Ancient Greece and Rome on film Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Ancient Greece and Rome on film - Essay Example Nero eventually threatened to destroy the peaceful order of the Rome and the main issue was the conflict between Christianity and debauchery of the Roman Empire (LeRoy, 2008). The film narrates the story of Roman military commander who fell in love with a devout Christian woman known as Lygia, who was a Roman captive because she was raised up as an adopted daughter of Aulus Plautius. The military commander, Marcus Vinicius slowly became intruded by the religion of Lygia. Their love story is narrated in a broader historical context of earlier Christianity and its persecution by Nero (Scodel and Bettenworth, 2009, p. 9). The acts of Nero became highly outrageous; thus he ended up burning Rome and started blaming Christians. Marcus went to save Lygia and her family but Nero captured them and demand both of them, as well as, Christians to be killed. However, Petronius, the trusted consultant of Nero cautioned Christians that they will be made martyrs and since he was tired of madness act s of Nero, Petronius decided to kill himself (Scodel and Bettenworth, 2009, p. 11). Marcus was later arrested due to an attempt of saving the family of Lygia and another person known as Peter was killed by being crucified upside down. Peter returned to Rome and married the couple arguing that it was a sign of the lord but he was eventually killed. In short, the story ends where Marcus is released from the prison and marries Lygia. Marcus replaced Nero and eventually people realized that he was the one who burnt Rome but not the Christians. People wanted to kill Nero but he escaped into the palace where he strangled Poppaea to death claiming that he was the one who attempted to scapegoat the Christians. In the palace, the slave of Nero appeared and offered to help Nero to terminate his life. After the death of Nero, Marcus and Lygia became free; thus they left Rome. By the roadside, the crosier that Peter had left after his return to Rome had already miraculously sprouted flowers; th us the radiant light uttered â€Å"I am the way, the truth and the life† (Scodel and Bettenworth, 2009, p. 12). The Way Filmmakers Use Roman Stories to Discuss Christianity Themes Filmmakers use Roman stories in order to discuss Christianity themes in diverse ways. One of the filmmakers that attempt to reveal the themes of Christianity is the Quo Vadis, which is an American epic film of 1951 that was directed by Mervyn LeRoy. An epic movie is a kind of film, which lays emphasis on human tragedy on a grand level and it is more ambitious in scale that any other genre films. Quo Vadis is one of the epic films because it attempts to reveal real human dramatic events or actions that took place in the ancient Roman. It attempts to reveal the way Christians were persecuted by some powerful leaders of the historical era in Rome. Quo Vadis is a Latin idiom meaning that â€Å"where are you going† but the modern usage of the idiom refers to a Christian tradition regarding Saint P eter (Scodel and Bettenworth, 2009, p. 21). The Filmmakers use Roman stories to discuss the theme of persecution or martyrdom in the life of Christians. For Christians, persecution or martyrdom is one of the significant aspects that strengthen their faith. The crucifixion of Christ and his death at the cross is what altered everything including the live of Christians. For instance, the epic film of Quo Vadis offers an example of people like Saint Peter and among other Christians who were persecuted because of their

I Think, Therefore I am Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

I Think, Therefore I am - Essay Example This means that he is allowing credibility to only his consciousness and cognitive powers, and not to that of any other objective audience. Indeed his method leaves no room for the derivation of a third-person truth, which would require the acknowledgement of premises beyond the perceiving being's conscious self. Descartes arrives into this insight into the nature of existence after undergoing the three 'waves' of doubt. The first of these brings up the fact that knowledge based on sensory inputs has not always been shown up as reliable. The second is a doubt that all that we experience and feel, indeed, our very existence itself maybe only a dream, because a lot of our thoughts that take place while dreaming, are not in fact real, but they are very similar to our waking thoughts. The third, and the most diabolical one of them all, is that we may be the subject of deception by an evil demonic force that presents to us as irrefutable knowledge, that which is not true at all. The conclusion of "I think, Therefore I am", has been criticized on various grounds.

Public Praise and Its Impact on Purchasing Decisions

Public Praise and Its Impact on Purchasing Decisions Public Praise on Blogs: An investigation into its impact on brand advertising and customers purchasing decision-making in Chinese business market The Aims AND Objectives The proposed research is expected to produce an insight into the role performed by public praise and its impact on purchasing decisions. Web blogging is a new-marketing approach emerged only ten years (Dyrud, Worley and Quible, 2005). It enables business executives and traders to create and develop their own brand advertising and pose an impact on how purchasing decisions are made. The previous studies on the influence of the public praise are mostly concentrated on personally verbal exchanges (Wright, 2006, p. 46), but the current research will focus on the public praise by blogs and their influence in Chinese customers. The overall aims of the investigation are to demonstrate how the reliability and underlying impacts of public praise on blogs intervene in the brand advertising and purchasing decision-making of Chinese customers. The research objectives are listed as follows. Assess the influence of public praise through blogs in Chinese business market; Infer how public praise on blogs can be further improved in China; Explore what extent Chinese customers trust these blogs; Discuss the degree to which public praise effects Chinese consumers purchasing decision-making; Examine the degree of public praise that influences brand advertising in China (focusing on two groups of people: having a preference or not for specific brands). Peoples opinions on blogs will be collected to help learn how brand advertising and the purchasing decision-making are influenced by the power of public praise, so that I can acquire sufficient data for review. The outcomes of this proposed research will also aim to provide facts on Chinese public praise on blogs. The Context Of The Proposed Research Since people have written down their thoughts and share them through spoken communication, the public praises have emerged. They are depicted as a ‘view-spread from peoples mouths or ‘word-of-mouth (Christiansen and Tax, 2000, p. 185). Public praise is a strong traditional item in Chinese culture and plays a very important part in Chinese consuming notions. Nowadays, it is recognized as a powerful marketing instrument to support the sales of both tangible and intangible commodities to customers. When marching into the knowledge era, public praise is drawing more attention by people than traditional methods of distributing information. Many printed formats have been transformed to electronic forms published on the websites and blogs (Keng and Ting, 2008). The universal application of Internet is growing rapidly. With a pointer and click button, people can convey and receive information. In fact, it offers an opportunity for prospective customers to gain relevant information about their potential purchasing from various sources: through individual communication with different people who used to be strange but had knowledge of the corresponding articles. This proposed research will specifically discuss the functions of blogging as a platform for marketing and purchasing in China. A Preliminary Literature Review The Development Of Blogs In Marketing Before the emergence of Internet, people were seeking information about a particular purchase either in person or in words to their familiar people. It is the traditionally face-to-face marketing. The development of the Internet means that web communications have become attainable and presented a convenient way for information exchange. A potential buyer has only to input the brand or product name to online search engines. Then, diverse forms of online information providers like websites, blog or forum will give him/her the relevant information. Recently, consumers are becoming progressively aware of the articles displayed on blogs. Bloggers prefer to share their experiences in blogs. Accordingly, these blogs become the information exchange media of consumers. This sort of media gradually develops a tendency for consumers to seek information about new products or brands through blogs. According to the recent results of Neilsons research (2007), about 80% of global consumers allege that they are ready to accept and trust the suggestions of other people for commodities and services. In addition, around 90% of individual future buyers in China depend on recommendations from other buyers. Although blogs have developed into an advanced tool for merchandising, it is still not a corporate domain investigated by many investigators (Bokaie, 2008, p. 17). This research aims to fill this gap. The information exchange online is composed of various actions, such as uploading, downloading, balloting and participating. For businessmen, whether it is beneficial to invest in online advertising via blogs becomes a serious issue for consideration (p. 17). Nevertheless, there is no existing research on this matter to answer their inquiries. With this in mind, the proposed research attempts to reveal the factors that can have impacts on brand advertising and purchasing decision-making. Purchasing Decision-Making The decision-making in purchase links to consumers determination of buying. It is also related to their response after receiving the advice of marketing (Chang and Wildt, 1994). Customers decision-making in purchasing is highly correlated to their perceptions of charge and benefit in commodities (HÃ ¤ubl and Trifts, 2000, p. 6). Hence, it should be more accurately regarded as an aspiration rather than a taste. It has also searched for recognising why knowledge of different products and brands substantially impacts a buyers decision-making. The existing literature makes evident that public praise has a visible impact on consumer-purchasing behaviour (Christiansen and Tax, 2000). Customer satisfaction is widely recognized to be a crucial effect for a consumers future decision-making. Satisfied consumers will share their positive experiences with others and provide praise for advertising. By contrast, discontented customers incline to change their decisions and engage in negative feedbacks on advertising. From the above phenomena, it can be seen that public praise is an effective manner allowing consumers to reduce the time and perceived risks for decision because it can provide the detailed information about products or services. Thus clearly, public praise is a means of avoiding risks when purchasing and also a method of obtaining favourable or adverse knowledge on commodities, so that customers can make a valuable buying decision. Hypotheses Based on the aims and preliminary literature review, I deem the following hypotheses are my research focus. H1: Trust of public praise in blogs can pose a positive impact on brand advertising and purchasing decision-making. H2: The influence of public praise in blogs will have a positive impact on brand advertising and purchasing decision-making. H3: For brand supporters, trust of public praise on blogs can create a favourable impact on brand advertising and purchasing decision-making. H4: For brand supporters, the impacts of public praise on blogs will be beneficial in brand advertising and purchasing decision-making. Methodology And Sources Of Data Methodology Considerations Two research approaches will be used in this study. The first is a deductive approach, which is a well-established method for analysing the existing theories to describe certain phenomena (Gallaire, Minker and Nicolas, 1984, p. 153). It can also predict whether theories are expected to develop and allow the possibility of their altering in the future. The second is an inductive approach, which aims to establish a theoretical framework based on the empirical study (Thomas, 2003). This method can be used in conjunction with the deductive approach. The leading concern of this proposed study is the impact of public praise blogs on brand advertising and purchasing decision-making in the Chinese market. Consequently, it should concentrate mainly on understanding customers dispositions and gaining insight into customer behaviors linked to public praise. A deductive approach will be adopted for analysing the consequences of the statistical reviews. The data and any possible future tendencies for public praise blogs will be tested simultaneously based on the relevant theories. I attempt to design a concise questionnaire for Chinese blog writers and also their readers to complete, so that I am able to evaluate how public praise is spread by blogs and how it influences the consumers perceptions of brands and their purchasing decisions when they are considering what to buy. Additionally, this research intends to clarify the relationship between public praise, brand advertising and the customers purchasing decision-making. This research studies will take trust and influence as independent variables. Two dependent variables are brand advertising and purchasing decision-making. Brand supporters and non-brand supporters are the main focus groups in this research. The conceptual framework related to these variables will be presented in a model form. Apart from this, interpretive research will allow me to investigate and illustrate the relationships between variables, especially the cause-and-effect one. What is more, employing the survey strategy for the collection of data is appropriate here for hypothesis testing, and it is more useful in a quantitative context – the nature of the proposed study. There are three formats of question outline which can be applied in this survey. The first is nominal in nature. The replies to these questions are only ‘yes/ no or ‘true/false, which are predictable and very friendly in statistical analysis. The second requires respondents to use a five-point scale with the extreme ones matching strongly agree or strongly disagree. The third form is multiple options. All respondents are expected to sort out no more than three choices. Sampling Considerations Sampling design commences by defining the target population (Emory, 1980). This is a collection of elements or objects that hold the data searched by the investigators and with respect to which conclusions are to be drawn (Korn and Graubard, 1991). A non-probability sampling method will be adopted for this research because I have many suspicions about the practicality of the approach of employing a mixed interview group. Particularly, convenience sampling will be considered in this study and the surveys will be retrieved online by around 200 Chinese consumers (both blog writers and readers) who were selected randomly. The sample selection is ended when the sample size for pilot study has been obtained. Although this technique of sampling is widely used, it is likely to introduce bias and its influences can be beyond control. However, for a wide-ranging questionnaire survey, it is the simplest sampling strategy to collect reliable data. Data Collection In order to guarantee the reliability, validity and integrity of this study and avoid possible difficulties, the survey will be piloted on a group of ten Chinese blog users (5 males and 5 females), aged from 20 to 35. They will evaluate the validity and clarity of the entire framework and the inquiries of the survey. The question outline will be set in the three types I mentioned in the section of Methodology considerations, which can allow the respondents to reply following the instructions and regulations as principals without the probability of being an unstable or unpredictable response. This research concentrates on blog users in China and the review procedures are according to the application of a questionnaire offering a sample of the target population. The survey is employed to infer the relationship between public praise, brand advertising and the customers purchasing decision-making. It is possible to collect the associated facts by either empirical or library-based studies. With regard to this proposed research, the survey asks respondents several sets of questions to explore their opinions about Chinese bloggers and their subscribers. The survey will be retrieved using an online survey website and people from all walks of life will be encouraged to fill it out and forward the survey information to their acquaintances. The convenience of arranging an Internet group to complete the questionnaire is the greatest benefit of carrying out a question-based investigation online. Furthermore, the speed of response is relatively fast and the research expenditure is rel atively low because I do not need to encounter printing, paper or stamp costs. The questionnaire will be separated into four sections. Section one refers to individual data linked to the websites and blogs. The aim of the queries in this part is to conclude the respondents using habits related to the websites and blogs and to comprehend the principal incentive of web users both as blog subscribers and bloggers. Section two is to determine how public praise in blogs affects brand advertising and purchasing decision-making by concentrating on responsibility, strength, disposition and effect correlated to public praise in blogs. Section three deals, particularly, with how the consumers shared knowledge with other people by means of blogs influences their purchasing decision-making. Section four further collects the individual information. Secondary data are also applicable to giving contextual knowledge and academic support relevant to the empirical inquiry, the questions adopted and hypothesis formulation. In addition, it is normally the situation that documentary data has been summarised intentionally other than their applications in prompt research. There has also been a study of any existing documents linking to public praise, blogs, brand advertising and purchasing decision-making. Therefore, this research has comprised the use of periodicals, archives and online articles. All these resources will be explored and analysed. Even so, the enquiry of documents can certainly not be sufficient to support the proposed study. For this reason, it has been indispensable to collect primary data for this research. Data Analysis The data sets collected from questionnaires will be processed by statistical analysis. Statistics is a group of approaches and theories that can be employed to quantitative data when making judgements in the aspect of doubtfulness. Quantitative analysis methods help to compose plain charts or figures that indicate the frequency of event via setting up statistical associations between variables and complicated statistical models (Bernard, 1996, p. 24). Quantitative analysis enables the figures collected from the survey to be transcribed into diagrams and graphs, which gives the figures comprehensibility and makes it easier to grasp. The proposed study will use quantitative analysis and display results from the survey through statistical analysis with investigating the connection between the variables. Employing this means, it is likely to examine the association between public praise, brand advertising and customers purchasing decision-making, and display the results in unsophisticate d diagrams. When I finish gathering all the required information through online questionnaires, the unprocessed data will be coded into variable divisions using statistical analysis. The validity and accuracy of the data need to be confirmed before the hypothesis testing. In this situation, it may be essential to think about the correctness or faulty of hypotheses because they can be refused based on the testing results. The research will use the software SPSS to verify the research hypotheses. SPSS is usually applied by those scholars or investigators who involved in the social sciences, such as the fields of policy and educational research. The proposed project will be used to analyze the outcomes and identify factors that have been influenced by variables, so that the validity of the hypothesis can be proved. This research will first use descriptive statistics to analyze personal information, including all sorts of reliable variables. Subsequently, regression and one-way ANOVA analysis may be adopted to verify the four hypotheses. Research Limitations The research sample is initially randomly selected from my acquaintances in China, which may comprise the first inadequacy. Moreover, that the samples are all from the 20-35 identical age group also introduces some bias. It is rational to deduce that such a confined age group may have related experiences and attitudes linked to the matters scrutinized in this research. In this case, it is likely to affect the research outcomes and overall quality. The number of participants involved in the proposed research is also likely to be too small to show the sample representativeness. Furthermore, because the entire empirical stage will be processed online, it may be unattainable for me to have any in human liaison with the participants. As a result, it may be unlikely to examine whether the personal information is in detail or not. The participants will give their replies on the web survey. When they read it online, they may change some of their answers intentionally. Ethical Considerations The proposed research will follow the ethical guidelines of business studies based on the ‘code of ethics for author in Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) (2007). I will contact with my friends and acquaintances to obtain their permissions to complete my web survey. Also, the researcher stance should be considered. I need to be an outsider of their questionnaire completion. What is more, the guidelines suggest some items in relation to protection of individual privacy, such as informed consent, the right to withdraw, protecting the anonymity, participant reviews of data and so forth. Although the targeted blog users will be encouraged to engage in the study, it should be clear that they are not forced to fill in the online questionnaire and they may thus choose withdraw their answers. When I post my questionnaire survey online, I will write a general introduction about my background and interests to the respondents. Then, inform them in written form about my purpo se of the survey and my general intentions regarding the research. I will also welcome their questions left on my research blog, and answer them honestly. In order to protect the respondents anonymity, aliases will be used for all involved blog writers and readers as soon as the data are transcribed. Anticipated Outcomes The anticipated outcomes are expected to effectively test all the listed hypotheses and achieve the aims of the proposed research. As I mentioned before, although public praise as distributed by the Cyberspace has come to be a prevailing marketing instrument, it has not been considerably scrutinized yet. The main results of this proposed research will try to clarify the relationship between public praise, brand advertising and purchasing decision-making. The outcomes will be capable of implying fresh thoughts to firms when they intend to engage in public praise spreading in order to improve the positive effect of their brands and encourage purchasing in consumers. Bibliography Bernard, H. (1996), Qualitative Data, Quantitative Analysis. Cultural Anthropology Methods Journal, 8 (1), 23-26. Bokaie, J. (2008), Corporations get Personal: A growing number of company chiefs are bypassing copywriters to speak direct to consumers. Marketing, pp. 17. Chang, T.-Z. and Wildt, A. (1994), Price, Product Information, and Purchase Intention: An empirical study. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 22 (1), 16-27. Christiansen, T. and Tax, S. (2000), The Questions of Who and When to Measure the Word of Mouth. marketing communications, 6, 185-199. Dyrud, M., Worley, R. and Quible, Z. (2005), Blogs: A Natural in Business Communication Courses. Business Communication Quarterly, 68, 73-76. Emory, W. (1980), Business Research Methods. Irwin: Homewood. Gallaire, H., Minker, J. and Nicolas, J.-M. (1984), Logic and Databases: A Deductive Approach. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 16 (2), 153-185. HÃ ¤ubl, G. and Trifts, V. (2000), Consumer Decision Making in Online Shopping Environments: The Effects of Interactive Decision Aids. Marketing Science, 19 (1), 4-21. JIBS. (2007), Code of Ethics. [Online]. Available at: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jibs/jibs_ethics_code.html. Last accessed 07/09/2009. Keng, C.-J. and Ting, H.-Y. (2008), The Acceptance of Blogs:Using a Customer Experiential Value Perspective (pp. 1-13). Taipei. Korn, E. and Graubard, B. (1991), Epidemiologic studies utilizing surveys: accounting for the sampling design. American Journal of Public Health, 81 (9), 1166-1173. Neilson, B. (2007), Consumer-Generated Media in the Age of the Web-Fortified Consumer. [Online]. Available at: http://www.nielsenbuzzmetrics.com/whitepapers. Last accessed 06/09/2009. Thomas, D. (2003), A General Inductive Approach for Qualitative Data Analysis: University of Auckland. Wright, J. (2006), Blog Marketing: The revolutionary new way to increase sales, build your brand, and get exceptional results. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Rap :: essays research papers

Throughout the past years, rap and all other types of music artist use their music to express their views, opinions and feelings in their songs. From their lyrics, you will have a little understanding towards what they see and feel about the society. The artists should be happy because this is a freedom of speech country and they can compose any types of music to express themselves. Although there are voices saying rap music should be censored and it has been influencing youth’s mind, but is rap music negatively influencing the youths’? There is a survey from the United States saying 48% Americans think popular music should be heavily regulated and 59% Americans wanted to restrict violence in music. However, there were no studies providing evidence towards a cause and effect relationship between violence, sex and behavioral effect. Even if there are studies, artist and composer will not be concerned about the regulations and/or rules. From this ignorance, this is how v iolence in rap music begins.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Rap is defined as a form of popular music developed especially in African-American urban communities and characterized by spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics with a syncopated, repetitive rhythmic accompaniment. In the early '90's, rap music was beginning to be popular, and there were two different rapper groups: the East and West Coast. The wars between these two groups were not quite obvious until East Coast rappers began to get more publicity. West Coast rappers were upset and jealous so that they started to make fun of East Coast rappers through their music. East Coast rappers made revenge at West Coast rappers and the war has continue until one day, there was voices saying the other coast had gone too far. Nonetheless, West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur had a personal feud with the East Coast rapper The Notorious B.I.G.. In one of Tupac’s song, he proclaimed he had slept with the Biggie’s wife and Notorious B.I.G. revenged by saying â€Å"stupid niggaz mess with Big Poppa, motherf**kers get roasted if you f**k wit B.

Development of Youth Culture Essay

There is no single reason for the development of culture; rather, it came about as a result of the number of different social changes occurring at the same time. These developments included the increasing economic power of young people, the influence of the USA and globalisation, social changes at the end of World War 2, development of the media, demographic change in the numbers of young people and the transition to adulthood. Defining youth culture can be difficult because different cultures and interruptions in employment status’s can affect the perspective of what â€Å"youth† is. Culture is the way we live within our culture and youth culture is the way youth lives within it but because of the difficulties youth culture could mean different things to different cultures. Youth culture developed in the early 1950’s, although the idea of youth as a phase in life has a longer history. Youth culture was first developed in America after World War 2, which then Britain decided to follow due to media and other influences from America. In my opinion the most important factor that developed youth culture was the economic changes in society. Due to the demand in workers after the Second World War there was an economic growth. The first person to realise the impact this was having on young people was Abram’s (1959) who analysed the increased economic power of the ‘teenage consumer’. There was a noticeable pattern in what was getting most money spent on, because young people were the age group spending the highest proportion of their income on leisure activities and music, clothes and cosmetics. This increase in economic power created the conditions for the emerging youth culture to develop. For the first time, young people had significant amounts of money to spend. Another extremely important factor for the development was the social change at the end of World War 2. There was much more opportunities for young people and possibilities at this time. Before the war, Britain was characterized by a class structure. By the time it came to the 1950s, we started to see a change in the economy and this opened up oppurtunities and individual expression. Judging on conventional standards, opportunities were becoming bigger. Cinema, art, literature and theatre began to explore new ideas. Amongst many new ideas was that young people were a distinctive group with new values and ideas about their place in society. The next important development for youth culture in my opinion was the influence of the USA and globalisation. With the changing culture and the growth in affluence of the 1950s, there was a ready market for American goods and culture, which included rock and roll music and other products aimed at the new ‘teenage market’. A quote from Leech (’76) saying ‘youthquake’ explained how a change in the new youth was such a sudden change it was like an earthquake. Globalisation recognised what young people wanted and advertised it more. I think the next development of the youth culture which was important was the growth and specialization of media. Media was becoming a lot more popular and so was advertisement. The media started to advertise the products that young people during that time wanted and this was a massive boost for the economics and spread quickly across the world. The 1950’s saw an explosion of different sorts of media. This was only possible because of the growth in social diversity and an increase in spending power that persuaded companies to spend large amounts of money advertising the new media. As a high-spending and newly discovered group, young people became the target for advertisers and hence the commercial media competed to attract this market. Another social condition that made the development of youth culture possible was transition to adulthood. Transition refers to the movement from being economically and socially dependent on parents, towards independence. The length of transition increased over the 20th century as the average period in education. Due to the longer age of being in education, it meant that typical adult responsibilities were taken on increasingly later in life, leaving young people with a number of years where they were physically mature but without the responsibilities of adulthood. This caused young people to want their own place in society. The last social condition that helped youth culture become possible was the demographic change in numbers of young people. After the war because couple had been split for so long because of hundreds of men being sent abroad, many sexual experiences had been delayed for years. The result was that when the men were released from the armed forces in 1945/46, there was a huge increase in birth rate. Although many of the children born at this time were not ‘teenagers’ until the end of 1950’s, they did ensure that youth culture continued and grew as a cultural form. Around 50 to 60 years ago, for the first time, a youth culture appeared to be emerging – young people appeared to be developing their own values, customs, tastes, clothes, music and language. After studying and discussing all the different social conditions that developed youth culture I have discovered that youth culture wasn’t made overnight. It took all these 6 main factors to create this culture and carry it on until this day. Economics was the most important condition in my opinion due to the fact that it all started because of the economic boost after World War 2. America was the country that started this youth culture and Britain followed it after the war ended. Abercrombie et al. (2000) has suggested that youth culture has three distinguishing features: leisure, style and peer group.

Weighted Average Cost of Capital and Discount Rate

Sampa Video, Inc You have to prepare a presentation to the management of the firm. The presentation should have; analysis of the project, your valuation of the investment and your investment recommendation. You have to be clear and brief and explain the main assumptions and methodologies used in the analysis. The quality of the presentation will be considered in the grading. You have to hand in a handout of the presentation and an executive summary of no more than 2 pages. Guideline Questions for you Report 1. What is the value of the project assuming the firm was entirely equity financed? What are the annual projected free cash flows?What discount rate is appropriate? NPV = $1,228,485 Discount rate = cost of equity (from CAPM) = 15. 8% (see model for projected free cash flows) 2. Value the project using the Adjusted Present Value (APV) approach assuming the firm raises $750 thousand of debt to fund the project and keeps the level of debt constant in perpetuity. NPV of Levered Firm = $1,528,485 3. Value the project using the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) approach assuming the firm maintains a constant 25% debt-to-market value ratio in perpetuity. NPV of Levered Firm = $1,469,972 4. How do the values from the APV and WACC approaches compare?How do the assumptions about financial policy differ across the two approaches? †¢ The level of debt with the fixed debt policy is fixed and thus the interest tax shields have the same risk as the debt. The discount rate for interest tax shields with the fixed debt policy therefore is the debt rate of 6. 8%. †¢ With the 25% debt-to-value policy, the amount of debt varies with the value of the firm so the expected interest tax shields also vary with the value of the firm. These tax shields therefore should be discounted at the expected asset return 15. 8%, which is higher than the debt rate.