A Study on the Supply and Demand for Hatchimals

A Study on the Supply and Demand for Hatchimals Supply and Demand: The Case for Hatchimals â€Å"Supply and demand† are two of the most well-known words in the subject of economics. Simply put, â€Å"supply† is the amount of something that is available, or can be made available, to consumers. â€Å"Demand† is how much consumers want or need a product. When there is more supply than demand, prices drop to get consumers to purchase the excess supply. When there is more demand for something than there is supply available, prices increase. There are two reasons for this – one, there could be a shortage of the product, and the retailer will likely need to pay a lot to re-stock it; and/or two, the retailer can simply increase their profit margins by increasing the price, as people are willing to pay for it. On the flip side, if the price of the product increases too much, demand will decrease, which will once again put the supply and demand at an equilibrium (Rittenberg Tregarthen, 2009). A popular time of year where we often see supply and demand come into play is the holiday season, starting with Black Friday and continuing all the way through after-Christmas gift returns and exchanges until approximately New Year’s Eve. Every year, there seems to be some new â€Å"must have† item. Often, it’s a toy. Kids learn about it at school or from television, they talk about it with their friends, and then they pressure their parents into getting it for them. (Sometimes, the parents can be just as guilty as the kids when it comes to consumerism, however – a parent might decide that their child must keep up with the Joneses, and have the latest and greatest toy or electronic device.) This sends the parents into a tizzy trying to track down the item in time for the holidays, while thousands – if not millions – of other parents around the country are doing the same thing. Consequently, the demand for this product becomes very high, and as stores begin to sell out frequently, the supply is very low. We saw an example of this recently, in December of 2016, when the phenomenon of â€Å"Hatchimals† began to make its’ way across North America – and even some other parts of the world! â€Å"Hatchimals† are furry, robotic, interactive animals that hatch from an egg that the owner must rub to facilitate the hatching process. Additionally, the creatures continue to â€Å"grow up† and increase in size as time passes. These are truly revolutionary in the world of children’s toys, and as such they come with quite a revolutionary price tag at approximately $60 each! That didn’t stop many parents from hunting this toy down and snatching it up – but many opportunists began finding and buying Hatchimals in bulk, and turning around to sell them on sites such as eBay for triple the price. Elasticity began to come into play here, as many parents were not willing to pay the inflated prices for the toy, and consequently stopped searching for them altogether. The after-market demand from sites like eBay and Amazon decreased greatly as a result; However, the demand to buy the toy at retail-value from stores like Target and Walmart remained on t he rise (Peachman, 2016). Spin Master, the creator of the Hatchimal toy, claimed that they knew the toy would be popular – especially around the holidays. They produced extra Hatchimals to meet this expected demand. However, they stated that they didn’t expect the response to be so overwhelming, and consequently, they struggled to keep up with consumer demand. Business cost increased for Spin Master, as they had to use airfreight to rush deliver the remaining Hatchimals from China so that they could be distributed to retail stores before the Christmas holiday. While part of the reason for the increased demand was sensationalism, there was another issue: the toy was appealing to a demographic larger than Spin Master anticipated. They had assumed the toy would appeal to children in the 5-10 year-old range, but once Hatchimals hit the market, the appeal stretched from children 3-12 years old (Peachman, 2016). The demand and price point of these toys did not seem to deter most parents from at least trying to obtain one for their child, however. This is where consumer choice and opportunity cost came into play. Some parents chose to forgo the hassle of driving hundreds of miles collectively, checking all of the stores within a certain radius, in exchange for paying three times the price on a second-hand retailer website, such as eBay. Other parents refused to pay that high of a price point in exchange for continuing to fight for the toy at big-box stores, and the article I chose even talks about a group of parents standing outside of the Target store entrance for several hours in the 20 degree cold weather in order to obtain one on delivery day. Some parents took a chance and entered raffles for the Hatchimals on Facebook by pitching in $10 with approximately a dozen other parents. Most were unsuccessful (Peachman, 2016). Fast forward to Christmas season, 2017: Hatchimals were a word barely uttered, and now, most children approaching five or six years of age would likely only have a vague idea of what I was talking about if I asked them if they like Hatchimals. The craze has worn off, and the supply of Hatchimals seems to have reached an equilibrium with the price point – most are retailing for between $45 and $50 at Target, Walmart and online. By the time the holiday season rolls around again this year, this entire process will repeat with a new â€Å"must have† item.

Questions on Syntax Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words

Questions on Syntax - Coursework Example Meanwhile, [15Max remains in a critical condition], and [16Tanya has been incarcerated]. [17The audience must have been sitting on the edge of their seats]! (a) Group together instances of each clause type, and identify the grammatical features that characterise each type. (b) Next, consider the verb strings in clauses 8, 13, 16 and 17 and describe their constituent parts both in terms of the category of each verb (lexical, auxiliary, etc.) and its form (finite, non-finite, etc.). This first section of the exercise concerns clause types. The clause, according to Borjars and Burridge (2001: 212) is a unit formed an optional bits the speaker has chosen to include. Almost it is agreed among linguists that a clause is a unit larger than a phrase but smaller than a sentence. In some cases, a clause functions as a sentence provided that it has a subject and a verb and expresses a complete thought. Crystal (1988: 277) identifies four types of clauses. These are declarative, Imperative, explanative and interrogative clauses. The short text above contains declarative, interrogative and explanative clauses. As the exercise requires, we are going to group the clauses that belong to each type together. Next, we are going to identify the grammatical features characterizing each type. First, we are going to start with declarative clauses. The declarative clauses in the text are listed below: In a declarative clause, the speaker or writer is simply making a statement, opinion, fact or an arrangement. Its structure is analogous to the simple English sentence. That is, The noun phrase (henceforth NP) precedes the predicate verb phrase (henceforth VP): Mick ate the sandwich. An interesting trait of declaratives is that a statement, whose key function is to notify the hearer or reader something, can also be used to pose a yes-no question. This could be done via a raising

Leadership and management Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Leadership and management - Assignment Example ......................... 6 3.0 Application of Theory and Analysis ................................................................ 7 4.0 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 8 5.0 Recommendations .............................................................................................. 8 References ................................................................................................................ 10 Abstract There is no denying the fact that conflicts tend to be the integral aspects of organizations that are given to performing in team scenarios (Pammer & Killian 2009). People do enter into conflicts with each other over a range of issues and differences. However, it is possible to manage conflicts in a way that does not lead to jeopardizing of the personal and organizational relationships and that optimizes the organizational performance (Pammer & Killian 2009). Yet, it is also a fa ct that organizational conflicts if mishandled could lead to the vitiation of the organizational environment and could seriously harm the organizational productivity and efficiency. The given report tends to analyze a conflict scenario at the Reindeer Solutions. The particular conflict situation pertains to the issue being faced by the management, HR and the senior accountant Julia in an organization named Reindeer Solutions. ... The particular situation is associated with a senior accountant, Julia, who has been working at the Reindeer Solutions since the past five years. Of late the senior manager Anthony has noticed many mistakes and flaws in the work submitted by Julia. Anthony tried to discuss things with Julia, but the situation still remained the same. On deeper enquiry, Anthony learnt that Julia is right now facing some domestic issues that demand her time and attention and thereby she is not able to focus on her work. Anthony does not want to lose Julia as she is an immensely experienced and skilled employee, yet he also wants to improve the things at the office. Anthony discussed the issue with HR Administrator Victoria. They agreed that the situation was serious as any serious flaws on the part of Julia could harm the business. So they decided to bring the HR Assistant Murphy and HR Officer Noel on board. These four administrators discussed the issue and came to the conclusion that losing Julia wou ld be a serious mistake. Hence, they decided to offer Julia a junior post on a temporary basis, so as to allow her to focus more on the home front. The whole objective of this step was to place Julia in a relatively soft position till she tides over the rough patch on the domestic front, and then restore her to her original position. These four administrators organized a meeting with Julia and offered to her the contrived plan. However, Julia got extremely disturbed and annoyed at this proposal. She got really angry and said that this solution practically amounts to be a demotion and that her pride forbade her from agreeing to a junior post. This gave way to a conflict scenario between the management, HR and Julia. The manager and the HR personnel tried to