Ari's face space.

1. To what extent are your movie choices influenced by other user reviews on Movie Forums?

2. What types of emotions are evoked when you find many agreeing with your responses? Could you compare these feelings to those experienced in person-to-person interaction?

3. How do you feel when people refute your review on a movie? Do you take it to heart?

4. Within what context do you navigate around Movie Forums? Do you follow particular users/genre or do you float around? Why?

5. Do you feel as if your forum participation is secretive and do you feel the need to review every movie you have seen?

6. What provokes you to use movie forums and share your thoughts with other users?

7. Do you feel as if it is easier to express yourself via Movie Forums than in real life conversation? Why?

8. Why did you chose that profile image to represent you and why not use a real image of yourself?

9. How do you structure your movie reviews? Is there a specific way you go about writing them, or do you write whatever spontaneously?

10. How has the use of movie forums shaped your daily/weekly activities?

11. What makes you feel like a significant part of this community?

12. In what ways is the forum lacking? In terms of engagement, interactivity, creativity, manifestation of information and so forth?

13. Movie forums are popular over the internet, why did you choose movieforums.com?

14. When reviewing movies, have you somehow developed a relationship with fellow users who you are constantly talking to on the web site, and where have these lead? (constantly arguing on boards,or civilized converstions throughout forums etc)?

15. Through past conversations, have you felt compelled to use inappropriate language to get your point across, and what lead you to this?

16. Is there anything else you would like to add about Movie Forums?

Will online retail one day out grow the tradition of Personal Selling?

Online retail is progressively becoming more and more important in today’s society. The way we shop has been revolutionizing over the years. From bartering to the conventional way of selling items to online shopping, it has become a necessity of life. But after seeing the demise of bartering after the introduction of money and personal selling, will online retail one day overtake the important tradition of personal selling, especially there is a generation of people being brought up with computers ? With online sites such as EBay, Amazon and Deals Direct leading the way into our future are these the kind of sites which will lead the way into a change of our societies shopping behavior.

Personal selling is defined as ‘’Oral Communication with potential buyers of a product with the intention of making a sale. The personal selling may focus initially on developing a relationship with the potential buyer, but will always ultimately end with an attempt to close the sale’’ ( Promotion – personal selling, http://tutor2u.net/business/marketing/promotion_personalselling.asp , viewed on the 23 September 2009).  Personal selling is also used for the promotion of the product and store. Persuasive elements such as the usage of language are used to sell a product to a customer through a person to person interaction.  Personal Selling also looks upon the buyer’s behavior to determine their needs and wants and this is where the seller tries to match up their needs and wants to a product that is in the store.  Having these human interactions has shaped the way we shop, but with online retail on the surge of popularity we see that maybe personal selling is something we do not need in order to purchase products that we do want and need. Through the wants and needs, this could be enough to fuel a customer’s desire to go shopping for an item they want. There are also advertisements on websites for products that are substituting the promotional element.

EBay, Amazon and Deals Direct are all similar in their purpose of providing a retail service online for customers to buy a range of different products. The only difference between these companies are that EBay has the ability for anyone to sign up and sell/buy their products while Amazon and Deals Direct rely on companies to join up with their site and have the ability to sell their products online in association with these websites. EBay has undoubtedly become one of the most popular online retail sites to hit the internet whilst Amazons popularity especially with books has been on an increase. Deals Direct which is Australian owned has not excelled as much as the other two online shopping sites. This phenomenon that is EBay and Amazon were both created 1995. Jeffrey Preston Bezos founded Amazon and EBay was created by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar. Deals Direct began in 1999 under the name Auction Brokers Australia and was running underneath EBay’s banner for 5 years until October 2004 where they became the lone entity, Deals Direct.

EBay has ‘’approximately 84 million active users worldwide’’ (EBay-Media Center,2009 http://news.ebay.com/about.cfm viewed on 22 September 2009), Amazon ‘’ attracts approximately 50 million U.S. consumers to its website on a monthly basis (Wikipedia – Amazon, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com, viewed on 22 September 2009) whilst Deals Direct have ‘’over 1,000,000 happy customers across Australia’’ (About Deals Direct Australia, Safe and Easy Online Shopping, Best Prices & Best Deals, http://www.dealsdirect.com.au/about-us/, viewed on 22 September 2009) . For a form of payment EBay owns PayPal which generates a huge amount of money. It was report that in 2008 their total annual revenue was $2.4 billion dollars. PayPal’ enables any individual or business with an email address to securely, easily and quickly send and receive payments online. PayPal’s service builds on the existing financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards and uses the world’s most advanced proprietary fraud prevention systems to create a safe payment solution’’ (The EBay Company, viewed on 22 September 2009,http://pages.ebay.com/aboutebay/thecompany/companyoverview.html) while Amazon, who do not accept PayPal or any other wire transfer, deal with major credit cards such as Amex, MasterCard and Visa etc. This is the same with Deals Direct, but they also have in place BPay, which ‘’ BPAY is a payments clearing organization owned by a group of retail banks. Individuals who hold accounts with a BPAY participating financial institution can pay billing organizations which participate in BPAY, using account transfers initiated by phone or internet. The transfers may be from savings, cheque or credit card accounts”. (RBA, Glossary, 2009,www.rba.gov.au/Glossary/text_only.asp, viewed on 22 September 2009).  All these transactions have one thing in common, the non-usage of physical money, an item we would regularly use at retail stores.

Because of the rise in internet usage around the world and the ever popular credit card, these are factors that are contributing to the excelling of online retail sites. Also contributing would be price in products and substances that would affect the price ‘’ Variations in retail prices caused by local sales tax rates seems to have a large impact on consumer’s online buying patterns, suggesting that there is a cross-channel competition ‘’ (Austan Goolsbee, The Journal of Industrial Economics, Competition in the Computer Industry: Online versus retail, 2001, Vol 49, No. 4, http://www.jstor.org/pss/3569792). There has been an increase in sales over the past years especially focusing on America. United States in 2004 in their first quarter, sales reached $15.7 billion dollars.  Sales are still showing a huge possibility of increase until 2010 in America alone, ‘Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research recently estimated that online sales will more than double over the next six years, growing from $144 billion in 2004 to $316 billion in 2010.’ (Matt Hines, Cnet News, Online retail sale continue to surge, 20 August 2004, http://news.cnet.com/Online-retail-sales-continue-to-surge/2100-1038_3-5318048.html).  Having these statistic, online retail is becoming increasing popular with no signs of slowing down at all.

With the ever increase in sales with online retail, as well as a generation that is being brought up with computers, online retail is due to become the number one way of shopping. It might just be a matter of years before online shopping over takes personal selling.

References

Promotion – personal selling, http://tutor2u.net/business/marketing/promotion_personalselling.asp , viewed on the 23 September 2009

EBay-Media Center, 2009, http://news.ebay.com/about.cfm viewed on 22 September 2009

Wikipedia, Amazon, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com, viewed on 22 September 2009

About Deals Direct Australia, Safe and Easy Online Shopping, Best Prices & Best Deals, http://www.dealsdirect.com.au/about-us/, viewed on 22 September 2009

The EBay Company, viewed on 22 September 2009,http://pages.ebay.com/aboutebay/thecompany/companyoverview.html

RBA, Glossary, 2009,www.rba.gov.au/Glossary/text_only.asp, viewed on 22 September 2009

Austan Goolsbee, The Journal of Industrial Economics, Competition in the Computer Industry: Online versus retail, 2001, Vol 49, No. 4, http://www.jstor.org/pss/3569792

Matt Hines, Cnet News, Online retail sale continue to surge, 20 August 2004, http://news.cnet.com/Online-retail-sales-continue-to-surge/2100-1038_3-5318048.html

I am part of many online forums but one forum I am constantly on is The internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com). This is a brilliant site for movie lovers such as myself. There are millions of forums on this website but each are catagorized in the film in which people want to talk about.

This can be accessed by the public but if you want to make a posting you do have to become a member of this website. You can also look up facts about the film,television show, video game or a actor!

Hey everyone in DIGC102, feel free to take part in my quick survey that i will be using in my report focusing on online retail sites. If you have any privacy issues with your answers you could email me on akp421@uow.edu.au.

1. Do you use online retail websites and which ones do you use?

2.What sort of items do you purchase (i.e clothing, books etc)?

3.How often do you look at these websites (weekly or monthly based)

4.Estimating, how much would you spend per month?

5.Have you encountered any problems purchasing items?

Peace out :)

Should there be a R18+ rating for video/computer games in Australia?

At the moment in Australia, we currently do not have a R18+ rating for computer games. Why is this? Film and Television have these ratings why not video games?  This has become a hot question with gamers who are determined to see their favorite games on Australian shelves.  There are currently 31 different video games that have been banned in Australia. The reasons for them being banned is because if the high quality of violence in the video games and/or the amount of sexual content.

The overall opinion over the internet is the fact that there is no R18+ rating for any games ‘’is a joke’’ according to Tom Crago the President of Game Developers Association of Australia. Having an actual classification system in place is what he and many believe is the key to see games which are currently being banned in Australia eventually being sold over the counter. It has also been noted that in recent surveys, the average age of a gamer is 30 years old, so how can this be a problem. It is because the current classification of video games is centered on teenagers ranging from an early age of 10 to barely even 18 year olds.

According to government the reasons behind banning of such games as Getting up: Under Pressure and Manhunt is because it can influence crime in teenagers. Not focusing on the target market of particular games, the government and Office of Classification Board are only focusing on the impact these violence games could do to young minds. Through the internet, and looking specifically at journals that are based upon the effects of young minds by these video games that are targeted at 30+year olds they find that young people will end up with ‘’aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, and cardiovascular arousal, and to decreases in helping behavior’’(Craig A Anderson,  Journal  of Adolescent, 2003).
With this ongoing issue as of last year the Federal government has decided consider updating the classification system for games to include a R18+ rating. But one year later, we have yet to see any attempts by government to resolve the issue.  In an Australian Survey in 2005 conducted by the Bond University with a combined 1601 Households participating, it was founded that 88% of these households are supporting the classification change to include the R18+ rating.

So in conclusion, there are still gamers out there in Australia who are banning together for this new classification system to be in place, and even though there is a sense of government approval with bringing in the R18+ rating we are still yet to see any adjustments being made.

Bibliography
Games Banned or Censored: 2000 to Present, viewed 18 August 2009, http://www.refused-classification.com/JPEGRCGames2000-Present.htm

Ford M Catherine, Short-Term Effects of Highly and Mildly Aggressive Video Games , Affect of the Game Player: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 12, No. 4, 390-402 (1986)

Asher Moses , The Sydney Morning Herald, February 25, 2008, viewed on 20 August 2009 http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/rrated-games-may-be-on-shelves-soon/2008/02/22/1203467345267.html

Risen Not Rising in Australia as the OFLC Strikes Again : Aus Gamers, viewed on 20 August 2009 http://www.ausgamers.com/news/read/2773873

Anderson A Craig, Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive Cognition, Aggressive Affect, Physiological Arousal, and Pro-social Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Scientific Literature, Journal of Adolescence, Volume 27, Issue 1, February 2004

Sarah Stokely, Adult gamers call for R rating, 07 July 2006, viewed on the 20 August 2009,  http://apcmag.com/adult_gamers_call_for_r_rating.htm

Risen Refused Classification,  viewed on the 20 August 2009, http://www.r18games.com.au/2009/08/risen-refused-classification/#comment-576

David Wildgoose , Australia’s Video Game Classification Is “A Joke”, viewed on 19 August 2009http://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/08/australias-video-game-classification-is-a-joke/

 Sub-industry: Advertising

 Question: Children and Fast Food, are these advertisements working too well?

 Keywords: Advertising, Fast-Food, Children, Obesity, Advertisments, Market, Childhood, Effects

• Google:The Weighty Issue of Australian television food advertising and childhood obesity

http://cbrcc.curtin.edu.au/reports/journal%20articles/hpja%2017%205-11.pdf

• Google Scholar:Fast‐Food Restaurant Advertising on Television and Its Influence on Childhood Obesity

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/590132

•  Ask:The role of media in Childhood Obesity

http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/The-Role-Of-Media-in-Childhood-Obesity.pdf

•  Bing: Report: TV ads contribute to child obesity. Scientists urge marketers to stop targeting junk food commercials to kids

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10346448/+

• Altavista: Advertising And Childhood Obesity: Food Companies Changing Little

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070525205437.htm

•  Dogpile: Children’s food choices, parents’ understanding and influence, and the role of food promotions

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/food_ads/

• Gigablast: Food Advertising: Advertising bans miss the mark

http://www.responsible-advertising.org/fo_advertising_bans.asp

• Wiki: Fast food advertising

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_food_advertising

•  Blackle: Childhood obesity fueled by marketing tactics

http://www.childrennow.org/newsroom/press_coverage/childhood_obesity_op_ed.html

• Rollyo:Public Health Obesity-Related TV Advertising

http://www.rwjf.org/childhoodobesity/product.jsp?id=23371

Hilarious Blooper from one of my fav show Stargate. (Note it will be funny only if you know who McGyver is)

Hello to everyone out there in Tumblr world!! :)

Peace