Tanunda winery Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Tanunda winery - Case Study Example The alternatives available, recommendations, and action and implementation plan for Tanunda Winery. Introduction The Tanunda Winery, one of the leading mid-sized wineries in Australia, was located in the Barossa Valley of South Australia. A young Australian-trained winemaker, Colin MacIntosh had started it in 1976. The Tanunda Winery started producing a range of red and white wines that were speedily gaining acceptance in the marketplace by 1985. The company had established a solid reputation in Australia as a consistent manufacturer of high-quality premium table wines. The company was known for its marketing skills. The company had been successful in generating revenues domestically but did not succeed in the international markets due to lack of an export strategy. There existed an ample opportunity for the company to enter the international markets. Problem Statement The main area of concern was to find way into the International markets so that Tanunda Winery could sell their qual ity table wines and increase their volumes. It was difficult to find which markets to precisely target. In the given case, the marketing manager of Tanunda Winery had been given an assignment to evaluate the feasibility of launching a major export drive. Key Issues The Tanunda Winery was successful in Australia but did not achieve success in international markets. The reason being it is an Australian company producing quality table wines and people worldwide hardly know about Australia as a producer of wine. The senior management group decided in a strategic meeting held in early 2000 that a substantial growth opportunity existed in export markets and therefore George Steen, the marketing manager started preparing for a feasibility study for the next strategy meeting. On forecasts of a very positive environment in several export markets by the Australian wine industry report, George found it as an opportunity to enter foreign markets in a big way. The major concern of Bruce Clark, t he general manager, was about the ability of entering worldwide markets and making profits because of severe competition from the old-world countries such as Italy, Spain, and France who are experts at producing well-recognized wines with huge volumes and value-pricing. Their main concern was to catch up with which markets to sell large volumes of wine. The recognition could be done via the Olympic Games to be held in Sydney. The marketing efforts led to increase in profits but the rate of increase was declining as well as the average returns which is measured by profits as a percentage of sales. In the previous two years, Tanunda was a passive exporter that is it did not make much effort in drawing wine importers and did not have any export strategy. The domestic sales which also marginally and an unpredictable sales pattern in the bottled table wine market was also an area of concern for Tanunda Winery. Ageing population in Australia led to stability in the wine markets domestical ly. The stability in the Australian markets was also a concern which pushed them to expand their international markets. Rising mergers and acquisitions in the early 1990s was a growing concern or issue for the mid-sized companies. The small companies joined hands with bigger companies and therefore increase the bigger companies’ portfolio of products. It was becoming difficult for mid-sized companie

Using of rTMS and antidepressant drugs Simultaneously To increase the Essay

Using of rTMS and antidepressant drugs Simultaneously To increase the therapeutic efficacy for patients with psychotic depression - Essay Example Psychotic depression is a fairly common psychiatric condition that has been found to occur in nearly 20% of patients with major depression (Flores et al., 2006). The preferred treatment for psychotic depression so far has consisted of tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) as also neuroleptic and electroconvulsive therapies (O’Neal et al., 2000). Patients with psychotic depression have a more severely disordered hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis (Kathol et al., 1989). The psychotic features of psychotic depression have been attributed also to excessive glucocorticoid activity (Schatzberg et al., 1985). Interestingly, HPA axis activity is, to a large extent, regulated by the combination of mineralocorticoid receptors (MR) and glucocorticoid receptors (GR) (Spencer et al., 1998; Young et al., 2003). Any mismatch between them could lead to inappropriate responses to stress, and incidence of major depression (Young et al., 2003). Decreases in MR sensitivity postulated to occur in major depression could result in elevated cortisol levels (Gesing et al., 2001; Young et al., 2003). In contrast, GR gives rise to feedback modifications in response to rising levels of cortisol as, for example, in response to stress or following the circadian rhythm. Hence, a GR antagonist e.g., the anti-progesterone steroid mifepristone (dimethylaminophenyl (17(-hydroxy-11(1(4-dimethylaminophenyl) 17(1- propynyl)estra-4,9-dien-3-one) exerts a powerful effect in the rising section of the HPA axis (Flores et al., 2006). A major effect of mifepristone occurs through obstruction of GR in crucial regions of the brain and in monaminergic nuclei, thereby, directly leading to recovery of symptomatic and cognitive faculties. First observed by Bickford et al.(1987) to trigger transient mood elevation in normal subjects receiving single-pulse stimulations to the motor cortex, the technique of non-invasive repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation