Identify and describe one psychological and one philosophical obstacle to critical thinking that you currently struggle with. Without getting too personal, give examples of how these obstacles impede your critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Lastly, discuss at least one strategy you intend to employ in overcoming each obstacle and why you think these strategies will be successful.

Michael is a 22-year-old college student who lives off-campus. Although he has a kitchen in his apartment, he has neither the time nor the interest in making his own food or stocking his own kitchen. All three of his daily meals come from fast-food restaurants. A typical day’s intake is shown below:

Breakfast: Two egg and bacon sandwiches on English muffins; large coffee with creamer and sugar

Lunch: Two cheeseburgers with catsup; large French fries; soft drink; cookies

Dinner: A foot-long submarine with cold cuts, cheese, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickles; bag of potato chips; soft drink

Snacks: Chocolate bar; chips and salsa; popcorn

1. What vitamins is Michael probably lacking in his diet? What vitamins is he probably getting enough of?

2. Are there better choices he could make at fast-food restaurants that would improve his vitamin intake?

3. What suggestions would you make for keeping “quick” and “easy” food in his apartment that would improve his vitamin intake without being too much “bother”?

4. How would you respond to this question from Michael: “Can I just take a multivitamin so I don’t have to make changes in my eating habits?

Please be sure to reference your sources in appropriate Harvard formatting and to provide substantive evidence of any claims that you make. Where appropriate, include personal anecdotes, statistics, and references to additional reading or materials.

Negotiate to win-win

Have a read through the following scenario, which is adapted from your suggested text (Jobber and Lancaster, 2015, p65).

Thomas Maggs is head buyer for cereals and cereal-related products at Morrisco Markets, one of Britain’s top supermarket chains. Morrisco has a 14 percent share of the UK grocery market with a mixture of in-town and out-of-town stores fairly evenly spread across the country. Like most retail grocery buyers, Maggs is tough on his suppliers. He has to be, as competition among the big multiples is fierce, and the ability to price low and retain a fair margin is the key to sustained financial success. The breakfast cereal market is highly competitive, fragmented, and yet dominated by a number of ‘power brands’, such as Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Weetabix, and Shreddies, all of which spend large budgets on advertising and promotions. Maggs favors deep price cutting promotional activity in this market as he knows that it shifts stock fast. The cereal manufacturers tend to resist this form of promotion as much as they can, preferring to ‘add value’ to their products rather than reduce price, which they feel tends to undermine premium brand imagery.

Sonya Farquahar is Key Accounts Manager at Morning Foods Ltd, a large manufacturer of breakfast cereals with one or two heavily supported ‘power brands’ in its portfolio, such as Powergrains, a protein-rich crunchy cereal enjoying 8 percent of the cereal market, and Slymbites, a tasty, low-fat cereal targeted at young women, ready sweetened with aspartame, a no-calorie sugar substitute, enjoying 5 percent of the market. With distinct product differentiators, these two brands hold premium price positions, and the company favors added value ‘themed’ promotions. Each brand is heavily supported with TV advertising. Riding on the back of the success of the two brands, each of them has been recently brand extended to cereal bars, competing with Jordans and other brands. The brand team at Morning Foods want to run promotions on the two brands, offering free cereal bars in-pack as a means of generating trial for each of the extensions. Given the importance of these brands, the company is trying to use this as a lever to gain separate distribution for the bars. It seems to be working with most of the supermarket chains, but Morrisco is proving difficult to persuade – they don’t like to be dictated to and they don’t want another as yet unproven cereal bar on their shelves. Maggs at Morrisco is insisting on some form of deep price-orientated promotion.

Imagine that you are Sonya Farquahar, and that you are doing some preparation for a big meeting with Thomas Maggs.

As part of your preparation, you are going to read the following article from the National Association of Sales Professionals, which is listed as an additional reading resource for this session:

https://www.nasp.com/article/AE55C784-B35B/sales-negotiation-skills.html (Links to an external site.)

In no more than 500 words:

Evaluate where you believe the balance of power lies in this negotiation process.

Assess the three most important behavioral sales skills you should try to work on when you are sitting down to negotiate with Thomas Maggs.

Describe what you think could be elements of a win-win outcome for both parties in this negotiating process.

This discussion question is based on a more academic source than we have used to date, an article by lecturers from the Alexander Technological Institute of Thessaloniki in Greece, which was published in the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Knowledge in 2017. (Article provided in Unit 5 Reading List.)

Firstly, the article explores some of the key differences between traditional CRM and eCRM, and considers some of the implications for organizations in adopting a predominantly eCRM approach, several of which are illustrated above. The article then introduces us to the concept of Social CRM:

“In addition to e-CRM there is also another new trend of CRM, called Social CRM. Social CRM is a customer relationship management process that provides communication through social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. A business can create a particular page, usually called fan page, for the company in different social media sites, to quickly get information about users, who are interested in their products. In response to customer comments, a business can reply quickly to their questions, potential negative feedbacks, or product problems either by posting new comments, or by communicating with personal messages. By using Social CRM, companies can get higher reputation through offering the best possible solutions and suitable products to customers.”

Students from The Technological Institute were asked to devise social CRM strategies in collaboration with three family-owned businesses based in Greece using the InCISIV framework, which is discussed in the journal article.

Choose any family-owned business based in your country which you think needs to adopt a more robust digital marketing strategy.

Briefly introduce your business and describe why you have chosen it for this discussion question.

For the benefit of your owners:

Critically evaluate the implications of adopting a predominantly eCRM approach as opposed to a traditional CRM approach using the graphic illustrated above. You should contextualize this response to the business that you have chosen.

By considering one or more of the conceptual frameworks analyzed in the journal article (such as InCISIV), outline a social media strategy for your chosen organization. Please note that you are not expected to conduct any primary research in the way that the students did in the article, and that you can make assumptions where information is not available to you.

You should aim for a submission of around 750 words for this discussion question.

Please be sure to reference your sources in appropriate Harvard formatting and to provide substantive evidence of any claims that you make. Where appropriate, include personal anecdotes, statistics, and references to additional reading or materials.

Take a virtual haircut!

This discussion question is based on two articles, which are included as sources of additional reading for this session.

The first is an interview with Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, in The Independent. As CEO of a market leader and an organization that prides itself on its innovation, Mr. Cook is understandably upbeat about augmented reality.

Cook claims that shopping will be changed “entirely” by augmented reality, and says that he doesn’t think “anything will be untouched”. AR brings together the two difficult forms of shopping today, both brick and mortar and online, in a way that could let people see the entirety of a dress by walking around it, as if they were in a shop, but from the comfort of their own iPhones.

The second article, from Forbes, was penned by Andrew Stephen, an Associate Dean for Research, and L’Oréal Professor of Marketing and Head of the Marketing Faculty at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School.

He says that the AI revolution in marketing has been spurred by the influx of affordable and accessible advanced data analytics tools (typically based on machine learning methods), the availability of increasingly rich (albeit still noisy) and extensive datasets, and a growing acceptance among marketers of the potential power of data-driven approaches to marketing decision making.

Imagine that you are a digital marketing consultant who has been asked to help a leading hairdressing boutique based in London. The owner of the boutique prides herself in being seen as a cutting edge brand (forgive the pun) and is very positive about embracing new forms of marketing, although she acknowledges that she may not have the budget required to do everything she aspires to do and that a large chunk of her business arises from traditional marketing activities. In a report in two sections:

Advise the owner about how her industry could benefit from understanding and adopting AI, VR, and AR trends in the future;

For the benefit of your client, critically assess some of the benefits VR adoptions could have on her particular brand and evaluate whether you think that it’s realistic for her independent business to attempt to become an early adopter in the whole area of VR, given that she has a very limited budget to play with.

You should aim to develop a response of no more than 750 words.

Social determinants affect access to health care, foster or interfere with the ability to practice health behaviors, affect physiology through influences on stress hormones, and result in ecological/epidemiological changes that can affect multiple generations. Culture and lifespan have a profound effect on designing a health promotion program.

• Discuss how health disparities can be reduced through the application health promotion research in a specific culture or population aggregate (such as an Ethnic Group, low socioeconomic community, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning or any population that has health disparities ).

Discuss a leadership strategy the advanced practice nurse can incorporate to improve quality and cost-effective care

In hospitalized cancer patients, how does having visitors and family members at the bedside compare to not having them at the bedside affect their treatment and health during their hospital stay?

THEN USE THAT QUESTION FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT:

Conduct a literature search to select a qualitative research study on In hospitalized cancer patients, how does having visitors and family members at the bedside compare to not having them at the bedside affect their treatment and health during their hospital stay? Conduct an initial critical appraisal of the study.

Respond to the overview questions for the critical appraisal of qualitative studies, including:

What type of qualitative research design was utilized to conduct the study?

Are the results valid/trustworthy and credible?

How were the participants chosen?

How were accuracy and completeness of data assured?

How plausible/believable are the results?

Are implications of the research stated?

May new insights increase sensitivity to others’ needs?

May understandings enhance situational competence?

What is the effect on the reader?

Are the results plausible and believable?

Is the reader imaginatively drawn to the experience?

What are the results of the study?

Does the research approach fit the purpose of the study?

How does the researcher identify the study approach?

Are the data collection and analysis techniques appropriate?

Is the significance/importance of the study explicit?

Does the literature support a need for the study?

What is the study’s potential contribution?

Is the sampling clear and guided by study needs?

Does the researcher control selection of the sample?

Do sample size and composition reflect the study needs?

Is the phenomenon (human experience) clearly identified?

Are data collection procedures clear?

Are sources and means of verifying data explicit?

Are researcher roles and activities explained?

Are data analysis procedures described?

Does analysis guide directions of sampling when it ends?

Are data management processes described?

What are the reported results (descriptive or interpretation)?

How are specific findings presented?

Are the data meanings derived from data described in context?

Does the writing effectively promote understanding?

Will the results help me care for my patients?

Are the results relevant to persons in similar situations?

Are the results relevant to patient values and/or circumstances?

How may the results be applied to clinical practice?