Whole Foods

The basis of all communication is to get the message across to others. There are many venues to assist in accomplishing this, from a telephone, a news paper, magazine, and television. Increasingly becoming more popular is the capability of utilizing the social network service, an online service platform. Most of these web based services are a means for users to interact over the internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. This capability provides access to potential users which can share ideas, activities, events, and interests. However this does come with faults, it can support error, and misinterpretation of messages.

The basic interpersonal communication model can be applied in an impersonal nature of an online forum. First there must be the communicator, which voices their message, then there has to be the receiver, and lastly there should be feedback. Interpersonal communication must possess a basic understanding of how personalities and cultures effect communication; also they should be familiar with conflict prevention techniques. Effective communicators understand their own personality, and have the basic language, listening, and speaking skills.

Communicators also can initiate defensive communication skills. Though not appealing there are six characteristics associated with defensive communication which are, evaluative speech, control, strategy, neutrality, superiority, and certainty. This communication style can harm the individual, by not being able to control their emotions. This style can and usually does lead to problems in the work place such as "People who are defensive communicators can cause organizational dysfunction and generally perform poorly in teams. The isolation and individual nature of work in the home office thereby, helps negate the harmful impact on the organization to a considerable extent." (Jennifer A.H Becker, 2005)

During this case defensive communication enters when John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market displays aggressive, attacking, and angry verbiage at a retailing conference in Manhattan in 2001, by shouting, "I'm going to destroy you," to Perry Odak, CEO of Wild Oats. Also he then continued this type of communication for nearly eight years by posting numerous comments that criticized Wild Oats Markets and its competitors online. His portal was the stock forums of Yahoo Finance, using the alias name Rahodeb, which happens to be an anagram of Deborah, his wife's first name.

This case simply amplifies the fact that the internet is transforming how we as a society communicate. This rapid, fast passed world is connected by the use of a tool that will place anyone requiring information by utilizing search engines in the World Wide Web. This tool, the Internet, integrates mass media. It has, in fact, created a new mode of two-way communication, by enabling participants to take part in World Wide Web, and the fact is they are no longer a passive audience. Unlike television and radio, which are passive in the sense that you would watch and listen, the internet requires active participants. "The Internet opens up a simple virtual topography of sites and "addresses" to users, allowing travel from site to site by moving from link to link. Cyberspace, or cybernetic space, through which users move, does not imitate the