In his blog post “Shared Value”, my classmate Mitchell McCullough discusses Nestlé’s new policies of shared value. After reading his post, I couldn’t help but feel a positive attitude toward Nestlé. Mitch talked about Nestlé’s forums on shared value, the establishment of a shared value prize by Nestlé and the company’s apparent dedication to the concept of shared value as a whole.

As I read, however, something was nagging the back of my mind. My first blog post in this course actually featured Nestlé, however mine looked at the company from quite a different perspective. My post, which can be read below, discussed how Nestlé extracts and packages ground water from B.C. at absolutely no cost, sometimes extracting water from local towns supply. To me this seems like the very opposite of shared value. When I read that Nestlé created a shared value prize I was immediately reminded of the Nobel prizes. Alfred Nobel, the creator of the Nobel prizes, was also the inventor of dynamite. The only reason he created the Nobel prizes was so that he would be remembered for something other than his destructive invention that has killed so many. It seems that Nestlé has also created their shared value prize to distract consumers from there unethical practices.

From my perspective Nestlé is an unethical company and from Mitch’s, it is one that is helping the world. Considering Nestlé, it becomes clear that it is essential to always look deeper into companies’ practices. It is important not to automatically categorize a company as either good or bad, but rather to evaluate a company from all perspectives until a clear picture emerges.

A recent source of intrigue in the business world is Pizza Hut’s newly announced re-brand. The company, which has been seeing a decline the past two years, has decided to change almost everything about the brand, from the topping options to the logo on the box.Some experts in the field feel that Pizza hut is doing “too much too quickly,” however I take a different perspective on the issue.

Time and time again I have heard stories of companies that were too afraid or too set in their ways to make a change that would have saved them from failure. A prime example of this would be Kodak. Kodak actually invented the digital camera in 1975, but because they feared that the digital camera would take away film sales, they never produced them. As history will show, this was a fatal error—Kodak’s competitors went on to mass produce the digital camera and Kodak faded into obscurity.

Although Pizza Hut may be taking the risk of losing brand recognition and alienating a customer segment who enjoys the current Pizza Hut brand, the rewards to be gained in my opinion far outweigh the risks. Obviously the company agrees with me, as they are continuing on with the rebrand despite the uncertainty. It will be interesting to see how the changes affect the company’s sales in the coming months.

When posed with the question “If the United Nations was fully funded why would we need the Arc or social enterprise?” an old proverb comes to mind: give a man a fish and feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you will feed him for life. The reason the world would still need initiatives like Arc and social enterprise is because handouts are not sustainable. If the United Nations kept on giving money that was just being consumed instead of being transformed, it would not be a sustainable practice—no problems would be solved, economies wouldn’t grow and people would be completely dependent on UN money.

This concept is perfectly encapsulated by a quote from Arielle Uwonkunda, a Sauder student who brought Arc to Ethiopia: “I presented a portfolio and impact book on Arc…It just so happened that this was exactly the solution the government was looking for. They want to invest in small-to-medium enterprises but so far have found that after being given money, these enterprises don’t have sufficient knowledge to utilize it efficiently.” If you replace the word “government” in that quote with “United Nation”, then you have the exact answer to the proposed question. Even if the UN gives money to people, without the knowledge on how to utilize that money properly, it will do no good. Initiatives such as Arc and social enterprise are more helpful than any lump sum of money could ever be, as they allow for sustainable growth and ultimately, independence.

 Recently, Starbucks announced that they would begin delivering food and beverages sometime in 2015. Although many experts have been discussing the logistical challenges this new channel presents, another less obvious problem may arise from the new system—a disconnect between delivery and Starbucks’ value proposition.

Currently, Starbucks prides itself on its customer experience, and under its present value proposition, seeks to be the ‘Third Place’ people go between work and home.

Delivering their products would completely change the customer experience Starbucks seeks to create, and at the same time would  likely cause a decrease in the quality of the products. So, although Starbucks may just be seeking to increase their channels, by doing so the face of the company might change as a whole.

I also found another facet of Starbucks’ announced delivery service intriguing. Over the past years, Starbucks has created an online rewards system and an online payment option through their app. The company also plans to build the new delivery service into this existing mobile app.

 Looking back now after the announcement of the app-based delivery system, it seems clear to me that Starbucks has been gaging how many of their customers will utilize the app, whilst strategically familiarizing customers with their online platform. This will help the transition to the new delivery system run smoothly, as customers will already feel comfortable with the platform.

 It will be interesting to see in the months to come how many people will use this new service and how it will change the face of the company as a whole.

I recently read an interview with the CEO of HalloweenCostumes.com, a costume store that operates on an e-commerce platform. As I read the interview, I considered what it would take to operate an online costume store, and immediately my mind went to issues such as cost structure, distribution and the seasonality of the business.

As I read on however, the CEO, Tom Fallenstein, discussed how important it is for his business to “Maintain a very personal experience for [their] customers”, citing the fact that “It’s not uncommon for a customer service representative to continue chatting with customers about a show, a movie, or a superhero long after the transaction is complete”

I was quite surprised about the level of importance customer relationships held for the company; at first, to me, it didn’t intrinsically seem like creating personal relationships with customers is important to a business like Tom’s.

In class, one of the tools we learned about was the business model canvas, which includes a “customer relationships” segment. Although we were taught that every section of the canvas is applicable in some way to all businesses, I still thought that customer relationships were only really relevant for service based companies that are built off forming strong, loyal relationships with customers.

I found it interesting to see that even online companies that deal with huge demand at certain times of year prioritize customer relationships, reaffirming the fact that all types of business’ have endless opportunities to create value for customers.

For over two decades the Taseko mining company has been embroiled in a battle with the First Nations people. Taseko wants to open up a new copper mine at Fish Lake, an area for which First Nations have claimed hunting, fishing and trapping rights. Taesko has faced barrier after barrier when trying to open up the mine.

First, they had to completely revise their original plan which would have destroyed the lake so that the new plan would keep the lake intact. However, even after revising the plan the federal government has rejected the mine. The provincial government is Taseko’s last hope for mine approval, however chances look dismal. In their most recent move against Taseko, the First Nations have now declared that the proposed mine site area is a part of a new Tribal Park, and therefore has all the protection that comes with this new status. This new park status combined with ongoing legal battles, negative press and lack of government support offers very little hope that Taseko will ever be able to overcome the external factor of the First Nations People.

An interesting blog I have come across is a blog run by the Harvard Business Review. The blog is not like most blogs in the traditional sense that it is written by one author or one group, but rather it serves as an access point to a network hundreds of posts written by different authors, all under the umbrella of the “Harvard Business Review”. Posts cover a wide variety of topics, ranging from “Fighting Ebola Means Managing Fear” to “Integrate Analytics across Your Entire Business”. Not only are the posts relevant and up to date, but additionally they offer solutions and advice that pertain to many business problems, and even some that are relevant to this course. There are posts about marketing, accounting, management and many other topics that are applicable to our Comm 101 class. Furthermore, because the blog utilizes an assortment of authors, there are lots of different perspectives and areas of expertise. All the authors on the blog are also credible academic sources, and their credentials are listed at the end of each post. I would highly recommend anyone who has trouble finding interesting articles to write about for their own blog to check out this one.

One of my peers, Rachel Meadow, wrote an interesting ethics article on CVS’ recent policy change to exclude the sale of cigarettes from all their stores. In her post, Rachel argues that this is an example of Ed Freeman’s stakeholder theory. She says that by cutting out cigarette sales CVS will be losing $2 billion in sales per year and so “this decision doesn’t agree with Milton Friedman’s idea that when in business, the main goal should be to legally maximize profit.” I believe, however, that CVS’ decision had nothing to do with ethics at all, and everything thing to do with maximizing profit. CVS would not have cut a huge source of revenue purely for moral reasons. Rather CVS saw an opportunity to be gained and acted upon it. Although they lose a large source of revenue by eliminating the sale of cigarettes, the removal allows them access to a new, and potentially much larger market—the health care market. CVS currently operates over 880 health clinics, and is expanding. With the introduction of Obamacare, the face of health care in the States is changing and CVS hopes to capitalize on this new and growing market. Selling cigarettes would be in direct conflict of its plan to re-brand itself as a healthcare provider, and so CVS chose to cut out cigarette sales in order to gain profit elsewhere, all whilst appearing to be ethically superior.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-agrees-to-acquire-creator-of-minecraft-1410786190

Recently the popular Indie game Minecraft was purchased by Microsoft for a whopping 2.5 billion dollars. According to the above article, one of the main reasons for the purchase was to boost Windows phone sales, which have been struggling recently. Previously, Mojang—the company that created Minecraft—stated that there was no compelling reason to create Minecraft for the Windows phone system, as a very small percentage of phones operate on it. Now however, it seems Microsoft is using Minecraft as a tool to attract users to its platform by creating a Minecraft app that could have extra features compared to other platforms. It remains to be seen what Microsoft will do with regards to console. Currently Minecraft operates on Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s X-box. However, a strategy Microsoft may take to attract more gamers to the X-box franchise will be to make Minecraft exclusive to X-box. Another strategy Microsoft might take, and in my opinion the more likely one, is that Minecraft will remain on all platforms and Microsoft will just continue to operate Minecraft as Mojang did. I think this is the more likely option because Minecraft is already on both Platforms so it would be difficult to remove it and because making it exclusive to X-box would greatly diminish Minecraft’s consumer base, and therefore revenue for Microsoft. It will be interesting to see what Microsoft’s business strategy will be in the months to come.

The 2013 Times Colonist article, “Wild West of groundwater: Billion-Dollar Nestle extracting B.C.’s drinking water for free”, discusses how Nestle, a multi-billion dollar corporation, is able to extract and package ground water from BC for absolutely no cost. According to the article, British Colombia has highly outdated water act which enables anyone to extract groundwater from BC without paying any fees or even having to report the amount extracted. The fact that Nestle has been able to operate unregulated has left many residents of nearby towns distraught, as Nestle is extracting water from the same supply these towns use.   According to Ed Freeman’s explanation of the Stakeholder theory, “A business that doesn’t pay attention to quality of life in the community, doesn’t pay attention to issues of corporate responsibility, of sustainability, on its effects on civil society, that’s a business that’s soon to be regulated and to decline”. It seems that Freeman is correct in his former prediction, as legislators are trying to implement new regulations that would hold Nestle and companies like it more accountable and require payment for the extraction of water. According to renowned economist Milton Freedman the sole responsibility of a company is to maximize profit for its shareholders and this is the approach Nestle appears to be taking.

http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ubc/reader.action?docID=10187339&page=171