Factors Affecting Consumer Behaviour Commerce Essay

Factors Affecting Consumer Behaviour Commerce Essay Consumer is considered as the king in the modern world market. So the main aim of every marketer is to meet the consumer needs and satisfy them better than the competitors. Marketers always look for emerging trends and innovations to attract the target customers. Consumer is the only factor which controls the whole market nowadays. So the behavior of the consumer in the different market situations should be analyzed to survive in the market. Consumer is a person who purchases goods or services for his end use. Consumer behavior is a psychological process in which the consumer plans to purchase a product, makes purchase decision, implements the plan and reviews the decision. Consumer behavior is controlled and influenced by various internal and external factors and those factors guide a person to buy or not to buy a particular product. The factors can be psychological factors, sociological factors or economic factors. The influence of these factors might be different in the consumers based on their mind sets. The process of the consumer behavior ends after taking a buying decision. The purchase decision making process involves several stages in which he consumer goes through mainly six steps and at last makes the decision of buying or rejecting a product. DISCUSSION C:UsersSOORAJDesktopMMconsumer.jpg Consumer behaviour is a process of decision making concerned to a product purchase. The end users psychological, economic, socal, personal and cultural factors leads him towards a particular commodity. Amog these the psychological factors have an important role which controls the mental process of a consumer and push him to take the buying decision. The buying decision process starts from problem recognition and ends with post purchase decision. The end user is the decision maker and who controls the whole market with his critical decision making process. The behaviour of the consumer decides the marketability and success of a product. For example, a new soap is introduced by Hindustan Unilever and the in market there is a tight competition in this industry. If the product can attract the consumers with its quality and price then the product will survive. The decision to buy or not to buy that product is taken by the consumer only. FACTORS AFFECTING CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR Consumer behavior refers to the selecting, purchasing and the consuming of goods and services for the satisfaction of their needs. There are different activities involved in the consumer behavior. Primarily the consumer assesses whats his need and then purchases the most promising commodity. After selecting the commodity the consumer analyzes the existing prices of commodities and takes the purchase decision about the commodities. In the meantime, there are various other factors influencing the purchases of consumer such as cultural, psychological, personal and social. Factors Influencing Consumer Behavior Chart 1 Source: (KELLER, 2009) Psychological factors affecting consumer behavior Out of these factors the psychological factors has a main role while purchasing a product. When we think from a human being perspective a consumers mind and his related personal characteristics influences and directs him what type of product should purchase or of what quality. The need of a consumer becomes a motive when he has an intense wish to buy something. The stimulus-response relation makes a consumer to make the purchase decision. The marketing and environmental stimuli enter the consumers consciousness, and along with some consumer personality which leads to purchase decision making. There are four key psychological processes- motivation, perception, memory and learning- mainly influence consumer behavior. ROLE OF MOTIVATION IN CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR C:UsersSOORAJDesktopMMmotivation_stick_figures.jpg Among these factors motivation plays an important role in influencing the consumer behavior. The motivation level also affects the buying behavior of consumers. Every person has different needs such as physiological needs, biological needs, social needs etc. The nature of the needs is that, many of them are generally pressing while others are least pressing. Therefore a need becomes an object when it is more pressing to direct the person to hunt for satisfaction. For example, a consumer may get motivated by an advertisement of a burger in television which is attractively shown and the advertisement is sequenced with good captions and conversations and who gets eager to run for it. The strategy used in advertisements stimulates the need in the mind of the buyer and he makes the decision. If the consumer is motivated by a particular product then he has to go through the process of decision making. The decision making process is the crucial moments through which a the consumers decides the survival of a product in the market. Actually the outcome of their decision making process is the future of a commodity. There are six stages for the decision making process. CONSUMER DECISION MAKING PROCESS Stages of the Consumer Buying Process Six Stages to the Consumer Buying Decision Process (For complex decisions). Actual purchasing is only one stage of the process. Not all decision processes lead to a purchase. All consumer decisions do not always include all 5 stages, determined by the degree of complexitydiscussed next. The 6 stages are: Problem Recognition (need awareness) It is the difference between the desired state and the actual condition. Hunger stimulates the need to eat. If a person has a particular drive to buy something or the need is triggered by the internal or external stimuli to buy something and becomes a possibility of making purchase. Can be stimulated by the marketer through product information-did not know you were deficient? I.E., see an advertisement for a new pair of shoes, stimulates your recognition that you need a new pair of shoes. Information search- Internal search, memory. External search if you need more information. Friends and relatives (word of mouth). Marketer dominated sources; comparison shopping; public sources etc. A successful information search leaves a buyer with possible alternatives, the  evoked set. Hungry, want to go out and eat, evoked set is Indian food burger king Chinese food Evaluation of Alternativesneed to establish criteria for evaluation, features the buyer wants or does not want. Rank/weight alternatives or resume search. May decide that you want to eat something spicy, Indian gets highest rank etc. If not satisfied with your choice then returns to the search phase. Can you think of another restaurant? Look in the yellow pages etc. Information from different sources may be treated differently. Marketers try to motivate by increasing alternatives. Purchase decision-Consumer takes the buying decision regarding product, package etc. Post-Purchase Evaluationoutcome: It is the state of Satisfaction or Dissatisfaction. I.e., Cognitive Dissonance, a question of: have I made the right decision. This can be reduced by guarantees, warranties, after sales communication etc. For example, after eating an Indian meal, may think that really you wanted a Chinese meal instead. The motivational factors may be internal or external. Consumer may be motivated by his own feelings snd desire about a particular product or he can be motivated by some external recommendations. Consumer may resist the product recommendations conditional on the perceived credibility of the recommender and he relies on their own judgements. INFLUENCE OF MOTIVATION IN CONSUMER BEHAVIOR Motivational theories and its implications People have many needs at any given time. The needs are influenced several psychological factors like motivation. Some needs are psychogenic or biogenic and the need becomes a drive or motive. When it becomes motive the inner urge to buy a product turn out to be a goal. There are several theories related to the concept of motivation. Two of the best known theories of consumer motivation- those of Abraham Maslow and Frederick Herzberg- implies some different concepts in consumer behavior. MASLOWS NEED HIERARCHY THEORY OF MOTIVATION Abraham Maslow wanted to explain why people are motivated by particular needs at particular times. The answer given by Maslow was the human needs are arranged in a hierarchy from most basic to least-psychological needs, safety needs, social needs, self esteem needs, and self actualization needs. People will try to satisfy their most basic and important need first. After succeeding the basic need, he will then goes to the next most important need. He divided the need to basic needs and the growth needs. C:UsersSOORAJDesktopMMmaslows-hierarchy-of-needs1.jpg Source: (KOSHY, 2009) The basic or deficiency needs are to be met first. For example, a starving man [need 1] will not take an interest in any musical party [need 5], not in how he is viewed by others [need 3 or 4], not even in whether hes breathing fresh air [need 2]; but when he has enough to eat and drink, the next most significant need will turn into prominent. As long as people are motivated to meet these needs, they are moving towards growth, toward self actualization. Based on this theory the consumer has the basic and growth needs. If the consumer satisfies his basic needs he will look for the next. The degree of satisfaction depends upon the quality of the product or service which they get and in what level they get it. For example, if the area of market is comprised of middle class people they need to buy products to meet their basic requirements. Say low cost bath soap- the marketer look for promotional activities to sell those products only. The marketer will not try to distribute high standard or high priced products. Consequently, satisfaction of the consumer depends on the level where the performances of the product/service match to the consumers expectation connected to them. If the performances of the product are placed away from the buyers expectations, who will be unsatisfied, and if these correspond to the expectations, who will satisfied, when the performances of a product will bridge the buyers expectations, he will be contented. C:UsersSOORAJDesktopScreenHunter_02 Dec. 10 18.23.jpg Once the basic needs like food, water, rest etc. needs area satisfied then the safety needs are to be met. Employment is a need of safe living. Monster.com, rediff.com like websites helps the consumers to meet their employment safety needs. HERZBERGS TWO FACTOR THEORY OF MOTIVATION Herzberg developed a two factor theory of motivation that differentiates Motivational factors (factors cause satisfaction) from Hygiene factors (factors causing dissatisfaction). The absence of the hygiene factors is not enough to motivate a purchase but the satisfiers should be present. For example, a camera that does not come with a warranty would be a dissatisfier. However the presence of warranty of a product would not act as a motivator to purchase a product, because its not a source of built-in satisfaction. User-friendliness would be a satisfier. Herzberg model of motivation C:UsersSOORAJDesktopMMherzberg_factors.gif

An Argument Against the Death Penalty Essay

An eyewitness to the execution of John Evans in Alabama describes this scene from the final moments of a death penalty sentence being carried out: â€Å"The first jolt of 1900 volts of electricity passed through Mr. Evans’ body. It lasted thirty seconds. Sparks and flame erupted from the electrode tied to his leg. His body slammed against the straps holding him in the electric chair and his fist clenched permanently. A large puff of grayish smoke and sparks poured out from under the hood that covered his face. An overpowering stench of burnt flesh and clothing began pervading the witness room. Two doctors examined Mr. Evans and declared that he was not dead.† It took three jolts of electricity and 14 minutes before John Evans was declared dead (Radelet, â€Å"Facing the Death Penalty†). Throughout history, various forms of executions such as this one have taken place as a punishment for crime. In 1976, the United States reinstated the death penalty after having revoked it in 1972 on the grounds that it â€Å"violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment† (MacKinnon, â€Å"Ethics† 289). Since its reinstatement, the morality of such punishment has been extensively debated. I argue that the death penalty cannot be morally justified on the basic grounds that killing a human being as a form of punishment is wrong. A major argument supporting capital punishment is that it serves as a deterrent to crimes – specifically, murder. However, this argument requires that the would be killer would take at least a moment to consider what the consequences of murder within our legal system are. This assumes that the killer is capable of such reasoning, and that the crime would be considered before it occurred. In fact, â€Å"those who commit violent crimes often do so in moments of passion, rage and fear – times when irrationality reigns† (Information, â€Å"Capital Punishment† 107). Whether or not a murder or crime is premeditated, there are statistics existing that cause us to question how supportive an argument of deterrence can be. In 1989, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee said that if we look at other Western democracies, â€Å"Not one of those countries has capital punishment for peacetime crimes, and yet every one of them has a murder rate less than half that of the United States† (Information, â€Å"Capital Punishment† 110). The Information Series on capital punishment also says that states that FBI statistics from 1976-1987 show that â€Å"In the twelve states where executions take place, the murder rate is†¦exactly twice the murder rate of the thirteen states without the death penalty† (111). The deterrent value of capital punishment is certainly in question. Killing a human being as a deterrent to crime is, in essence, using a human being as a means rather than an ends. Kantian ethics state that we are to treat people as having intrinsic value and not simply instrumental value. â€Å"People are valuable in themselves regardless of whether they are useful or loved or valued by others† (MacKinnon, â€Å"Ethics† 56). Also, as MacKinnon states, â€Å"using the concern for life that usually promotes it to make a case for ending life is inherently contradictory and a violation of the categorical imperative† (133). If we hold that killing is wrong (except in self-defense) and therefore a killer needs to be punished, to follow with the conclusion that the killer’s punishment is to be killed is completely contradictory. Some would argue that the execution of a murderer is in the â€Å"self-defense† of society itself. This is a distortion of the definition of self-defense. Self-defense is when your life is in immediate danger and a reaction is necessary in order to prevent your injury or death. I believe that self-defense could also apply to situations where the lives of children or others who could not defend themselves were in immediate danger and someone else had to react in order to protect them. The key phrase in each of these definitions is â€Å"immediate danger† and, in the trial of a murderer, there is no indication or guarantee that the person is going to kill again, and there is no immediate danger or threat that requires reaction. This is not self-defense and does not justify killing. Simply because a guilty verdict requires that the murderer be punished, it does not follow that the punishment should be death on the grounds of self-defense. The determination of guilt within our legal system is also in question. Legally, criminals are to be â€Å"innocent until proven guilty†, but in reality they are often â€Å"guilty until proven innocent†. Unfortunately, our legal system is not always just or accurate. Innocent people are convicted. This can happen due to inconclusive evidence, the socioeconomic status of the accused, or jury/judge bias and prejudice, among other factors. A criminal who is convicted and sentenced to imprisonment and then later proven to be innocent can be released. Such is not the case once the irrevocable death penalty has been carried out. The Information Series on capital punishment cites the work of Michael Radelet of the University of Florida who counted since the turn of the century â€Å"343 cases in which a defendant facing a possible death penalty was wrongfully convicted. Of these, 137 were sentenced to death, and 25 were actually executed. Sixty-one served more than 10 years in jail and seven died while in prison† (77). If even one innocent person is wrongfully killed, how can we claim that this is justice? Racial and socioeconomic factors also come into play in the trial and conviction of the accused. The Information Series states that â€Å"since the death penalty was reinstated, six White defendants have been executed for murdering a Black person, while 112 Black people have been executed for the murder of a White person† (105). Samuel Jordan of Amnesty International also points out that in 1998, â€Å"although African-Americans count for 50 percent of homicide victims in the nation, 82 percent of death row offenders have been convicted for the murder of Whites† (Information, â€Å"Capital Punishment† 104). In the 1970’s the Baldus Study found that â€Å"defendants charged with killing White persons received the death penalty in 11 percent of cases, but defendants charged with killing Blacks received the death penalty in only 1 percent of the cases† (Information, 46). The Baldus Study also found that prosecutors sought the death penalty more in cases where a Black defendant was charged with killing a White. Samuel Jordan pointed out that â€Å"poverty as well as race often determines the allocation of the death sentence. Inadequate, inexperienced representation for indigent defendants characterizes most legal litigation† (Information, 104). While the unfairness and inequality of our legal system does not show that the death penalty itself is wrong, I would argue that because of the judicial disparities shown in the statistics above, we know can never be 100 percent certain of the guilt of an individual. Due to this measure of uncertainty, it is morally wrong to determine a punishment that is as irreversible as death. We cannot put ourselves into a position of God. Some will say that the killer’s actions are irreversible and that such a crime deserves an equal punishment. These same people would cite the biblical passage that exhorts â€Å"an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth†. However, if a crime deserves equal punishment, then why do we not rape the rapist or burn the arsonist? A civilized society must be based on values and principles that are higher than those it condemns. As I stated previously, to punish killing with death is inherently contradictory. Biblically we are called to live by higher values. In the New Testament, Jesus said that we may have heard it said â€Å"an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth† but he instructed us to â€Å"turn the other cheek† (Matthew 5:38-41) to love even our enemies (Matthew 5:43-45), to obey the Ten Commandments which tell us not to kill (Exodus 20:13) and not to put ourselves into the position of God by judging whether others live or die (John 8:7). Vengeance and retribution are to be left to God, who is the only one with the perfect capabilities of judgment. If the argument is that serious crimes deserve equal punishments, it is interesting to note, as MacKinnon states in her text, that the death penalty is also assigned as punishment for treason and rape. Capital Punishment is obviously extreme and unequal to such crimes. There are also certain times when the death penalty is not sought for murder cases (297). The inconsistencies in application seem morally problematic in themselves. Burton Wolfe quotes Albert Camus as saying: What is capital punishment if not the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal act, no matter how calculated, can be compared? If there were to be real equivalence, the death penalty would have to be pronounced upon a criminal who had forewarned his victim of the very moment he would be put to a horrible death, and who, from that time on, had kept him confined at his own discretion for a period of months. It is not in private life that one meets such monsters. (â€Å"Pileup† 419) Camus goes on to say that â€Å"the devastating, degrading fear imposed on the condemned man for months or even years is a punishment more terrible than death itself, and one that has not been imposed on his victim† (â€Å"Pileup† 419). A Utilitarian might argue in support of the death penalty based on the moral premise that the goal is to increase the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people. Often the victim’s family and others in society will claim that the death penalty is â€Å"justice† and that therefore they are happier when it is applied. I would argue that this â€Å"happiness† is often more of an appeasement – – a very shallow form of â€Å"happiness† that is actually wrapped up in anger and revenge, and not what Utilitarians would classify as true happiness. John Stuart Mill would classify this as a lower pleasure or happiness as described in MacKinnon’s text (37). I would also argue that such â€Å"happiness† would be of short duration. The killing of the murderer does not bring back the life of the victim, and the sorrow from that death is not eliminated by adding the death of another. It would also need to be taken into account that the murderer may also have friends and family who would be caused pain and suffering by the death of the person they care for. It also seems morally dangerous to apply The Greatest Happiness Principle to the determination of whether or not another human being lives or dies. Using this type of reasoning a killer could be able to justify his actions if he were able to prove that greater happiness was produced through the killing of one individual than if they would have lived. The intrinsic value of life itself does not allow for this kind of reasoning for ending it. Killing a human being hinders them from reaching their goal of mature potential. As MacKinnon states when discussing Natural Law Theory, † the innate drive toward living is a good in itself† (133). Other human beings should not choose the time of another human being’s death – this is not natural. To argue that the killer has done this does not make it morally justifiable for us to do the same to the killer. Killing an individual robs them of the opportunity to rehabilitate and to live a good life. Whatever the reasons might be that would determine that a person should be sentenced to death, there can be no argument that we are prematurely ending the life of another with no foreknowledge of what their future may have held. We have no means beyond mere hypothesis to determine what the future actions of an individual will be. This is not to argue that certain actions do not morally require punishment, but simply to argue that the death penalty itself is an inappropriate form of punishment because of the way that it devalues life itself. As members of a civilized society made up of morally responsible individuals, I feel that we are required to consistently value human life. There can be no â€Å"fair† judgment of which lives have more worth than others and we cannot, as a society of moral beings, be saying that it is wrong to take a life and at the same time threaten that if you do, we will take yours. The existence of the threat itself within our legal system contradicts the value we are trying to uphold. Gandhi was a strong proponent for peace and nonviolence within society and throughout the world. Eknath Easwaran quotes Gandhi as saying, â€Å"Violence can never bring an end to violence; all it can do is provoke more violence† (â€Å"Gandhi† 49). He also said that â€Å"Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law †¦Ã¢â ‚¬  (â€Å"Gandhi† 152). No arguments can outweigh the intrinsic value of other human beings and of life itself. Capital punishment cannot be morally justified. Works Cited Easwaran, Eknath. Gandhi: The Man – The Story of His Transformation. Tomales: Nilgiri Press, 1997. Holy Bible: New International Version. Nashville: Broadman & Hloman Publishers, 1995. MacKinnon, Barbara. Ethics: theory and Contemporary Issues – Second Edition. New York: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998. Radelet, Michael. Facing the Death Penalty: Essays on a Cruel and Unusual Punishment. New York, 1989. The Information Series on Current topics. Capital Punishment. Cruel & Unusual? Wylie: Information Plus, 1998. Wolfe, Burton H. Pileup on Death Row. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1973.

Caribbean Studies Essay

â€Å"The history of the Caribbean is the history of exploitation of labour.† Discuss with reference to Encomienda, Slavery and Indentureship. According to the Oxford Dictionary, exploitation is defined as being the action or condition of treating someone or a group of people unfairly in order to benefit from their work, also, labour refers to work that is done using bodily strength and effort. In a historical sense, the Caribbean can be defined as being a group of countries sharing the same background of forced labour through the institutions of colonization, indentureship and slavery in some form or another (Robottom and Clayton, 2001). Understanding this, the historical Caribbean would be inclusive of the Bahamas and Guyana as well as some Central American countries. As it speaks to colonization, there were three main Old World colonizers that set out for land to conquer and riches to claim; Spaniards, the British, and the French, each of whom utilized systems of exploitation in order to obtain what they had sought from the so called â€Å"New World†, which were mainly new lands for the Feudal Lords or Kings and/or Queens of their respective mother countries. In contemporary Caribbean society, the population is one of the most demographically diverse regions in the world, this is a result of the heavy colonization of the region that was initiated by Christopher Columbus’ first voyage to the Caribbean in search of a shorter route to India, thus the reason for calling the region the West Indies, which resulted in more European colonists coming to the Caribbean in search of the riches and produce of the region. The exploitation of labour has long been the very backbone or foundation on which the diasporic and historical Caribbean has been formed through the Old  World colonists importing slaves and indentured labourers from various parts of the world like West Africa, India and China. Firstly speaking with reference to the Spaniard Encomienda system which started formally in 1503; the term â€Å"Encomienda† was coined from the Spanish verb encomendar, which means to entrust. This therefore means that both parties had entrusted their resources to each other, as the main objectives of the Encomienda system that was seemingly to be to the benefit of the indigenous people was to spread the doctrines of the Christian faith, provide adequate housing facilities and food provision for the native people of the colonized islands (Yeager, 843). In exchange for these amenities, the natives would have to work for the Spaniards as slaves. The Encomienda system was considered to be the most damaging institutions that the Spanish colonist implemented in the New World. The Encomienda system was also developed as a means of obtaining adequate and cheap labour. However it may be said that in being able to obtain this labour, the Spaniard Encomenderos were rewarded with land as well as the natives that accommodated that same land due to their endeavours on successful conquests. This was as early as 1499, and this took four years to become a formal rewarding system for the Spaniard Conquistadores. The Queen of Spain, Queen Isabella, did not support the notion of enslaving humans to do work. Knowing this, the Spaniard Encomenderos did not let Queen Isabella know that they were forcing others to labour on their plantations, so they sent her tributes from the indians such as goods and metals. However, the abolition of the encomienda system was becoming imminent as of 1510 when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had begun to regret allotting such power to Columbus, therefore they sent an agent to oversee the running of the system. Word had gotten to the King and Queen by means of this agent about the mistreatment of the natives of the region, thus leading to its abolition in 1542 and in effect its replacement by the crown governed Repartimiento system. This Encomienda system had impacted the Spanish speaking Caribbean countries  in both good and bad ways, whereas the demography of these islands are quite diverse due to the reception of the African slaves that mixed with the Amerindians, and later on the Spaniards that interbred with both African and Amerindian slaves which had slowly become deemed as the â€Å"Grey Area†; where whites and coloured people had copulated. Slavery had first begun in the British-colonized Caribbean during the period of the arrival of the first African that came to the Caribbean in 1517 by the Spaniards. This was in response to the decline of the tobacco industry in the Caribbean due to the the new focus on the crop in Virginia. Therefore, without a main crop that provided subsistence and export income, the British had turned to sugar cane, a plantation crop that required a stronger, more efficient work force that was overall more in numbers. The native Amerindians were dying out rapidly due to the unfamiliar notion of being overworked by their slave masters. They obtained their work force by means of stealing/tricking the African head tribesmen into trading his people for so called â€Å"riches†, which in fact were of no value to the Europeans, thus meaning that they robbed the tribesmen in what was seemingly a â€Å"fair trade†. These West-African slaves were brought to the Caribbean via ship across the Atlantic along a path known as the Middle Passage; a treacherous stretch of water where numerous West Africans lost their lives due to below standard living conditions, being killed by the Europeans and suicide by jumping overboard. Slavery’s impact on the Caribbean correlates with George Beckford’s analysis of the region as being a Plantation Society, a social system encompassing an entire lifestyle of the population inhabiting the region, inclusive of social, socio-economic and demographic factors. In the context of contemporary Caribbean society, as it relates to the Plantation System, social mobility in both contexts somewhat differ but yet share a common trait that coincides with the factor of the demography of the population. Social mobility is the ability of a person or a group of people to be able to advance within a social system of open stratification, meaning that it is a process by which one is able to advance in social class within their  population. In the era of slavery, the social system was one of closed stratification, therefore, a slave was not able to advance within the social strata or framework due to what Amartya Sen sees as an â€Å"unfreedom†; these unfreedoms are prejudices, inclusive of race and class, that cannot be changed and in effect, the slaves social standing could not either. However in the contemporary Caribbean society, a member of the society is able to move up in social class based on the wealth or property he acquires. Although this is dependent on the governmental framework, whether it be communist, in which case it would be closed stratification, or capitalist, social mobility is a key factor of the link between the era of slavery and the contemporary Caribbean, as it has evolved through the abolition of slavery in 1834 as well as the mixing of the demographic to create a third social strata apart from the black and whites, the mulattoes. The British and French slavery system has impacted the Caribbean society both in good and bad ways, as previously discussed, the evolution of social mobility may be deemed as good, while one of the shortcomings of the slavery system is that the slaves were being abused by their slave masters and were being treated as animals. This can be somewhat translated into contemporary Caribbean society as being a form of not only capital punishment in educational institutions, mostly primary, but also of abuse within the home. Although the numbers for these cases are not in the majority, the cases are still present in the Caribbean. The slavery system was abolished in 1834 finally fully abolished in 1838, by which time Indentureship had begun. Indentureship had begun from 1838 and was designed as a means of obtaining a work force to work on the plantations for low pay, especially since slavery was abolished. A strong and dependable workforce was in high demand at the point of it’s institution, as although some emancipated African slaves had stayed back, the number wasn’t enough to sustain the plantation. The first set of indentured labourers to have arrived to the Caribbean were the Chinese labourers. They had arrived in two main waves, where the first waves was intended to be the replacement work force to work on the sugar  cane plantations during the post Emancipation period. They mostly went to British Guiana, Trinidad and Cuba. The second wave, however, consisted of mostly relatives of the members of the first wave that went to British Guiana, Jamaica and Trinidad. The former slave owners had decided to use Chinese labourers due to them being â€Å"free civilized people†, thus that would set an example for the newly freed Africans in order to alleviate the chances of a rebellion against them. However, this venture was did not reap any substantial dividends as the mortality rate on the plantations were increasing as well as abandonment. The first wave of Chinese were not used to that level of physical labour and slowly died out, while the second wave of Chinese were free voluntary migrants that came due to the discontent of the labourers who had wanted to carry their families to the Caribbean with them. This therefore means that the most modern Caribbean Chinese are descendants of the second wave of Chinese immigrants. After the British had seen that the Chinese labourers were not as dependable and not as cheap, the sought a new workforce from India, so the British had sent agents to Calcutta to convince the Indians to come to the Caribbean and work on the sugar plantations. when the first Indian arrived in the Caribbean in 1838, they were forced to live under harsh conditions as the Europeans had the same mentality of slavery, so when the Indians tried to flee the plantation, they were chased, caught, brought back to the plantation and punished.By 1841, India had banned immigration to Guyana due to the news of the labourers being treated like slaves. However by 1845 the immigration of Indians would continue through Portugal, where the Portuguese workers who were coming to the Caribbean, knowing that they would be branded as slaves, had carried approximately 5000 Indians along with them. The Indentureship system had impacted the contemporary Caribbean lifestyle in the sense of the demographic factor, as well as business wise. Demographically speaking, both Indians and Chinese that came to the Caribbean have influenced the racial diversity of the region, where during the era of Indentureship, more Indians had gone to Guyana and Trinidad, in  contemporary Caribbean society, this same racial ratio is still present as approximately over 50% of Guyana’s population are of Indian descent. Along with the demographic factor comes cultural diversity, which encompasses a lifestyle unique to their homeland. In terms of style of business, this trait or practice was adopted from the Chinese indentured labourers who had left the plantation in order to establish shops and other income oriented businesses. In contemporary Caribbean society, Chinese citizens are usually thought to be in some sort of business management. The Caribbean does indeed have the history of the exploitation of labour as its own, and due to the Old World’s conquests of the New World’s land and riches, this provided a reason to find interest in the West Indies. The abundance of unclaimed land, availability of resources and an available workforce in the Amerindians was motivation enough to exploit not only the resources of the region, but also to exploit the labour of not only the Native people, but also the African slaves and East Indian indentured labourers. However, this history of exploitation is the very basis on which the contemporary Caribbean has been formed as with the slaves and indentured labourers that came, so did their cultures and practices. This therefore contributes to the diverse nature of the Caribbean society.

Language Paper - 1243 Words

Language Paper PSY 360 Language Paper Language is something that generally every human has as a form of communication. It can be in the form of verbal words, in the form of written words, or even in the form of signed words, but it is something that as humans we all use in one way or another. The need for language evolved as a way for people to express their thoughts, their feelings and emotions, and even their fears. Humans needed a way to communicate with each other to express things that normally couldn’t be expressed. This paper is going to set out to cover language. It will cover the definition of language and lexicon, as well as evaluate the key features of language. The paper with describe the four levels of the†¦show more content†¦The properties include communicative, arbitrary, structured, generative, and dynamic. The first property, communicative, is a property because as it describes it permits one person to communicate with another person. Next in the properties is arbi trary, which is the fact that the relationship between language’s elements and their meaning is arbitrary. When it comes to symbols, arbitrariness is one of the key features. A sound can stand for a meaning, but as to which sound stands for which meaning is considered arbitrary (Willingham, 2007). While language is arbitrary, it is at the same time structured as well. Basically meaning the pattern of symbols is not arbitrary at all. Next is the fact that language is also generative. The basic units of language such as words can be used to build any number of meanings. Finally, language is dynamic because it is not just static. According to Willingham, language is changing constantly as new words are added and the rules of grammar slowly and subtly change (2007). Language Processing in Cognitive Psychology Language is a remarkable process when it is looked at on a cognitive level. As far as language is concerned, humans are the only being on earth that posses the ability to be able to communicate through language. When it comes to a person’s basic needs and desires a person has only to communicate them through words for them to be met. Another interesting fact is thatShow MoreRelatedLanguage and Memory Paper1329 Words   |  6 PagesLanguage and Memory Paper Donnell M. Thomas University of Phoenix PSYCH 560/ Cognitive Psychology Dr. Kristi Collins-Johns 15th August 2010 Language and Memory Paper Introduction Language is important to the way we communicate. Semantic memory is acquired over the years and is vital to language. Language becomes second nature when we already know what, when and how to say something. We form sentences, phrases, paragraphs by planning what we say and how we will say it. 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