How concentration affects the rate of reaction between Hydrochloric Aci

How concentration affects the rate of reaction between Hydrochloric Acid and Sodium Thiosulphate Chemistry Coursework How Concentration Affects a Reaction Aim: The aim of this experiment is to find out how concentration affects the rate of reaction between Hydrochloric Acid and Sodium Thiosulphate. Introduction: This experiment will be carried out by drawing a cross on a piece of paper and mixing hydrochloric acid and sodium thiosulphate together to see if the cross disappears. The concentration of hydrochloric acid would change every reaction to show that concentration effects a reaction. The time in which the cross took to disappear would be recorded as well as the temperature at the start and end of the reaction, the concentration of the hydrochloric acid and the amount of hydrochloric acid and sodium thiosulphate used. Sodium Thiosulphate + Hydrochloric Acid ------------> Sodium Chloride + Water + Sulphur Dioxide + Sulphur Na2S2O3 + 2HCl 2NaCl + H2O + SO2 + S Preliminary Work: The problems that arose whilst doing the preliminary experiment was that the beakers and measuring cylinders were not cleaned out properly and some of the sodium thiosulphate turned cloudy were there was previously hydrochloric acid inside the beaker. The preliminary experiment showed that concentration effects the rate of reaction as well as the temperature does. The higher the concentration of hydrochloric acid, the faster the reaction was because the more particles there were to collide and break old bonds and make new bonds. Also if the temperature was higher the particles would move around faster because they have more energy and would also cause more effective collisions. GRAPH Fair Test: The experiment will ... ... anomalies within the experiment and this may have been caused by the stirring or the timer being started and stopped wrongly. I think that our group had a good method because our results showed what we were trying to find out, which was to test how the change of concentration affects a reaction. To get rid of any anomalies we could have either not stir the mixture or use a machine to stir it at the same speed each time. I think that the procedure that we had used was adequate to test and that it was reasonably reliable. In my prediction I had stated that as the concentration increases, the time taken for a 10% decrease in light intensity would decrease. This is because more particles would be in the higher concentration causing more effective collisions to happen. In future experiments we could increase the range of results as well as having more intermediate values.

Frito Lay Sun Chips Case Study Essay

1. How would you characterize the snack chip category and Frito-Lay’s competitive position in this category? The snack chip category is growing, mainly because of the increased per capita consumption, which rose from about 12 pounds in 1986 to nearly 14 pounds in 1990. The snack chip category consists of three types of competitors: national, regional and private brand firms. The market is very competitive and difficult; as many as 650 new products are introduced every year, but less than 1% of them generate more than $25 million in first-year sales. Frito-Lay is a national brand and a worldwide leader in the manufacturing and marketing of snack chips. Frito-Lay accounts for 13 percent of sales in the US snack food industry. Frito-Lay’s market share is 50% of the snack chips category, and and eight of its snack chips are among the top-10 best-selling chip items in US supermarkets. Furthermore, Doritos and Ruffles are the only snack chips with $1 billion in retail sales i n the world. 2. What specific challenges and risks does Frito-Lay face in marketing SunChips and what are the implications of each? The following are many of the specific challenges and risks that Frito-Lay faces in marketing SunChips and the implications of each: * There are a relatively large number of rivals > a lot of competition. * There is a large number of substitute brands/chips > a lot of competition. * Consumers are very price sensitive so brands are competing on price > detrimental. * There are a few barriers to entry, and existing entrants have better access to distribution channels than new ones. * Tried healthy snacks and failed > risky strategy. * New brand name is a departure from known name. * Cannibalization is a concern. * Frito Lay strategy: differentiator, line extensions, new products to address needs. 3. What insights can be drawn from Frito-Lay’s prior experience with multigrain snacks? As mentioned before, the snack chip market is incredibly competitive. With as many as 650 new products entering the product every year and less than 1% reaching a sustainable sales mark of $25 million, it is rare to find a successful one. Frito-Lay first toyed with multigrain snack chips in the 1970s, when research indicated a need for a snack in this category. Prontos, released in 1974 and distributed for four years, weren’t incredibly well received. While a lack of success is attributed to a confusing name, poor manufacturing and too narrow a market, Dwight Riskey, VP of Marketing Research and New Business, admits that he is â€Å"not sure there were dramatic things wrong with the product design [†¦]. It may have been invented and introduced before its time.† This sentiment was reflected in the Harvest Project in the early 1980s, when Frito-Lay developed several multigrain products to attempt and have a possible healthy alternative to saltier snack foods for the baby-boomer generation. Lackluster response caused the project to stall into the mid 80s as focus was put on developing new flavors and healthier alternatives in other brands. Development for the product now under the Sun Chips brand picked up in 1988. Consumer testing found a few variations of the Sun Chip that were perceived by test markets as both healthy and as â€Å"everyday snacks† — a factor necessary to the long term success of the snack. Ultimately, they had to wait until the right time to release the product. The market was slowly gaining health consciousness as baby-boomers matured and desired healthier alternatives to their snack foods. Early attempts were just that: too early. 4. What conclusions can be drawn from research on SunChips’ consumer acceptance and sales potential prior to the Minneapolis-St. Paul test market? The results from the premarket test were not at all what Frito-Lay’s executives had initially expected. Consumers preferred the SunChip name,while the most popular flavors were Natural and French Onion. After the trial, Sunchips had the potential to be an â€Å"everyday snack.† The results from the premarket test indicated that the Sun Chips Multigrain Snacks would sell a total sales volume of $113 million during it’s first year on the market. Included in this sales volume is a $22 million advertising and merchandising expenditure. That being said, $113 million far exceeds the $100 million sales performance goal for which Frito-Lay initially planned. There is also less potential for product cannibalism at 42%. The Minneapolis-St Paul, Minnesota metropolitan area was chosen because executives believed it to be a strong social and economic representation of the US as a whole. Generally speaking, this area also represented a standard environment in which consumer acceptance of products and competitive behavior both could be measured accurately. Ultimately, 2.2% of American households that eat these types of chips reside within this metropolitan area. Thus, according to the research on SunChips’ consumer acceptance and sales potential prior to the test market, it would be highly advised for Frito-Lay to continue exploration with this product, and proceed to more advanced stages of product testing. 5. What is your assessment of the SunChips’ test market results? Promotion/Advertising: As a result of the Premarket Test, Frito-Lay is allocating a $22 million advertising budget for Sun Chips. 70% of this budget—$15.4 million—is to be used within the first 6 months of the test market. The advertising message will convey subtle positive messages, including wholesomeness, fun and simplicity. Television commercials emphasizing â€Å"smarter because they’re multigrain† will be shown in order to appeal to the health-oriented consumer segment while depicting the product as unique. In-store displays and free-standing inserts in newspapers will support the advertising campaign, while coupons placed in newspaper free-standing inserts will stimulate trial and repeat sales during the test market Price and Sales: Projected annual sales in the snack chip category amount to half of the market share or about $5 billion. Sales are projected to grow at a 4-5% rate annually due to an increase in per capita consumption. Sun Chips carries a selling price to retailers of $0.385 for the 2.25 ounce package, $1.240 for the 7 ounce package, and $1.732 for the 11 ounce package. The weighted-average price amounts to $0.16 per ounce sold, with 15% of purchases in the Test Market going towards the 2.25-ounce package, 47% to the 7-ounce package, and 38% to the 11-ounce package. With this average price-per-ounce of $0.16, first-year sales on a national level as represented by the Test Market will amount to $82,866,894 for Sun Chips. Decisions/Alternatives: 1. Decide not to launch Sun Chips 2. Continue to test the product and risk having a competitor launch a similar product nationally or regionally 3. Expand and launch a national introduction, requiring adequate manufacturing capacity Strategies: 1. Increase advertising and merchandising spending to either test further or launch nationally 2. Introduce a larger package size 3. Build the household repeat and depth of repeat business by introducing a flavor extension (mild cheddar) 6. Given your assessment of the test market results, what actions should Dwight Riskey recommend to Frito-Lay’s top executives? We believe that Riskey should implement the flavor extension strategy while continuing to test the product for another 6 months. The extension would increase the â€Å"repeats per repeater† to an average of 3.5 times per year instead of 3 times per year due to greater variety for consumers. This will increase expected national sales from $82,866,894 to $90,984,446, or $8,117,552 closer to the company’s $100 million goal. The introduction of another flavor could increase the cannibalization rate from 30% to 35%. This, however, actually amounts to only 23% cannibalization because 1/3 of this cannibalized volume stems from Doritos which have the same suggested retail price as Sun Chips. Adding another flavor will also increase brand awareness (33%) even further past the successful O’Grady’s brand awareness of 28% before the product can be released on a national scale. In taking more time to test the product and by adding another flavor, Frito-Lay can increase first-year sales by building repeat business, as well as increase brand awareness to assure they reach their goal of $100 million in first-year sales.

Time Warner Cable

Large-scale mergers between media companies are becoming more and more commonplace in recent years causing alarm to consumers and industry analysts. The result of these mergers has been a consolidation of market competitors causing media ownership and influence to be controlled by a smaller and less diverse group of firms, the essence of anti-competitiveness. Most recently, Compact announced its intent to acquire Time Warner Cable (ETC) which, if approved, will unite the two biggest companies in the cable television market (Steelers, 2014).The merger would give unprecedented power to the newly merged company which would over 30 percent of the pay television subscribers (Baker, 2014). The fact is that separately, Compact and ETC already have market power in numerous local geographic markets. Compact is the nation's largest provider of pay television with 22 million subscribers (41 percent of all homes and businesses in the geographic areas in which Compact operates). ETC is the second largest cable television company with 1 1. 2 million subscribers.After the merger, approximately one third of all cable television bickerers will be Compact customers sparking concern about the amount of leverage and influence one company should control (Rhombohedra & Camilla, 2014). There are varying opinions about the kind of economic industry cable television market operates in. Many argue that cable television is a â€Å"natural monopoly' (source). Economics professor, Thomas Delivered, explains, natural monopolies occur when production technology, such as relatively high fixed costs, causes long-run average total costs to decline as output expands.In such industries, the theory goes, a single reducer will eventually be able to produce at lower cost than any two other producers, thereby creating a ‘natural' monopoly. Higher prices will result if more than one producer supplies the market. (Delivered, 1996, p. 43) Natural monopolies are created when the initial investment in the framework and infrastructure required to enter the market are so high that it discourages other firms from coming into the market. Installing cable lines is an example of the high cost of starting a business in the television industry and a â€Å"first come, first serve† mentality for natural monopolies.Implementing the cable lines is considered a sunk cost and is one reason why there are such overwhelming difficulties to entry in the cable industry. With natural monopolies, economies of scale are also very significant so that minimum efficient scale is not reached until the firm has become very large in relation to the total size of the market allowing it to recoup its investment. The graph below shows the demand curve of a natural market economy (Economics Online, 2014). When price is allowed to be set by the company (P), it results in higher levels of profit and manipulation of the market.The company's main concern is in the bottom line and maximizing its profits. The chart also shows a potential price (Pl) that would result if there was some regulation; for example, government imposes a price cap and the company operates at a loss. The cable television industry has also been described as a â€Å"patchwork of micro-monopolies† (Honda, 2011, p. 1). Since there are a small number of large companies that compete on the national scale, some argue that the industry cannot be classified as a monopoly or natural monopoly.However, the market structure, permitted and/or encouraged by the government, is set up so that Hess companies do not compete on the local level which results in small scale monopolies and little to no choice for the consumers. A 2011 survey by the Federal Communications Commission concluded that 61. 5 percent of customers had only one choice of cable provider in their neighborhood (Marten, 2012). The theory is that through local government legislation and result in nearly non-existent competition on the local level between c able companies has led to a non-competitive oligopoly (Shafer, 2014).Although the cable industry natural monopoly may have made sense initially, the companies that have been able to benefit from this market structure have exploited the consumer and been able to charge high prices for mediocre products. Many of the government regulations that were initially implemented at the onset on the industry were controversial; firms paid franchise fees enabling them to obtain decisions through offers of building public access studios and regulating the rates of the politicians' Jurisdiction (Shafer, 2014).Notwithstanding the exact classification, there is a general consensus that too few companies in the cable television industry hold too much power. It is evident when comparing the service that the American public receives in terms of cable television and broadband from these companies to other developed nations that we consumers receive far less. Americans pay more for their personal service that in any other industrialized country except Chile, Mexico and Turkey (Crawford, 2014).In the United Kingdom, the government forces the cable companies which dominate the market to lease their networks to competitors at cost. This weakening of one of the major barriers to entry in the system has created competition and brought prices down considerably to the UK population (Caddis, 2014). There are many negative consequences for consumers when industries operate in monopolistic or near monopolistic competition. This is especially true when the industry is related to the media and has a great deal of influence on what the public is seeing and hearing.First, the media market will be too reliant on and loyal to large corporate sponsors. The industry will become singularly focused on what it can get from the consumer rather than concern with public interest. Second, a small number of colossal companies will represent the interests of their stockholders, usually America's upper-class. Third, there is a lack of competition in the marketplace which leads to higher prices to the consumer and a lack of innovation in the products offered. These problems are exemplified by both ETC and Compact.In 2012, ETC spent Just 9 percent of its $41 billion revenue on maintaining and upgrading their equipment and networks (Hilt, 2013). Compact spent even less, 3. 7 percent of its $118. 3 billion revenue. There is little reason to believe that two companies spending such a small percentage of their revenue on making improvements to their products and services would change their strategy cost-merger. Consumers are already troubled with the possibility that the merger will be approved. Cable television companies already have critically low satisfaction scores among their clients.ETC and Compact are the two worst offenders in the industry. In 2013, the American Consumer Satisfaction Index gave the two companies the dubious distinction of having the lowest rated television and interne t services in the United States (Ezra, 2014). According to Yogurt's Barehanded, Americans do not want ETC and Compact to merge (Including, 2014). The television cable industry is notoriously retrieved by consumers in general and the announcement of the merger has caused the perception of the two companies to drop even further. The following chart shows how consumers are reacting to the $45 billion deal.In many cases, customers have no recourse other than cutting the cable cord completely if they do not choose Compact or ETC. There are many non-cable media options for the public to patron however, one major section of the population has no choice but to subscribe to cable: sports fans. This is of particular concern to the Dodgers and Lasers fans in Los Angles. Currently, ETC spent billions to obtain eradicating right to both massively lucrative sports franchises (Baker, 2014). This allows ETC to extract steep subscriber fees to its non-cable competition.When the negotiations between the companies stall or are incomplete, ETC blacks out the games to those who do not subscribe to ETC. This is especially problematic for sports fans who do not have the choice to become customers of ETC since the company does not even offer services in their region. Additionally, those customers who cut the cable cord are likely only able to access internet through the same company that was already overcharging for their television service. They will be able to watch Nettling or Hull instead of cable television but will still have to pay Compact in order to do so.It creates a catch-22 in the industry and very little choice for consumers in terms of who they select as their service provider. The merger between Compact and ETC will have a much greater impact than simply in the cable television industry alone. There will be a ripple effect in internet and phone service as well as the other media that these companies own such as NBC Universal and Sportsmen. The merged company's control will be more widespread because of their various endures making it all the more potentially harmful to the consumer.