Reasons for the Success of Primark

Reasons for the Success of Primark Overview Primark is one of the biggest chain stores in Europe. It operates in 6 European countries like Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Portugal and Germany. The first store was established in 1969 in Dublin. Afterwards in 1973 Primark started trading in Great Britain and in 2006, it opened 2 new stores in Spain and from 2008 2009, Primark starts trading in the Netherlands, Portugal and Germany. Today Primarks chain consist from 193 stores, and majority of them located in the UK. The main offices of company are located in Ireland where it is known as Penneys, Primark is a branch of Associated British Foods pls. ABF has international sales of  £6.8bn and 85,000 employees in 43 countries and Primark is the main piece in ABF. ABF is a highly diversified group of companies who enjoy a high degree of autonomy in the running of their specific businesses. The ABF group is one of the biggest chain stores in Europe with the variety of successful brands and goods in the food sector. (http://www.primark.co.uk/ ) Main Body The successful story of business is Primark story that has become true in last several years. As it was written in â€Å"The Independent: â€Å"During a high street slump, it has built a reputation as a seller of extraordinarily cheap garments and shoppers have besieged its new stores, some of them bought from the collapsed Allders chain.† ( The Independent,† Primark is named at least ethical clothes shop†, by M. Hickman, Thursday, 8 December 2005). Primark success relates to: Super-competitive prices (the result of technology, efficient distribution, supply and volume buying) Market product quality High Street locations Clear focus on the target market. Good global management and logistics system (http://www.earthtimes.org/ ) Super-Competitive Prices Nowadays, global economy opens huge variety of markets, distribution and supply services to the companies that trade in global market. The one of the main oppotunities in companies success is opportunity to choose from a wide range of markets where to trade, or what supplier to choose. The combination of this aspects give to global companies a chance to make more profit that was ever made. As it is known, most of Primarks suppliers are from China, India and south east Asia. So, it gives to ABF group cheap distribution that relates to prices. Low price system give a huge advantage to Primark as a player in the market, among other players such as Tesco, Mark Spencer, Next and etc. this is a good strategy for Primark ,as a player in the global market, during the recession. It gives Primark a big market share and increases in profit. FQDSC strategic model (competitive advantage through) It is better to understand success of Primark store in FQDSC strategic model, which includes flexibility, quality, dependability, speed and cost aspects. If we mark Primark in all this aspects with one of his competitors and compare them, we will see why Primark is so successful. Now, we see that factors such as speed and cost play a huge role in human behavior in todays world during the recession. The recession time shows us how Primark is flexible with their customers, that speed and cost factors give Primark a huge advantage among other players in the market. In comparison with Debenhams and other competitors, factors such as speed and cost played the main role to the success of Primark. (Gregson, R. (2009) MGT 7100 Managing Processes, Lecture 1) Market Product Quality Quality of Primark`s goods strictly relates to the price and suppliers that Primark works with. So it is one of the best quality-price ratios in the market. ABF group achieved this correlation by using the basic rules in global economy to reach best profit. As it was mentioned before, global economy gives a huge amount of opportunities to the companies to make their best correlation between quality, price, location, speed and etc. High Street Locations Primark like almost a half of his competitors has a good location policy. For example, in London on Oxford street, Primark and his competitors are found in one street of market stores. In the UK High Street there is a huge amount of no-frills fashion stores. That means that Primark have a lot of competitors that have same type of customers. Well-established competitors such as Bhs and NEXT and others have to cope with Primark, while results are booming. Primark has become one of the cheapest fashion retailers in the UK High Streets. Therefore people buying goods from Primark store. The live example of Primark success in UK High Street it is if you go to Oxford street you will see a superior amount of people that are carrying Primark bags than from other stores. (http://www.open2.net/ ) Clear Focus On The Target Market Primark have clear understanding demands of their customers. Primarks market segment is the fashion conscious people under- 35s with the slogan â€Å"Look good pay less†. Primark has chosen ‘Cost Leadership strategy, it means that Primark has a cost privilege over competitors. In the last several years Primark has done a lot of things right. TK Maxx and Asda are one of the strongest competitors of Primark and they have a similar market segment. TK Maxx and Asda have different strategies to that of Primark. TK Maxx trades hugely-discounted prestige brands and Asda has created its own private and well-known brand. Primark focuses more on buying, logistics and supply chain management rather than developing its own brand. Primark made its own teams of buyers that travel all over the world to detect fashion trends and to find out the competitive caterers. It means that Primark understand demand of their customer very well by providing them high fashion goods at very low prices. It also has a very clever system of choices of fashion goods to copy into the mass production. To proceed to be most successful in market with ‘Cost Leadership strategy the firm should provide the cheapest prices in the market. (http://www.open2.net/ ) Good Global Management And Logistics System The success of Associated British Foods pls. is not based only on one aspect such as super competitive price, quality, high street location or clear market target. It is the totality of all of aspects. ABF group has a clear understanding of global economy rules. Primark realize that global market opens huge varieties of dealing business. It means that global economy, as it was mentioned before, give to companies a huge varieties of markets, suppliers and etc., and companies can choose among markets and suppliers. ABF group has a good correlation of options that global economy provides to companies. As the result Primark has a very good management and logistic systems. It means that Primark realize a correlation between high volume, low cost, location, market and supply chains. It is better to understand Primarks correlation in picture: Now, we can clearly understand the logistic system that is used by Primark. We can see that global economy and global market give a challenge to Primark and competitors to choose among suppliers. As we can see Primark has chosen the best correlation between suppliers, prices and other aspects which leaded to better profit. This is demonstration of Primarks commitment to having the best available solutions to help manage its supply chain, and to improve working conditions whilst maintaining competitive edge and quality in a fast-moving fashion environment,† said Ray Ellis, business systems analyst at Primarks owner, Associated British Foods. ( http://www.supplychain.cn ) Conclusion In conclusion we can see a whole picture of Primarks success. It is obvious that the company became a successful business story just in several years. Primark success is a very good solution in management and logistic system. Primark became a good example of success and a case study to its competitors. As it was written before, Primarks triumph relates to several aspects such as quality, high street locations, super competitive prices, clear focus on the target market, good management and logistics system. The main point of the success of Primark, it is that the owners of Primark were one of the first in practical business who realized the whole picture of global market and combinations of aspects and factors that is given by the globalisation. It is true that during the recession time factors like low costs and fast speed are playing a big role in decision making process of customers. Primark has a clear focus on the target market, and it helps them to know what the best to their customers is. They know that their target market are people under 35 and they focus more on factors such as fashion, low prices and speed. At the end, we cant say that the success of Primark is the lucky chance, their success is the well-developed combination between factors and aspects. References: http://www.primark.co.uk/page.aspx?pointerid=eb44df4565934edca627dac6ec12145a [accessed 14 November 2009] http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/primark-to-install-island-pacific-planning-solution,1029702.shtml [accessed 14 November 2009] The Independent,† Primark is named at least ethical clothes shop†, by M. Hickman, Thursday, 8 December 2005 http://www.open2.net/money/briefs_20051206_primark.html [accessed 15 November 2009] http://www.supplychain.cn/en/art/2769/ [accessed 15 November 2009] Gregson, R. (2009) MGT 7100 Managing Processes, Lecture 1

Part Five Chapter IV

IV A misty blue sky stretched like a dome over Pagford and the Fields. Dawn light shone upon the old stone war memorial in the Square, on the cracked concrete faà §ades of Foley Road, and turned the white walls of Hilltop House pale gold. As Ruth Price climbed into her car ready for another long shift at the hospital, she looked down at the River Orr, shining like a silver ribbon in the distance, and felt how completely unjust it was that somebody else would soon have her house and her view. A mile below, in Church Row, Samantha Mollison was still sound asleep in the spare bedroom. There was no lock on the door, but she had barricaded it with an armchair before collapsing, semi-dressed, onto the bed. The beginnings of a vicious headache disturbed her slumber, and the sliver of sunshine that had penetrated the gap in the curtains fell like a laser beam across the corner of one eye. She twitched a little, in the depths of her dry-mouthed, anxious half-sleep, and her dreams were guilty and strange. Downstairs, among the clean, bright surfaces of the kitchen, Miles sat bolt upright and alone with an untouched mug of tea in front of him, staring at the fridge, and stumbling again, in his mind's eye, upon his drunken wife locked in the embrace of a sixteen-year-old schoolboy. Howard Mollison was sleeping soundly and happily in his double bed. The patterned curtains dappled him with pink petals and protected him from a rude awakening, but his rattling wheezing snores had roused his wife. Shirley was eating toast and drinking coffee in the kitchen, wearing her glasses and her candlewick dressing gown. She visualized Maureen swaying arm in arm with her husband in the village hall and experienced a concentrated loathing that took the taste from every mouthful. In the Smithy, a few miles outside Pagford, Gavin Hughes soaped himself under a hot shower and wondered why he had never had the courage of other men, and how they managed to make the right choices among almost infinite alternatives. There was a yearning inside him for a life he had glimpsed but never tasted, yet he was afraid. Choice was dangerous: you had to forgo all other possibilities when you chose. Kay Bawden was lying awake and exhausted in bed in Hope Street, listening to the early morning quiet of Pagford and watching Gaia, who was asleep beside her in the double bed, pale and drained in the early daylight. There was a bucket next to Gaia on the floor, placed there by Kay, who had half carried her daughter from bathroom to bedroom in the early hours, after holding her hair out of the toilet for an hour. ‘Why did you make us come here?' Gaia had wailed, as she choked and retched over the bowl. ‘Get off me. Get off. I fuck – I hate you.' Kay watched the sleeping face and recalled the beautiful little baby who had slept beside her, sixteen years ago. She remembered the tears that Gaia had shed when Kay had split up with Steve, her live-in partner of eight years. Steve had attended Gaia's parents' evenings and taught her to ride a bicycle. Kay remembered the fantasy she had nurtured (with hindsight, as silly as four-year-old Gaia's wish for a unicorn) that she would settle down with Gavin and give Gaia, at last, a permanent stepfather, and a beautiful house in the country. How desperate she had been for a storybook ending, and a life to which Gaia would always want to return; because her daughter's departure was hurtling towards Kay like a meteorite, and she foresaw the loss of Gaia as a calamity that would shatter her world. Kay reached out a hand beneath the duvet and held Gaia's. The feel of the warm flesh that she had accidentally brought into the world made Kay start to weep, quietly, but so violently that the mattress shook. And at the bottom of Church Row, Parminder Jawanda slipped a coat on over her nightdress and took her coffee into the back garden. Sitting in the chilly sunlight on a wooden bench, she saw that it was promising to be a beautiful day, but there seemed to be a blockage between her eyes and her heart. The heavy weight on her chest deadened everything. The news that Miles Mollison had won Barry's seat on the Parish Council had not been a surprise, but on seeing Shirley's neat little announcement on the website, she had known another flicker of that madness that had overtaken her at the last meeting: a desire to attack, superseded almost at once by stifling hopelessness. ‘I'm going to resign from the council,' she told Vikram. ‘What's the point?' ‘But you like it,' he had said. She had liked it when Barry had been there too. It was easy to conjure him up this morning, when everything was quiet and still. A little, ginger-bearded man; she had been taller than him by half a head. She had never felt the slightest physical attraction towards him. What was love, after all? thought Parminder, as a gentle breeze ruffled the tall hedge of leyland cypresses that enclosed the Jawandas' big back lawn. Was it love when somebody filled a space in your life that yawned inside you, once they had gone? I did love laughing, thought Parminder. I really miss laughing. And it was the memory of laughter that, at last, made the tears flow from her eyes. They trickled down her nose and into her coffee, where they made little bullet holes, swiftly erased. She was crying because she never seemed to laugh any more, and also because the previous evening, while they had been listening to the jubilant distant thump of the disco in the church hall, Vikram had said, ‘Why don't we visit Amritsar this summer?' The Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the religion to which he was indifferent. She had known at once what Vikram was doing. Time lay slack and empty on her hands as never before in her life. Neither of them knew what the GMC would decide to do with her, once it had considered her ethical breach towards Howard Mollison. ‘Mandeep says it's a big tourist trap,' she had replied, dismissing Amritsar at a stroke. Sukhvinder had crossed the lawn without Parminder noticing. She was dressed in jeans and a baggy sweatshirt. Parminder hastily wiped her face and squinted at Sukhvinder, who had her back to the sun. ‘I don't want to go to work today.' Parminder responded at once, in the same spirit of automatic contradiction that had made her turn down Amritsar. ‘You've made a commitment, Sukhvinder.' ‘I don't feel well.' ‘You mean you're tired. You're the one who wanted this job. Now you fulfil your obligations.' ‘But – ‘ ‘You're going to work,' snapped Parminder, and she might have been pronouncing sentence. ‘You're not giving the Mollisons another reason to complain.' After Sukhvinder walked back to the house Parminder felt guilty. She almost called her daughter back, but instead she made a mental note that she must try and find time to sit down with her and talk to her without arguing.

Paper Bag Records and Sweet Potato Pie

Sweet Potato Pie Eugenia Collier From up here on the fourteenth floor, my brother Charley looks like an insect scurrying among other insects. A deep feeling of love surges through me. Despite the distance, he seems to feel it, for he turns and scans the upper windows, but failing to find me, continues on his way. I watch him moving quickly†gingerly, it seems to me† down Fifth Avenue and around the corner to his shabby taxicab. In a moment he will be heading back uptown. I turn from the window and flop down on the bed, shoes and all.Perhaps because of what happened this afternoon or maybe Just because I see Charley so seldom, my houghts hover over him like hummingbirds. The cheerful, impersonal tidiness of this room is a world away from Charleys walk-up flat in Harlem and a hundred worlds from the bare, noisy shanty where he and the rest of us spent what there was of our childhood. I close my eyes and side by side I see the Charley of my boyhood and the Charley of this aft ernoon, as clearly as if I were looking at a split TV screen. Another surge of love, seasoned with gratitude, wells up in me.As far as I know, Charley never had any childhood at all. The oldest children of sharecroppers never do. Mama and Pa were shadowy figures whose voices I heard aguely in the morning when sleep was shallow and whom I glimpsed as they left for the field before I was fully awake or as they trudged wearily into the house at night when my lids were irresistibly heavy. They came into sharp focus only on special occasions. One such occasion was the day when the crops were in and the sharecroppers were paid. In our cabin there was so much excitement in the air that even l, the â€Å"baby' responded to it.For weeks we had been running out of things that we could neither grow nor get on credit. On the evening of that day we waited anxiously for our parents' return. Then we would luster around the rough wooden table†I on Lil's lap or clinging to Charleys neck, litt le Alberta nervously tugging her plait, Jamie crouched at Mama's elbow, like a panther about to spring, and all seven of us silent for once, waiting. Pa would place the money on the table†gently, for it was made from the sweat of their bodies and from the children's tears.Mama would count it out in little piles, her dark face stern and, I think now, beautiful. Not with the hollow beauty of well-modeled features but with the strong radiance of one who has suffered and never yielded. â€Å"This tor the store bill,† sne would mutter, making a I p e. â€Å"This tor c'llection. T for a piece dgingham†¦ † and so on, stretching the money as tight over our collective needs as Jamie's outgrown pants were stretched over my bottom. â€Å"Well, that's the crop. † She would look up at Pa at last. â€Å"It'll do. † Pa's face would relax, and a general grin flitted from child to child.We would survive, at least for the present. The other time when my parents were solid entities was at church. On Sundays we would don our threadbare Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and tramp, along with neighbors similarly attired, to the Tabernacle Baptist Church, the frail edifice of bare oards held together by God knows what, which was all that my parents ever knew of security and future promise. Being the youngest and therefore the most likely to err, I was plopped between my father and my mother on the long wooden bench.They sat huge and eternal like twin mountains at my sides. I remember my father's still, black profile silhouetted against the sunny window, looking back into dark recesses of time, into some dim antiquity, like an ancient ceremonial mask. My mother's face, usually sternly set, changed with the varying nuances of her emotion, its planes shifting, shaped by the soft highlights f the sanctuary, as she progressed from the subdued â€Å"amen† to a loud â€Å"Help me, Jesus† wrung from the depths of her gaunt frame. My early memo ries of my parents are associated with special occasions.The contours of my everyday were shaped by Lil and Charley, the oldest children, who rode herd on the rest of us while Pa and Mama toiled in fields not their own. Not until years later did I realize that Lil and Charley were little more than children themselves. Lil had the loudest, screechiest voice in the county. When she yelled, â€Å"Boy, you better git yourself in here! † you got yourself in there. It was Lil who caught and bathed us, Lil who fed us and sent us to school, Lil who punished us when we needed punishing and comforted us when we needed comforting. If her voice was loud, so was her laughter.When she laughed, everybody laughed. And when Lil sang, everybody listened. Charley was taller than anybody in the world, including, I was certain, God. From his shoulders, where I spent considerable time in the earliest years, the world had a different perspective: I looked down on the heads rather than at the unders ides of chins. As I grew older, Charley became more father than brother. Those days return n fragments of splintered memory: Charleys slender dark hands whittling a toy from a chunk of wood, his face thin and intense, brown as the loaves Lil baked when there was flour.Charleys quick fingers guiding a stick of charred kindling over a bit of scrap paper, making a wondrous picture take shape†Jamie's face or Alberta's rag doll or the spare fgure of our bony brown dog. Charleys voice low and terrible in the dark, telling ghost stories so delightfully dreadful that later in the night the moan of the wind through the chinks in the wall sent us scurrying to the security of Charleys pallet, Charleys sleeping form. Some memories are more than tragmentary. I can still teel the whap ot the wet disn rag across my mouth. Somehow I developed a stutter, which Charley was determined to cure.Someone had told him that an effective cure was to slap the stuttered across the mouth with a sopping we t dish rag. Thereafter whenever I began, â€Å"Let's g -g-g- -,† whap! From nowhere would come the ubiquitous rag. Charley would always insist, â€Å"l don't want to hurt you none, Buddy†Ã¢â‚¬  and whap again. I don't know when or why I stopped stuttering. But I stopped. Already laid waste by poverty, we were easy prey for ignorance and superstition, hich hunted us like hawks. We sought education feverishly†and, for most of us, futilely, for the sum total of our combined energies was required for mere brute survival.

Effects And Effects Of Sleep Deprivation - 1286 Words

Effects of Sleep Deprivation Sleep is important for good health. Studies show that not getting enough sleep or getting poor quality sleep on a regular basis increases the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and other medical conditions. In addition, during sleep, your body produces valuable hormones. These hormones help children grow and help adults and children build muscle mass, fight infections, and repair cells. Hormones released during sleep also affect how the body uses energy. Studies find that the fewer hours people sleep, the more likely they are to be overweight or obese, develop diabetes, and prefer eating foods high in calories and carbohydrates. Sleep is essential for a person’s health and well-being, according to†¦show more content†¦Common triggers include school- or job-related pressures, a family or marriage problem and a serious illness or death in the family. Usually, the sleep problem disappears when the stressful situation passes. However, if short-term sleep problems such as insomnia arent managed properly from the beginning, they can persist long after the original stress has passed. Environmental factors such as a room thats too hot or cold, too noisy or too brightly lit can be a barrier to sound sleep. And interruptions from children or other family members can also disrupt sleep. Other influences to pay attention to are the comfort and size of your bed and the habits of your sleep partner. If you have to lie beside someone who has different sleep preferences, snores, cant fall or stay asleep, or has other sleep difficulties, it often becomes your problem too! According to a long-term study published in the 2004 April issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, young teenagers whose preschool sleep habits were poor were more than twice as likely to use drugs, tobacco or alcohol. This finding was made by the University of Michigan Health System as part of a family health study that followed 257 boys and their parents for 10 years. The study found a significant connection between sleep problems in children and later drug use, even when other issues s uch as depression, aggression, attention problems and parentalShow MoreRelatedSleep Deprivation And Its Effect On Sleep849 Words   |  4 PagesSleep is a necessity in which, its value has been undercut. People of all ages, from college students, to middle-aged adult, have experienced the effect of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is has poisoned the positive affects sleep has on ones life. In order to challenge the effects of sleep deprivation and study its effect on me, I conducted an experiment designed by James B. Mass. This experiment was created in 1991 to help students determine if they were truly sleep deprived. Out of the 15Read MoreSleep Deprivation And Its Effects1738 Words   |  7 PagesSleep is a major component of human life, taking up almost a third of an individual’s lifetime and allowing the brain to process an individual’s experiences, thoughts, and memories. Proper sleep is vital to maintaining good health, as it is associated with maintenanc e of many of the body’s processes such as metabolism and disease prevention. This has become difficult as this modernizing world is completely changing the lifestyles of societies, and therefore the patterns of human sleep, due to schoolRead MoreSleep Deprivation And Its Effects1480 Words   |  6 Pagesnight of sleep, a person may not feel restored and refreshed and sleepy during the day, but be totally unaware that the person is sleep deprived. A person might just think it is just the stress of work, and school or this is just normal the way you normally feel and had no idea that you should feel differently. Sleep is one of the things we need to survive, getting less hours of sleep and not sleeping well is not good for your body both physically and mentally. Every day sleep deprivation in increasingRead MoreSleep Deprivation And Its Effects910 Words   |  4 PagesSleep what is? Seems like it should be an obvious thing to everyone you go to sleep when you’re tired and awake when you’re rested though the unfortunate reality, most of us take sleep for granted and deprive ourselves of a vital our brain needs to function at its fullest. First and foremost the concept that everyone needs 8hours of sleep is false for most adults there is slight variation some of us are perfectly capable of functioning with 6 hours others need those few extra winks of 9 hours a nightRead MoreEffects of Sleep Deprivation881 Words   |  4 PagesSleep is an essential part of life. Without sleep, the body does not get the energy that it needs to function. Yet a large amount of people do not get anywhere near the amount of sleep they need. Whether it is because of medical reasons or because there just is not enough time in the day, sleep deprivation is a major problem in todays society. The many people who do not get enough sleep usually end up suffering the consequences. No good can come from not getting enough sleep. Sleep deprivation hasRead MoreThe Effects O f Sleep Deprivation710 Words   |  3 Pages Sleep Deprivation. How lack of sleep affects you? I bet everyone stayed awake for 24 hours at least once a life. Why has sleep deprivation become such a big issue? Firstly, the global human problem is that teenagers, especially high school or college students spend their nights on parties, in front of the computers playing games or some of them even doing their homework. As well, a lot of workers or workaholics spend their nighttime doing tasks and willing to skip sleep in order to impress theirRead MoreEffects Of Sleep Deprivation. Sleep Deprivation Is, Irrefutably,962 Words   |  4 PagesEffects of Sleep Deprivation Sleep deprivation is, irrefutably, a massive health concern among Americans. Innumerable studies have been performed in hopes of finding out the perfect amount of sleep for a healthy lifestyle. Even though an average of 8-9 hours of sleep is practically unanimously recommended by health professionals, there is a huge discrepancy between that and the actual amount of sleep that teenagers in America are getting on average. The article â€Å"Go To Bed!† by Kerry Grens describesRead MoreThe Effects Of Sleep And Sleep Deprivation On The Body1267 Words   |  6 PagesThe Effects of Sleep and Sleep Deprivation Has on the Body. Specific Purpose: To inform the audience about why we need sleep and what happens if you are sleep deprived. Thesis: Sleep is crucial for any living creature and lacking an adequate amount of sleep is detrimental to health. Introduction Attention Getter: Many of us will spend about a third of our lives sleeping, yet don’t know why we need sleep or how important it is for the body. Did you know you can die faster from sleep deprivation thanRead MoreThe Effects Of Sleep Deprivation On Sleep Disorders971 Words   |  4 Pagesbecome more about of society there has been a trend in people who are not getting a full night’s rest. According to the National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research, â€Å"at least 40 million Americans suffer from chronic, long-term sleep disorders† (Sleep Disorders and Sleeping Problems†). There are several causes for the increase in lack of sleep or sleep deprivation; which include, using electronics late at night, using your bed for more than just sleeping, and anxiety. As a result, of more American’sRead MoreThe Effects Of Sleep Deprivation On Sleep Disorders926 Words   |  4 PagesCommission on Sleep Disorders Research, â€Å"at least 40 million Americans suffer from chronic, long-term sleep disorders† (Sleep Disorders and Sleeping Problems†). There are several causes for the increase in lack of sleep or sleep deprivation; which include, using electronics late at night, using your bed for more than just sleeping, and anxiety. As a result of modern technology, there are many people who every now and then don’t sleep well, but there are several who experience what is called sleep deprivation: