two dimensions described are the ‘market share’, as it is an indicator of products ability to generate cash and ‘market growth’, as an indicator of product’s cash requirement.

Market share: Relative ratio of the market share as compared to the competitors’. A ratio of one or greater is supposed to be high else otherwise.

Four quadrants of the matrix could be explained as:

Cash cows:  High market share in a slow-growing industry, generate cash in excess of the amount of cash needed to maintain the business, require minimal investment.

Dogs: Low market share in a mature, slow-growing industry, units typically "break even", generating barely enough cash to maintain the business's market share, thought that should be sold off.

Question marks:  Low market shares they do not generate much cash, result is large net cash consumption, has the potential to gain market share and become a star, and eventually a cash cow when the market growth slows else dog in other scenario.

Stars: High market share in a fast-growing industry, sustaining the business unit's market leadership may require extra cash.

The balanced portfolio has:

‘stars’ whose high share and high growth assure the future;

‘cash cows’ that supply funds for that future growth; and

‘question marks’ to be converted into stars with the added funds.

Directional Policy Matrix (DPM)

The model measures the market health and the strength to pursue the further stand in the market. Various criteria to place the enterprise on appropriate positions in the matrix are:

Value of the product

Quality of the product

Market share

Experience

Threats of substitutes

Bargaining power of supplier, buyer

Experience

Customer loyalty

Reputation

Staying power

Competition

Ansoff Matrix

It is a tool to assist business in deciding their product/market growth strategy and set a direction. Four main courses of actions could be identified:

Market penetration: Selling existing products to existing markets

Market extensions: Extending existing products to new markets

Product development: Developing new products for existing markets

Diversification: Developing new products for new markets

Van Westendorp's Price Sensitivity Meter

The Price Sensitivity Meter (PSM) is a market technique for determining consumer price preferences. The traditional PSM approach asks four price-related questions:

At what price would you consider the product to be so expensive that you would not consider buying it? (Too expensive)

At what price would you consider the product to be priced so low that you would feel the quality couldn’t be very good? (Too cheap)

At what price would you consider the product starting to get expensive, so that it is not out of the question, but you would have to give some thought to buying it? (Expensive/High Side)

At what price would you consider the product to be a bargain—a great buy for the money? (Cheap/Good Value)

"Point of marginal cheapness" or PMC : intersections is that the crossing of "too cheap" and "expensive" can be the lower bound of an acceptable price range.

"Point of marginal expensiveness" or PME: intersection of the "too expensive" and "cheap" lines can be viewed as the upper bound of an acceptable price range.

 "Optimal price point" or OPP: intersection of the "too cheap" and "too expensive".

McDonald, Malcolm. Marketing Plans. 5th ed. Butterworth-Heinemann, MA, 2002, Chapters 1-7.

http://academic.mintel.com/sinatra/oxygen_academic

http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/swot/

http://www.xing.com/net/balancedscorecard/2-insights-4642/definition-corporate-governance-1813244/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_five_forces_analysis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEST_analysis

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_life_cycle_management_(marketing)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth-share_matrix

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Westendorp's_Price_Sensitivity_Meter

http://www.12manage.com/images/picture_campbell_ashridge_mission_model.gif

http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/5-Forces-Model1.png

http://www.esfsourcebook.eu/_img/articles/000001005/figure02.gif

http://www.beasuccessfulentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/product-adoption-lifecycle.jpg

http://www.openabm.org/files/books/1928/fig112.png

http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_bcgmatrix.html

http://www.brs-inc.com/models/model18.asp

http://marketingteacher.com/image/content/gap_tactics.gif

http://tutor2u.net/business/images/Ansoff%20Matrix%20w500.gif

http://www.learnmarketing.net/marketingmixdiagram.jpg

http://brandalyzer.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/psm-1.jpg?w=600&h=398



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Legal Environment And Macro Environment Analysis Political Marketing Essay

Marketing » Legal Environment And Macro Environment Analysis Political Marketing Essay

The government plays an important factor in any business' success. With the stability of politics, Singapore government has many policies to support business by providing a stable economy; low interest rates banks and competitiveness of the tax system. It is important element for company to develop their product. Singapore has no restrictions on foreign exchange management and Singapore dollar can covert so it is a positive factor for foreign investors to transfer capital and profits in and out of Singapore. Singapore government does not restrict foreign investors to protect domestic industry for any reason. Thus, companies feel safe to grow and expand its business in Singapore.

Singapore is well- known as highly dynamic developed country. A stable economy not affected by inflation and fluctuations in the market is one of important factor for company’s success. According to the latest report 2010 by the World Bank about the assessment of business environment, Singapore's economy is considered to be the easiest environment for doing business and investment. Singapore Gross Domestic Product accounts for 0.29% of the world economy about 182 billion dollars. The more development economy, the more amounts of money consumers spending for shopping so this is a favorable condition for development of Zara products.

Singapore located in the middle of South East Asia countries which are central of the trade and economics brings a lot of diversity for their culture and social life. Based on the demographical, Singaporean is famous with the multi- ethics people and culture. Total population in Singapore was about 4.99 million in Jun 2009 with 77% of Chinese, Malay 14% and 7.6% of India. Since nationality in Singapore mixed as well as their culture, its immediately effect the culture and habits of the people in Singapore. The traditional family values are still conserved but the younger generation has gradually adapted to the culture and lifestyle of Western Europe. Thus the Zara’s product can partially meet the needs of young people for usability design.

With the development of information technology, it can impact on many kinds of things such as distribution strategies, media strategies, etc. According to Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, a total Internet user in Singapore is 3,370,000 as of June 2010, about 77.8% of the population. Company can develop direct sales via the company’s website http://www.zara.com or use the online advertising methods such as link marketing, banner advertising.

Zara's products are designed as a quick fashion. The other fashion usually takes about three to five months to create a new seasonal collection after experts need to predict a new fashion trend that customers want. For Zara, instead of predicting fashion trends, they ask, listen and monitor of what customers want. Each employee is equipped a personal digital assistant to collect customer comments about their products. The data will be collected and sent directly to headquarter. So Zara can be able to distribute the new product to the customers within 2 weeks. Besides that Zara has effective sale system, only those products with the highest demand will be in stores that allow for more popular items to appear in during the season in which its sales are high. To create special and unique designs, Zara use its own fabric and dyes. Zara also has the rare advantage in their clothes because of the amount of inventory is very low, only sold in stores in a limited number and so customers do not always see the same product twice in Zara.

Zara does not have a chief information officer must take responsibility for information technology and computer systems that support business objectives. In addition, Zara should spend a large expense for research and development to respond quickly and efficiently the need and want of customer as well as for the fast introduction and frequent of new product. The company must give high costs for the continuous upgrading of production techniques to create their different appeal lines. With that, the company must spend money to train staff in using new production technologies and that is the cause of cost increases. Along with the use of euro-centric model has caused prices of clothes to climb in some places.

Zara Company has strong opportunity of development in Singapore because the company can expect to increase sale due to the growth of Singapore economy. As a result, the quality of living standard will be increase so Singaporean will have extra money to spend on shopping. Besides that, Singapore has the ability to attract large numbers of tourists to visit and shopping for many different purposes. According to the Singapore Tourism Board, in January 2010, Singapore welcomed a total of 908,000 tourists, over the same period last year increase by 17.5%. And the opening of the two integrated resorts in Marina Bay and Sentosa, as well as the Gardens by the Bay in Marina South will be a boost for the tourism industry. Singapore is also home of many great events, for example Youth Olympic Game 2010 from 14 August to 28 August 2010. This is a good business opportunity not only for Zara to sell their product but also for many other service industries.

The threat for Zara is direct competition. Zara’s product toward the target customers are middle and high-class people, there is also the target market of other company like Gap, Guess, Calvin Klein, etc. Key tools used by competitors are price, quality and design. As a result of Zara brand has wide range so it faces competitor at every price point from luxury to cost reduction. The next threat, Zara has only one center of production and distribution worldwide therefore the risk associated with just one centre. Today advertising has become an important part of every business because it directly affects the sales. Zara's in-store advertisement model may not work going forward. The significant threat to the success of Zara is that while Zara find it difficult to manage the vertical model, local retailers can follow Zara's formula for success and they can emerge.

Objective

3.1 Marketing

Zara's marketing objective is to increase customer equity to enhance customer loyalty and gain more profit. It can be done by:

Improve customer satisfaction

Enhance brand awareness

Increase customer’s purchase frequency

Continue to grow by extending the Zara fashion brand

3.2 IMC

Objectives set out what the business is trying to achieve. The main objective of IMC is to inform customer about the arrival of new products, promotions and raise awareness of product within a clearly identified target market as well as create positive feelings for customers in order to encourage purchase intention.



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Jetblue Entered The American Airline Services Industry Marketing Essay

Based on a highly differentiated service concept and competitive price point, JetBlue entered the American airline services industry in 1988 and quickly gained customers and began accumulating industry awards. The concept of having first class amenities in coach cabins, and have direct routes to America’s most popular cities caught on. In 2003 JetBlue was named the Best US Airline by the upscale magazine Conde Naste Traveler in a reader poll. In 2005 JetBlue received the FAA Diamond Certificate of Excellence Award, and later than year introduced fleet-wide in-flight entertainment to all 36 channels of DIRECTV.

In 2007 JetBlue was recognized by the industry guide OAG as being the best low cost/no frills airline. Despite all of these awards however the company suffered a major set-back in February, 2007 when due to scheduling and optimization of routes, a JetBlue flight sat for five hours on the tarmac at New York’s La Guardia Airport (Wade, 2007). Enraged, the passengers were calling 911 from the plane to get off, and yet JetBlue refused to move out of the take-off line due to an ice storm (Waite, 2007). February 14, 2007 will always be remembered as the day JetBlue started an airline passenger revolution, as since that day much legislation has been passed to protect flyer’s rights (Wade, 2007) (Waite, 2007).

JetBlue has worked to recover from this customer service and PR disaster, putting into place state-of-the-art analytics applications that measure customer sentiment and satisfaction. JetBlue has extensively modified its service chain and service operations as a result, with the aim of significantly increasing customer satisfaction over the long-term (Jeppsen, 2010).. From that low point in February, 2007 to today, JetBlue has worked diligently to turn the service experience into a core differentiator of their company (Wade, 2007).

Along the way the airline has hit plenty of turbulence as it has strived to overcome the systemic problems that contributed to the incidents in February, 2007 as well. The intent of this paper is to analyze how JetBlue used service marketing, supported by analytics and customer service measurement methodologies SERVQUAL to increase their customer satisfaction effectiveness as other airlines have in the past(Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1991).

JetBlue now realizes that it is the customer experience, not necessarily the operational focus of how it services and returns planes for flights from its operations teams, which matters most (Braff, DeVine, 2009). Also being cognizant of customer expectations in the context of service marketing and choosing to cancel the February 14th, 2007 flights from New York’s La Guardia Airport would have averted a PR disaster. The cost trad0offs of customer experience and satisfaction must be weighed against the hard realities of running a capital intensive, expensive to operate business. Yet JetBlue would have saved themselves millions of dollars in lost reputation if they had made that choice over attempting to get the stranded flight out in the middle of an ice storm, leaving a plane full of passengers stranded on the tarmac for hours.

This paper analyzes how JetBlue has been able to redefine and grow the positive aspects of their brand by using customer satisfaction measures of performance to better align crew members with customers’ perceptions (Waite, 2007). The lessons learned from this analysis are also being learned by airlines globally, some faster than others. The case of United Airlines and their refusal to reimburse a musician for a broken guitar, which lead to him producing a YouTube video that promptly netted over 55 million hits in two weeks and became the leading viral marketing story of 2009, illustrate some airlines still don’t get it. United is a case in point and their planes having all the atmosphere of an Internal Revenue Service office during audit time – quite different than a Southwest flight for example. These examples of United versus Southwest are provided to show just how acute and dramatic differences are in how the customer experience is the marketing.

At the center of JetBlue’s re-emergence as a dominant discount carrier in the US has been their improved approaches to managing, fulfilling and exceeding customer expectations. JetBlue’s organizational culture shifted from being purely focused on organizational effectiveness to one of customer centricity following the events of February, 2007. This shift in culture however did not come easily as the focus in the organization had been consistently on operations efficiency, dictated by the backgrounds of the senior managers and executives in charge of airline operations (Wade, 2007).

The metrics and key performance indicators within JetBlue forced efficiency and cost savings and placed high value on full flights always flying. This in turn led to a mindset of customers being second, and their expectations being third and their satisfaction being last. The incident of February 14, 2007 then was not just an aberration; it was the culmination of a mindset of seeing customers as an interruption to the efficiencies operation of the airline. Even though the cabin amenities were exceptional and well recognized in the industry and travel trade press, the soul of the company was beginning to slip away in the name of pure efficiency and operational excellence.

What JetBlue did after the February 14, 2007 wake-up call was to create an entirely different series of customer service and marketing strategies to stress customer experience over just operational efficiency. As JetBlue, like many airlines is a highly metric-driven culture, the use of key performance indicators (KPIs) and measures of performance is critical for making change last in the organization. Monitoring, measuring and modifying strategies as a result of the use of SERVQUAL became the foundation of JetBlue’s focus on improving customer relationships, meeting and exceeding expectations, and also creating more effective marketing strategies over time (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1991). This was a unique step for any airline to undertake as the cultures are highly tuned to operating and process efficiency over customer satisfaction and in many airline company cultures, these two aspects of their business can pull their operations strategies in opposite directions.

To lead the revolution towards customer experience, JetBlue first concentrated on a balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach to making sure there was a balance of operational and customer-centric metrics in place. Second, the company integrated the two dominant methodologies used extensively in services industries, SERVQUAL into their core set of performance metrics. This in turn led to the development of the best measures of variation in expectations versus actual performance delivered JetBlue had ever seen, even when they had occasionally used customer satisfaction surveys in the past. The basis of the SERVQUAL methodology is to measure the difference or variation in the median levels of expectations versus actual performance of an organization. There have at last count been over 800 studies of SERVQUAL and many of them multi-year in scope(Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1988). These studies when taken together over the decades in which they were completed provide an accurate glimpse into how trust is generated as part of the broader marketing strategies, programs and operations strategies of service-based businesses (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1985). An essential aspect of the methodology is that the measurement must also be completed during the actual service delivery process, and to this end JetBlue began offering, in randomized seats, SERVQUAL-based surveys to passengers during and at the end of flights. This provided an exceptional level of insights not attainable through traditional customer satisfaction surveys e-mailed or mailed out after the fact. The interaction between the service provider and client is more accurately measured when done as immediately as possible to the actual service event (Parasuraman et al.). The SERVQUAL metric was originally created with the five generic dimensions of service quality for customers’ expectations to be met(Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1991). These five dimensions are briefly discussed here in the context of how JetBlue used them to better manage expectations and improve the experience of flying with them.

The first of the five dimensions of SERVQUAL is assurance (Crosby, Evans, Cowles,1990) (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1988). This is the dimension that concentrates on those areas of a company’s culture that are the most difficult to change and as a result include the areas of knowledge transfer, training, new employee development and customer satisfaction programs to increase overall SERVQUAL scores. Studies have also indicated that this dimension of SERVQUAL is critically important as a determinant of trust within selling, service and service recovery scenarios (Anderson, Baggett, Widener, 2009). Assurance is a critical determinant of trust and integrity throughout a long-term relationship with a customer as well. Trust in fact is the catalyst of customer loyalty and assurance is key to making that happen. For JetBlue they had drastically reduced the trust in their brand due to the February 14th, 2007 event but also the many aberrations in customer service that had happened previously (Wade, 2007). The assurance components of SERVQUAL, when quantified through actual survey work, showed JetBlue that despite their passion for quantifying and measuring operational performance, they were failing often in the area of assurances to customers.

Overbooking flights, not telling customers of gate changes until literally the last minute, not paying for hotels when the last fight out of a city was cancelled for those on return legs of their itineraries all contributed to the JetBlue brand taking a beating in the market. This one component also showed very clearly that the JetBlue brand was its marketing; the two were inseparable. The JetBlue customer experience as even more of a predictor of the company’s growth than any amount spent on marketing, promotion, discounts, special fares or even bundled vacation programs (Zeithaml, Berry, Parasuraman, 1988). JetBlue learned the hard way that this one aspect of the SERVQUAL model, assurance, has a direct bearing on their ability to be trusted for the long-term and for their marketing programs and promises of performance to have any credibility at all. Assurance is the catalyst of credibility and trust, and through the surveys that JetBlue completed both in-flight and at landing showed this as the case (Ku, Fan, 2009). The second factor in the SERVQUAL methodology is empathy, or the ability of an organization to create, maintain and grow processes that create a culture that places a high value on a caring, individualized environment where customer needs are critically important. Southwest Airlines had previous to 2007 been using SERVQUAL on short-haul regional flights to test out if their unique value proposition of being an attractive alternative to driving was working. Purely from an economic standpoint as gas prices have risen their value proposition has been solidified (Crosby, Evans, Cowles,1990). Yet the aspect of empathy is an area where Southwest seeks to hire the best possible attendants to create this culture both in their large operations teams and also onboard their flights. JetBlue on the other hand had created a culture that stressed efficiency and pure operational excellence over empathy and the result eventually came out in their decisions made to strand passengers on the tarmac of five hours on Valentines’ Day, 2007. What is fascinating about the SERVQUAL methodology is that each component can accurately determine the level of commitment to a given value that may be strong underneath the branding and marketing veneer of a company, waiting for the right set of circumstances to expose it over time (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1991). This is exactly what happened with JetBlue on this dimension. Their initial empathy scores were negative, almost off the gird of analysis used for SERVQUAL. The veneer of empathy for customers as defined in their branding and marketing literature had become a hypocrisy waiting to happen; and on February 14, 2007 it did. In subsequent analysis of in-flight and post-flight experiences, customers mentioned that empathy was above the neutral line of the analysis, a marked improvement during 2008 and 2009 research periods the company completed. Empathy and assurance were the two areas of SERVQUAL analysis where JetBlue found the greatest room for improvement overall. To compensate for the exceptional low scores in the areas of empathy and assurance, JetBlue also aggressive pursued social media marketing strategies to overcome this weakness. The airline did this for two strategic purposes. First to get its crew members and attendants in touch with customers’ real-time expectations, experiences, compliments and complaints. This proved to be exceptionally effective from the standpoint of getting the internal culture focused on listening to customers instead of just shoving them through the airline company’s operational systems and queues to generate sales. Web 2.0 technologies (O’Reilly, 2006) had the strong effect on the company’s ability to listen and appreciate how to better serve customers. The Web 2.0 technologies are based on the design principles and tenets that are shown in Appendix A, Web 2.0 Meme Map. JetBlue soon found that striking a balance between operational efficiency and the quest for operational excellence could be balanced with empathy and the ability to design processes to deliver assurance as well. Earning trust, over time, became a higher priority than just hitting the highest levels of efficiency over time. This transformation was also made possible through the use of social networking platforms and applications (Bernoff, Li, 2008). A representative analysis of social networking applications is shown in Appendix B, Social Networking Applications.

It is ironic that JetBlue adopted social media marketing to change their reputation and they have been changed by it. The lessons learned from their social media marketing strategies built around Facebook, Twitter and other platforms has been to further underscore how critically important SERVQUAL is as a measurement of their performance over time on the customer experience dimension. In effect the social media marketing strategy had transformed JetBlue more than it changed any aspect of their customer base. The company began to realize that when empathy and assurance are measured there is a corresponding impact on financial performance over time. Today JetBlue has over 1 million followers on Twitter and millions of fans across all their social media marketing programs. The irony of social media marketing changing the company more than influencing its customers is not list on industry analysts or senior management.

The third factor of SERVQUAL is reliability, which is by definition the ability of a service organization to deliver consistent performance over time (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1985).

JetBlue has been able to accomplish this through their strong culture of operational excellence and performance. This aspect of SERVQUAL did excellently compare to other aspects that were related to creating and sustaining trust. On this measure JetBlue excelled as their organizational structure and analytics are geared towards business process consistency and performance. The value of reliability is so engrained into the company’s culture that they readily excelled at it, often at the expense of their customers, which is what led to the moment of truth of February 14, 2007.

The fourth factor in the SERVQUAL measurement methodology is responsiveness. On this dimension of SERVQUAL, JetBlue initially found that their strong operational performance focus helped them from an on-time departure standpoint (Waite, 2007). Yet the focus on responsiveness from an operational efficiency standpoint was coming at the expense of empathy, assurance of individuals care and a focus on making the experience being part of the broader marketing experience. This fourth factor of responsiveness in conjunction with the tangible experiences of JetBlue as a brand, which is the fifth factor in the SERVQUAL methodology which includes all branding, communication materials, equipment, physical facilities, and most importantly, the customer service and flight personnel. Please see Figure 1: SERVQUAL Conceptual Model for an overview of the entire set of factors.

Source: (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1985)

For JetBlue to recover from customer experience disaster of February 14th, 2007 and the more systemic challenges the company has had in becoming more customer-centric, senior management turned to SERVQUAL to evaluate overall performance across five key dimensions. When the transformation of JetBlue from a marketing standpoint is analyzed using this framework their many initiatives, strategies and programs all interrelate and show how critical it is for any company to aspire to eh trust of its customers. JetBlue successfully did this over time, ironically being transformed through the customer listening process they hoped would transform their customers. In the end, JetBlue learned hwo to be more customer-centered by taking on the challenge of transforming their brand, and the most critical aspect of their marketing, which is the customer experience they deliver.



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