Critically analyze how successful the British government's use of Essay

Critically analyze how successful the British government's use of Spending Reviews has been as a way of making government more - Essay Example Definition and history of Spending Reviews The Spending Review is ‘the HM Treasury led process that allocates public expenditures.’1 It is intended to ‘set a clear direction for reform, focused on shifting power from central government to the local level.’2 In the late 1990s, the New Labour government came into power in the U.K., and embarked on several reforms whereby public spending may be made more effectively. One of these reforms is the introduction of medium-term spending reviews. The first Comprehensive Spending Review was conducted in 1998 and published in July of that year. Three subsequent spending reviews were conducted in the years 2000, 2002 and 2004. The subsequent Comprehensive Spending Review was conducted in 2007, and the next after that in 2010.3 The diagram on the following page shows the progression of Spending Reviews from 1998 when the process was first adopted and the first Comprehensive SR was conducted, to the next CST in 2007. ... Source: OECD Senior Budget Officials Network4 The adoption of the CST98 was in line with the public sector reform for that year, which introduced the three year spending plans, as well as the use of resource based accounting and budgeting. The review stressed greater protection for capital spending, proper asset management, and was anchored on outcome-focused performance targets.5 In 2009, the Government borrowed one pound for every four pounds it spent. As a result, the cost of debt servicing (which is comprised of interest payments on public debt) exceeds what the Government spends for England’s schools in one year.6 Significance of spending reviews as strategic tool for government Spending reviews provide government a tool for controlling public spending in two ways: (1) that during the budget planning process, proposed spending could be more effectively aligned with the strategic goals of government; and (2) that interim reviews could act as a monitoring tool to ensure tha t the actual expenditures are consistent with the budgeted allocations and, if not, that justification could be found which nevertheless serves the strategic goal, and where none could be found, that further spending could be halted along this line before runaway expenses could be incurred. There is a fundamental difference between the Comprehensive Spending Review conducted in 1998, 2007 and 2010, and the spending reviews conducted in 2000, 2002 and 2004. The CSR is a fundamental strategic review of spending priorities, while the SR creates ‘merely incremental changes to existing priorities.’7 There is a distinction between two types of public expenditures that are provided for in the spending reviews. The first is the annually

Pre-testing of Advertisement before Launching Essay

Pre-testing of Advertisement before Launching - Essay Example Coulter (2005. pp43-44) termed this as attitude change as a function of information processing & "persuasive communication". Coulter termed the attitude change as quantitative effect of advertisement and variation in thinking as a result of advertisement as qualitative effect of advertisement. Chaudhuri (2001. pp275) discovered some evidence of the effects of advertisement that the dimensions of customer emotions are strongly linked with the perception of risks in purchasing products & services. In fact the author also established that negative emotions have much stronger influence than positive emotions the in way that the same create threatening consumption scenarios for customers thus leading to negative perceptions of risks pertaining to the products & services. Also it was observed by the author that the perceptions of risks are more prevalent in products where the customers tend to actively analyze the pros & cons of acquiring them. It was surprising to be observed that alcohol & cigarettes, in spite of display of clear warning messages, were highly consumed by the users given that they buy these products more because of addiction rather than need. In this context, the author also appreciates the comment by Wang and Minor (2008. pp198) that "Marketing research needs to pursue more precise, comprehensive, and unbiased measurements of the psychological processes to reflect a broader and deeper intellectual understanding of the human mind's mechanism". Looking into these complex expected reactions of consumers, it is highly risky to launch an advertisement to customers without carrying out psychological effectiveness tests of the campaigns. In fact, if the advertisements are launched without such tests and the results are disastrously negative perceptions in customer's mind, then the damages thus caused may take ages to be repaired and sometimes may even get rendered as absolutely irreparable. For example, in a very recent research Hansen and Strick et al (2009. pp145) challenged an old myth that humour makes the impact of an advertisement very effective. After an impressive survey on this subject they realized that humour in advertising reduces memory of brand names as it distracts the customers from brand names from even within the advertisements. They discovered that customers only remember the humour but not the company and its brand names. Also, customers may not take such products seriously although they appreciate the humour a lot. This discovery may shatter empirical generalizations that have been letting millions of dollars getting shed on some conceptual framework that is traditionally perceived to be effective only to be realized now that the output was more damaging and against the objectives of the campaign. This justifies that campaigns should be tested effectively before they can be launched to actual end customers. Having said that, it needs to be understood and emphasized that this is not an easy phenomena. The advertisement designers need to come out of the shell and comfort zone and be ready to face the criticism from the testers of the advertisement. The testers need to be certain individuals that have no stake