Management accounting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Management accounting - Essay Example However, with the right tools information and skills, a company is guaranteed to stay afloat in a world where businesses keep dropping out of the corporate world. How companies manage their finances and workforce dictates whether the company is bound to open its doors come the next financial year. One of the major concerns in management is the management of accounts which is usually handled a company’s accountants in conjunction with the management of the company. Management accounting specifically deals with generating information pertaining to a given company and basically relates on how to minimize costs while improving sales and boosting profits within the available company’s resources. In short this is information that helps the management to make crucial decisions. Financial accounting on the other hand deals with generating information based on information relayed by external users and mainly deals with control of cash inflow and outflow in the company. So why is management accounting so important? Among the most important reasons why management accounting is important to company include; 1) Planning-this basically deals with making decisions pertaining to the company’s products where and when to make them, who to sell them to, how much labor it will use and so on and so forth (Caplan, 5). 2) Operational Control-management helps the top officials in identifying and minimizing production error from the time a product is initiated for production to the time it is released to the market for sale. 3) Performance and Evaluation-this involves evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of different products and different managers within the company. When dealing with management of accounts two concepts become clear: Variable (Direct) costs and fixed production overhead costs

Assessing The Four Functions Of Management Commerce Essay

Assessing The Four Functions Of Management Commerce Essay The base function is to: Plan It is the foundation area of management. It is the base upon which the all the areas of management should be built. Planning requires administration to assess; where the company is presently set, and where it would be in the upcoming. From there an appropriate course of action is determined and implemented to attain the companys goals and objectives Planning is unending course of action. There may be sudden strategies where companies have to face. Sometimes they are uncontrollable. You can say that they are external factors that constantly affect a company both optimistically and pessimistically. Depending on the conditions, a company may have to alter its course of action in accomplishing certain goals. This kind of preparation, arrangement is known as strategic planning. In strategic planning, management analyzes inside and outside factors that may affect the company and so objectives and goals. Here they should have a study of strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. For management to do this efficiently, it has to be very practical and ample. The subsequent function is to: Organize The second function of the management is getting prepared, getting organized. Management must organize all its resources well before in hand to put into practice the course of action to decide that has been planned in the base function. Through this process, management will now determine the inside directorial configuration; establish and maintain relationships, and also assign required resources. While determining the inside directorial configuration, management ought to look at the different divisions or departments. They also see to the harmonization of staff, and try to find out the best way to handle the important tasks and expenditure of information within the company. Management determines the division of work according to its need. It also has to decide for suitable departments to hand over authority and responsibilities. The third function is to: Direct Directing is the third function of the management. Working under this function helps the management to control and supervise the actions of the staff. This helps them to assist the staff in achieving the companys goals and also accomplishing their personal or career goals which can be powered by motivation, communication, department dynamics, and department leadership. Employees those which are highly provoked generally surpass in their job performance and also play important role in achieving the companys goal. And here lies the reason why managers focus on motivating their employees. They come about with prize and incentive programs based on job performance and geared in the direction of the employees requirements. It is very important to maintain a productive working environment, building positive interpersonal relationships, and problem solving. And this can be done only with Effective communication. Understanding the communication process and working on area that need improvement, help managers to become more effective communicators. The finest technique of finding the areas that requires improvement is to ask themselves and others at regular intervals, how well they are doing. This leads to better relationship and helps the managers for better directing plans. The final function is to: Control Control, the last of four functions of management, includes establishing performance standards which are of course based on the companys objectives. It also involves evaluating and reporting of actual job performance. When these points are studied by the management then it is necessary to compare both the things. This study on comparision of both decides further corrective and preventive actions. In an effort of solving performance problems, management should higher standards. They should straightforwardly speak to the employee or department having problem. On the contrary, if there are inadequate resources or disallow other external factors standards from being attained, management had to lower their standards as per requirement. The controlling processes as in comparison with other three, is unending process or say continuous process. With this management can make out any probable problems. It helps them in taking necessary preventive measures against the consequences. Management can also recognize any further developing problems that need corrective actions. Effective and efficient management leads to success, the success where it attains the objectives and goals of the organizations. Of course for achieving the ultimate goal and aim management need to work creatively in problem solving in all the four functions. Management not only has to see the needs of accomplishing the goals but also has to look in to the process that their way is feasible for the company. Goal Management There is a strong relationship between a successful company and an effective goal setting process. By setting goals, specifically SMART goals, employers engage their workforce and encourage employees across the company to focus and successfully achieve these goals together. Strong goal alignment and goal visibility allows for quicker execution of company strategy by enabling management to allocate proper resources across various projects. Managers can focus their staff on the companys most important goals and reduce task redundancy throughout their team while employees will have a greater understanding of how their efforts will serve the business goals. Goal management also lets you establish a true pay-for-performance culture by communicating the company goals to employees, therefore providing the groundwork for linking reward systems with individual and / or team performance. Find out how you can put goal alignment to work at your organization in our complimentary whitepaper, Driving Success: The Incredible Power of Company-Wide Goal Alignment. In his piece Notes on the Theory of Organization, a memo prepared while he was a member of the Brownlow Committee, Luther Gulick asks rhetorically What is the work of the chief executive? What does he do? POSDCORB is the answer, designed to call attention to the various functional elements of the work of a chief executive because administration and management have lost all specific content. In Gulicks own words, the elements of POSDCORB are as follows: Planning, that is working out in broad outline the things that need to be done and the methods for doing them to accomplish the purpose set for the enterprise; Organizing, that is the establishment of the formal structure of authority through which work subdivisions are arranged, defined, and co-ordinated for the defined objective; Staffing, that is the whole personnel function of bringing in and training the staff and maintaining favorable conditions of work; Directing, that is the continuous task of making decisions and embodying them in specific and general orders and instructions and serving as the leader of the enterprise; Co-Ordinating, that is the all important duty of interrelating the various parts of the work; Reporting, that is keeping those to whom the executive is responsible informed as to what is going on, which thus includes keeping himself and his subordinates informed through records, research, and inspection; Budgeting, with all that goes with budgeting in the form of planning, accounting and control Gulick states that his statement of the work of a chief executive is adapted from the functional analysis elaborated by Henri Fayol in his Industrial and General Administration. Indeed, Fayols work includes fourteen principles and five elements of management that lay the foundations of Gulicks POSDCORB tasks of an executive. Fayols fourteen principles of management are as follows: Division of Work Authority and Responsibility Discipline Unity of Command Unity of Direction Subordination of Individual Interest to General Interest Remuneration of Personnel Centralization Scalar Chain (line of authority with peer level communication) Order Equity Stability of Tenure of Personnel Initiative Esprit de Corps Fayols influence upon Gulick is readily apparent in the five elements of management discussed in his book, which are: Planning examining the future and drawing up plans of actions Organizing building up the structure (labor and material) of the undertaking Command maintaining activity among the personnel Co-ordination unifying and harmonizing activities and efforts Control seeing that everything occurs in conformity with policies and practices Fayol, H. (1949). General and Industrial Management. (C. Storrs, Trans.). London: Sir Isaac Pitman Sons, LTD. (Original work published 1918) Service industry is getting more attention in B-World. It has never been so easy to establish a company, I should say, listed company as it is now being in service industry rapidly. Production and operation enabled companies have seen so many business management fundamentals for quality control and best team management including quality circles. If I were to point, I would talk about Baldrige Award Framework that promotes quality awareness in organization. It is based on a weighted score of seven categories of performance criteria. Consultancy firms, IT or Hospitality services and so other services in this industry want more influential, organizer and innovator talents. Take an example of a small IT company of 10-50 talents serving best functional and operational solutions to giants. Do you want to categorize such company in levels? E.g. One HR, One Director, One Software Engineer, One Writer, One Quality Tester, One Functional Analyst, One Support Engineer, One System Administrator, One Hardware Engineer, One Designer etc. I agree to hire masters but I am against individual operations capability. I favor multiple skills specialist or in other words All Rounder. This article is to describe the team needed in todays service industry so called as Self Managing Teams. Emery suggested, In designing a social system to efficiently operate a modern capital-intensive plant the key problem is that of creating self-managing groups to man the interface with the technical system. The basis of the autonomous work group approach to job design is socio-technical system theory that suggest that the best results are obtained if grouping is such that workers are primarily related to each other by way of task performance and task interdependence. Charles Peguy described, A man is not determined by what he does and still less by what he says. But in the deepest part of himself a being is determined solely by what he is. Self-management team is made of such persons who are motivated by self. Defining Self Managing Team A self-managing team or autonomous work group is allocated an overall task and given discretion over how the work is done. It provides for intrinsic motivation by giving people autonomy and the means to control their work, which will include feedback information. Self-Directed (or Self-Managing) Teams are teams that have been structured to manage and coordinate their own activities and make many of the day-to-day decisions that would have traditionally been made by a supervisor or manager. They usually have responsibility for a complete piece of work (such as engine assembly) and they work quite closely and interdependently. A self-management team is a permanent group of employees who together are responsible for the total process where products or services are made and delivered to internal or external clients. According to one research, the TQM and mass production organized groups did not improve customer service quality or sales volume. While self-managed teams improved sales by 9.4% and quality of customer service by 6.3%. In fact, comprehensive surveys report that 79% of companies in the Fortune 1,000 currently deploy such empowered, self-directed or autonomous teams. Because of their widespread use, much research has been devoted to understanding how best to set up self-managing teams to maximize their effectiveness. Understanding Multi-skilled Team Better Self-managing team incorporates the concepts of Hackman Oldhams job characteristics model. Autonomy Skill variety Task significance Task identity Positive Feedback The team enlarges individual jobs to include a wider range of operative skills. It is multi-skilled team operations. It decides on methods of work and the planning, scheduling and controlling of work. It distributes tasks itself among its members. The team plans and guards the process on its own, solves daily problems, without always having to consult the manager or supporting services. It takes account of the social or group factors and the technology as well as the individual motivators. The team maintains independently contacts with others teams and staff. The team improves working methods on its own, and has all the relevant information available on the basis of which they evaluate their results. The team-members posses both qualifications on both the care they deliver as well as certain organizational qualities. Self-Management Team Development According to Vanessa Urch Druskat and Jane V. Wheeler Leading Self-Management teams in organization is the process that requires specific behaviors that can be grouped into four basic functions. __First moving back and forth between the team and the broader organization to build relationships, __Second scouting necessary information, __Third persuading the team and outside constituents to support one another, and __Forth empowering team members. Self-Managing Team Corporate Whole Foods is very committed to the team structure and self-managing work teams; theyre like the basic cells of the company. The teams are empowered. They do their own hiring. They do their own scheduling. To become a team member at Whole Foods, you have to get voted on by your team after a trial period. If you dont get a two-thirds vote, you dont get on the team, said John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods on Self -managing work team. Hewlett Packard trusts and respects for individuals, focusing on high level achievement and contribution, conducting business with integrity, achieving objectives through teamwork, and encouraging flexibility and innovation. Let it be either small or big, no doubts most of the companies are applying to have self-management teams in organization. Books on Self-Managing Team Dawn Burstall, T. Michael Vallis and Geoffrey K. Turnbull, I.B.S. Relief: A Doctor, a Dietitian, and a Psychologist Provide a Team Approach to Managing Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Ronald E. Purser and Steven Cabana, The Self-Managing Organization: How Leading Companies Are Transforming the Work of Teams for Real Impact. MANAGING PEOPLE IN ORGANIZATIONS: ASSESSING THE PROPOSITION THAT THE WAYS IN WHICH PEOPLE ARE MANAGED AFFECTS THE PERFORMANCE OF THE ORGANISATIONS WITHIN WHICH THEY FUNCTION This essay reviews theoretical concepts to assess the proposition that the ways in which people are managed affects the performance of the organisations within which they function. The implications of this proposition are that (a) effective management is associated with higher levels of organisational performance, while ineffective management practices are associated with inferior organisational performance. The theoretical framework within which this assessment is performed is Managing People in Organisations (MPIO). MPIO is an umbrella concept that encompasses both organizational behaviour (OR) and human resource management (HRM). The concepts of leadership and its effects on organisational performance also are included in MPIO (Beech, Cairns, Livingstone, Lockyer, and Tsoukas, 2002). MPIO includes a wide array of concepts and theories. To assess the proposition that the ways in which people are managed affects the performance of the organisations within which they function, however, this essay focused on two crucial aspects of MPIO in the contemporary period. These crucial aspects of MPIO are the responses by management to the globalised business environment and the effects of cultural diversity on managements communications with employees, each of which is crucial to the devel . . . perate on a global scale. The formal systems alone are not able to satisfy the enormous information needs necessary to coordinate such a complex configuration (Sussland, 2001). The roles and tasks of management also change noticeably in these contexts. When several different cultural backgrounds are present within a company at any one time, management cannot assume that all values are common. Often the shared understanding of the role of management becomes an instrument of integration that is more powerful than formal structures and systems. The manager, therefore, becomes a vehicle of integration. Internationalization and cosmopolitanism are the new characteristics required of this person. The task of the top manager is not that of submitting the activities of a national organization to a central control, but rather that of co-opting abilities and obtaining the involvement of the national organizations; paradoxically, attention shifts from control of the strategic content to managem ent of the organizational process. Evaluation and reward systems must favour the free exchange of information and commitment to global objectives over the above local interests to obtain a positive attitude to integration and thus favour a clim . . . The process starts with a strategic assessment (see The People Process, page 85). This is where HR develops staffing plans to support the organizations objectives and strategies. The process continues as hiring, training/development, and performance management activities are carried out. Finally, ongoing workforce relations and environment activities (e.g., recognition programs and employee surveys) take place. At the center of the people process are the executives and staff that comprise the HR function. IDENTIFYING RISKS The IIAs Auditing Your Human Resource Function seminar includes a risk assessment exercise where participants identify their top HR risks. A few of the most interesting and most frequently mentioned people process risks arise in the areas of objectives, employee skills, HR competency, processes, and outsourced activities. OBJECTIVES Unaligned objectives is a risk event imbedded in the first people process activityorganization design and staffing plans. When HR does not have the appropriate level of involvement in the strategic planning process and its objectives are not aligned with those of the organization, the result can be a ticking time bomb. This disconnect can prevent management from achieving its strategic objectives. It can also result in huge compliance issues (e.g., organization downsizing, staff reductions, and unintended employment law litigation). Some organizations have managed this risk via enterprise risk management activities. In others, where HR is a key player on the management team, this is a nonevent. EMPLOYEE SKILLS Human capital skill gaps is another risk is embedded in organization design and staffing plans. Risks arise, for example, when organizations have heavy concentrations of experienced employees in skill positions who will be retiring soon. A second skill gap risk is linked to changing operating environments and new strategies. These changes often require new skills that can take time to develop or acquire. Best practice HR functions manage these risks via employee database information and competency forecasting techniques. HR COMPETENCY HR staff are at the center of the people process. HR and internal audit groups have a lot in common. Both have professional associations and certifications and play key roles in their organizations governance process. It is also possible for both groups to have skill gaps. Some of these gaps can be remedied via training or other resourcesin other cases, a change of personnel is required. HR competency gaps are a real risk in many organizations. The internal audit issue is how to identify and communicate these gaps to management. To comply with The IIAs International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing, auditors have internal quality assessment programs that can include client surveys and peer group benchmarking on staff profiles (e.g., size, experience, and certifications). HR should have a similar quality program. [GRAPHIC OMITTED] PROCESSES The people process, like all other processes, is subject to communication breakdowns, bottlenecks, faulty handoffs, and inefficiencies. What makes it somewhat unique is that inconsistent compliance (e.g., hiring or promotion policies) and too much (e.g., supervisor comments in unofficial employee files) or too little documentation (e.g., involuntary terminations) can result in litigation and reputation damage. Of course, the likelihood and magnitude of these risks depends on the organization. Best practice HR functions use technology (e.g., employee kiosks to update information, more reliance on automated controls), training, and monitoring to manage process risk. The risks are referenced to the four objectives in the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commissions Enterprise Risk ManagementIntegrated Framework (S = strategic, O = operations, R = reporting, and C = compliance). Some possible risk categories are also included to help identify various types of risk events. Sample impact and likelihood ratings are assigned to the events (4 = high and 1 = low). Also, the matrix has three priority ratings. One is calculated (impact times likelihood), the second is a real (i.e., subjective) rating of the inherent risk, and the third is a real residual risk rating. The generic ratings are only intended to demonstrate the matrix features. Individual controls are not included by design, as they are best identified and evaluated at the organization level.

George Orwell :: essays research papers

George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on June 25, 1903 in Motihari in India, which was at that time part of the British Empire. His family was not very wealthy and like most middle-class English families of that time, their livelihood depended on the Empire. In 1907, his family returned to England. His parents managed to send him to a private school in Sussex and when he was thirteen, he won a scholarship to Wellington. Soon after that, he won another scholarship to the well-known public school, Eaton. After being forced to work very hard at preparatory school, Blair lost interest in any further intellectual exertion that was not related to his personal ambition. In his book Why I Write he says that from a very young age he had known that he must be a writer. But, he also realized that in order to become a writer, he had to read literature. However, in Eaton, English literature was not a major subject and he spent his five years reading works by the masters of English prose includ ing Jonathon Swift, Laurence Sterne and Jack London on his own. He failed to win a university scholarship after the final examinations at Eaton and, in 1922, he joined the Indian Imperial Police. This decision was not the usual path that most Eaton students would have taken. Blair preferred a life of travel and action and he served in the force in Burma (now known as Myanmar) for five years. He resigned from the police force for two main reasons: firstly, being a police officer was a diversion from his real ambition of being a writer; and secondly, he felt that as a policeman in Burma, he was supporting a political system in which he could no longer believe. Even at this time, his political ideas and his ideas about writing were closely related. In his book The Road To Wigan Pier he wrote that he wished to "escape from†¦ every form of man's dominion over man", and he felt that the social structure of British Imperialism was that "dominion" over the English working class. After he returned to London at the age of twenty-four, he began to teach himself how to write. He spent most of his time writing in very poor living conditions because he felt that the poor in London and Paris represented the people of Burma under British rule.

Red Bull versus Coca Cola Sport Sponsorship from a Sponsor’s Perspective Essay

Involved in this money is planning the sponsorship deal, carrying it out and last but not least evaluating the whole process and engagement (Hermanns 2003). So according to this the strategic planning process is crucial in order to communicate effectively and achieve the desired outcome. It has become more professional and the amount of money and time spent on this process has increased over the last years. Furthermore, Buhler and Nufer (2010) see mutual understanding, a long-term perspective and trust as important to satisfy the needs of both parties. Hence there are a lot of different perspectives that need to be considered during the strategic planning of a sponsorship deal and different types of strategies can be followed. The comparative case study of Coca-Cola and Red Bull’ sport sponsorship strategy relies on extensive secondary data, from newspaper coverage and official websites from Abstract In 2010, 18. 2 billion US-$ were spent on sponsoring in North America of which 68 per cent are spent on sport sponsoring, by far the leading form of sponsoring (Streng 2010). The area of Sport Sponsorship is immensely important in the sport business. In the major sport leagues sponsorship makes up at least a third of the overall turnover (Ludwig and Schneider 2010). However, the way in which sport sponsorship is dealt with has changed dramatically in recent years. The time where a sponsor just kindly signed a contract to support the local club is gone, especially when it comes to global operating organizations. On the one hand companies are willing to spend more on sport sponsorship. On the other hand they want to gain more in return. In 2010, 63. 7 per cent of the companies have a written strategic and operational planning before starting the sponsorship (Hermanns and Buschner 2010). The question that occurs is therefore how companies strategically plan their sponsorship activities. To respond to this question, this paper analyses the sponsorship strategy of two major sponsors from the beverage industry, Coca Cola and Red Bull. Coca Cola is the best known brand in the world and was one of the first sponsors in sport in the early 20th century. Red Bull is a new company which is highly involved in sport sponsorship. Their approaches however are different. While Coca-Cola is investing huge amounts to sponsors majors events with a global reach, such as the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup, Red Bull initially invested in lesser known extreme sports with a very specific target audience. Moreover, contrarily to Coca-Cola, Red Bull does not limit itself to buying sponsorship rights. In most cases, it also took over the control of the sponsee. Red Bull runs competitions in extreme sports, organizes events, and owns its own Formula 1 team and three football clubs (Salzburg, Leipzig and New-york). Red Bull’s strategy, now the fourth biggest sport sponsor in the world, is thus different to other global sponsors. In literature it is argued that implementing and using the gained rights costs the sponsor three times the money that they have spend on both the sponsors and their sponsees. To gain an additional insight, interviews with the sport sponsorship department of both organizations are planned to better apprehend their strategy and see what their plans are/were and what actually was achieves. These interviews will explore their target group(s), reason for this target segment, activities, general understanding of sponsorship, importance of sponsorship within the company etc. Preliminary results show that there are big differences in the sponsorship strategy of Red Bull and Coca Cola. While Coca Cola seems to be a partner of the sponsee, Red Bull is using a more aggressive style of sponsorship. Red Bull tends to take control of the whole situation in order to ensure the success and the direction of the event. The whole Red Bull company has implemented its sponsorship activities. An example is Red Bull TV, the company owned TV channel, which further broadcast the sponsees. Sponsorship is part of the company philosophy and irrigates its whole marketing strategy. The core product and the sponsorship area are closely linked. Though different, these two cases both demonstrate that strategic planning is getting more important in global companies. There are certain patterns which can be found as well as differences which are due to the different approaches and culture of the company. The implications for the future are more professionalism and concentrating on the own culture rather than trying to copy the strategy from another company. Strategies need to be unique and specifically created for the organisation.

The Effect Of Motivation, Values And Involvement Of The Buyers In The Market

In each and every market the buyers are unpredictable and therefore strategic marketing should be in a way that the marketers influence the decisions made by the buyers. Motivation, values and involvement of the buyers plays a very important role in influencing the decision of the buyers. For a business organization to be unique from other competitors in the industry it needs to form a strong relationship with the current buyers and the potential buyers.Considering the values of the buyers, involving them in the decision making process and motivating them accordingly are some of the ways that businesses can use to influence the behavior of the buyers. There is need to research on the motivation, value and involvement of the buyer because all of the successful sales are made not because of the excellence of the products being marketed but because the marketers either consciously or unconsciously have found a human reason to why their products should sell. The marketers need to underst and the role of motivation, values and involvement of the buyers so as to have a successful sale.Businesses that misunderstand the above role end up making wrong decisions concerning the behavior of the buyer and hence they incur significant losses. Research also needs to be carried out to show the differences in the levels of motivation and involvement between buyers who are purchasing for business reasons and those who are purchasing for personal reasons. Understanding the values, motivation and the involvement of the buyers also helps businesses retain their customers and hence have a stable market and a competitive advantage in the market.Due to the above factors which clearly show the importance of the motivation, values and involvement of the buyers there is need to carry out a research so as to provide more information to businesses on this topic. LITERATURE REVIEW In a business context the behavior of the consumers is referred to as the study of the reason why consumers purc hase specific items during a certain period in a certain place. In trying to understand the concept of consumer behavior a lot of research has looked at it from a social, psychology and economics view.A lot of research has been carried to evaluate the behavior of the consumers but most of the research is carried out on groups of the consumers and fails to investigate the behavior of a single consumer without the influence of the other consumers in the market. Most of the research that has been carried out studies the characteristics of consumers in groups so as to understand the needs and preferences of a certain group of consumers (Solomon et al: 121-135). This research study will study the consumers individually to understand personal needs and preferences of consumers.Studies have also been carried out to investigate the influence consumers get from their friends, families and the society as a whole. Consumer behavior also tries to study the consumer retention, the relationship o f the consumers and the business and also the values of the consumers. Businesses need to consider the motivation of the buyers in order to improve their sales. There are two types of motivations of the buyers: psychological motivation and physiological motivation (Hauftvet et al: 889).Consumer behavior studies are carried out to determine how the consumers use and dispose the product as well as to understand how the products are purchased. Marketers need to understand the use of the products they deal with because this affects how a product is positioned in the market and how the marketers can influence the consumption of the product. Due to the fact that environmental problems arise as a result of disposal of the products purchased by the consumers it is necessary to study the disposal of products as this affects the motivation of the buyers towards a certain product.The research will extend previous studies in that it will look at the effect of consumer behavior on the society fo r example aggressive marketing of foods rich in high foods has serious effects on the health of the population (Henry, 2004: 256-262). In the early 1900’s Dither carried out a qualitative market research and suggested that the motives of the consumers are initiated by concealed unconscious needs. However, most of the theories developed by Ditcher on consumer motivations have been disregarded in the modern marketing strategies (as cited in Ziems, 2004: 211).Ditcher identified five stages involved in the motivation process as underlying need, drive, desire, goal and behavior. Consumer involvement is the increased state of awareness that tends to motivate consumers to think about a product and seek information regarding the product before they buy it. High levels of involvement of the buyers have been seen to increase the attention of the buyers towards certain products and also the consumers place greater importance on the sources of the information relating to the products.Thi s research will also investigate whether there is more to motivating the consumers rather than unaware desires or wants of the consumers. Hein, 2006 noted that the only best way to hook a buyer into buying a certain product is touching the buyers emotionally (Hein, 2006: 42). HYPOTHESES The level of motivation of the buyers affects the competitive advantage of the business. The value of buyers on a certain product affects the sales of the product. High levels of involvement of the buyers increase the information the buyers have regarding the product.RESEARCH METHODS In selection of the research methods to be used in this research, time available for the research, the cost of the research and access to the information were the factors that will be put into consideration. For the successful completion of the study it will be necessary to collect data from various sources to enable the business produce items that the buyers want and not what the business thinks the buyers want. Both pr imary and secondary methods of research will be used in this study.Secondary research will involve making use of information that has been collected in previous studies. Primary data collection methods will also be used in this research. The methods used will include mail questionnaires, use of focus groups, phone surveys and direct observations. The research will focus more on the data collected through surveys because surveys produce more specific information regarding the buyers. The surveys will have open ended questions as well as close ended questions.Due to the fact that mail surveys are generally inexpensive they will be preferred in this research to cut down the cost of the research. MEASUREMENT APPROACH Collection of the data in this study will commence by informing the expected respondents of the need to carry out the research and how their responses will be treated during the research. The expected respondents will then be sent a copy of the questionnaire through mail. S o as to minimize the chances of unanswered questionnaires the researcher will take a sample of the respondents from a group of the consumers.The sample will consist of people of all races, ethnic group and age. Follow ups will then be done through the phone to ensure that the respondents have received the questionnaires and they are willing to respond to the questionnaires. Observations will then be made to understand the level of involvement of the respondents and how this affects the market of the product. After the questionnaires have been completed by the respondents the researcher will then collect all the questionnaires and analyze the data acquired.Analysis of the data will be carried out by use of SPSS and then graphs and charts will be derived from the data to present the data in a more clear way. The researcher will then collect secondary information from previous studies that have been carried out. The secondary information combined with the primary information will then be used to show how the values, motivation and the involvement of the buyers affect the market of the product. Statistical analysis will also be carried out on the data collected to test for validity and reliability of the data.DISCUSSION For the successful completion of this research contributions will be drawn from earlier researchers in the area. The marketers will also be expected to participate in the research in that they will give experiences on how the values, motivation and involvement of the consumers have affected the marketing of their products. One of the major difficulties expected during the research is unwilling respondents. This will result to unanswered questionnaires hence gaps in the expected data.An error may occur in the observation method of collecting information, this happens when the researcher observes the wrong behaviors of the sampled population. There will be need for further research in this area to clearly identify the measures that business organizat ions should take to ensure that the buyers are more involved in the business activities. WORD COUNT: 1, 480 WORK CITED Haugtvedt P. Curtis, Paul Herr and Frank R. Kardes, (2008), Handbook of consumer psychology, Illustrated Edition, New York, CRC Press Hein, K. (2006, October 2). Inside the Mind of the Marketer.Brandweek, 47(36), 16-21. Retrieved July 22, 2009, from the Academic Search Complete database Henry Assael, (2004), consumer behavior: a strategic approach, illustrated Edition, Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin Publishers Solomon R Michael, Gary J. Bamossy, Soren Askegaard, (2001), Consumer behavior: A European perspective, Second Edition, New York, Prentice Hall Publishers. Ziems, D. (2004, June). The Morphological Approach for Unconscious Consumer Motivation Research. Journal of Advertising Research, 44(2), 210-215. Retrieved July 22, 2009 from EJC database