Please Rate This Article: The Real Energy Crisis-How Much Is It Costing Your Business?
Turn the page of any paper or turn on any news show and you’ll likely hear about the global energy crisis and soaring gas prices. But I’m convinced that the real energy crisis is not taking place in the oil fields of Texas and Iraq or the gas stations of New York and California but rather inside the people and the companies that contribute to our global economy. In a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive Inc. less than 15 percent agree that they feel strongly energized by their work and only 20 percent feel very passionate about their jobs. While part of this crisis can be attributed to management (37% of Managers are indifferent to their company’s fate) a big part of the problem can be associated with worker burnout. 42% are coping with burnout while 33% believe they have reached a dead end in their jobs and 21% are eager to change their jobs. The cost of fatigue, burnout and a lack of engagement to corporate America is staggering. The Gallup organization estimates the cost to be 250-300 billon dollars while work place fatigue alone costs American businesses at least 77 billion per year according to the National Sleep Foundation.There’s no doubt that today’s employees as a whole are under engaged, overtired and overstressed. If you’re not convinced just try to ease drop on water cooler conversations. You won’t hear anything because they are not there. They’re hovering around the coffee pot or in line at the corner coffee shop. People are clearly searching for their energy but unfortunately they are finding it in coffee, diet sodas, energy drinks and other quick fixes that do not last.The fact is that enhan

Please Rate This Article: Does the Brand Equity Influence the Customers' Loyalty?
The research objective is to enable the marketers to understand better the parameters that effect the re-purchasing decision, and to evaluate whether the factor of level of involvement influence the results. The research population consisted of young men and women aged 18-25 who were considered as the target audience. The research examined the level of loyalty, product quality and involvement, in three product categories: Low level of involvement – Deodorant. Medium level of involvement - fashion clothes. High level of involvement - Cellular Phones.The research examined the relationship between brand equity and repurchase willingness. The research findings yielded, according to the Pearson correlation conducted between the consumer perception of the product equity and the consumer loyalty, a positive significant relationship on an intermediate-high level. In other words, the higher the consumer evaluates the brand equity, the greater his loyalty becomes. This relationship is weakened as the level of product involvement increases. Namely, as a product has higher perceived importance in the consumer’s opinion, he searches for additional added value beyond his brand perception.In addition, positive significant relationships were found between all the indices of the variable of brand equity and all the indices of the variable of customer loyalty. The level of relationships was intermediate high. The strongest positive relationship, relatively, is between real assets and repeat purchase, while the weakest relationship, relatively, was found between the non-real assets and recommendation to the friends.Additional f

Please Rate This Article: What is Metal Stamping?
Metal stamping is the process of cutting and shaping metal alloys into specific forms, especially to be used as components for large machinery or structures. Metal sheets can be molded into different pre-determined shapes for use as regular products like pans and cans. The most common alloys that are used in metal stamping are steel, zinc, nickel, aluminum and titanium. Metal stamping is a very cost-effective and productive way of producing many kinds of metal products on a large scale.In metal stamping, the metal sheets are placed in a die or a press tool that has a specially designed cavity that gives the preferred shape to the metal sheet. The upper part of the die connects to the press slide while the lower component connects to the press bed. A specific component known as the punch pushes the metal sheet through the die, thus performing the actual shaping operation. After pressing, the metal is plated with gold, palladium, nickel or tin to prevent corrosion.Plating also increases the wearability and solderable nature of the product. Sometimes, the sheet is also pre-plated before the stamping process, and then the product is cleaned to remove excess metal stamping oils and films. The product is then heat treated to make it stronger since it is still in the soft state after stamping. The product is then subjected to the deburring process for removing the sharp corners. This is done by using chemicals or abrasives. Metal stamping also involves other metalworking processes like piercing, blanking, forming and drawing on the same machines.Stamping presses have specific force, speed and precision for giving a