Coca cola marketing research Essay Example for Free

Coca cola marketing research Essay The Coca-Cola company was established back in 1886 and it is most famous of creating the soft drink Coca Cola. Based on a global brand study, Coca Cola was the world’s most valuable brand in 2011. Though, just like all those â€Å"old† and well developed brands, Coca Cola is facing aging problem, a disconnection with the younger generation and it seems like people are not picking up coca cola as a trendy drink and a sign of coolness anymore as there are so many other drinks available in the market nowaday. In order to make the brand’s image younger, Coca Cola started a campaign back in 2011 called â€Å"Share a Coke†, internally known as â€Å"Project Connect†. It is a worldwide campaign that started with their Australia team and in 2014 the campaign has finally reached Hong Kong. There are two objectives for this campaign, to get the attention of the younger generation and to make them feel like Coca Cola is still a trendy and cool thing to be talking about and another communication objective for the campaign is really just to have everyone to talk about Coca Cola again, both in the real and virtual world. As mentioned, Coca cola is trying to get collection with young people again and to make Coca Cola the cool thing to be talking about among people, so the target audience of the campaign is young adults focusing on demographic of 18 – 25 years old, who is health consumers, affluent and really is the current and future major stakeholders for the brand. In order to bring people together to â€Å"Share a Coke†, Coca Cola swapped out Coke’s classic label on bottles and cans with 200 of Hong Kong’s most popular nick names, like â€Å"Ã¥ ¥ ³Ã§Å¡â€¡ (queen), â€Å"Gag 王 (joke maker)†, †Buddy†, â€Å"ç ²â€°Ã§ µ ²(fans)†, â€Å"é â€Ã¤ º º(expert)†, â€Å"Ã¥ ¥ ³Ã§ ¥Å¾ (goddess)†, â€Å"ç” ·Ã§ ¥Å¾ (god)† or common names like â€Å"Yan†, â€Å"Wah†, â€Å"Lee†, â€Å"Fung† and â€Å"Ming† or phases like â€Å"miss you†, â€Å"love you†, â€Å"Oh Dear†, à ¢â‚¬Å"Cheer up† and â€Å"I’m yours† etc. This is one of the strategy that Coca Cola came out to bring together to talk about Coca Cola again, a new concept that Coke came up and wants to promote is â€Å"Shareability†. Coca Cola understands the best way to connect people is to have something they can share or even can send it as a gift to their friends and relatives. Moreover, If you can’t find a nick name, common names nor phases that best represent you or your love one? No worries, Coca Cola had created a web page for customers to go online and create a virtual bottle to share it on social media (e.x. facebook, Instagram and Twitter†¦etc) with their friends and family. Coca Cola would never missed a single person who is interested in â€Å"Share a Coke† out. In other countries, such as the U.S. and U.K., customers with less common names (or basically if you can’t find what you are looking for), they are able to get a mini can customized with their name on it at one of their pop up stops. Because of Hong Kong don’t have the similar promotion, people are starting to sell the service of helping people to order personalized cans and bottles in the U.K. This also helped Coca Cola Hong Kong to create the basic foundation of pull strategy as supply was super limited and it I very time consuming to mail the products from overseas to Hong Kong making the products very hard to get. Another advantage of the success of the â€Å"Share a Coke† campaign overseas is that it offered the Hong Kong campaign a word-of-mouth (WOM) communication and WOM plays an important role as a communications tool in modern marketing. As Kotler (2009) suggests that if an organization can develop a marketing program to harness and  accelerate the use of personal recommendation effectively, the more likely it will be that the marketing program will be successful. This also acted as a demand-created pull strategy, as overseas people were gifting that to people who are living in Hong Kong and Hong Kong people were soon demanding to see this unique style of Coca Cola cans in Hong Kong. As soon as people got hold with a can of the personalized Coca Cola, they will share it on Instagram to show people how cool they are. Indeed, in Hong Kong, before the official campaign launched, Coke partnered with Volkswagen and sent personalized Coke can in a fancy box to younger generation celebrities like Charlene Choi, Gillian Chung, Shiga Lin and PakHo Chau†¦etc. On the cover of that fancy white box, Coca Cola encouraged celebrities to create a post on Instagram with hashtag shoareacokehk and cocacolahk. This encouragement of sharing those â€Å"Share a coke† cans on Instagram or Facebook created another pull strategy which would eventually catching the suppliers’ attention to inquiry to Coca Cola about those unique cans as celebrities are always the focus point for people to follow where the trend is. After this massive breakthrough, â€Å"Share a coke† cans and bottles were then secretly (without any proper announcement† sent to convenience stores like 711, OK and  supermarket likes Wellcome and ParknShop. As soon as they were in stock, people started to treasure hunt to trying to â€Å"share a coke with their love one and to post it on social platforms†, mainly on Instagram and Facebook. *See below images as examples. In a situation like this, the push strategy will play its part in meeting the objectives for this campaign which is letting the supplier know the demand for this product which is created by celebrities influences, social media powers and later advertising. Finally persuading retailers to both stock the product and to actively promote the â€Å"Share a coke† cans to their customers and finally making the product more accessible. Ever since Coca Cola started to encourage people to â€Å"Share a coke†, people have been uploading Instagram and Facebook posts on a regular basis. This is a creative way to make use of the profile strategy as numerous posts will be updated on Instagram everyday automatically under hashtag shareacokehk and cocacolahk and keeping stakeholders/audiences up to date with campaign information and the official Coca Cola Instagram would also share people’s â€Å"Share a coke† moment. This tactic is cost effective for Coca Cola (saved money on hiring a spoke person as many celebrities have automatically became a â€Å"spoke person† the moment they shared their personalized Coca Cola), it created a free of charge profile strategy as fans or lay people will soon follow what celebrities are doing and share a coke with their name on social media platform. This â€Å"Share a Coke† wave has caught media’s attention as bloggers and magazines were reporting this. Therefore, at a later time, personalized cans were also sent to famous bloggers, magazine editors and particular for those who have a high number of followers/fan base on Instagram. In order to â€Å"officially† announce and position Coca Cola in the minds of consumers with a view to differentiation and to inform prospective customers about the â€Å"Share a Coke† campaign, Coca Cola then started to advertise on traditional platform. It aired a television commercial on one of the biggest television channels in Hong Kong-TVB, pointing out the various nickname that people can find to mix and match them. Advertising on national television offer mass coverage, flexible format and uses sight, movement and sound  which fit in with the young adult demographic as things like that will attract their attention. They have also created posters telling people to share a coke with their mom and dad to emphasize the objective of this campaign- shareability of the product, to make people talking about Coca Cola again. Coca Cola also rented several outdoors places at causeway bay (e.x. Sogo), creating a venting machine like billboard starting â€Å"Share a coke with the person next to you, Share Coca Cola, Share happiness† and putting all the available names on there for making potential customers aware of the offering. Advertising outdoor creates a good coverage as a support medium and as the location (Sogo, Causeway bay) is where all the young adults go, it creates a perfect interesting background for young adult to take a picture and share it on Instagram as it is not so easy to spot such a large scale Coca Cola machine in your daily life. *See below images as examples. Ogilvy Mather (the advertising agency behind all these) had also found Jonathan Mak (who editing the Apple logo in remembrance of Steve Jobs) to design a poster inspired by â€Å"Share a Coke† to advertise this campaign. You can see attached, to depict two hands sharing a Coke. This poster has served as something unique, young and trendy to matches with the target audience of the campaign. Evaluation of effectiveness: should be related to the campaign objectives and the particular tools chosen, e.g. advertising could be post-testing, tracking studies, likeability or enquiry tests. Particular market research techniques using qualitative or quantitative methods should be proposed, e.g. focus groups, surveys. A researcher quote in Wilson (2006: p.29) suggests that, â€Å"The proposal is the most important part of the whole research project†. Before we evaluate the effectiveness of the tools use, let me restate the objective of this campaign again, which is to reconnect with young adults and just have people talking about Coca Cola again. In order to evaluate whether or not the television commercial tool is effective or not, I would use likeability test  as to researching to what degree people enjoyed the advertisement and really feel like they have connect with the â€Å"Share a coke† campaign. I propose using quantitative research which is described by Wilson (2006) as a structured approach producing quantifiable data for statistical analysis, gathered from a population  sample or census. I propose that we will create a 5 questions questionnaire asking a combination of descriptive and casual questions like â€Å"What do you feel about Coca Cola‘s â€Å"Share a Coke† campaign†, â€Å"Have you watch the TV commercial about â€Å"Share a coke†Ã¢â‚¬ , â€Å"Would you consider drinking Coca Cola as a trendy thing after watching the commercial ?†, â€Å"How do you feel about the â€Å"Share a Coke† concept and do you think the commercial has stated what we are trying to offer?†, â€Å"have you shared a coke with anyone after watching the commercial†. I suggest using Facebook as the platform to pass on the questionnaire to random audience that is within the demographic that we are aiming at as it is the most convenient and cost effective way because on Facebook you can set your target audience age to your desired one. Two identical questionnaires should be sent out to the same group of people who are aged between 18-25 across the campaign period to see if the audience has any perception changes over time. We could also get from the data whether or not we are reaching the right target auidences and whether or not this advertisement is doing what we want it to do. The second tool that we are going to evaluate is Instagram as Coca Cola has created it’s own hashtag for the campaign #shareacokehk and #cocacolahk and as our target audience is young adults, Instagram has been a major communication tools for the demographic. Also, Coca Cola has been posting all updates on its official Instagram page and this should be where we get all the noises from as Coca Cola has posted on all it’s advertising communication tools to share it on Instagram. Morevoer, Coca Cola has emphasized shareability over this campaign so the effective use of Instagram is notwithstanding one of the most important evaluation to do. Using Observation research to collect quantitative data would be a good way to analysis the effectiveness of this heavily used tool. I suggest for a consecutive of 30 days, researchers to go through around 100 potential hashtags posting on Instagram, starting with the two official hashtags â€Å"shareacokehk†, â€Å"cocacolahk†, cokehk†, â€Å"ilovecoke†Ã‚  then following any potential hashtags such as phases on cans†¦etc. Researchers will record daily change rate of each hashtag search, we can then compare shareability of each hashtags. We can also record likes from each post and see which personalized cans/bottles grabs the most attention. From the evaluation of the effectiveness of Instagram, we can increase shareability of the campaign (as, again it’s one of the major goal to get people talking about Coca Cola again). With the quantitative data that we got from this research, we can perhaps add more hashtags that people are likely to use and also we could use those information to amend or add in names that are in popular demands to keep the idea fresh. We could also see whether or not we are hitting on our target audiences. In Conclusion, the â€Å"Share a Coke† campaign is a clever idea. It is further proof how something so simple can still create a lot of buzz on the internet and in social settings. This â€Å"Share a Coke† campaign has fully fulfilled Fill (2006)’s definition of marketing communications. â€Å"A management process through which an organization seeks to engage with its various audiences. To accomplish this, the organization develops, presents and evaluates a series of messages which it sends to and receives from its different audiences. The objective of this process is to position the organization and its offering in the minds of particular audiences and in doing so encourage the  development of relationships that are of mutual value.† Coca Cola has proven to us that with the right marketing communication tools, an aging brand can sure be made younger again and reconnect with the you nger generation. Have you â€Å"Share a Coke† with your loved one today? Reference http://www.coca-colajourney.com.au/stories/local-idea-goes-global-share-a-coke#TCCC http://www.sor9y.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Screen-Shot-2014-08-24-at-2.06.38am.png http://www.milk.com.hk/content/coca-cola-share-coke-hong-kong-ed http://www.icoke.hk http://www.sor9y.com/2014/08/24/share-a-coke-name-combinations/ http://rudileung.com/tag/share-a-coke

Environmental Science Review Sheet :: essays research papers

ENVIORMENTAL SCIENCE REVIEW SHEET 1) Mutation- a random change in one or more genes of organisms. Mutations may occur spontaneously in nature, but exposure radiation and/or other chemicals vastly increase their number and degree. 2) Natural selection- the process whereby the natural factors of environmental resistance tend to eliminate those members of the population that are least well adapted to cope and thus, in effect select those best adapted for survival and reproduction. 3) Speciation-the evolutionary process whereby populations of a single species separate and, though being exposed to different forces of natural selection, gradually develop into distinct species. 4) Selective pressure-An environmental factor that causes individuals with certain traits, which are not the norm for the population, to survive and reproduce more then rest of the population. The result is a shift in the genetic makeup of the population 5) Selective breeding- breeding of certain individuals because they bear certain traits and the exclusion from breeding of others. 6) Tectonic plates- huge slabs of rocks which make up the earths crust. 7) Igneous rock- produced under conditions involving intense heat; "igneous rock is rock formed by solidification from a molten state; especially from molten magma"; "igneous fusion is fusion by heat alone. 8) Metamorphic rock- Pertaining to, produced by, or exhibiting, certain changes which minerals or rocks may have undergone since their original deposition; -- especially applied to the recrystallization which sedimentary rocks have undergone through the influence of heat and pressure, after which they are called metamorphic rocks. 9) Sedimentary rock- rock formed from consolidated clay sediments 10) Aquifer- An underground bed or layer of earth, gravel, or porous stone that yields water. 11) Capillary water- water that clings in small pores, cracks, and spaces against the pull of gravity, like water held in a sponge. 12) Aquitard- 13) Condensation- collecting of molecules from the vapor state to form the liquid state, as for example, water vapor condenses on a cold surface to from water droplets. 14) Desalinization- process that purify seawater into high quality drinking water via distillation or micro-filtration. 15) Infiltration- the process that water soaks into the solid as oppose to running off the surface. 16) Groundwater- water that has accumulated in the ground completely filling and saturating all pores and spaces in rock and/or soil. Groundwater is free to move more of less readily. It is the reservoir for springs and wells and is replenished by infiltration of surface water. 17) Percolation- the process of water seeping through cracks and pores in the sold or rock.

Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen and Letters to Alice- Fay Weldon Essay

An examination of Jane Austen’s 1813 social satire Pride and Prejudice, and the reading of Fay Weldon’s 1984 epistolary text Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen, allows understanding of Austen’s novel to be moulded and then shifted. Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners, focusing on marriage, Pride, Prejudice and Social Class which are projected through the characters, gentry-class setting and Austen’s authorial comment. Austen’s purpose was to portray the world of the gentry class, and satirise some aspects of her society and praise others. Weldon’s purpose is to encourage an understanding of the value of literature for individuals and society. She models Austen’s writing to demonstrate her argument and in so doing she gives a heightened understanding of values in Austen’s context. She reviews Austen’s society, providing an explanation of social conventions such as marriage, social stratification and women. Aunt Fay’s opinions allow readers to reshape their understanding of events and characters in Pride and Prejudice. Her conclusions allow the reader to draw connections between our contemporary society and Austen’s context, which then enables us to reshape our original understanding of Pride and Prejudice and our own context. Through Letters to Alice, Weldon discusses the importance in the value of literature. This is displayed through use of the imperative ‘you must read†. Her observing of literature linking to the transcendence of time is examined when adopting the metaphor of the city of invention, which educates the readers of what good literature is and the solid foundations that make it withstand time. Aunt Fay says â€Å"Through reading literature we learn about the way people thought and how they lived, the ways we are different and the things we share†, suggesting an implicit link to Austen’s work. Weldon writes that good literature has the ability to â€Å"transcend time and reach readers across centuries†. She demonstrates that the characters Austen created, are still relevant in modern society. The universal themes of faults and failings such as prejudice are seen in both texts, as they were been written for moral guidance purposes. Austen uses her novel to suggest how people should behave. She condemns snobbery, pride and prejudice. For example, Austen uses the character transformation between Elizabeth and Darcy and rewards them with happiness. Through Mary, Austen uses authorial comment on pride by saying â€Å"human nature is particularly prone to it†¦a  person may be proud without being vain†. Weldon’s character Aunt Fay is comparable to Jane Austen, as she teaches her niece Alice to read, be appreciative of her world and develop empathy for those who are less fortunate. Through Aunt Fay’s didacticism, the readers see a changing Alice, similarly to Elizabeth Bennet’s character transformation in Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth has to overcome her initial judgements of Mr Darcy in order to gain a heightened understanding of herself. For example, after the first brief encounter with Darcy â€Å"she remained with no very cordial feelings towards him†. She is left believing he is arrogant and the most disagreeable man. However she learns from her wrongness when she begins to understand his character and his motives. This is similar to Alice’s experience, as she is taught to reshape her opinionated first impressions of Jane Austen and the Professors wife. Alice comes to understand, through Aunt Fay’s letters, that she has taken her life and educational opportunities for granted and should not make judgements of Unlovable when only based on her Professor’s opinion. Marriage is the primary concern of Austen’s novel. The immense importance of which is referred to by Mrs Bennet â€Å"If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield, and all the others equally well married, I have nothing to wish for†. The plot follows Mrs Bennet’s desperation in having her five daughters married to men who have inherited a substantial fortune. The novel reflects Austen’s context where marriage was a result of seeing profitable prospects rather than love. This is exemplified through Mrs Bennet’s comment â€Å"A single man of a large fortune†¦what a fine thing for our girls!† Marriage benefited the couple in both wealth and social status. Austen utilises a variety of marriages to contrast and show preference to the uniting of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy who have love and respect, and have had to overcome initial personal judgements of each other. Elizabeth Bennet, who has to reassess her prejudice and Mr Darcy, who has to overcome his pride. They become the most affluent and respected couple in the novel. The idea of entailment ensured the family fortune was inherited by the men, which meant women had limited inheritance rights. This is the main incentive for Mrs Bennet having her children married to men with a substantial fortune, as when Mr Bennet dies, the family will be left poor. This is augmented through Weldon who expresses empathy towards Mrs Bennet, and says â€Å"life was not rosy† whether women married or not. This helps to reshape the  understanding of marriage gained in Austen’s novel, as it was previously believed that marriage lead to a better lifestyle for women. Fay Weldon connects the idea of marriage by linking the two generations, and interpreting the changing facets of matrimony. In Jane Austen’s period, marriage was a necessity rather than a commodity. Alice, the representative for the contemporary context, perceives marriage as an â€Å"outmoded institution†. Alice views Austen’s novel as â€Å"boring, petty and irrelevant†, as her context believes love should be factored into marriage. Fay Weldon connects the generations by justifying aspects that have remained the same or have changed. She highlights the harsh realities of married women in Jane Austen’s patriarchal world. For example, she writes â€Å"men could beat you if they saw fit†. Weldon describes Austen’s contextual ideas on marriage through Aunt Fay who attempts to help her niece Alice, a rebellious university student, understand the necessity for marriage in Austen’s context. She uses the metaphor â€Å"To marry was a great prize. It was a woman’s aim†¦No wonder Mrs Bennet driven half mad by anxiety, knowing they would be unprovided for when her husband died†. This helps the readers to reshape their understanding of Mrs Bennet. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen satirises and condemns her character for her obsession with finding suitable partners for her unmarried daughters. However, Aunt Fay’s didactic attempt on using empathy is expressed through Mrs Bennet, who is described as â€Å"politeness warred with desperation†. Weldon details the unions between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy to be unlikely, given their differences in social standing. This is reinforced by Aunt Fay reminding Alice, â€Å"Novels are illusion not reality†. This perspective on matrimony takes the reader back to Pride and Prejudice and reinforces Charlotte’s pragmatic perspective â€Å"Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance†. Aunt Fay recognises that some unions have not changed from Austen’s period. There are women who still marry for survival. For example, the importation of Asian wives links to the marriage between Charlotte and Mr Collins, as she â€Å"found happiness, inspite of marrying for all the wrong reasons†. To heighten the readers understanding of marriage in Pride and Prejudice, she says â€Å"is the stuff of our women’s magazines, but it was the stuff of their life, their very existence.† This is Weldon reinforcing the idea of necessity for marriage for women of Austen’s context. It helps Alice to overcome her initial  thoughts on marriage in Pride and Prejudice. In Pride and Prejudice, social class overrides all other emotions such love and happiness. Mr Darcy is the central character who defines the upper class of Regency England. Mr Wickham uses bitter verbal irony to describe Darcy, noting â€Å"He was to be above all company, in having been unworth y to be compared†. Austen defies her conventional ideas on social stratification through the eccentric unions of matrimony between Elizabeth and Darcy or Jane and Bingley. These marriages occur, despite the authorative Lady Catherine saying â€Å"â€Å"Your alliance will be a disgrace, you name will never be mentioned by any of us†. This allows the readers to see that Austen had created Elizabeth Bennet, to break through her society’s rigid values. This is linked to Weldon’s comment â€Å"Jane Austen likes to see the division between nobility and gentry broken down†, as the division had been created when Elizabeth married Darcy. Fay Weldon uses social stratification to connect the gap between Austen’s society and the modern world. She contemporises Austen’s text by having the didactic Aunt Fay write to Alice explaining â€Å"â€Å"the gentry thought well of themselves, and liked to despise the nobility for their rackety ways, and were despised by them, in turn for being worthy and boring†. In this, Weldon suggests that people of both societies were limited by social boundaries. Through Weldon’s text, Aunt Fay attempts to make the readers feel empathy through the explanation of stratified women’s lives â€Å"Women were born poor, and stayed poor, and lived well only by their husbands’ favour.† Weldon’s use of stratification, like Austen’s, is used for didactic purposes. She writes â€Å"human nature does not change over the centuries†, indicating that snobbery, pride, prejudice and criticism, which Austen satirised in Pride and Prejudice, are still relevant in modern society. For example, Caroline Bingley’s criticism of the middle class is similar to criticism aimed at writers, deriving from the readers who do not understand the difficulty of writing well. Austen believes women should have options and opinions. Her character Elizabeth is independent, witty and judgemental. She defies social conventions and is used as a model for achieving Austen’s purpose, and in return, is rewarded with love. There was also the idea of accomplished women being more suitable to men. Women who were well educated in the art of music, literature and languages, were thought to be accomplished and therefore more attractive to a suitor. Miss Bingley states, using  accumulation â€Å"A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word†. In Pride and Prejudice, the Bennet sisters did not attend school and were only trained in accomplishment. This juxtaposes with Alice’s lifestyle, as she is eligible to attend university on a different continent to further her education. An example of this is when Aunt Fay plants the idea â€Å"why don’t you go to UCLA and write?† This helps people understand the limitations of women in Pride and Prejudice and justify the difference between the ideas of a successful woman in both contexts. Fay Weldon defines women’s lives in Austen’s context and compares it to modern society. She models Austen’s life for Alice to gain a heightened understanding of the difficulties women faced to defy social conventions. She demonstrates this by using the metaphor â€Å"It takes grea t courage to swim against the stream of communal ideas†. In this, Weldon is depicting the complications for Austen to see her world and reprimand its values on marriage, social class and women, whilst providing an alternative perspective. Weldon describes the limitations for female writers as they were expected to â€Å"be tender, flatter, deceive†¦never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own†. Female writers were discouraged from inventing and were only allowed to write about their world. Aunt Fay’s brief explanation of the female writers contrasts with contemporary society, with Aunt Fay being the example. With the ability of travel and freely express her opinions, she is able to write without concern of her work being unpublished because of contemporary values. Unlike Austen, she is being paid and recognised for the texts she writes. Fay Weldon uses didacticism to develop an empathetic link to women in Austen’s context by detailing to Alice â€Å"by your standards it was a horrible time to liveâ₠¬ . For example, she gives statistical evidence of childbirth â€Å"childbirth was primitive†¦there was no analgesics†¦your chances of dying were†¦one in two†. In this, Aunt Fay highlights that Alice should not take being autonomous for granted. This is delineated through Aunt Fay expressing â€Å"You do not know little Alice, how recent or lucky you are†. A close study of Jane Austen’s 1813 social satire Pride and Prejudice and the 1984 epistolary text Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon, allows us to draw connections between the two texts and for our original understanding of Austen’s text to be shaped and shifted. Austen uses the main themes in Pride  and Prejudice, such as Marriage, social class and Pride, to express her approval or disapproval of her societies’ attitudes. Weldon’s text is used for didactic purposes to encourage an understanding of the value of literature, for which she uses Austenâ₠¬â„¢s writing to project her ideas. She reviews Austen’s context by providing an explanation of social conventions such as marriage, social stratification and women.

The United States Constitution - 1698 Words

The United States Constitution was ratified in the summer of 1788 and is the governing document of the United States of America. Owing to its brevity and clarity of thought, it has stood the test of time, whereas founding laws of other nations have come and gone, lost to the thoughts of the many for whom they were originally conceived of to sustain. Of the prescient statutes that comprise this most venerable of documents is Article 1, Section Four, which laid a foundation for the election of federal representatives. It states in part: The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such†¦show more content†¦While codification of this statute in 1875 for the U.S. House of Representatives and in 1914 for the U.S. Senate has accomplish much in the way of streamlining the elections process throughout the United States, the na tion is still saddled with a patchwork of 50 state laws which make it, almost by constitutional decree, impossible for citizens of the United States to equally exercise their civic voting rights. While the U.S. Code mandates a date for federal elections, the Constitution simultaneously grants each state broad power in how it conducts federal elections. The outcomes on Election Day are the result of disparate voting experiences and, some argue that to protect the integrity of the electoral system, changes need to be implemented. Others argue that voter turnout is a problem, with the United States historically ranking embarrassingly low internationally in voter turnout, but that these results are due to lack of voter interest in the political system as a whole rather than lack of opportunity to cast a ballot. Is there a problem, and if we agree there is, what is at its root? Furthermore, what could be done politically to address any such problem? Those U.S. citizens that seek to participate in the election process are in some precincts faced with an inadequate number of poll workers and voting