Assignments

CDAE 127
Belize--Spring Semester--2007
Assignments

Your written assignment is due no later than 10 o'clock a.m. on the date indicated below (the Friday of the week the topic is covered).

For most of the assignments, you will use the course mail tool (linked from the home page) to send me your report or findings. Assuming that you use Microsoft Word as your word processor, my preference is that you attach a Word document to your e-mail message rather than writing directly into the e-mail. (It's easier for you to do drafts and easier for me to read!)

Some of the assignments (such as both parts of the first assignment) require you to post your response using the the Discussion Board (linked from the home page).

In either case, make sure to keep a copy of the original document for your records. The assignment should be approximately 2-3 pages.

Group Assignments: Three of your assignments will be done in small groups. I will assign you to a group of three or four people at the end of the first week of classes (as soon as I have received and read Part I of your first assignment). Only one person in the group needs to turn in the assignment. Make sure you indicate that the assignment represents the work of the group.

See the "grading" link for an explanation of how your assignment will be graded.

Due Date	Assignment
January 12	Introduction and Ethics (Assignment #1) This is a two-part assignment. Part I is an introduction. Using the Discussion Board (00. Introduction) please introduce yourself to me and the rest of the class. Provide us with the following information: your name, where you were born (city, state, country), where your family lives, where you ordinarily attend university (e.g., UVM, Galen University, etc.), your class (e.g., junior, senior), your major field of study, your career goal, where you currently reside, and why you are taking this course. Part II: Using the Discussion Board (01. Ethics Discussion), analyze the following hypothetical fact situation. You work for a real estate company that is selling timeshares on the beach in San Pedro. Your experience is that people don't like to take time from their vactions to visit timeshare units, but when they do they often end up purchasing one, and they are almost always happy with the decision. So you work out a deal with a vacation promotion firm to provide consumers with reduced room rates during the off-peak travel season in return for touring the site. Consumers are shuttled to the units on their way from the airport and are required to take a tour and listen to a sales pitch before going on to their hotel. They are under no obligation to buy. There is no high-pressure sales pitch. They are allowed five days to change their minds and cancel. Although consumers are not told about the timeshare promotion at the time they book the vacation, such notice is not required under the laws of Belize. Is your business practice unethical? What would a utilitarian say? What would Kant say? What do you say?
January 19	Consumer Protection Websites Assignment (Assignment #2) Go to the Consumer Protection page of the Vermont Attorney General's web site. Check out some of the links. Find something the Attorney General regulates, warns about, or otherwise does that relates to marketing practices. Describe what you learned in an e-mail message to me. Make sure you include the URL of the site in your report. Next go to FirstGov for Consumers, the federal's government's consumer website. Browse the site and select something related to marketing practices that you find interesting. First, identify the federal agency that posted the information. Then describe briefly what you learned from that information in an e-mail message to me. Make sure to include the url of the site in your report.
January 26	Informal Survey Assignment (Assignment #3) (Group Assignment) Having read about a wide range of ripoffs and scams in the Garman text and the NACAA/CFA report, as well as the consumer issues in Belize as of spring, 2000, you're now in a position to find out what the consumer problems in Belize are today. Each member of your group should interview five people to find out what consumer problems they have either experienced personally, have heard about from others, or for some other reason believe to be problems. Summarize the information and send me a single report representing the group's findings using the course e-mail. For purposes of a later assignment, ask each person whether they have every used hire-purchase to buy or rent goods and whether they were satisfied with the experience.
February 2	Self-Regulation Website Assignment (Assignment #4) Browse the website of the Better Business Bureau and familiarize yourself with what the BBB does. (1) Describe one BBB activity that helps keep the marketplace free of deceptive or unfair business practices. [Don't include the activities of either NAD or CARU]. Next go to the BBB's National Advertising Division (NAD) website. (2) Summarize what the NAD does. (3) Summarize one of the self-regulatory processes described in the links from the NAD home page. Send the information to me in an e-mail.
February 9	U.N. Guidelines Assignment (Assignment #5) (Group Assignment) If you read the U.N. Guidelines for Consumer Protection after having read the Belize Consumer Protection Baseline Study, you can see very quickly that Belize has adopted few of the guidelines. (There is a very active Burea of Standards, so we will assume that the provisions on standards in section IIIC. are being met.) Based on what you've learned so far, are there any other guidelines that are being met? If you were given funding to establish a consumer protection agency, what three guidelines would you choose as your highest priorities? Why? What economic and/or cultural aspects of Belize would cause you to choose those priorities?
February 16	Hire-Purchase Assignment (Assignment #6) (Group Assignment) Is hire-purchase in Belize as bad a deal as your reading suggests? Is Belize's Hire-Purchase Act being complied with? The purpose of this assignment is to answer both questions. Since there is a major hire-purchase business in downtown San Ignacio (Court's), it shouldn't be too hard to find out. First, send a member of your group into the store and have him or her check out two items that can also be purchased elsewhere in San Ignacio. Get as much information about each item as you can: cash price; amount of each payment; number of payments; other costs; total cost. Compare the total cost at Court's to the total cost at the other store, assuming the purchase at the other store was purchased on credit. That means you're going to have to also go to a bank or two (a good task for the other group members) to get that information. In your e-mail message to me, let me know how the costs compare, whether Court's is complying with the disclosure requirements of the Act, and your general impression of hire-purchase as a method of buying goods in Belize.
March 9	Alcohol Advertising Assignment (Assignment #7) Your reading suggests that one of the problems associated with alcohol marketing is that there is a great deal of "spillover"--i.e., advertisers place ads for alcohol in media that is targeted at an over-21 audience but many adolescents are exposed to the ads as well. Identify three magazines or television shows that appeal to those of legal age, male and female, that may be read or seen by youth as well. (You probably know which ones those are better than I do.) How many alcohol ads are there? How is drinking portrayed? Do your findings support what your reading suggests?
March 16	Children's Advertising Assignment (Assignment #8) Read the CARU "Self-Regulatory Guidelines for Children's Advertising." Then watch two hours of children's programming on television, paying close attention to the advertisements. (To maintain your sanity, I'd suggest you videotape the two hours if you have the equipment, then when you watch you can fast-forward through most of the shows! But do watch some of the shows so you know how the commercials relate to the shows. Saturday and Sunday mornings may be prime time for these shows, but there are lots of them on weeknights as well.) Keep a log describing the ads shown. What kinds of ads were shown? What products? Did they appear to comply with the guidelines? What about compliance with the spirit of the guidelines? Were any what the FCC calls "program length commercials"? (See the lecture outline for a definition of "program length commercial.")
March 23	Women in Advertising Assignment (Assignment #9) The video "Still Killing Us Softly" was filmed in 1987. In the past 20 years the status of women in the U.S. has changed dramatically--there are many more women in the workforce generally and in upper management in corporations, universities and governmental agencies. Have advertisers' use of images of women changed accordingly? Look at some television and magazine ads. What do you find? Include some examples in your assignment.
April 13	Tobacco Marketing Assignment (Assignment #10) With their traditional market (American, white, and male) diminishing, tobacco companies have focused their marketing efforts on less traditional markets: children, women, minorities and, in particular, developing countries. Using the home page of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids as a starting point, find information about tobacco company marketing practices in developing countries. (Make sure you indicate the URL of any site you use.) (1) Are American tobacco companies using marketing practices in developing countries that are illegal in the U.S. (the "home" country)? (2) Is there anything wrong with that, if it's not illegal in the "host" country? (3) Whose laws should multinational companies follow, anyway--those of the host country or the home country? Always, or are there exceptions?