Review The Book, All The Light We Cannot See By Antony Doerr - 825 Words

Review The Book, All The Light We Cannot See By Antony Doerr (Essay Sample) Content: A book review is a piece of writing which provides a critical evaluation of the book. Usually, it is not long and has a specific structure. A review gives readers the summary of the book including the information about the author; it defines its genre, outlines the plot and offers critical characteristics of the characters. Besides, a review of a book may include the analysis of the authors writing style and the language of the story under discussion. It also provides suggestions whether it could be recommended for the readers to read and whether the latter will enjoy it or not. Below you will find an example of a book review.Book Review ExampleThe book, All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr is a historical novel written in 2014. The novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize as the best fiction book in 2015 following the novel's appearance in The New York Times as one of the best-selling novels of 2014.The story is set in France and Germany in the years of the Wor ld War II, mainly during the German occupation of France. The primary characters turn out two children; a German boy and a blind French girl who are revealed to struggle with the horrors of the war. According to the book, the girl, Marie-Laure LeBlanc, is a six-year-old girl whose father, a widower, works at the Natural History Museum in the capital of France. Marie-Laure cannot see, but she has mastered the skill of finding her way through the labyrinth of Paris streets using a scale-model that her father made her. The girls father is revealed to be an excellent teacher who hides presents in elaborately carved boxes with the aim of teaching his daughter to see using other senses rather than her eyes, which is a unique way to sharpen her mind. The story cites a famous museum known to house a precious if not priceless blue diamond, known as the Sea of Flames. The book highlights the Diamond to have a superpower in the context that a person keeping it gets granted eternal life, but th ose he loves are cursed being doomed to live in misfortune.In 1940, after the Nazis' invasion of France, Marie-Laure left Paris, together with her father, to find refuge in Saint-Malo where the girls uncle, Etienne resided. As it turns out, the Sea of Flames or presumably one of the copies of the diamond gets entrusted to Marie-Laures father to prevent it from capture by the Germans. The man, in turn, hides the stone in a model of the house that belonged to Etienne, his brother. The Germans later capture LeBlanc'c father, and his fate becomes unknown. After the disappearance of the man Marie-Laure is left in the care of Etienne, her great-uncle, and the housekeeper. Shortly after the incident of capture, a Nazi who hunts for treasure starts his chase after the diamond. The parallel plotline takes the readers to the town of Zollverein in Germany. The main character, Werner Pfennig, has no parents but has a preternatural gift to understand circuitry. One day Werner and his sister Jut ta find a broken radio. Having repaired it, the young boy hears some Frenchman talking about science. Thanks to his extraordinary skills in radio mechanics and love of science, he finds himself in a school training elite militants of the Nazi.After his graduation, the boy joins the Wehrmacht. In 1944, the Allied forces landed in Normandy. Werner revealed as a militant who previously got assigned a military service mission in Saint-Malo, carries on his military service assigned to a particular t...

Marketing planning - 1100 Words

Marketing planning (Essay Sample) Content: Marketing planning Name: Course: Tutor: Date: Marketing planning "Marketing planning is a logical sequence and a series of activities leading to the setting up of marketing objectives and formulation of plans for achieving them" (Mac Donlad, 2002, cited in Blois, 2000, p.454). It is based on markets, consumers, and products, business planning involves other corporate resources which will have a bearing on the identified markets (Mc Donald, 2002) cited in Blois, 2000, p.455). Marketing planning is aimed at matching the marketing mix for the product with ever changing customer needs, as well as seeking opportunities to use the companies' strengths to market the products in new markets (Jobber, 2010). Our venture project named Organica, an organic online grocery store in United Kingdom. Organica specializes in selling fresh organic fruit, vegetable and meat products online with Manchester residents being provided with delivery services for purchased products. Strategic marketing planning plays an important role as part of our corporate plan. This is because marketing is regarded as a major activity; especially, in small business like Organica Following the marketing planning process, (McDonald, 1997, cited in Blois, 2000, p.467), phase 2 situation review enabled us to decide the approach on the planned Organica market entry. Market research established that there lies a good future for online organic market; this is due to eating organic products becoming a global trend as seen in USA, most of European countries, and Asian countries. In the UK, the demand for organic products is also increasing with an expanding economy and increasing household income (Boshevskiet al., 2013). The situation review allowed us to formulate strategies to cope up with increasing turbulence, environmental complexity and market change as phase 3 of market planning. The UK organic market is highly competitive with both indirect competitors like big supermarkets (e.g. Tesco and Ocado) and direct competitors like online organic specialities (e.g. Riverford and Abel Cole). In order not to compete with them directly, we target niche marketing with health conscious, young (aged 25 - 44) and high-income (Class A and B) consumers living in Manchester by providing high quality products in most convenient way in terms of flexible and fast speed delivery. Furthermore, we design out unique marketing mix according to the target market. For example, in terms of price, we set up relatively higher profit margins compared to our biggest competitor Abel Cole for different products because our target market is less price sensitive and higher prices often imply higher quality. As a start-up, one of the most important things is to create awareness. Therefore, promotion became a highlight in the marketing plan. We decided to adopt intense marketing tools including designing viral outdoor marketing campaigns, seasonal pop-up store, and advertisements on social networks and Google search engine to generate huge awareness in the first two years. Thus, we can focus on improving services and expanding the business in later years by avoiding being squeezed out of the market in the early stages. According to Marx (1991), numerous bureaucratic obstacles in the process of planning are the reason of failure to deliver promised benefits. Furthermore, Gluck et al. (1982) identified obstacles in each four phases of the development of strategic management. As Gluck et al. (1982) suggested our business started to face difficulties from phase 3 which is the externally oriented planning (Gluck et al., 1982). After a thorough market analysis, we met one of the biggest obstacles, which was that the plan is too constraining that prevented development of innovative ideas. This set back also forms one of the sources of resistance to strategic marketing identified by Mac Donald's 2002. After we confirmed the business model of running an organic online grocery store, we generated some ideas in order to become unique and stand out in the organic industry. Then we did a thorough competitor analysis in terms of direct and indirect competitors by searching for secondary data from official report ; visiting their websites; observing and collection of data in physical shops and running in-depth interviews. However, we found Riverford - our biggest competitor had already been running their businesses in ways we thought were unique. We were planning to promote ethical practices such as using eco-friendly packaging and carbon neutral delivery; use innovative cold insulated packaging for the meat packing; promote healthy lifestyle by writing blogs; and create our own communities through social network. But, Riverford is not only using these ideas, but also has first mover advantage of owning its own farms and has 25-years experience in the organic industry. This was frightening and threatened our decision to adopt the business idea a we envisaged failure in competing with Riverford. This problem can be viewed as the gap between theory and reality; and it does not mean marketing planning is not important. On the other hand, as Henkoff (1990) cited in Baker, 2007) suggested, we require "strategic thinking" which is characterised by focus and flexibility. After some meetings, we decided to keep the business idea and make it a success through a number of modifications. To make a differentiation form Riverford we decided to catch a niche market that is health conscious, young (aged 25 - 44) and high-income (Class A and B) consumers living in Manchester, focus on this market and build on what the company can do best. We identified the evolving needs of our customers, developing our core competencies and accelerate our ability to generate new customers and keep existing customers. For example, Riverford o...