The CVS Caremark Corporation

The CVS Caremark Corporation is a pharmaceutical company based in the United States and it was founded in nineteen sixty three by Stanley and Sidney Goldstein and Ralph Hoagland with the intention of selling health and beauty products. Within a year of its founding, this company had a chain of seventeen stores and when it was acquired by Melville’s in nineteen sixty nine, it had a total of forty stores. After this company was acquired by Melville’s, the driving force behind its growth was its new president, Franklin Rooney. Under Rooney, CVS saw tremendous growth due to the fact that after he took over the corporation, he concentrated more on the development of the pharmaceutical side of the business. By the time of his retirement in nineteen eighty five, Rooney had turned CVS into one of the most diversified retail chains in the United States through his knack for making brilliant acquisitions during his tenure.

Stanley Goldstein succeeded Rooney in nineteen eighty five and his major task was to continue the colossal work that his predecessor had left behind. Goldstein proved to be up to the task and under him; CVS continued its expansion with some structural renovation taking place in the corporation. Some of this renovation took place in nineteen eighty nine when the corporation created a profit sharing plan and an employee stock ownership plan whose intention was to distribute six percent of the corporation’s common stock among its employees as a way of motivating them.  Despite the recessive economy of the eighties, CVS continued to grow and rake in profits throughout the period (Eder, 1999).

Currently, the corporation has stores in forty five states within America and Puerto Rico and it sells prescription drugs and a wide assortment of other goods which include beauty products, cosmetics, photography services and convenience foods. It also has healthcare clinics located within CVS stores through which it provides healthcare services and in some places, they have centers that deal specifically with people affected by diabetes. The merger between CVS and Caremark a few years ago continued to ensure that the corporation’s continued growth went on uninterrupted (Pimlott, 2006).

It can be said that it is the strong leadership style of the company from its founding to the present that has spurred its extremely fast growth throughout the recent decades even when growth was not expected at all. The strong leadership has also enabled CVS to make ventures into the selling of merchandise which was not traditionally in its preserve through the acquisition of retail chains which dealt in products other than those which it was promoting at the time. These acquisitions have made sure that the diversification of this corporation continues and because of this diversification, it is likely to survive any form of a collapse in the sales of a particular product. This is due to the fact that it does not completely rely on a single product to make a profit and instead, it has a diverse range of them to ensure its survival in the very competitive market of the world today.

The company is headed by a Chief Executive Officer who is also the president of the corporation. Directly below him are the executive vice presidents each heading a specific department within the organization namely: Finances; Health Care Strategy and Management; Operations; Pharmacy Services; Legal; and Human Resources among others.

Why Older Workers Can’t Get Hired

There are many reasons why it is difficult for older workers to get hired by many companies today. According to the article Why Older Workers Can’t Get Hired, one of these reasons is the expectation of a higher salary than their counterparts due to their many years of experience. Older workers are expected to ask for a higher salary and this makes many potential employers hesitant because of the added expenditure to their businesses hence a preference for younger workers whose little experience ensures them a low salary. The second reason for a hesitation in hiring older workers is the belief that many older workers may not be able to work well with younger bosses due to the age and generational differences between them and may feel uncomfortable working for a less experienced boss.

A third reason is that many older workers lack the necessary skills to function in a modern and fast evolving working environment due to the fact that many have yet to embrace the new technology that has come into the market. For example, many companies currently require that job applications be submitted online, and many older workers, lacking knowledge in computers tend to lose opportunities to get hired despite their experience in their field of work. The retirement expectations of older workers may make a potential employer reluctant to hire them because it is believed that these workers will be retiring soon anyway and there is no need for taking the responsibility for paying their benefits when they only have a short time to work. Being unemployed for a long time may make older workers to be visibly frustrated and when they show up for interviews, they tend to be careless with their appearance and behavior and this immediately puts off the potential employer.

Amazon's Kindle: Aspects of Consumer Behavior

There are many aspects of consumer behavior which Amazon’s Kindle product and services should emphasize in their marketing plan. According to the article 100 Top Global Thinkers, many of these aspects are more concerned with the efficiency and affordability of the product as well as the existence of similar products on the market. It is therefore necessary for Amazon to keep these aspects in mind whenever it does its marketing because if it does not, then its products would not long survive the very competitive market environment of the modern world. In this paper, we shall elaborate on these aspects and how they affect the marketing of Amazon’s Kindle products.

The very first aspect that those marketing the Kindle product should consider is the fact that the product should be built or created to be more efficient than those of rival companies. This is essential for the marketing of the product because consumers tend to consider efficiency when buying a product. Consumers may prefer to go buy a product which is fast and wastes less time when they are using it even if the product is more expensive than similar products from other companies. The company should work on improving the speed of products if it intends to attract more consumers by promoting the efficiency of its products.

Another aspect of marketing which should consider consumer behavior is the frequent changing of how the product is packaged. Consumers tend to believe that the products with a look that is new and different from the previous one is better. Amazon should therefore ensure that the look of its Kindle products is changed frequently to ensure that consumers are kept interested in them. New tools should be incorporated into the new forms of the product to make its use easier and this can be made a basis upon which the product is promoted (Poole, K, 2011). Consumers tend to prefer portable products which they can use anywhere at their own convenience. The Kindle products should be made more portable than they already are so that its marketers can use it as a strategy for marketing the product. Consumers are more likely to want to buy a portable product because of the ability to use them in any situation. They can read an eBook anywhere at any time and this can be used as a marketing strategy when promoting this product.

The best marketing strategy which considers consumer behavior is the promotion of the product as being cheaper than those of rival products. The company should ensure that the prices of its products are lower than those of similar products in the market if it can successfully attract enough numbers of consumers to buy its product (Bjørner, S, 2010). Because of the affordability of the product, the consumer is more likely than not to want to buy the product because the current difficult economic situations would push them to buy cheaper products. It has further been noted that consumers tend to buy products which they know a lot more about than those which they do not know enough about. Amazon should therefore ensure that its Kindle product is advertised frequently on television, the internet, and other media which are commonly used by consumers in their day to day lives. Consumers will as a result have enough knowledge about the advantages of the product and will be encouraged to buy it.