Category: Comparative Analysis

Comparative Analysis of Web Accessibility Standards and Regulations

Abstract

Today websites play important role in our day to day life. It has made our life very easier and approachable to many operations that were a distant dream in the past. Websites allow user to access information from wide range of sources. These web services are available for all including person with disabilities, older people and people living in remote area. But the people with disabilities have several accessibility barriers to access the internet due to poor and improper designing of web interfaces. Accessibility professional are accessing various Accessibility standard, to implement the Accessibility project as per their need. Specific project require specific standard such as USA has ADA, and uses section 508. Indian government have GIGW for their Government portal. European Union has adopted their own standard. WCAG 2.0 is an internationally accepted standard for web accessibility, developed by Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It is difficult to provide smooth project remediation right from the beginning, when asked for particular Accessibility standard implementation. Each standard has different structure to organise and implement the Accessibility guidelines on the website. Implementation of web accessibility standard demands, time, effort and cost estimate. The researcher wants to provide complete analysis of selected web accessibility standards and regulations that has helpful to organization and it will also be helpful for designing accessibility evaluation tools and addressing multiple compliance. The researcher prepared a questionnaire to assess knowledge of web accessibility expert defining certain criteria and parameters. Researcher administered a questionnaire to Accessibility expert as part of Pilot Study. After conducting pilot study, it was found that Accessibility expert were not aware about any tool for comparative analysis of various Accessibility standard and guidelines.

Keywords— Web Accessibility, Accessibility guidelines, analysis, compliance, comparative.

Introduction

The web accessibility movement is started in late nineties in world. United States of America introduced section 508 in US rehabilitation act followed by Americans with disabilities act (ADA). World Wide Web consortium also started web accessibility initiative (WAI) in 1996 and started developing guidelines for content accessibility, authoring tools accessibility, browser accessibility etc. Product based software companies like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Adobe etc. also started developing accessibility standards for their own products in late nineties.

First version of Web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG1.0) was released in 2003. Since then accessibility was started to be addressed throughout the globe. Australia passed an act (disability discrimination act) (DDA) in 1998. Several European states like Switzerland, Ireland introduced accessibility standards for their countries. United Kingdom had also the similar laws in late nineties. India also had persons with disabilities act in 1995 but there is no mention about accessibility of website and software application. Accessibility is being addressed in India after signing on United Nations conventions on rights of persons with disabilities (UNCRPD) in 2007. Then India introduced a government of India guidelines for web accessibility (GIGW) in 2009 to address accessibility issues in government web portals.

Managing accessibility projects is a challenge and growing need in the IT industry as there is no tool for generating accessibility projects estimate.[1] Due to this accessibility professionals end up spending more time and efforts to prepare an estimate for the web accessibility projects. [2] The focus is towards developing a tool for generating systematic estimate for the web accessibility projects by using comparative analysis of web accessibility standards across regions and organization that helps in providing similarities and differences in expert the standards. Comparative study has carried out on the various parameters to compare the accessibility standards. [3]

Comparative study of web accessibility standards helps in designing a tool that can generate project estimate which includes efforts, time and cost to implement the specific accessibility standard into client website. [4] Accessibility professionals are facing challenges in preparing the fairly accurate project estimate in case of accessibility remediation and designing from beginning. Only experienced accessibility experts can prepare the project estimate with lot of study and research which is not only time consuming but also an approximate value.

Providing complete analysis of selected web accessibility standard and regulations has helpful to organization and also for designing accessibility estimation tools for addressing multiple compliance. With the help of sample data collected through pilot study it was found that accessibility expert were not aware of any such detailed comparative analysis of various accessibility guidelines and standards, or about availability of any such tool for comparison of accessibility standards. This research application integrates the systematic comparison of accessibility standard. Generating project estimate report for specific accessibility standard considering all parameters of the accessibility guidelines that helps in accessibility remediation of the website.[5] Application can be compatible to adapt newer version of accessibility standards. Initially application can be used to generate report for WCAG, Section 508 and GIGW implementation.[6] Comparative information of various accessibility standards and guidelines is not available for the organisation who wishes to adapt accessibility in their system which creates difficulty for the organisation to make decision. Publicly available web accessibility standards and regulations on web has downloaded and manual comparison has done by aligning and mapping accessibility checkpoints, sections, levels etc for every web accessibility standard that the researcher want s to compare.

2. Related Work:

This work comes from these main criteria, 1. Person with disabilities face many challenges to access the website, 2. Accessibility expert are unaware about the availability of tool to compare various web accessibility standard, 3. Organisation seeks comparison of various web accessibility standards in order for smooth implementation of the guidelines.

3. Objectives of the study:

1. To gather and analyze available web accessibility standards and regulations in world to understand their specific context.
2. To provide systematic comparative information of each web accessibility standards and regulations in terms of similarities and differences.
3. To find out usability of selected accessibility standards and regulations for users with disabilities.

4. Hypothesis:-

• Systematic Comparative information of various accessibility standards and regulations of latest versions is unavailable.
• Comparative study of various web accessibility standards and regulations are helpful in addressing multiple compliance.

5. Research questions:-

Question pertaining to objective 3.1

• Q.1 How many accessibility standards are available in world.
• Q.2 What is the specific objective of each accessibility standards and regulations?
• Q.3 What is the scope of each accessibility standards and regulations?

Question pertaining to Objective 3.2

• Q.1 How comparative analysis can be presented and made available?
• Q.2 What is the similarities and differences in each selected accessibility standard and regulations?
• Q.3 What is co-relation of each accessibility standards and regulations?
• Q.4 How addressing one accessibility standard or regulation will fulfill other compliance?

Questions pertaining to objective 3.3

• Q.1 How effective is the selected accessibility standards and regulations?

6. Research methodology:-

The experimental method has used for comparative analysis.

6.1 Manual analysis:

Publicly available web accessibility standards and regulations on web has downloaded and manual comparison has done by aligning and mapping accessibility checkpoints, sections, levels etc. in each web accessibility standards taken under study.

6.2 Checking effectiveness:

Selected web accessibility standards has implemented one after other in the experimental portal and usability has checked each time from 5 selected web accessibility experts. Their structured feed back in the form of short questionnaire has noted and usability before implementation, usability of the experimental portal after implementation of each accessibility standards has taken.

7. Data collection:-

Primary data:

The primary data has collected in the first stage of the research. Primary data has collected from the selected sample of experts that are accessibility professionals. In the second stage of the research for checking effectiveness. The sample size has 10 experts.Geographical area selected for research sample is Maharashtra. Approximately 100 Accessibility professionals in various district. Sample size is 50 out of 100 for entire research.10 samples has taken for pilot study. Source of Sample-NGO, Institution, IT sector.

Researcher has used Google Docs to collect the data from experts.

Secondary data:

Secondary data from various sources from web has collected and analyzed.

8. Tools used:-

• a. Microsoft Excel is used for mapping each web accessibility standards simultaneously.
• b. Questionnaire is used to collect feedback of the expert.
• c. T test is used to record and analyze user feedback before and after implementation of each web accessibility standards.

9. Pilot Study Design:

We designed a questionnaire to assess knowledge of Accessibility expert on various parameters related to comparison tool for S Web Accessibility standards. This questionnaire was administered on 10 Accessibility professional the researcher formulated 38 questions for the questionnaire. The parameters considered for the study were

• a) Total number of accessibility standards
• b) Objectives of accessibility standards
• c) Difference between accessibility standard
• d) Similarities between accessibility standard
• e) Availability of tool to compare accessibility standard.

Thus the study was carried out on 10 accessibility expert. 38 Questions pertaining to above parameters were framed and designed in 3 Point Likert Scale. The responses included ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and can’t Say or Agree, Disagree and strongly agree depending upon the question. In the first part the participant filled in the demographic information. The questions included were about their academic qualifications, their age and experience in this field. The questions were also framed on awareness about objectives, similarities and differences of various accessibility standards. The respondents were also asked if they are aware about any tool to compare different web accessibility standard.

The researcher designed questionnaire that assessed knowledge of Accessibility expert pertaining to information about tools to conduct comparative analysis of various web accessibility standards

Question Frame

Demographic Information

Gender, Age, Educational qualifications, experience

Designation ,

Accessibility standard

Knowledge about availability of tool to compare web accessibility standard

The 3 Point Likert Scale was administered to 10 Accessibility expert each gave us completed response to every question. 50% of the respondent were female and 50% were male they belong to age group of 23-28 years most of them were high school passed. Almost all respondent belong to physical accessibility sector, almost all respondent were accessibility tester. Most respondent were experienced in the field of implementation of web accessibility standard, almost all of them had experience of one or two years. Almost all the respondents were aware about the objectives of web accessibility standard.

10. Pilot Study Results

10.1 Findings

The finding of the pilot study was very interesting. Almost all the respondents were not aware about web accessibility standards. Almost all the participants were aware about anyone accessibility standard. Almost all the respondent agreed that they are aware about objectives of web accessibility standard. But the almost all participant replied that they cannot elaborate objectives of web accessibility standard. 70% of web accessibility expert had experience between zero to five years.20% of accessibility expert had experience between five to ten years. 10% expert had more than ten years of experience. Almost all the expert holds certification in web accessibility standard. 70% of respondent had an attended training on accessibility whereas 30% had not attended any training on accessibility. 50% of participants were not aware about difference between available web accessibility standard. 40% participants were partly aware about difference between available web accessibility standards whereas 10% of the participants were fully aware about difference between different web accessibility standards. Almost all the respondents were partly aware about the similarities between different web accessibility standards. 50% of the participants never tried to compare any web accessibility standard, whereas 30% of respondent were partially sure whether they tried to compare different web accessibility standard. 20% respondents actually compared different web accessibility standards. 60% of the respondent replied they don’t think comparison of web accessibility standards is needed. 20/% felt the need for comparison of web accessibility standards. 70% respondent felt that comparison of web accessibility standard has helpful in addressing multiple compliance. 30% were partial whether comparison of web accessibility standard has helpful in addressing in multiple compliance or not. 60% of respondents were not aware about availability of any tool to compare web accessibility standards. 20% were not aware about availability of any tool to compare web accessibility standards whereas 20% were aware about tool to compare web accessibility standards.

Almost all the participant felt that availability of tool to compare web accessibility standard has useful to them. Almost 90% said as there are no much difference in different web accessibility standard there is no need for a tool for comparison. 10% of the participant felt the need of comparison of web accessibility standards. 80% respondent replied that they came across common errors while implementing web accessibility standard. 20% said they didn’t come across any common errors while implementing web accessibility standard. Almost 80% replied that they can name common accessibility problem. 20% respondent said they were not able to name common accessibility problem. Almost all respondent said that they were aware about accessible content. 80% respondent said that they can name some common accessibility barriers. 20% said they cannot name some common accessibility barriers. 70% respondents were aware about accessibility training courses. 30% respondents were partially aware about accessibility training course. 80% respondents were partially able to follow guidelines for implementing accessibility standard given in English. 10% were able to follow accessibility guidelines given in English. 10% respondents were not able to follow guidelines given in English.60% respondent felt provision of comparison of various accessibility standard is required by the client. 20% respondent disagreed that comparison of various accessibility standard is required by the client. 20% of the respondent strongly agreed that comparison of various web accessibility standards is required by the client. 50% felt that Principal, Success Criteria, Check Point and Level can be used as parameters to compare web accessibility standard. 20% respondent felt that Principal, Success Criteria, Check Point and level cannot be used as parameters to web accessibility standards. 30% respondent replied that they can’t say whether Principal, Success Criteria, Check Point and Level can be used as parameters to compare web accessibility standards. 70% respondents were not aware about parameters to compare web accessibility standards. 30% respondents were aware about parameters to compare web accessibility standards. 80% respondents were not able to describe parameters in detail to compare web accessibility standards. 20% respondents were able to describe parameters in detail to compare web accessibility standards. 50% were able to identify factor in deciding time estimate to implement specific web accessibility standards. 50% were not able to identify factor in deciding time estimate to implement specific web accessibility standards. 50% respondents were not able to identify factors to consider in deciding cost estimate to implement specific web accessibility standards. 30% respondents were able to identify factors to consider in deciding cost estimate to implement specific web accessibility standards. 20% respondents said they were not able to say whether they are able to identify factors to consider in deciding cost estimate to implement web accessibility standards. 60% respondent said that they are partially aware that efforts in implementing web accessibility standards are measurable. 40% respondent said that they were not aware that efforts in implementing web accessibility standards are measurable. 60% respondents were aware that addressing one accessibility standard or regulations will fulfil other compliance. 40% respondents were not aware that addressing one accessibility standards or regulations will fulfil other compliance.

Results and Discussions

Parameters

Questions

Mean

Number of Web Accessibility Standards

Are you aware about web accessibility standard

.882

How many web accessibility standard do you know

.882

Do you know exact number of web accessibility standard available in the world.

.873

Details about web accessibility standards

Do you know objectives of web accessibility standard

.882

If yes can you elaborate objectives of web accessibility standard briefly?

.882

Do you know difference between web accessibility standard in detail.

.869

Do you know similarities between available web accessibility standard in detail.

.882

Efforts in implementing web accessibility standard are measurable

.882

Availability of tool for comparison

Do you know about any tool to compare web accessibility standard

.872

If a tool is made available to compare web accessibility standard will it be useful to you?

.882

Can we use following parameters to compare web accessibility standard

1. Principal
2. Section criteria
3. Check point
4. Level

.863

Problem related to implementation of web accessibility standard

Do you come across common errors while implementing web accessibility standard.

.873

Can you name some common accessibility problem

.873

Can you name some common web accessibility barriers?

.873

Can you identify factors to consider in deciding time estimate to implement specific web accessibility standard

.872

Can you identify factors to consider in deciding cost estimate to implement specific web accessibility standard.

.867

The result of the questionnaire test positive on reliability as it showed .882

Conclusion:

With the above conducted pilot study the researcher came to conclusion that the accessibility expert are not aware about availability of tool to compare various web accessibility standards and if the tool is made available to them in near future it has useful to them in implementing the web accessibility standard in clients website.

This is pilot study

References:

1. Baowaly,M.K.,Hossain,J.M.,Bhuiyan, M.,2012.Accessibility analysis and evaluation of government website in developing countries: case study Bangladesh
2. Mankoff,J., Fait,H., and Tu Tran., 2005. Is Your Web Page Accessible? A Comparative Study of Methods for Assessing Web Page Accessibility for the Blind. In Proceedings of SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors In Computing Systems (pp.41-50), Portland,USA
3. Klein,D.W.,Kresowik,D.,and McCoy.,2005.A Study of the Accessibility of Ten States’ Web Services and their Policies on Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities.
4. Richards,J.T.,Hanson,V.L.,2004. Web Accessibility: A Broader View.Proceedings of the 13th international conference on World Wide Web.
5. S.Lujana-Mora.2013.Web Accessibility Among the Countries of the European Union: A Comparative Study. Actual problems of Computer Science.,vol.1,no.3,pp..18-27,ECCC Foundation.
6. Cullen, K., Kubitschke, L., Boussios, T., Dolphin, C., Meyer, I., 2009. Study report: Web accessibility in European countries: level of compliance with latest international accessibility specifications, notably WCAG 2.0, and approaches or plans to implement those specifications. European Commission. Internet: http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/study-report-web-accessibility-european-countries-level-compliance-latest-international (visited November 2 2013)
7. Slatin, J., & Rush, S. (2003). Maximum Accessibility: Making Your Web Site More Usable for Everyone. Boston, USA: Addison-Wesley.
8. USA government, Americans with disabilities act document, internet:http://www.ada.gov/enforce_current.htm(visited 17th November 2015)
9. USA government, rehabilitation act document, internet:http://www.section508.gov/content/about-us(visited 18th November 2015)
10. World wide web consortium, Web accessibility initiative, article designing for inclusion, internet:http://www.w3c.org/wai/designingforinclusion(visited on 17 november 2015)
11. World wide web consortium, resources document, internet:http://www.w3.org/WAI/Resources/Overview(visited 02 november 2015)
12. Oracle corporation inc, corporate policy document, internet:http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/accessibility/policies/index.html(visited on 23 september 2015).
13. Adobe corporation inc, corporate accessibility document, internet:http://www.adobe.com/accessibility(29 november 2015)
14. Government of India, ministry of information and communication technology, government of India Guidelines for web accessibility document, internet:http://web.guidelines.gov.in/#&panel1-3 (visited 23 september 2015)
15. Web accessibility in mind, Uta state university initiative, laws throughout the world, internet:http://webaim.org/articles/laws/world/(visited on 25 november 2015)

Comparative Analysis on Advertising Techniques of Selected Barbecue Businesses in Liputan Meycauayan City of Bulacan

Introduction

“There is a great deal of advertising that is much better than the product. When that happens, all that the good advertising will do is put you out of business faster”.

-Jerry Della Femina

Advertising is the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcement technique is a way of doing something by using special knowledge or skills (Merriam Webster Dictionary, 2018).

The term advertising is derived from the latin word “advertere” which means to turn the attention. When you advertise you try to caught the absorption of the consumer. The must widely accepted definition of advertising, it is a way of presenting different product by a famous personality Kazmi and Bafra, (2008). But the definition has some limitation because it does not talk about the persuasion aspect of advertising without which it is very difficult to achieve advertising objectives. There is no generally accepted definition of advertising, however advertising may take any form, oral or written to promote a product through persuasive communication to achieve a pre determined objectives changing and reinforcing the desired attitude of the consumers of the point of purchase. The advertising message is considered as important in advertising communication process. It is the idea, attitude, image, or other information that the advertiser wishes to convey to the target consumer. The effectiveness of advertising is based on its message. To persuade your audience you need to build the concept of your product to their mind (Gupta, 2012).

The researchers want to know the different advertising techniques of different Barbecue Businesses and the reason behind its success. This research can help those people to know more about the importance and the risk of establishing a Barbecue Business.

Conceptual Framework

This study focuses on the comparative analysis of advertising techniques and the theoretical similarities between the two Barbecue Businesses within the barangay of Liputan Meycauayan City. The figure below shows the framework of the study.

1. The mediation of 2. The magic of reality theory. meaning theory.

Barbecue Business 1

Advertising Barbecue Business 4

Advertising Barbecue Business 2

Advertising Barbecue Business 3

Advertising

Figure 1: Conceptual Framework

This focuses on the comparative analysis of the different advertising techniques and their theoretical analysis used in the business. The researchers used two rectangles above the four circles that is connected with an arrow which shows that the two theory is both connected to the analysis of the study. The researchers also used venn diagram to compare and contrast the two Barbecue Business which belongs to the rectangles, the four circles composed of four parts, the differences of four Barbecue Businesses’ advertising techniques and the theoretical similarities between the two Barbecue Businesses. The venn diagram shows that there are four Barbecue Businesses listed and these four are the respondents in collecting data about their advertising techniques, in order to proceed to the study the research must critically analyze their techniques and find out if there are theoretical similarities among those techniques.

Theoretical Framework

The mediation of reality theory. Promotions are successful when directed with other media and setting in which they are completely submerged. Obviously what makes the advertisements convincing is the product. What the media do with respect to publicizing, the media defines the excitement and addiction of what me are watching.

The magic of meaning theory. This clarifies how promotions are utilized in mixing the importance of the items to the client not with standing offering. It indicates how promotion impacts the qualities and other essential convictions of the shoppers. This theory is like putting a tagline in every business. A business became catchy by using a unique tagline that can remember by the costumer and by just knowing the tagline your business may be known.

These two theories are the theories that were going to use by the researchers to compare and contrast their similarities in terms or the usage of media as a technique in advertising. The magic of meaning was used to identify and analyze if taglines and names given by the business can help the business to increase its popularity and catch the eyes and mind of the consumers specifically to distinguish ones business to the other competitors.

Statement of the Problem

The goal of the research is to compare and contrast the different advertising technique used by Barbecue Businesses. Specifically this study will answer the following questions.

1. What are the different advertising techniques of the different owners of Barbecue Business?
2. What are the factors that sole proprietors consider in choosing Barbecue Business than others?
3. How do these advertising techniques help in order to maintain the business?
4. What are the challenges encountered by the owner of a Barbecue Business?

Scope and Delimitation

The purpose of this study attempts to know the differences and similarities on advertising technique of selected Barbecue Businesses. Four (4) Barbecue Businesses were chosen within Liputan, Meycauayan City that are purposively selected. The researchers conducted an interview and questionnaire as an instrument. This research study piloted of Barbecue Businesses in Liputan, Meycauayan City, within the academic year 2019-2020.

Significance of the Study

The outcome of this study will be beneficial to Barbecue Business and future advertisers to know their strength and weaknesses in implementing their technique and aids to provide guidelines on how to improve the performance of the business. The study will benefit the following.

Customers. As the customer of the Barbecue products they are the people supporting the business stability. This study will provide them insights about their level of satisfaction about the product.

Barbecue Business Owners. To provide basic information on how to increase sales by telling potential customers about the product or service and also to minimize the impartiality of the business decision. This will help generate awareness of the business stability and also the awareness of the customers about your business.

Other Business Owners. To maintain their businesses and to give additional guideline and recommendations on how to improve their businesses in order to complete with other competitors.

Investors. This study will help the investors to build a point of view of the business and gives them prior knowledge about the strength and weaknesses of the brokers. This will further assist them in deciding if they are going and support the business.

Future Researchers. To provide additional information to the body of knowledge and helps the future researchers to identify the techniques and procedure used by other business in building their names and reputation.

Definition of terms

For further clarifications and understand more about the terminologies used in the study, the following terms are being defined:

Customer. The people who consumes products, good or services and has the ability to choose between different products and suppliers (Business Dictionary.com 2018).

Barbecue. Barbecue is a cooking method in meat that grilled and served. Barbecue can refer to the cooking method itself. Barbecuing is usually done outdoors by smoking the meat over wood or charcoal. In the Philippines, Barbecue is one of the famous dishes in fiesta, party and in every occasion. (Cambridge Dictionary 2019).

Sole Proprietor: The sole proprietorship is the simplest form under which one can operate a business. It simply refers to a person who owns the business and personally responsible for its debts. A sole proprietorship can operate under the name of its owner or it can do business under an ideal name is simply a trade name (Encylopedia 2018).

Business Stability. is the ability to fight a temporary problem, such as a decrease in sales, lack of capital or loss of a key employee or customer. Analyzing your cash flow and a variety of negative scenarios will help you determine whether or not your business is financially stable (Hearst Newspaper 2019).

Persuasion. As stated in the researchers’ persuasion was defined of process of convincing a person towards the product or services using different way.

Impartiality. Impartiality is a principle of justice holding that decisions should be based on objective criteria, rather than on the basis of bias, prejudice, or preferring the benefit to one person over another for improper reasons (Merriam Webster 2018).

Advertising. As stated in the researchers advertising was defined as breaking down of concepts into customers.

Business. Its is the practice of making one’s living by engaging in commerce. It is an organization or economic system where goods and services are exchanged for one another or for money (Business Dictionary, 2018). It is used in the study as an entity that creates its own profit and engage in the market.

Comparative Analysis. Also described as comparison analysis, is used to measure the financial relationship between variables over two or more reporting periods. Business use comparative analysis to identify their competitive positions and operating over a defined period (Wilkinson 2013). It is used in the research as finding the similarities and differences of different businesses.

Techniques. Carrying out a particular task, especially the execution or performance of an artistic work or a scientific procedure. It is a skillful or efficient way of doing achieving something. (Cambridge Dictionary, 2018). It is used in the research as ways to pursue goals and objectives and way to advertise.

Comparative Analysis of Google and Bing

Google, in 1996, started of as a thesis project at Stanford University by three PhD students Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Scott Hassan (who did most of the programming but left the project before it was founded as a company). Their aim was to improve the horrible Internet search conditions back then.

Back in the day, a relevant result to a search would be found under several pages. It was difficult to decide which links were more relevelent than others. The goal of this was not to search what information was inside a link but to search which links other people found valuable.

Both Larry and Sergey came from educational family backgrounds hence were very familiar with how citations of scientific literature work. Footnotes pointing to a certain paper relate to its popularity. The more a certain paper or thesis is footnoted in other papers the more relevant or popular it is. This inspired them to create a similar structure where the more a page is linked the more relevant it was considered to be. As said by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google (2001- 20011), in an interview with Discovery UK that, “The idea was to build a system that you could reliably count how popular something was”.

The idea to make money through this business model was by providing links to relevant ads for specific search terms. They would have an unlimited ad inventory and if a word or term was searched, ads relevant and related to the search term would show up. Which is still the basic concept used by Google as an income source, through ad revenues.

One could say is not the internet but Google who gathered all the world’s information and gave it to us.

Bing, launched in 1998 as MSN Search which only had three tabs search, index and web crawler, which was replaced by Windows Live Search in 2006 which was more interactive with Web, News, Images, Music, Desktop, Local and Microsoft Encarta, which was transformed into Live Search which now had an ad platform, which was replaced by Bing in 2009.

Even though it may seem that Bing might not be popular among internet users. 33.33% of the US, 26% of the UK and 17% of Canada’s of internet searches are done on Bing. Similar to Google, Bing’s main source of income is through ad revenue.

Windows OS is run on 82% of the worlds computers, this gives Microsoft an incredibly powerful tool to use and rely on. Even the smallest adjustment to Windows has a huge effect among hundreds of millions of people. Even Though Microsoft allows its users to change its default settings most of the users don’t actually change theirs. This makes defaults an incredibly important tool for companies as such. Internet Explorer may not be universally liked, but it came with Windows, so the opinions don’t actually matter to Microsoft. This is why they are going to do anything to make Edge to get more users.

Hence as Edge is the default browser of Microsoft and Bing is the default search engine of Edge. Users willingly or unwillingly use Bing, let it be for downloading another browser or searching for another search engine or sending feedback to a bug report.

The success of Bing is not really about Bing, it’s about the power of control. The distinction between a $5 billion company and a failed business is the ability to decide what consumers see. The wider objective of microsoft is to shift up the pyramid of power. The strategy of entire companies, entire industries,The lower something is on the pyramid of power, the more companies it relies on, and the greater its risk of being shut down. It’s the same reason that for so long Windows Phone had refused to quit.

Hence we can say both companies, Google and Microsoft having search engines Google and bing respectively but they serve similar and different purposes to the companies on the one hand, both Google and Bing’s purpose is to give out the most relevant page to the relevant search term and both the companies and both companies rely on ad revenue through search terms, but on the other hand as Google’s search engines only purpose is to give relevant results to a search term and provide an ad revenue income but where as Bing’s only purpose even though universally not liked very much is to not only act as a search engine but to help Microsoft step up the hierarchy of control.

Comparative Leadership Analysis: Transformational Theory Vs Machiavelli’s Theory

Machiavellian principles are deemed to be more practical in today`s society and have been believed to offer not only critical advice in terms of management but also a decisive course on change. This paper takes particular interest in revisiting Machiavellian original arguments on management and compares it to the modern transformational theory. It scrutinizes its relevance and impact on a leader’s perspective of environmental scanning, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and evaluation and control.

Transformational is a type of leadership that believes in motivating and encouraging employees to create change and shape the organization. The leaders achieve this by creating a good working environment and a sense of ownership and independence among the employees. Machiavellians, on the other hand, can be described as a group of people who are goal-driven and willing to achieve their desired dreams with any means necessary (Kirkpatrick, 2010). These principles strongly assert that a good leader should be feared rather than loved, should have good morals, should be intelligent and should have the support of their people. When this is translated into the modern transformational leadership theory, a good leader should be respected and supported by his people and the leader should authentically know and trust and flourish the skills of the people they are working with.

The transformational leader takes time to understand, nurture and cultivates the skills of their employees and supports them. They motivate their employees and do not necessarily micromanage them. Such leaders trust their trained and highly qualified employees to make informed decisions on their assigned jobs. This type of leadership focuses more on building their team, empowering them and aligning them with the goals of the organization. They as well motivate their team y acting as role models and exemplification of good morals and code of conduct. Driven by the rule that it is better being feared than loved, Machiavellian style of motivation is quite different (Rego, Lopes & Simpson, 2017). Employees have to adhere to strict rules and harsh punishments. Employees are motivated and driven by the fear of losing their jobs. They are as well-motivated as beating their competitors. It works on the principle of the survival for the fittest. It, therefore, attracts a team of people that can quickly think on their feet and get the job done regardless of the situation.

Machiavellians believe in authenticity and believes and that good leader should be honest. He believed that openness is an integral part of good leadership. Transformational leaders as well rely mostly on good communication. They communicate openly with all the stakeholders as they source for support, assistance as well as knowledge in regards to the superlative business practices in terms of leading an organization.

Change is an inevitable process that every organization must face at one point. Transformational leaders are the champions of change. Just as the name implies, transformation changes people; and when people are transformed, the company can as well transform itself. With strategies such as clear vision and trust, it can provide direction to their employees with predefined goals. This leadership style offers direction to the people from top to bottom as they develop a conducive working environment and culture (Shapira, 2019). In terms of change, Machiavellian believes that change is a process and is not a one-time event. It is therefore hard for people to believe in something they do not know. He, therefore, believes that is it equally important that change comes with a lot of resistance as it alters the power dynamics across the organization’s boundaries. To reduce the level of resistance, it is therefore important to build support.

Both leadership style may impact a leader`s perspective of environmental scanning, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and evaluation and control. A good leader should always develop an effective course and direction for their team with a strategic agenda. The acquisition of these characteristics forms the part of a transformational leader as it places emphasis on monitoring and evaluating external opportunities. Transformational leaders are vision-oriented and as such, before embarking on any venture, they always evaluate the market environment using different strategies such as pestle, Porter’s five and SWOT framework to determine the profitability of the new venture (Kirkpatrick, 2010). They focus more on identifying the best solution for any problem. These leaders shift the power of decision-making to their employees and this consequently inspires employees to come up with new ideas. This creates intellectual stimulation among employees as well as giving them more room to be creative. They then formulate an effective strategy as they implement it. Such leaders implement change by developing ways to collaborate with their team.

Machiavellian leadership theory, however, believes that the implementation of change is dangerous since one is met with a lot of resistance and opposition. Therefore, for one to succeed, change needs support and ownership and courage. Implementing innovative strategies, therefore, require a lot of collaboration, research, and consensus from people. As a result, for any leader to be able to implement, they need to convince their followers through proper scanning of the environment and successfully evaluating and monitoring control.

The Impact of Waste Management on Economy: Comparative Analysis of South Korea and India

Introduction

The rise in environmental issues has led to the field of environmental economics which deals with the relationship between the economy and environment becoming extremely important. India as a country generates 62 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) each year. (Wikipedia contributors,2019, October 16). However, only about 30% of the waste collected is actually treated (Livemint, Mar 1, 2018). South Korea has one of the most efficient waste management systems in the world, even after having 5 times the per capita generation of MSW than India. In this paper, I look at the decoupling link between the economy and environment of South Korea and whether the policies implemented by its government have been more successful than that of the Indian government.

Literature Review

There have been multiple attempts made to gauge the impact that consumption of natural resources and the waste that is generated has on the economy. Natural resources are the essential inputs of production, the scarcity of which can very harmfully impact the economy of any country. Hence, India cannot afford to ignore effective usage of its natural resources if it doesn’t want to jeopardize its developmental plans (OECD, material resources, productivity and the environment). In this paper, the authors show that India faces the problem of rapid population growth, urbanization and increased demand while simultaneously facing immense pollution. However, the paper doesn’t draw any comparative with an Asian country facing similar issues that has been able to deal with it.

The Volume-Based Waste Fee System aims at reducing household wastes by introducing economic incentive system in waste disposal. (Kim et al., 2012) The government levies a waste collection fee based on the volume of waste discharged (Kim et al., 2012). The waste generation per capita following the implementation of the Volume-based Waste Fee System has been reduced to a level equivalent to the developed world, and the amount of recyclable waste collected has doubled (Kim et al., 2012). In this paper, the authors determine the impact it has had on the environment of South Korea which has been largely positive. It was implemented in 1995 in South Korea. However, this paper doesn’t take into account the effect that it has on the economy of the country.

Theoretical Background

In order to estimate the impact that an effective waste management can have on the GDP of a country, it is imperative to introduce a few key concepts and variables. Resource productivity is the effectiveness with which an economy is able to convert the resources it extracts into monetary gain.

The ratio of domestic extraction to domestic material consumption indicates the dependence of the physical economy on domestic raw material supply (Weisz et al., 2006). Decoupling is a type of economy in which the economy is able to grow without increasing the pressure on the environment. In this paper, we plot the data available for different years in terms of material productivity and material consumption in order to find out whether the economy is able to grow without putting substantial pressure on the environment.

Objective of the Paper

Waste management in South Korea is based on the model of waste generation reduction and recycling and its Volume-Based Fee System is one of the key policies that it has taken. While subsidiary policies have also been taken in the further years, this is the most large-scale policy taken by the government, hence for the sake of the paper it will be assumed to be the sole policy. India’s waste management system has largely focused on segregation and collection that is largely undertaken by the municipals of the respective states (DTE Staff, ‘Rewind 2018: How India dealt with its waste’, 2019). The objective of this paper hence becomes to compare the monetary fine to traditional waste management systems.

Research Question and Hypotheses

The question of this paper is to understand the effectiveness of South Koreas waste management system in terms of material productivity, if it was successful or not and whether it is a viable option for India to follow.

Data and Methodology

This is a quantitative research paper and it is a descriptive correlation design. The data has been collected from reliable secondary sources. The data has been formulated into tables and converted into scatter plots using excel. The data has been collected for the decade of 2007-2017 as further data wasn’t available.

Domestic Material Consumption (DMC) is based on the Economy-Wide Material Flow Accounts (EW-MFA) which includes compilations of the overall material inputs into national economy, the changes of material stock within the economy and the material outputs to other economies or to the environment and covers all solid, gaseous, and liquid materials, except water and air (Eurostat, ‘Your key to European statistics’, 2019). The indicator is defined as the total amount of material directly used in an economy (Eurostat, ‘Your key to European statistics’, 2019).

The domestic material consumption has increased from 4.425 in 2007 to 5.53 in 2017. The material productivity has increased from 0.817 in 2007 to 1.14 in 2017. Per capita consumption of materials in India is still low compared to the rest of the world. With an average of 4.2 tons per capita, India ranked 151 out of 193 countries in the world in 2009, consuming less than half of the global average of around 10 tons. In comparison, in the same year, average resource consumption per capita in OECD countries was about 15.7 tons, while it was around 3.5 tons in the least developed countries (Dittrich, 2012). But it is important to keep in mind that due to the large population that India has, its materials consumed in absolute terms is a huge amount, which is why it is in this country to generate the most municipal solid waste at 150,000 tons per day.

For South Korea, the domestic material productivity has increased from 1.718 in 2007 to 3.207 in 2017, which is a rise of approximately 1.5 tons per capita, while the material consumption has fallen from 16.194 in 2007 to 11.291 in 2017, which is a decrease of approx. of 5 tons/capita.

Result Analysis

As we can see from the above data, the decreasing trend in the DMC can be taken as a positive sign that Korea is well on its way to decoupling its economy while India still has a long way to go as its DMC is still increasing. India’s increase in material productivity has also not seen a substantial increase as it’s just a meagre 0.323 rise which means that there is urgent need of a revamp of India’s approach to waste management and its usage of natural resources.

Conclusion

Due to the large population that India has and taking into consideration that it is a fast economy, in order to achieve efficient waste management, it is important to firstly, reduce the overall material consumption and secondly to increase the productivity of its resources.as seen from the south Korean case, putting a monetary fine on waste generated acts as an incentive for consumers as well as producers to either reduce their consumption or to more efficiently use the available resources. It is only then that India’s economy can move to decoupling. Hence India needs to move away from focusing on collection of waste to incentivizing its citizens to reduce waste.

References

1. Your key to European statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2019, from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-datasets/product?code=t2020_rl110&lang=en.
2. Waste management in India. In Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 00:00, October 20, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waste_management_in_India&oldid=921641492.
3. Rewind 2018: How India dealt with its waste. (2019, January 3). Retrieved October 20, 2019, from https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/waste/rewind-2018-how-india-dealt-with-its-waste-62620.
4. Weisz, H., Krausmann, F., Amann, C., Eisenmenger, N., Erb, K., Hubacek, K., & Fischer Kowalski, M. (2006). The physical economy of the European Union: Cross-country comparison and determinants of material consumption. Ecological Economics, 58(4), 676- 698.
5. OECD (2019), Material consumption (indicator). doi: 10.1787/84971620-en (Accessed on 20 October 2019).
6. Kwang, K. (2012),”Volume based waste fee system in Korea”, Korea Environment Institute (KEI).

Differences in Language Use by Men and Women

In using a language, men and women have their own different ways. In an interaction, women tend to use linguistic devices that focus more on the affective functions than men do. Women communicate in such ways to increase their solidarity while men tend to communicate in such ways which focus on the masculinity and power. Stylistically men are less flexible than women. The language of men and women has a number of differences in some ways (Lakoff, 1975). This paper focuses on the differences in the language use by men and women which are noticed in terms of their intonation, use of vocabulary, pronunciation, syntactic pattern, non verbal utterance and social class.

To start with, biologically, women have high pitched voice whereas men have low pitched voice. This physical explanation is only a part of gender differences in voice pitch. However, the social and cultural explanation about voice pitch is different. Speaking in a low pitched voice is the indication of masculinity and speaking in a high pitched voice is the indication of gentleness and politeness. Men prefer to use falling intonation to show their level of confidence of what they are saying and at times power. Conversely, women prefer to use high pitched voice to signify their womanly behavior.

In order to express feelings or to state something, men and women use different sets of vocabulary. To describe things, women mostly tend to use adjectives, such as: adorable, sweet, lovely etc. to show more sensitivity to their surrounding than men. Furthermore, women are polite in using language and they use more words and gestures, but men tend to use direct words. While talking, unlike men, women take the thought of others into consideration rather than imposing their own claims or ideas. Swear words and expletives are mostly used by men. To express shock in everyday life, men tend to use more swear words than women. Alternatively, women pay more attention to grace their manners to express their feelings and emotions and they may believe that using swear words make others uncomfortable as well as give an impression of indecency. In addition, to indicate affection, women tend to use words like, ‘so sweet’, ‘oh dear’ etc more than men. Beside this, women tend to appreciate politeness by saying ‘sorry’, ‘please’ more often than men do. It is definite that in order to get emphatic effects, men and women choose different sets of vocabularies.

Men place a high value on vernacular speech to show their power and masculinity, whereas women tend to use the forms which are considered as correct. In term of pronunciation, in English speaking communities, men have the tendency of dropping /h/ and /r/ sounds which is similar to the vernacular form. On the other side, women have lesser tendency of dropping these sounds. According to the context of Bangladesh, men have the tendency of using vernacular sound, whereas, women tend to use the standardized sound in their speech. This indicates that women focus more on the correct form of grammar by using clear utterances. Next, the syntactic pattern used by men and women differ from each other. While asking for help, women use more indirect and polite form of sentence with respect, whereas men use more direct and simple language, for example, a woman might say, “I was wondering if you can help me”. On the contrary, a man might say, “Please, help me in solving this matter”. From this example, it is understood that men tend to ask something directly, while women tend to be more indirect and polite.

In term of non verbal utterances, women use more gestures than men in a conversation. Men and women tend to have different styles while expressing their thoughts. By moving hands, fingers, face and other parts of the body women signify on their psychological state, emotion and feelings.

Next, the level of class reflects in the linguistic usage of men and women. In most of the societies, the use of vernacular form is very common among the men. However, women tend to use standard speech in their conversation. Men express positive to the vernacular form of language more than the female. Other than this, Labov (1981) points out that the highest status of group in society usually adopts a formal style. Women have a tendency to use language to show their social status than men do. In societies, women are considered as the subordinate groups, for which they try to secure their position in the society through their use of standard language. Socially, while men are rated on their power and position, women are rated primarily on how they appear and consequently their use of language seems more important. From the data of Trudgill(1983), it is known that, the percentage of standard form used by the women of middle class is closer to the men of one class higher than them rather than to that of men from their own social class.

To sum up, this paper has showed the differences between the use of language of men and women from some aspects like, vocabulary, as they are brought up in different ways since their childhood. And the differences I roles in the society has also an affect. Language, as a tool of human communication, will be improving day by day, and this needs the effort of both men and women. Women, with more participation into the academic field, business, social life, and so on, there will be other changes in the future. The changes in the language can show the improvement in women’s social status.

References

1. Holmes, Janet. (2013). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (FourthEdition). Routledge.
2. Xiufang, Xia. (2013) Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 3, No. 8, pp. 1485-1489, August 2013
3. Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and Women’s Place. New York: Harper&Row Publishers, Inc.
4. Labov, W. (1981). What Can Be Learned about Change in Progress from Synchronic Descriptions? Variation Omnibus. Edmonton: Linguistic Research Inc.

Comparative Analysis of Usability of Media Players

Nowadays computer systems are playing a vital role in almost every aspect of human life with the help of complex and user-friendly software systems. Multimedia players are one of the application of computers system used to watch videos and listen audios. In this paper, we conduct a comparative analysis of four media players i.e. VLC, QQ player, Windows media player class and Pot Player. We conduct a survey from exerts of different organizations on usability of media players, containing parameters i.e. learnability, efficiency, memorability, error, satisfaction. According the mention parameters we compare the given media players with each other.

Introduction

Computer and computerized devices have become an eminent element of our society. They increasingly influence many aspects of our lives; for example, the way we communicate, the way we perform our actions, and the way we interact with our environment. There are a number of quality software applications which provide many facilities and human life easy. Multimedia is one the application of software system which enables the user to play audio and video. People switched from one media player to other because there are some issues in media player or software. This paper will help the user to select an interactive media player.

VLC media player is one of the world open-source media players used by millions of users in the world. It was released 16 years ago. VLC is available on all the major operating systems such as Windows operating system and Mac OS. It is also available on Android.

Windows media player classic is an extremely light-weight, open source media player for Windows. It supports all common video and audio file formats available for playback.

QQ Player software is a free application for Windows that helps you play videos, movies and music. You can play all video and audio formats without the need for external codex packages. QQ Player helps you play videos, movies and music, snapshot video as digital images, converting video and music, play 3D movies and convert the normal 2D movies to 3D movies in one click.

Daum Pot player is a free media player that supports a variety of different video codecs and format. Pot player already includes built in codecs, eliminating the need for manual installation. It also supports Digital TV devices, Webcams, Analogs, DXVA, live broadcasts and more.

The rest of the paper is organized as follow. In section II, we summarized our literature review. Proposed methodology of our survey is explained in section III. Our results are mentioned in the section IV and section V present the conclusion and summary.

Literature Review

Usability is an important quality attribute to be considered during software architecture design. Many usability benefits link directly to a variety of architectural tactics in addition to separation of the user interface and these benefits can be discovered early in the life cycle [1]. There are several techniques to evaluate software usability, these evaluations being quantitative and qualitative. The main way to quantitatively evaluate a software product is by using software usability metrics [2]. The success of any software or product depends on many factors and the usability is one of the most important factors. Usability is considered as the quality of software [3]. for assuring and improving quality, it is necessary to ensure quality attributes such as usability, efficiency, learnability and many more. Among of them, usability is the key quality attribute of any kind of software. With the same time, evaluation of usability is also necessary for improving the quality of the software [4]. Usability is one of the most important aspects of software quality, several methods have been developed in order to establish techniques capable of evaluating this attribute from early phases of the software development process [5].

Methodology

In this paper, we conduct our survey on usability of four media players i.e. VLC, QQ player, Windows media classic and Pot player on the basis of five parameters: learnability, efficiency, memorability, error and satisfaction.

Each media player is assigned its own matrix table. In this table rows present parameters of usability and columns represents the feedback of experts. Each column is assigned a value starting from 1-5. Media players have values near to 5 will be considered the best media player and the values near to 1 will be considered the less reliable media player. If the user is strongly satisfied means the value is five or closer to five and if the user is not satisfied means the value is one or near to one.

The media player will be considered the best if it scores 5 out of 5. Our evaluation technique is for a media player is adding up all the values of parameters and divide it by five e.g. 5+5+5+5+5/5=5 means strongly satisfied.

In this survey, experts provide scores to media players according to their experience mentioned in the example. For example, if a media player A scores 4.3 and another media player B scoring 3.9, the media player A will be said better than media player B.

Results and Discussions

After conducting our survey, we collect the scores of media player mentioned in section III. After collecting these values, we calculate the mean of these values by dividing the total score of media player by total number of users. We get the values of all the media players by using this method.

According to the opinion of our experts and our calculation. VLC media player has highest scores i.e. 3.66, Windows media classic placed second position scoring 3.44, third QQ player 3.18 and last Pot player with 3.1 scores. According to this survey VLC media player is more usable and a best solution for the users.

Conclusion

In this paper, the authors conduct a survey from the experts on the usability of four different media players i.e. VLC, QQ player, Windows media classic and Pot Player. Our survey parameters are learnability, efficiency, memorability, error and satisfaction. Our evaluation method was taking the mean of the score of each media player. After calculating the scores, we found that the VLC media player has the highest value and we proposed VLC media player as the best choice and solution the users.

References

1. B. E. J. Len Bass, ‘Linking usability to software architecture patterns through general scenarios,’ The Journal of Systems and Software, 2003.
2. J. P.-S. Jose Pow-Sang, ‘A Systematic Mapping Review of Software Usability Metrics,’ International Journal of Engineering & Technology,, 2018.
3. T. M. A. R. M. Qurat-Tul-Ain, ‘Usability Practices in Software Development Life Cycle A Review,’ Usability Practices in Software Development Life Cycle A Review, 2016.
4. S. I. M. Md Alamgir Kabir and Muaan Ur Rehman, ‘An Analytical and Comparative Study of Software Usability Quality Factors,’ IEEE , 2016.
5. J. A. P.-S. Freddy Paz, ‘A Systematic Mapping Review of Usability Evaluation Methods A Systematic Mapping Review of Usability Evaluation Methods,’ International Journal of Software Engineering and Its Applications, 2016.

Comparative Analysis of Uber and OLA

Meru Cabs introduced organized rental cab service in the Indian market in 2004. It soon became popular amongst consumers in urban or metropolitan areas. However, the real revolution came in 2010 with the introduction of app based cab aggregators. OLA was launched in 2011 and Uber followed in 2013. With technological advancements and door to door service becoming the industry standard, customers chose the comfort of being able to book a cab with one click and gave a push to app based cab aggregators. With many cab aggregators competing for market share, consumers became demanding and it became difficult to acquire new customers and retain old ones. These app based cab aggregators have seen tremendous potential for growth in countries like India, where population density is high and parking space is a precious commodity. With public transport being over-crowded during peak hours, this convenient mode of transport gained popularity rapidly.

As customers have become more demanding and the market place is flooded with cab aggregators, it’s a challenging job for rental cab services to satisfy the customer. Not only price but service quality also plays an important role in customer satisfaction. Using a smartphone, it’s easy for a consumer to access, compare, evaluate and buy a service. Most of the cab aggregators offer various kinds of services ranging from basic to luxury.

OLA Cabs, is an Indian transportation network company and was started in 2010 in Mumbai by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd. It is based on online app based cab aggregator concept. It offers a range of services that include peer-to-peer ridesharing, ride service hailing, taxi and food delivery. As of May 2019, it was valued at $6.2 billion with a variety of venture capitalists like Softbank holding large stakes in the company. Currently it has a network of 15,00,000 drivers across 250 cities.

Uber Technologies Inc. is an American multinational ride-hailing company. It offers peer-to-peer ridesharing, ride service hailing and food delivery. It expanded to the Indian market in August 2013 and began operations in Bangalore. According to a report in 2016, OLA showed to capture 70% of the Indian market.

This research is focused on doing a comparative analysis of the major cab aggregators in India, namely, Uber and OLA on the basis of various brand characteristics.

Methodology

With growing competition, both companies are offering a variety of services to make the consumer’s journey comfortable. The consumer is spoilt with choices and quickly switches over to the one with better offerings. The technique used to carry out the research was a mix of questionnaire and secondary data. It included some multiple choice questions along with a rating scale addressed to the respondents. The two brands were rated on various characteristics common to them. A sample size of 22 was taken which included students, homemakers, businessmen and professionals. Secondary data, on the other, included data collected from published articles, newspaper and the Internet. The respondents were asked to rate both OLA and Uber on a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being extremely dissatisfied and 5 being extremely satisfied) on the following characteristics.

• Ease of use: how easy the app and service it to use;
• Consumer safety: how safe do the consumers feel while travelling or availing the services;
• Value for money: how pocket friendly the service is or does the service quality justify its cost;
• Ease of payment: how easy and simple it is to make payments on the apps;
• Customer support: do the cab aggregators provide quality customer service or not;
• Availability: whether the services are readily available or not;
• Overall service provided: how the overall experience of the respondent is while using the services;
• Preferred cab aggregator for daily use: which app the respondents will prefer to use in their daily life.

Results and Discussions

According to the data collected from the respondents, majority of them were male (59.1%) and 86.4% belonged to the age group of 18-25 years. Majority of the respondents have completed their Intermediate or Graduation (40.9%). The data collected also suggests that 63.6% of the respondents were students, while 31.8% were either self-employed or salaried professionals. Most of the respondents were aware about various cab aggregators like Uber, OLA, Meru etc.

1. The data suggests that more people found Uber easier to use than OLA. Majority of the people gave Uber a 4 star rating while OLA got a 3 star or a 4 star rating.
2. The data suggests that the respondents found Uber to be safer than OLA. Uber fared slightly better than OLA in terms of consumer safety.
3. The data suggests that the respondents found Uber to be more pocket friendly than OLA. Uber was given 5 star or 4 star ratings for pocket friendliness. On the other hand, a majority gave OLA a 3 star rating.
4. The data suggests that the respondents found it easier to make payments on Uber than OLA. Uber took the lead in terms of ease of payment and was given a 5 star rating by majority of the respondents. OLA scored a 4 star rating on the contrary.
5. The data suggests that the respondents preferred Uber’s customer service over OlA’s. Uber got more 5 star rating from respondents as compared to OLA. OLA remained consistent at 4 star ratings.
6. The data suggests that the respondents found Uber to be more available than OLA. Uber received slightly better ratings than OLA.
7. The data suggests that most respondents prefer Uber’s service over OLA’s service.
8. The data suggests that majority of the respondents prefer Uber over OLA for their day to day use.

Conclusion

Companies are attracted to India because of the sheer size of its market and increasing purchasing power resulting in an uplifting lifestyle. However, the consumers are smart, demanding and highly price sensitive. They are also not very brand loyal. This makes managing such a market an extremely difficult task. Companies need to be on their toes, constantly looking out for new opportunities to grab and for areas to innovate. They need to keep on designing new packages or offers to acquire or retain customers. However, this comes at the cost of a huge cash burn. Thus making it difficult for both Uber and OLA to operate. They constantly need to find ways and areas to minimize costs while developing customer centric, innovate and socially acceptable offerings or packages. It is clearly visible from the results that Uber has excelled in gaining popularity in the age group of 18-24 years. It has also successfully designed an easy to use user interface which has helped enrich the user experience. It has also provided for a secure and easy payment gateway which the doesn’t hassle the consumers. Uber’s services are readily available and are deemed safe by the consumers. It also provides for a decent customer support and provides an overall good experience. It has managed to provide this package at reasonable, consumer friendly rates. OLA on the other hand, is equally popular amongst the consumers. However, it scores lower than Uber in terms ease of use, consumer safety, customer service and value for money. Drivers are the image of the brand and misbehaving drivers causes OLA to score less on the overall service experience of the consumer. As a result, very few consumers are likely to prefer OLA over Uber for their daily use. However, OLA has greater market share due it being available at more locations than Uber. ‘Customer is king’ and it is the reason why companies are striving to make customer’s experience the best. This promotes healthy competition which in turn benefits the end user.

Bibliography

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ola_Cabs
3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/krnkashyap/2016/09/21/its-uber-vs-ola-for-the-battle-of-supremacy-in-the-indian-market/#2ed4dfbbd99f
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ola_Cabs
6. https://www.forbes.com/sites/krnkashyap/2016/09/21/its-uber-vs-ola-for-the-battle-of-supremacy-in-the-indian-market/#2ed4dfbbd99f
7. https://www.forbes.com/sites/krnkashyap/2016/09/21/its-uber-vs-ola-for-the-battle-of-supremacy-in-the-indian-market/#2ed4dfbbd99f

Comparative Analysis of Different Styles of Management in Indian and Chinese Organizations

Even after the emergence of cross-border business world, the advent of ‘culture-free’ business practices has yet to be transpired that brings with itself the complexities are associated with distinct values and beliefs in spite of the growing interdependence among countries. Both India and China are the countries with great diversity with substantial regional, cultural and religious variations across the country. The existence of a standard management practice that can be applied in any culture is still unsettled. The paper aimed to offer a comparative approach to the management practices followed by Indian and Chinese Organizations. This paper reviews the previous literature that has focused on comparing various issues related to business and management in India and China. The findings indicated that though there are substantial differences in staffing, leading and controlling activities of both the countries, planning and organizing activities offer a vague variation. Moreover, the reason for persistence in practices scaled using dimensions of hofstede’s model. Finally, the paper concludes with the acceptance that no ‘one’ management practice can be adopted across every culture and country.

Introduction

The Asia’s economic giants – China and India – have always had an erratic history. They share a border, have fought a bitter war and continue to compete for geopolitical supremacy in the region. Political ambitions and distrust on either side have sometimes been at the cost of better economic sense (Bhatia, 2016). Despite these incongruities, these countries have fascinated each other over the past two millennia with unique examples of unbroken civilizations extant for over 3000 years, and with significant mutual influence in areas like religion and ordinarily cultural symbols like art, literature etc. (Subramanian, 2007, Anand, 2013).

Both share a past as two of the most prosperous nations on earth (Kalish, 2006). Long before the emergence of Europe, China and India have in their name, a considerate amount of inventions and discoveries, and a higher standard of living (Bhasin, 2007). However, in the early 19th century, both countries suffered a huge plunge and were surpassed by Europe and the US. The situation further became worse, when in the middle 20th century; both countries faced an extreme poverty. For China, fortune began to change when Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978. He brought about changes in market-oriented and economic policies in the country. For India, the situation actuated as a setback for the financial crisis that was faced in early 1990s. The government started taking gradual steps along a market-oriented path. The consequences of this remarkable upturn are profound and far-reaching and are causing the world economies to relentlessly draw towards them (Quer et al, 2014).

A considerable interest in differing attitudes, behavior, management style and values of managers has arising, attributing to the rapid globalization of the world’s economy and cultural diversification (Hofstede, 2001. Therefore, by establishing relationships between these concepts and management practices and effectiveness, one can deduce the impact of cultural variables on management practices and effectiveness (Anant, 1975).

Literature Review

A great attention has been given in literature regarding the management practices and styles of the international companies, especially China. But the comparison between India and China is very limited and scarce. Moreover, the comparisons have been made on the basis of economic growth, FDI and GDP (Bosworth & Collins, 2008, Agrawal & Khan, 2011), quality practices (Ragunathan et al. 1997, Zhao et al, 1994, Rao, 1999), talent management (Cooke et al. 2013, Ariss et al., 2014).

When it comes to comparing the management styles, U.S. and Japan have received a lot of attention. There is an abundance of literature on both U.S. and Japanese management since they present contrasting managerial approaches. Like in a paper by Culpan & Kucukemiroglu (1993), the management styles of US and Japan is compared in a conceptual model using different six managerial dimensions: supervisory style, decision- making, communication pattern, control mechanism, interdepartmental relationships, and paternalistic orientation. The findings indicated that there is a considerable amount of variations in the management styles of the countries and within each dimensions also. In yet another paper by Weihrich, (1990), Chinese managerial practices were identified and an analysis was made to know which of the two managerial approaches, i.e. U.S. and Japan, would be appropriate to make Chinese businesses more effective and efficient. Some studies have also analogized the culture of countries using Hofstede’s model like the one by Migliore (2011). The inter-relational aspects of personality traits have been assessed quantitatively by the author using five-factor model of personality and Hofstede’s five dimensions of culture.

The comparison between India and China is multi-dimensional. Raghunathan et al. (1997) pointed out significant differences among USA, India, and China with respect to quality management practices. Patrick et al. (2003) in their paper compared the management style of marketing managers in Australia with their counterparts in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Managers in PRC scored higher than their counter parts with respect to the dimensions like information utilization, complexity, group decision-making, risk acceptance and technology orientation. In the paper by Quer et al (2014), a comparative approach to the reality of China and India as regards business and strategic management were presented, analyzing the main similarities and differences between the two Asian giants. The comparison was done on the basis of key factors for success, the entry modes that can be used and the business opportunities offered.

A management style when applied in another culture loses its effectiveness. With the increasing trend of globalization in most organizations, there is an admissible increase in the study of management practices in different countries and how they lead to organizational efficiency. For the purpose of this study, the five managerial functions (Planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling) will serve as a framework for comparing and analogizing the managerial approaches in these two countries. The managerial functions will then be further elaborated and expanded to know the managerial activities.

Objectives

The main objective of this paper is to compare the management practices in India and China and to find out the reason for the differences, if any, in their management. The objectives are framed as follows:

1. To study the management practices prevalent in Indian and Chinese organizations.
2. To analyze the similarities and differences between the management practice of both countries.
3. To know the reason behind the differences in the management practices.

Research Methodology

The present study is based on secondary data only. The major sources of data are management books, articles, journals, and different related research studies. The previous literature that has focused on comparing various issues related to business and management in India and China has been reviewed and synthesized the literature findings in relation to management practices and other spheres as an initial effort towards identifying the differences and similarities between the two countries. Although various models for comparing management practices have been proposed, the present study shall adopt the model used by Weihrich (1990), using the elements of managerial functions.

Management Practices in India and China

To understand the management practices prevalent in India and China, Weihrich model (1990) has been used. The managerial elements involving planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling will serve as a framework for the comparison of managerial activities in both countries.

In both Indian and Chinese organizations, planning has a short and long-term orientation based on the circumstances. The decision making in Indian companies seems to be time-consuming, but when one is able to adjust with these circumstances, a better understanding and smooth decision-making process are achieved (Mark, 2012). Subordinates actively participate in planning, ideation, and related processes, but they look to their leader to finalize and bring closure to the process (Laxman, 2015). Whereas in China, the managers had their authority to make any decision in the organizations acknowledged by their employees but it is not desirable of subordinate to disagree on manager’s idea and communicate directly (Khairullah & Khairullah 2013). Decision making is strongly centralized and hierarchical, where decision flow is from top to down (Weihrich, 2000).

Majority of the Indian Companies follow a functional structure (PwC, 2013), rigidly organized and hierarchical and they maintain a highly centralized power structure (Walker, 2010). The Chinese organization followed a structure that is formal and bureaucratic. As the Chinese economy grows more diverse and new private and foreign-run firms become more common, the organizational structure of all firms is likely to become more flexible and decentralized (Walker, 2010). Moreover, there is a strong organizational culture in China (Weihrich, 2000).

Sources of recruitment in Indian companies are campus recruitment, referrals, and consultancies with increasing online employment agencies and social media hires (Dasgupta, 2018), whereas Chinese firms relied more heavily on schools than on other firms as sources of new employees (Weihrich, 2000, Li et al. 2015). Indian companies invest heavily in their employees, especially their new hires, because they see employees as key to building the organizational capabilities that drive competitiveness (Peter et al., 2010) that applies not only to their current jobs but is used to enhance employee capabilities to accomplish various tasks and to create a flexible workforce (Erwee & Paelmke, 2008). In contrast, Chinese managers do not have a positive attitude to train employees, the training system is defective and there is lack of a superior and tracking system which causes training inefficiency (Sun, 2015). While promotions were supposed to be based on performance, potential ability, and education, the reality was that family ties and good relations with top managers were extremely important for advancement (Weihrich, 2000). In India, work experience, contribution, etc. of the professionals and business managers have more avenue to success, ‘relations’ are not the only reason for success (Capelli et al, 2013).

Indian managers and workers prefer a paternalistic style of leadership where managers assume social support roles in addition to their work-related roles for their employees (Roopal & Sangya, 2012). The Chinese leadership style is also predominantly paternalistic in nature where the leaders are less likely to give rationales for decisions and are more inclined to issue directives known as the ‘directive’ leadership style (HayGroup, 2007). Indians are motivated by both individual and group achievements whereas employees in China are motivated through the group rather than individual achievement (Walker, 2010). The Chinese leader sought to avoid confrontation and come forward to resolve the conflict and establish peace among his subordinates (Weihrich, 2000 & Rahul, 2011).

The Indian managers set the well-specified targets and control the performance to maintain the efficiency and competitiveness. Indian system is based on individual targets because they prefer to be evaluated to be more on qualitative aspects of their work (Shrivastava & Shrivastava, 2012). With respect to China, the group leader is expected to exercise control over the group and the group assumed responsibility for pursuing and achieving group goals and objectives (Weihrich, 2000).

Comparison in Management Practices of India and China

With the help of Weihrich model, various managerial practices that are prevalent in India and China have been analyzed. Management practices vary considerably across countries and across firms. While practices of some countries are considered better than another, the question arises, why one would not just simply adopt the ‘better’ management practices for their own country. The probable reason may be the difference between their cultures (Hofstede, 2001) or due to environmental constraints (Farmer & Richman, 1965). For the purpose of current study Hofstede’s dimensions are used.

It was revealed that the power distance score is higher for both the countries. It indicates a high level of inequality and wealth distribution within the society. But the society accepts it as a cultural norm. Real power is centralized and communication is top-down in directive style (Juhasz, 2014). The individualism score is higher for India which depicts that the people here deal favorably with those they know and trust, and the opinion of close ones including workgroup, neighbors influence the actions of individuals (Thakur, 2010), whereas in China, people place group interest prior to their own interest. In-group considerations affect hiring and promotions with closer in-groups (such as family) are getting preferential treatment. Personal relationships prevail over task and company (Stone, 2012). Both India and China are considered a masculine society, meaning they are very driven by successful, competition, and achievements. Long working hours, pays promotion, etc. are considered as a measure of success (MarketMeChina, 2014). In India, there is acceptance of imperfection; nothing has to be perfect nor has to go exactly as planned. India is traditionally a patient country where tolerance for the unexpected is high (Juhasz, 2014). Chinese people need a structure and a plan and would prefer stability to adventure. Chinese people don’t like taking risks, which is why it is so important to build Xin (trust) with them (Stone, 2012). Long-term orientation score of Indian managers is higher than Chinese managers. The culture is more persistent. It is expected that the Indian businessperson will provide detailed business plans because of their need for Long-Term Orientations (Juhasz, 2012). Owing to the high score for Chinese managers, they will dedicate whatever time is required to achieve their goals. This is seen in the very time-consuming Chinese negotiation process (Stone, 2012).

China is still more or less a communist country. This means that all the enterprises there are run by the state. State-run enterprises are usually not efficient and definitely not innovative. On the other hand, the Indian industry is based on innovative enterprises. Given the competitive nature of the world economy, the Indian industry stands a better chance at success in the future (Management study guide, 2016). Relationship building is a very important factor in India, especially at the professional level. In India trend of giving ideal deals to a known person is followed. Therefore, more you maintain the cordial and friendly relations more it is useful whereas Chinese follow very formal relationships in business (Business maps of India, 2010).

Conclusion

Even after the emergence of cross-border business world, the advent of ‘culture-free’ business practices has yet to be transpired that brings with itself the complexities are associated with distinct values and beliefs in spite of the growing interdependence among countries. In fact, the variation in management practices is one of the main variables for the large differences in productivity across firms and countries. Both India and China are the countries with great diversity with substantial regional, cultural and religious variations across the country. It should be impossible to generalize about the society, organizations, and leaders in both countries and also the management practices in the country.

Both these management cultures are in a time of transition – on a local level, cultural values and norms continue to exert a strong influence, while on an international level, the influences of globalization, technology, and Western management practices have increased over the past decades. While China and India are striving to have an exposure and experience of western management practices, the countries around the world, on the other hand, are seeking market penetration and business growth in these countries. Regardless of the pace of change, it is important to appreciate the traditional cultural values such as the concept of hierarchy, the nature of social and community networks, the implication of continuity and stability, and prevalence for flexibility and ambiguity, continue to impact managerial practice and remain influential features of the cross-cultural management landscape.

From the present study, it is evident that the major difference between the countries lies in the areas of staffing, leading and controlling whereas the planning and organizing activities offer vague variations. With their own management practices and styles, we can say that both the countries are taking crucial ladder towards the escalation to reach pinnacles in their own way.

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Comparative Analysis of Capital Structure of Automobile Companies Ashok Leyland and Eicher

The capital structure has its impact on cost of capital which influence the earning of the firm, investment decision, value of the firm, operating efficiency, earning available to shareholder etc. the controversy is found in various theories formulated, the time period, the selection of the companies and sector companies on which studies had undertaken forms the research gap for the present study the past few studies on capital structure and its impact on profitability, the study of financial performance by different researcher on cement, power, banking , car manufacturing, sugar industries however very few studies has been conducted recently on comparative analysis of capital structure of automobile companies and more precisely on Ashok Leyland and Eicher. The present study focuses on trend of component of capital structure, relationship between debt-equity ratio and earning per share of shareholders and also considers the study of liquidity and profitability of the two selected companies.

Introduction

The automobile industry is one of the largest sectors in the world and also among the fastest growing sector in the Indian economy. Capital structure refers to the combination of equity and debt used by a firm to finance its asset.it also refers to the fraction of money owing preferred and common stock on company’s balance sheet. Capital structure is an important management decision as it greatly influences the owners ‘equity return, the owners’ risk as well as the market worth of the share. Earlier the Indian automobile industry use to depend on foreign counties for their technology but gradually Indian manufacturer started using their own technology. This will give enhanced profit and will give prospect to new heights. The capital structure or financial leverage decision should be examined from then point of its impact on the value of the firm. The relationship between debt, equity and profitability is examined and an attempt is made to understand this relationship among them. There are various factors that determine the capital structure they are: 1) financial leverage or ‘trading on equity’; 2) growth and stability of sales; 3) cost of capital; 4) cash flow ability to service debt; 5) nature and size of a firm; 6) control; 7) flexibility; 8) cost of flotation; 9) capital market conditions; 10) marketability; 11) government policy.

Objectives

1. To study the relationship between Debt and Equity and Earning per share.
2. To study the profitability of the two companies under study.

Hypotheses

1. H0: There is no significant relationship between Debt and Equity and Earning per share.
2. H1: There is a significant relationship between Debt and Equity and Earning per share.
3. H0: There is no significant relationship between the profitability of two companies.
4. H1: There is a significant relationship between the profitability of two companies.

Literature Review

Dhole Madhavi (2013) in her analytical study of four automobile companies instigated the impact of price movement of shares on selected company performance The study reveals that the sentimental factors do play a role in price movement only in short term but in long run annual performance is sole factor responsible for price movement.

Kumar Mohan, Vasu V and Narayan T. (2016) in their study made an attempt to study the relationship between liquidity and profitability. The data was collected from secondary source for the period of 10 years from 2005-2015. The study reveals there is a positive correlation between liquidity and profitability ratios except return on total assets. Z score value also indicate good health of the company.

Research Methodology

1. Sample size. This paper is focused on the determinants of capital structure in auto industry and for the study the data was collected from secondary source. These companies belong to different segments like HCVs, LCVs, passenger vehicles:
2. Sample Design. This paper is focus on the determinants of capital structure in auto industry and has a case study approach. The companies considered for study in the paper are Eicher and Ashok Leyland.
3. Data Collection. Required secondary data was collected from the annual reports of two major automobile companies in India which is collected from the official website of the companies and money control application. The study on capital structure of the two selected companies is for the period of 5 years that is from 2014-2019.

Limitation of Study

The study is limited to the automobile sector of commercial vehicles, heavy vehicles. There is no consideration of two wheelers, three wheelers and cars. The time period of the study is only of five years and limited to the national boundaries i.e the study is of Indian automobile companies only.

Data Analysis and Interpretation

Descriptive Analysis

The debt equity ratio of Ashok Leyland is highest for the year 2015 whereas as EPS in the same year is negative. The debt equity ratio in the range of 1.55 to 1.75 is generating positive and increasing EPS for the company. In the year 2019 the EPS is the highest that is Rs.7.44. As the company increased the debt financing in the year 2015 where the debt equity ratio is highest, the company was not able to give EPS to the shareholders the reason for the same was high debt financing by company which lead to pay high interest to the creditors.

The debt equity ratio of Eicher is in the range of 0.01 to 0.02. The EPS has increased it became almost double in the year 2016 as compared to 2015 where the debt equity ratio reduced by 50%. For the further years from 2017 to 2019 even though the debt equity ratio remained same EPS is increasing by 80/- to 100/-. The constant debt equity ratio is giving the increasing EPS so the line of debt equity is on X-axis and the line of EPS is upward sloping from right to left.

Inferential Analysis

Correlation Coefficient(r) of Ashok Leyland: -0.720168512.

It can be observed from the correlation coefficient value that there is a negative correlation between the debt equity ratio and EPS. Hence the test reveals that there is no significant relationship between the debt equity. Therefore, H0 is to be accepted.

Correlation Coefficient(r) of Eicher: 0.2478.

The debt equity ratio (%) and EPS (Rs) of Ashok Leyland for the period of the study i.e. from 2015 to 2019. The correlation coefficient is applied to test the relationship between debt equity and EPS of the company. It can be observed from the correlation coefficient value that there is a positive correlation between the debt equity ratio and EPS. It means that if one variable is increasing the other variable also increases and vice versa that is there is a direct relation between the two. Hence the test reveals that there is no significant relationship between the debt equity. Therefore, H0 is to be accepted.

The Return on Net worth of Ashok Leland lies in the range of 3.83 to 24.86, the ratio shows the increasing trend in return on net worth of a company from the year 2015 to 2019. The coefficient of variation calculated is 50.93% The coefficient of variation is 17.55% which is too less as compared to Ashok Leyland’s CV, it indicated that there is less consistency in Return on Net worth of Ashok Leyland as compared to Eicher which is not a good sign for the company. The investors would prefer to invest in Eicher on the basis of coefficient of variations the company is giving consistent returns.

Conclusion

From the whole study it is found that the relationship between debt equity ratio and EPS of Ashok Leyland is negative, hence it is concluded that there exists inverse relationship, as the debt equity increases EPS decreases and vice versa. It is observed from the study that there is no significant positive relationship between debt equity ratio and EPS. In case of Eicher it is revealed that the correlation ship between EPS & debt equity ratio is direct. The profitability of the two companies is examined on the basis of return on net worth. The coefficient of variance figure indicates that the Ashok Leyland is not preferable as there is much of variation in the returns on net worth. The investors would prefer to invest in Eicher as there is significant difference between the return on equity of both the companies.

References

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