Good Bargain Research Articles

ACHIEVING PROMOTION THROUGH CONSTRUCTING PRAGMATIC IDENTITIES IN ANTHROPOMORPHIC SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING – A CASE STUDY

As a large number of companies adopt anthropomorphic marketing approaches to share information and promote products on social media, this paper examines the role of identities constructed by these companies on such platforms in enhancing their marketing endeavors. Utilizing three e-commerce official accounts on Weibo, a prominent Chinese social media platform, this research delves into the linguistic perspective to uncover how diverse pragmatic identities constructed by these accounts can impact their promotional efforts. A tailored analytical framework, integrating pragmatic identity theory with rapport management theory, is developed to reflect their projected identities and elucidate the strategies employed in their construction across discourse, stylistic, and illocutionary dimensions. Under the content analysis of a self-built mini-corpus, this study shows that their identities, which belong to pragmatic identities, are defined in three dynamic and interactive aspects: good bargain promoter, beautiful life sharer, and e-commercial media introducer. Each identified identity is subsequently exemplified with authentic posts, providing an understanding of their promotional facilitation functions. Finally, the feasibility of constructing various pragmatic identities within social media contexts is discussed.

FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS OF COFFEE PROCESSING BUSINESS IN CIJAMBU SUMEDANG

The increase of coffee consumption encourage a small scale enterprise, Cijambe Coffee to identify the current business performance to face the challenge. The research purposes are 1) to evaluate the feasibility of Cijambe Coffee business, 2) To interpreted the evaluation result in recommendation that help enterprise to decide the strategy. The research method is quantities and qualitative approach. The evaluation results: 1) the product has distinctive quality, 2) Technical factor is feasible in terms of producing good quality, 3) financially feasible that is proven by the parameters: NPV (IDR 2,350,000), PP (2.9 years), IRR (27.88%), and unit BEP (169.23 units), and the value of BEP ( Rp. 5,076,923.07), 4) Recommended strategy are : expanding market and production capacity with accurate forcast and strategy; the shifting of B to C into B to B market strategy or mix of both; acquiring business partners with good bargain and productive resources.

Towards stable and highly active IrO2 catalysts supported on doped tin oxides for the oxygen evolution reaction in acidic media

Iridium oxide is the preferred catalyst for water oxidation but it is required to maximize its utilization to deploy Proton Exchange Membrane Water Electrolyzers (PEMWEs) into the large-scale applications panorama. A promising pathway for dispersing this precious catalyst is on an electric conductive and stable support. However, there is a lack of understanding how the support-catalyst interactions affect the stability/activity of the electrocatalyst under anodic conditions. This work discloses a modified, easy-scalable, polyol synthesis protocol to produce a highly active and stable iridium-based catalyst, supported on metal-doped tin oxides. The loading of Ir was reduced 30 wt.% compared to the reference IrO2, and dispersed on Sb-SnO2 (IrOx/ATO), In-SnO2 (IrOx/ITO) and SnO2 supports. All synthesized electrocatalysts not only surpassed the OER-mass activity of a commercial catalyst (IrO2) – reference – but also reached higher electrochemical active surface areas and enhanced stability under the OER conditions. The highest performance was achieved with Ir NPs supported on ITO (176 A/gIr vs. 15.5 A/gIr for the reference catalyst @ 1.51 V vs. RHE) and both IrOx/ITO and IrOx/SnO2 catalysts demonstrated remarkable stability after cycling the electrode and performing long-term chronopotentiometry. ITO is, therefore, an auspicious support to serve Ir-based catalysts as it favors a good bargain between activity and stability, while drastically reducing the amount of noble metal.

The Misunderstanding of China’s Investment, and a Clarification: “Faustian Bargain” or “Good Bargain”? On the OFDI Data of Central and Eastern Europe

The close development of the economic relations between China and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) since 2012 has triggered the European Union’s criticism of China’s foreign policy towards Eastern European countries. The European Union believes that China’s investment growth has led to a governance crisis in CEE countries. Based on the global governance indicators of the World Bank and the outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) data of the Ministry of Commerce of China, this paper conducts a test using the panel data model and the regression discontinuity method. An imbalanced panel dataset is adopted, covering 16 CEE countries from 2000 to 2018. The empirical research results indicate that, representing a small proportion of the investment inflows to CEE countries, China is not yet able to exert a domination effect on the region, and China’s economic power is far less than the European Union’s regulatory influence. Furthermore, China’s share of the OFDI in CEE has a U-shaped effect on the regulatory quality of host countries, and the two have a mutually causal relationship. Specifically, the impact on the host country’s regulatory quality is first manifested in the Shanghai effect, and when China’s share reaches a certain level, it is manifested in the California effect. The U-shaped effect is associated with the strategic factors of CEE countries and China’s positive contribution to good global governance.

Not such a good bargain for (the evidence on) budget support

Not such a good bargain for (the evidence on) budget support

Language Choices and its Effect in a Culturally Diversified Nigeria Business Places: Adopting Giles’ Communication Accommodation Theory

The research aims at investigating inclusion strategies in Nigeria business places by taking a look at the way buyers and sellers use language while engaging in business transactions and the effect it has in the whole dealings. This is especially as they have diverse choices before them. Giles’ Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) which addresses convergence and divergence is used as a theoretical framework to reveal the socio-pragmatic elements in the discourse of a multi-cultural Nigeria business places. The research tries to see how inclusiveness is achieved in the face of diversity. Findings reveal that several languages come in contact with one another, including English, Yoruba, Pidgin, Igbo and Hausa in the market transactions in Nigeria. Participants employ various bargaining and pragmatic strategies which include greetings, humour, cajoling, flattery, pleading as well as code-switching and code-mixing. The study helps to establish that both buyers and sellers want to be at an advantage and use languages that accommodate the other party, despite their social, religious, cultural or ethnic differences. Texts were recorded from business places in Nigeria and these include banks, urban markets, and communication outlets. The texts were later transcribed and analysed. While the vendors create room for accommodation as a persuasive strategy, customers do so to get a good bargain for what they want to buy or some other favour from the vendors.

Performance of Supercritical CO2 Power Cycle and Its Turbomachinery with the Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger with Straight and Zigzag Channels

Since printed circuit heat exchangers (PCHE) are the largest modules of a supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton cycle, they can considerably affect the whole system’s performance and layout. Straight-channel and zigzag-channel printed circuit heat exchangers have frequently been analyzed in the standalone mode and repeatedly proposed for sCO2−BC. However, the impact of heat exchanger designs with straight and zigzag-channel configurations on the performance of the cycle and its components, i.e., the turbine and compressor, has not been studied. In this context, this study evaluates the effect of different heat exchanger designs with various values of effectiveness (ϵ), inlet Reynolds number (Re), and channel configuration (zigzag and straight channel) on the overall performance of the sCO2−BC and its components. For the design and analysis of PCHEs, an in-house PCHE design and analysis code (PCHE-DAC) was developed in the MATLAB environment. The sCO2−BC performance was evaluated utilizing an in-house cycle simulation and analysis code (CSAC) that employs the heat exchanger design code as a subroutine. The results suggest that pressure drop in PCHEs with straight-channel configuration is up to 3.0 times larger than in PCHEs with zigzag-channel configuration. It was found that a higher pressure drop in the PCHEs with straight channels can be attributed to substantially longer channel lengths required for these designs (up to 4.1 times than zigzag-channels) based on the poor heat transfer characteristics associated with these channel geometries. Thus, cycle layouts using PCHEs with a straight-channel configuration impart a much higher load (up to 1.13 times) on the recompression compressor, this in turn, results in a lower pressure ratio across the turbine. Therefore, the overall performance of the sCO2−BC using PCHEs with straight-channel configurations is found to be substantially inferior to that of layouts using PCHEs with zigzag-channel configurations. Finally, optimization results suggest that heat exchanger’s design with inlet Reynolds number and heat exchanger effectiveness ranging from 32 k to 42 k and 0.94>ϵ>0.87, respectively, are optimal for sCO2−BC and present a good bargain between cycle efficiency and its layout size.

Psychiatrists Can Take Steps to Enhance Value of Services

Psychiatrists Can Take Steps to Enhance Value of Services

The in-betweens

My feelings are mixed when it comes to in-betweens. Some seem quite positive, others less so but necessary, and still others downright bad. They are bad when they seem to be cop-outs, a lack of decisiveness, or an abundance of expediency that reeks of timidity, preventing bold steps required by a situation—at least the bold steps that I think are required. Not to say that compromise in human affairs should not be pursued, at least when a good bargain is better than none at all. Fortunately, few situations offer stark choices between pure good and unadulterated evil, exceedingly rich and desperately poor, or between life and death. Not all choices, even tough choices, rise to the level of Chamberlain-like ignominious appeasements that fall somewhere in-between the extremes of peace and war. Everyday life presents us with much less fraught extremes to bracket our options.

Poverty and the Democratization Crisis in Nigeria: A Failure of the Social Contract

From the time of philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, it has been made explicit that the state and civil society exist under a mutual-reciprocal relationship. The state exists to serve several purposes in the interest of society, while the civil society is expected to fulfill its obligations to the state for the benefit of all. However, the civil society in Nigeria has not had a good bargain with the state as poverty pervades the land with dire consequences on the entire fabrics of society. The state seems to have failed in promoting the interests of its civil society and most citizens have lost interest in participating in the activities of government. Thus, during most elections, Nigeria has witnessed various forms of electoral malpractices and even post-election violence as experienced in different parts of the country. This paper is a desktop research incorporating secondary data from relevant institutions and agencies. Its concern is to examine how the failure of the social contract has led to poverty, which has affected Nigeria’s democratization process. The paper suggests that addressing the issue of poverty will go a long way in ensuring peaceful, free, and fair democratization of political structures that will be of benefit to all, with applause from the international community

The Fourth Last Thing Revisited

The Fourth Last Thing Revisited Peter Heinegg The Penguin Book of Hell. By Scott G. Bruce, New York, NY: Penguin Random House, 2018. xvi + 279 pp. $17 (paper) It might seem strange that a professor of medieval history at Fordham who has written three books about the Benedictine abbey of Cluny should have compiled this lively, eccentric pop anthology of excerpts on hell, beginning with Hesiod and ending with William Blake—not the poet, but a prisoner who has served over twenty‐five years of solitary confinement in various New York State “correctional facilities.” But Bruce is also the editor of The Penguin Book of the Undead (2016), which, its publisher tells us, “teems with roving hordes of dead warriors, corpses trailed by packs of barking dogs, moaning phantoms haunting deserted ruins, evil spirits emerging from burning carcasses in the form of crows, and zombies with pestilential breath.” So, Bruce's interests are less theological than literary‐imaginative, not to say horripilative. His second‐longest section, after various cantos from the Inferno, comes under the heading “Hell for Children,” and derives from the sadistic pen of an Irish priest, John Furniss (1809–1865), who both mocks and terrorizes his target audience (actually teens rather than toddlers): What a good bargain you made to take the pains of eternity in exchange for the sin of a day, an hour, a moment. You cry now for your sin, but your crying comes too late. You liked bad company; you will find bad company enough here. Your father was a drunkard and showed you the way to the public‐house; he is still a drunkard. Look at him over there drinking red‐hot fire! You were too idle to go to Mass on Sundays. Be as idle as you like now, for there is no Mass to go to. You disobeyed your father, but you dare not disobey him who is your father in Hell. Look at him, that great chained monster; disobey him if you dare! Twenty pages of this, one wonders, but not a line, paragraph or chapter from Augustine's treatment of Hell in Books XXI and XXII of The City of God? (e.g., XXI, 11, “Whether it is just that the punishment of sins last longer than the sins themselves.”) Nor are there any citations from Paradise Lost, the greatest English text, bar none, about Hell; but on the other hand, Milton is not talking about pain meted out to humans, but to demons, who are in their own way heroically superhuman. Everything about them, like their palatial headquarters, Pandemonium, is grand and willy‐nilly evokes wonder rather than condemnation or pity. We get nothing of Jonathan Edwards’ immortal “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God” (1741), and only a passing reference to Ignatius Loyola's searing meditation on Hell from the First Week of The Spiritual Exercises (1522–1524) or its famous panic‐stricken echo in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Well, perhaps those pieces have been overanthologized. In any case, we can be grateful for Bruce's uncovering of the Jesuit Giovanni Pietro Pinamonti's Hell Opened to Christians to Caution Them from Entering it (1693), a collection of sermons considerably more eloquent and sophisticated than Ignatius’ spare summary: So … we may say that eternity not only every moment tortures the damned, but that to the damned every moment is turned into many eternities. For, since evil is unavoidable, the expectation thereof is most certain, the fear of it perhaps more cruel than any executioner and the anticipation every moment redoubles the pain. You recoil to read these things and yet not to sin. If so, you fear a painted precipice, but fear not to cast yourself from a real one. Other valuable unfamiliar items in Bruce's menu include the anonymous Vision of Tundale (1149), an exceedingly graphic tour of Hell, provided as a warning to an errant Irish knight. Among other things, we learn here that the genitals of gluttons are “tortured with great wracking pains and corrupted with putrefaction that gushed with worms.” There is also a fine sermon, which Bruce labels “The Sharp Pangs of a...

How Much Does Bad Hay Cost a Beef Cattle Producer?

Everyone likes a good bargain, but when it comes to hay, low price often equates to low nutritional value. Because hay is often sold on a large round-bale basis, savings from the good bargain can decrease substantially if there is a negative impact on the cow herd nutritional program. This 4-page fact sheet discusses intake limitations, energy limitations, protein limitations, examples of hay quality, and bad hay’s impact on cow body condition. Written by Matt Hersom and Todd Thrift, and published by the UF/IFAS Department of Animal Sciences, February 2018. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/an339

PURITANISME DAN FUNDAMENTALISME DALAM ISLAM TRANSNASIONAL SERTA IMPLIKASINYA TERHADAP PANCASILA SEBAGAI IDEOLOGI BANGSA

In fact, the movement of Islamisme has special portion in the political world. It not only presents as a potential power, this movement is also there as a good bargain to define and colorise the political climate. The movement not only exists as antithesis to the old concept created by the western, but also it appears as a movement to influence the colors of the political states in many countries, particularly in the newly independent states after the World War II. This present article explains how, historically, the Ideology of Islam Transnational as the idology that spread over in Indonesia after reformation movement builds a new hegemony. It also describes how this ideology influences the Pancasila, especially the existence of Pancasila as the national concensus.

Is Negotiation a Good Bargain: A Study in Public Procurement in India

One of the issues in public procurement is whether the supplier selection process should be based only on competitive bidding (auction) alone or it should use negotiations. Relative efficiency of auction vs negotiation has been studied in economics literature. First price sealed bid auctions (conventional open competitive tenders) have been used successfully in public procurement. The present regulatory frame-work in India identifies negotiation as exception rather than the rule. This paper analyses circumstances in which competitive procedures or auctions work or do not work. The paper further argues that procurement policy of “No Negotiation" does not always produce optimal outcomes. If the procurement is complex and high value, auctions are likely to achieve sub-optimal outcomes. Negotiation with L1 does not help in addressing auction failures and therefore it might be better to ‘Not Negotiate’ at all rather than Negotiating with L1. Multi-stage auctions may provide opportunity to address some of the challenges that regular auctions face. It concludes that Negotiation is an effective tool to achieve allocative efficiencies and there is a strong case of permitting negotiations in high value complex public procurements.

A Faustian bargain or just a good bargain? Chinese foreign direct investment and politics in Europe

This article explores the political challenges posed by the recent influx of Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) into the European Union (EU), which has become in 2011 the top destination for Chinese investment in the world. The central political question facing European states welcoming the influx of Chinese capital is whether this is a good bargain—a positive-sum game where both investor and investee benefit—or instead a Faustian bargain—a zero-sum game in the long term where capital is accompanied by implicit conditionality affecting European norms and policies, from human rights to labor laws. The novelty of Chinese FDI has the potential to affect politics in Europe in three different venues: inside European countries, between European countries, and between Europe and third countries. This article, whose main goal is to launch a research agenda on the political implications of Chinese FDI, explores in turn its potential impact on foreign and domestic policy, institutional process within the EU, and transatlantic relations.

Antitrust Enforcement: A Good Bargain for Policy Makers

Antitrust Enforcement: A Good Bargain for Policy Makers

TMS membership: An investment in your professional future

11 www.tms.org/jom.html Each of these benefits would be costly if purchased on the open market, but all of these are now yours for the price of membership. Additionally, you can be sure that TMS will continue to offer more on-line services every year so you can continue to access important information and stay up to date at all times. Membership to a professional organization has intangible benefits as well. How do you put a price tag on the opportunity to network with colleagues with similar work or professional interests? Can you put a value on the professional growth you receive when you present a paper in front of your peers or develop a symposium on a special topical area? What worth would you assign to being part of an organization that recognizes our leaders, encourages students to enter our field, accredits university education programs, and establishes programs to certify professional engineers? Membership in a professional organization lets you give back a little to society for all of the opportunities that have been given to you. The leaders and staff of TMS know that you have the difficult decision of how to spend your precious resources of time and money. We want you to seriously consider renewing your membership to TMS. We have held the line on membership dues at $115 for 2010 while increasing the services we offer to our members. I believe we offer a good bargain for your money. Sincerely yours,

When I Use a word ... Changing your practice

Be not the first by whom the New are try’d, Nor yet the last to lay the Old aside. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism How many Oxford dons does it take to change a light bulb? Change?!? The word ‘change’ comes from the Latin word cambire, to barter, but change is not always a good bargain. Many sayings deplore it. ‘Plus ca change plus c’est la meme chose’, said Alphonse Karr, talking about revolutions. And Ogden Nash thought that progress may have been all right once but that it had gone on too long. On the other hand, bad practices abound and need to be changed, and even good practices become outdated as new technologies are invented and new ideas take root. For many years, the BMJ has run a column titled ‘A paper that changed my practice’, and NICE has published a document ‘How to change practice’,1 identifying barriers such as lack of awareness, knowledge, motivation, belief, and skill, and practical, financial, and political obstacles. I recognize three broad types of publication that might change your practice. First, one that reminds or teaches you about something you already know or should—in other words, education;2 the BMJ 's ‘Change Page’ aims to do this,3 and this type of publication may be a more powerful engine of change than original research. Secondly, a single research paper can occasionally change your practice, although to do …

Investigation of performance of Malaysian Islamic unit trust funds

PurposeOne of the implications of Islamic investment principles is the availability of Islamic financial instruments in the financial market. The main aim of this research is to observe the differences in terms of performance between Islamic and conventional mutual fund in the context of Malaysian capital market.Design/methodology/approachTo achieve the major objectives of this paper standard methods wereused for evaluating the mutual funds performance, for example, Sharpe index and adjusted Sharpe index, Jensen Alpha, Timing and selectivity ability. The scope of the paper is to measure the relative quantitative performance of funds which was managed based on two different approaches.FindingsThe basic finding of the paper is that Islamic funds performed better than the conventional funds during bearish economic trends while, conventional funds showed better performance than Islamic funds during bullish economic conditions. In addition to that finding, both conventional and Islamic funds were unable to achieve at least 50 per cent market diversification levels, though conventional funds are found to have a marginally better diversification level than the Islamic funds. The results also suggest that fund managers are unable to correctly identify good bargain stocks and to forecast the price movements of the general market.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation is that the samples of conventional and Islamic mutual funds were from one developing market. The findings could be better validated if the sample included the mutual funds from other developed and developing economies, where both Islamic and conventional funds are available.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest that having Islamic mutual funds in an investment portfolio helps to hedge the downside risk in an adverse economic situation.Originality/valueSo far there is no published evidence on the relative performance of Islamic and conventional mutual funds in Malaysia as well as other developing countries. Therefore, this paper adds new knowledge to the mutual funds literature.

Regret triggers inaction inertia – but which regret and how?

When people miss a good bargain, they are less likely to take a subsequent one that is not as good. This phenomenon is termed inaction inertia. Two regret-based explanations of it have been proposed. According to one, people anticipate that buying the item will lead to regret because it will remind them that they missed a better opportunity to buy it. According to the other, the regret people experience when missing a bargain, together with a subjective devaluation of the item resulting from that, produces inaction inertia. In two studies, we assessed experienced regret, anticipated regret, subjective valuation (SV) of the bargain and likelihood of purchase. Our findings provide grounds for reconciling the above accounts. The former is more appropriate when the difference between the previous and subsequent bargain is large, and the latter is more appropriate when it is smaller. Furthermore, our findings suggest that previous accounts of inaction inertia are incomplete. Whereas subjective value and regret considerations jointly determine purchase likelihood when no previous opportunity has been missed, regret considerations are the sole determinant of this likelihood when such an opportunity has been missed. Inaction inertia arises at least partly because considering regret turns attention away from the financial advantages of taking the bargain.