Thursday, January 30, 2020

Fast Food Popularity in China Essay Example for Free

Fast Food Popularity in China Essay Examine the reasons for the popularity of fast food restaurants in your country. When, why, and how have these restaurants become so popular? (Cause) Demonstrate the impact of this popularity on your country’s culture, i. e. , food, health, economy, lifestyle. (Effect) You will need to do some research on the fast food chains growth, menus, nutritional background, business models, and perhaps more. Your research should include more than one fast food restaurant. Recently, McDonald’s announced their plan to expand outlets from 1300 to 2000 by the end of 2013 in China. It is reported that the main purpose is to compete with KFC, which is the largest quick service restaurant brand in China with over 4,200 restaurants in more than 850 cities across China. The growing huge market and politic strategies taken by restaurants make fast food popular in China; this in turn has a great influence on China’s economy, culture and health. There are several of causes for fast food popular in China. On the first place, the growing market and industry attract plenty of fast food restaurants. Chinas fast food market worth over 700 billion yuan in the last year and had a rapid speedabout 12 percent in the past several years. Furthermore, the market is estimated to grow to 1400 billion yuan by 2015. The second main cause of this popularity is some strategies taken by fast food brands especially localization. Take KFC for example, the brand adds many localized product like Beijing Chicken Roll, tomato egg soup and corn salad to meet Chinese consumers demand. The popularity also brings some effects especially for Chinese culture. First, the change reflects on food consumption habits. For example, Yum! China’s menu is dominated by meat-rich food except for breakfast. Furthermore, fast foods are becoming affordable by most people so that the brand opens almost one third of its restaurants in countryside. Second, traditional wedding has been influenced with wedding services provided by some fast food brands. Nowadays, to compare with Chinese traditional, extravagant and tawdry weddings, more and more young people in China prefer smaller, easier and cheaper weddings. Many fast food restaurants contribute to this tendency like McWedding offered by McDonald’s, which is held by restaurant assistants with a more intimate and less costly way. In short, fast food popularity has an effect on Chinese eating habit and wedding tradition. Also, the popularity has an effect on economy. For one thing, it increases the revenues for economy. The revenue of fast food industry in 2011 is $74. 8 billion which benefits the economy in turn. More important thing is that the revenue will keep growing at the rate of 14. -15. 0% in the next five years. For another thing, it influences the agriculture. With the explosive development of fast food industry, many grain farms are out of use. In 2011, there are roughly 700 thousand hectares of arable land are reconstructed to raise livestock or fowl instead of growing grains. As a result, China needs to rely more on importation and increase grain imports. In 2010, China imported 927 (1000 MT) wheat, while in 2012, nearly 3200 (1000 MT) wheat were imported. It is obvious that the popularity benefits China’s revenue while harming the agriculture foundation. Finally, the popularity also carries two problems for people’s health: obesity and diabetes. The number of overweight people has grown from 18 to 100 million in the last 5 years with the rapid development of fast food industry. As a result, many complications like high blood pressure and diabetes become more common in China. Take diabetes for example, there are over 92 million adults suffer from diabetes and the costs of diabetes make up nearly 1. % of GDP. It is undeniable that fast food restaurants make Chinese people cost a lot on their health especially on the treatment of diabetes. In conclusion, the pursue towards maximum profits and proper strategies contribute to the popularity of fast food in China, as a result, China’s culture, economy and Chinese health. In the foreseeable future, the popularity of fast food will last for a lone time and will have long-term effects in china.

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Why Modern Monsters Have Become Alien to Us :: Papers

Why Modern Monsters Have Become Alien to Us Late autumn has arrived and with it comes the dark magic of Halloween--and, of course, the murky thrill of monsters. Yet our appetite for a good monster knows no season. Ever since ancient times we have been fascinated with all sorts of tales about monsters and intrigued by myths and legends about those wild half-human beasts who haunt the edges of our forests and lurk in the recesses of our oceans. The sphinxes, minotaurs, and sirens of early mythology gave way to Beowulf's Grendel and Saint George's dragon, then to the mermaids, trolls, and one-eyed giants of our fairy and folk tales, and finally to those 19th-century Gothic classics. Nor are these stories on the wane, for the monster tales that made Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, and Bela Lugosi stars of the silver screen continue to draw megacrowds six and seven decades later. In 1994 Kenneth Branagh and Robert DeNiro brought us the latest reincarnation of Shelley's story of Frankenstein's tortured creature, and Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt starred in "Interview with a Vampire," the first installment of Ann Rice's homage to Stoker'sDracula. Meanwhile, Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical production of Gaston Leroux's "Phantom of the Opera" continues to pack in audiences from London to L.A. Much of the initial appeal of monster stories comes from the fact that they, like their twisted siblings, "creature features" and "slashers," both terrify and fascinate us with their ghoulish brand of horror. It's the rattling-the-tiger's-cage kind of thrill that Scout and Jim Finch got from sneaking onto Boo Radley's porch under a pale moon. Reading or watching great monster stories, we get to accompany the frightened heroes or heroines as they descend into the dragon's lair; crane our necks over the tops of books or movie seats and peek into the dank recesses of the giant cyclops' cave; stretch out our trembling hands and actually touch the monster's reptilian scales, hairy paws, or cloven hoofs; and then run screaming like a banshee the instant it wakes from its slumber. What a rush! As frightening as these creatures are, in monster stories it is always the beast that ends up taking the fall, which means that this is a place where we not only get to tangle with evil's most daunting and dangerous minions but to vanquish them with regularity. Pretty heady stuff.

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Activity-Based Costing (Abc); Hunter Company

Activity-based Costing (ABC) Hunter Company Emmanuel Achirem ACC 560-Managerial Accounting Dr. Lotfi Geriesh Strayer University 08/04/2012 Activity-based Costing (ABC) Hunter Company, 1 Introduction Over the past two decade’s adoption of Activity-Based Costing ABC has been tossed around like a hot potato by every size and type of organization. It was adopted by organizations ranging in size from huge multi-national companies like General Motors to the much smaller Alexandria Hospital. Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011) Some companies began the initial processes but stopped short of actual implementation when they discovered more time and resources were needed to effect the change so management ran from it just as they had run from quality improvement concepts from the seventies and eighties. (Romano, 1990) Was this because ABC was not a good fit for the organization or was there a deeper issue? These organizations knew they were not adequately capturing the costs of activities ye t they final cost could be. T.J Rodgers who founded Cypress Semiconductor wrote: â€Å"The seeds of business failure are sown in good times, not bad†¦Growth masks waste, extravagance, and inefficiency. The moment growth slows, the accumulated sins of the past are revealed all the way to the bottom line. † (Clemmer, 1992) Given the competitive nature of business today organizations both big and small cannot long afford to ignore the 900 pound gorilla in the room. The goal of this paper is to discuss Time-driven ABC cost system can be implemented and how it has benefited some companies such as Hunter Company.The system was not widely accepted in the beginning, but ABC has play major role in cost accounting today and has help some managers to combat corporate resistance to change when trying to implement it. Operating managers have known for many years that while the traditional costing approach was inaccurate; and archaic it was close enough. Today, because of the global a nd high speed Activity-based Costing (ABC) Hunter Company, 2 nature of the business environment, the errors of conventional costing are systematic and can affect too many decisions.Time-driven ABC is not a hypothetical improvement to traditional ABC analysis. It has been applied in dozens of companies, helping them to deliver significant profit improvements quickly. The Hunter Company (disguised name of actual company), a large, multinational distributor of scientific products with over 20 facilities, 300,000 customers, and 460,000 product SKUs, processes more than one million orders each month. Hunter already had an existing activity-based costing model that had been built with the assistance of an external consulting team.The insights revealed from the model were extremely informative but many in the company questioned if the view was worth the climb. Their main complaints can be summarized as follows: †¢ The model had been cumbersome to build and maintain. With more than 1,0 00 activities, the monthly survey of department staff of where they had spent their time was complex and costly. Also, tracking the driver quantities for each activity and customer was difficult. †¢ The model did not reconcile with actual financials since activity cost driver rates had not been updated recently. Despite the already large number of activities, the model was still not considered accurate or granular enough. It did not reflect several important differences between orders. To increase accuracy, more activities would have to be added, and employees would have to be re-interviewed. Also, an additional data extract to track the quantities of the new cost drivers would be required. The existing ABC approach was not easily maintainable, and thus not sustainable.The company called in a software and consulting company to help it implement the time-driven ABC approach. The time-driven approach led to the following changes: For a department, such as the inside sales departm ent, the previous ABC model required employees to estimate, each month, the percentage of their time spent on their three activities: customer set-up, order entry, and order expediting. In the time-driven approach, the ABC team estimated the time required to perform each activity.For example, the activity to set-up a new customer took 15 minutes. Since a field already existed within Hunter’s ERP system that identified whether a customer was new, assigning a customer set-up cost to a new customer became a simple transaction. For order entry, the team learned that every order took about five minutes to enter the basic order information, plus three minutes for each line item on the order. Again this was a simple calculation to implement since the ERP system already tracked the number of line items for each order.Finally, the team learned that order expediting was triggered by a request by the customer to rush the shipment, resulting in an additional 10 minutes of time to coordin ate the expediting. The order included a field that identified it is a â€Å"rush order. † The project team could write a simple equation to estimate the Inside Sales Department time required for each order received: Inside Sales Process Time = 15*[New Customer] + 5 + 3*[Number of Line Items] + 10*[Rush]The Inside Sales Department cost for the order was obtained by multiplying this time by the cost per minute of Inside Sales Department resources. This process was replicated in each department to arrive at the total cost of producing, handling, and fulfilling the order. Note that once the team had created the Inside Sales Process algorithm, it did not need to continually re-interview personnel. Each period, the costs of the department would be assigned based on the volume and nature of the transactions it handled.Activity-based Costing (ABC) Hunter Company, 4 The Hunter Company identified the following benefits from shifting its ABC model to the time-driven approach. †¢ I t reduced the number of activities to maintain. It transformed 1,200 activities (e. g. , set-up new customer, enter orders, expedite orders) to 200 department specific processes (e. g. , the equation used to estimate Inside Sales Department time). Also, it could easily update the resource cost of each cost center and departments so that its process costs were accurate and current. Its cost estimates were more accurate since they were based on actual observations of processing time and actual transaction data, not subjective estimates on where and how people spent their time †¢ It was easier to increase model accuracy and granularity, when wanted, for high cost and heterogeneous processes. Adding more elements to the time equation enabled managers to easily add more variety and complexity to the model when required. This enabled managers to identify specific SKUs, customers, and processes where improvements could be made. The model was easier to validate. The calculated total pr ocess time, based on all transactions in a period, could be reconciled to head count (resources supplied during the period). If the total process time exceeded the actual resources supplied, managers received a signal that some of their unit times were likely too high. If total calculated process time was well below the time supplied, but employees felt they were working at or beyond capacity, managers learned that some of their unit times were under-estimated or employees were working less efficiently than anticipated.Activity-based Costing (ABC) Hunter Company, 5 †¢ The model provided explicit information on processes operating at or beyond capacity, and those operating well below capacity. Managers could take action to relieve bottlenecks expected to persist in future periods, or act to reduce capacity in departments where any unused capacity was expected to persist for several periods into the future. Today, it takes two people, two days per month to load, calculate, valida te and report findings, compared to the 10-person team spending over 3 weeks to maintain the previous model.Employees now spend time generating increased profits from the information rather than just updating and maintaining the information. Over the past 15 years, activity-based costing has enabled managers to see that not all revenue is good revenue, and not all customers are profitable customers. Unfortunately, the difficulties of implementing and maintaining traditional ABC systems have prevented activity-based cost systems from being an effective, timely, and up-to-date management tool. The time-driven ABC approach has overcome these difficulties.It offers managers a methodology that has the following positive features: 1. Easy and fast to implement 2. Integrates well with data now available from recently installed ERP and CRM systems 3. Inexpensive and fast to maintain and update 4. Ability to scale to enterprise-wide models 5. Easy to incorporates specific features for partic ular orders, processes, suppliers, and customers Activity-based Costing (ABC) Hunter Company, 6 6. More visibility to process efficiencies and capacity utilization 7.Ability to forecast future resource demands based on predicted order quantities and complexity These characteristics enable activity-based costing to move from a complex, expensive financial systems implementation to becoming a tool that provides meaningful and actionable data, quickly and inexpensively, to managers. In conclusion, we can see that the methodology behind Activity-Based Costing is sound, and can result in sometimes great savings to a company willing to take the time, effort and expense to implement a plan.Although there are some pitfalls to the process, with perseverance and a solid commitment from management, ABC can be of great benefit to a manufacturing company. Activity-based Costing (ABC) Hunter Company, 7 References C. Argyris and R. S. Kaplan, â€Å"Implementing New Knowledge: The Case of Activity -Based Costing,† Accounting Horizons (September 1994): 83-105. Journal of Cost Management (Winter 1989): 34-46; R. Cooper and R. S. Kaplan, â€Å"Measure Costs Right: Make the Right Decisions,† Harvard Business Review (September-October 1988). http://www. hbs. edu/research/facpubs/workingpapers/papers2/0304/04-0

Sunday, January 5, 2020

The Politicization Of Accounting The Impact Of Politics...

The article The Politicization of Accounting: The impact of politics on accounting standards by David Solomons discusses the relationship between the field of accounting and politics. Government agendas are meant to work towards achieving economic growth, both on a micro and macro level. Since the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has the ability to create policies that aid the government with their goals, the FASB are obligated to use their power to benefit the government, the economy, and in turn the greater public. Both politicization and neutrality have benefits, but each have the potential to solely benefit certain stakeholders, becoming exclusionary to other interest groups. The reason that the politicization or neutrality of accounting standards is so widely debated is because of the varying opinions regarding what the standards should accomplish. Neutrality and politicization have an inverse relationship where there is a trade-off between the two; losing informatio n neutrality results in more politically influenced standards, while maintaining impartiality results in less politicization. The most crucial trade-off that exists in this relationship is the one between relevance and reliability. Information neutrality leads to more reliable information because neutrality eliminates bias of any single stakeholder. Therefore, when accounting standards are free from political influence they are more likely to benefit the greatest amount of financial statementShow MoreRelatedCurrent Financial Reporting Standards On The Workplace Essay1744 Words   |  7 PagesCurrent Financial Reporting Issues It is incontestable that international financial reporting standards (IFRS) are in vogue and global conformity theoretically on the doorstep as about 100 countries implement standard financial regulations. 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