This post is in response to Tyler Merten’s post “I-Pod, I-Pad, I-…”

In his post, Tyler mentions that Steve Jobs did almost no market research. Jobs believed that “It isn’t the consumers’ job to know what they want. It’s hard for consumers to tell you what they want when they’ve never seen anything remotely like it.” Entrepreneurs are innovative and have to be a head of the game.

Steve Jobs introducing the very first iPhone

I have to agree with Tyler but only to a certain extent. I do believe that Steve Jobs envisioned many consumer products, but I highly doubt that there was no market research involved. Without market research, there is no possible way that Steve would know what the consumers want. I myself could dream up a revolutionary product, but if it does not satisfy consumer wants, the product wouldn’t sell, and would render useless. I believe that he envisioned his products then tailored it based on the markets demand. The statement that Jobs wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, but to possibly give aspiring entrepreneurs the motivational boost.

Sources:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/tylermertens/2012/11/15/i-pod-i-pad-i/

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/4GN8KHnfUWFkN2yaU4_QyQ–/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O2g9NzM2O3E9ODU7dz05NTA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/9a36c0ed73b9c216fa0e6a70670016d9.jpg

As mentioned on their corporate citizenship blog, Microsoft is offering a total of $40,000 to several developers who can come up with a ‘Social Good’ application for their new Windows 8 Operatin system. Their new contest celebrating the launch of their new operating system is aimed for “developers to create apps that positively impact the world around them”

Microsoft’s latest product the ‘Surface’ running their latest operating system ‘Windows 8’

As talked about in several classes in COMM 101, Social Entrepreneurship is growing in popularity everyday. However, not many people have the access to the start up capital to fund their ideas. But with hat Microsoft is implementing now, it will put some doubts to rest and become truly a win-win situation for everyone!

Entrepreneurs can start their new business through application developing as it is cheap, and requires only a user and their computer at the bare minimum. The general public will benefit from the social good application produced. Microsoft will gain a great brand image, as a result, consumers will want to purchase their new Windows 8 products. Truly a great strategy adopted by Microsoft.

For more information on the contest, or if you want to participate, CLICK HERE!

Sources:

http://uncrate.com/p/2012/06/microsoft-surface-tablets-xl.jpg

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoftupblog/archive/2012/11/05/announcing-the-windows-8-apps-for-good-contest.aspx

This post is written in response to Carmen’s Lee post “Sears Canada Reduces Losses”

In her post, Carmen mentions that Sears has been declining in sales, due to American retail chains entering the Canadian Market. However, despite the decline, Sears has slowly been recovering, through an improvement in operations. Their losses cut in half, but still not back to normal capacity.

Personally, I never really knew how much Sears was affected until reading Carmen’s post. I realised something was wrong after their store at Downtown Vancouver closed down, but I thought it was just cause of the particular branch’s problem, not the company as a whole.

A picture of the Sears at Downtown Vancouver closing down

 I think that Sears should recognise their competition, and instead of just addressing operations, address the marketing side of the situation as well. They should identify their point of difference, relative to consumer demand, and see how they can use that to their advantage! Possibly deal with the human resource, offering better incentives to employees as well, because happy employees lead to effective and efficient work!

Sources:

http://www.vancitybuzz.com/image.php?src=http://www.vancitybuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Sears-Closing-1024×764.jpg&w=650&a=t

https://blogs.ubc.ca/carmenlee/2012/11/15/sears-canada-reduces-losses/

Back in June, Japan enforced the law against piracy which would allow anyone who sold, bought, uploaded, downloaded or even watched unauthorised media to be prosecuted.  Furthermore, Internet Service Providers (ISP) would have to pay fees to allow the music companies to keep constant surveillance over their customers. This law has caused a huge decrease in sales for the music industry, as consumers have become so afraid to download legitimate content, in fear that it may be fake, leading to them being arrested. A recent consumer survey showed that 68% of the polls spend no money on purchasing music. This has been the highest in Japan in over 10 years.

This is a great example of what Tom Dobrzanski had to say in COMM 101 class about how bands feel about illegal downloads. As he quotes, it is essentially “free marketing” helping spread the word of the band, so why try to resist it?

Record labels continuously complain about loosing tons to illegal downloads but honestly, in this day and age, there is little to no way of stopping piracy. Even with the laws set in place it is still very possible to copy content. Back before torrenting was popular, kids would buy a CD, rip it off on their computer and simply transfer it to someone elses thumbdrive. If we were to go further back, kids would hold cassettes recorders by the radio to record their favorite song!

To any bands or record labels reading this now, why fight a battle you can’t win? try to find the brighter side of it, because without consumers listening and buying your music, you would not exist.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zolas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrenting

http://sourcefednews.com/japans-anti-piracy-laws-hurt-revenue/

http://www.japantoday.com/images/size/x/2012/11/download.jpg

This post is written in response to Christopher Merritt’s blog post “Hurricane Sandy is Affecting Retail Supply Chains”.

Here’s a short news report from ABC news about Hurricane Sandy.

Businesses have been drastically affected by Hurricane Sandy. Their inventory, damaged; Transportation logistics reduced in frequency, resulting in businesses being unable to fulfil consumer demand. To make matters worse, the holidays are around the corner which usually means high demand for goods. Furthermore, third party transportation cost have been increasing as there is a ‘shortage of capacity and fuelling affecting their service to customers’. Christopher ends by stating that it will be a while before things go back to normal.

In my opinion, this will put a huge amount of pressure on the role of operations in the supply chain. As now, they need to double their efforts to get the right product at the right place, at the right time, in the right amount in the most efficient manner! Especially in time for the holiday season.

It is crucial at this time that the operations manager and marketing manager have excellent communication. I have to agree with Christopher that the situation will only improve slowly. Therefore only high demanded items should be supplied and less of the low demanded. That way cost will be saved from transportation, as there will be a better chance of sales of a highly demanded good than a lower one. Which will ultimately lower average cost in the short run. Making the best of a bad situation.

For more information on Hurricane Sandy click here.

Sources:

http://blog.ryder.com/2012/11/hurricane-sandy-is-affecting-retail-supply-chains/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/hurricane-sandy-causes-evacuations-closings-throughout-east-coast/2012/10/29/8eac52ba-2162-11e2-8448-81b1ce7d6978_story.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZFlxuU1FRY

It seems with every new device that gets released by apple, some breaking news has to emerge. And as expected, with the release of the new iPhone 5, a stir has been caused within the Foxconn factory. Due to a failure in the design of the iPhone and new regulation standards on inspection of the new product, Foxconn employees are finding it difficult to cope with the raging demand of production and as a result, leading to iPhones that come with nicks and scratches out of the box!

The employees say that they do not have the training required for the new inspection procedures. To make matters worse, employees were denied vacation and instead have to continue production to satisfy the demand for iPhones coming up for the holiday season. And to top it all off, alleged violent fights have broken out within the factory over unsettled disputes. This may have an affect on the supply of iPhone 5s.

Workers at a Foxconn factory

A solution to this problem would be for apple to take initiative and either change the design of the product or train the employees for the production. It would be unethical of apple just to sit there and watch employees take the blame for their flaws. If Apple doesn’t do anything soon, It could lead to a greater loss as consumers will see Apple as unethical and move away from the company to competitors like Samsung. However, Apple has handled situations like these in the pass and dug them selves out of the grave, so lets hope for Apple to pull out an umbrella on this rainy day.

SOURCES:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/05/foxconn-workers-reportedly-strike-over-iphone-5-quality-control-rules-say-handset-design-is-flawed

http://cultofmac.cultofmaccom.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/hi-852-foxconn-workers.jpg

Start by watching this video by the GatesFoundation.

Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, on behalf of the “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” (BMGF) are sponsoring a team or researches to reinvent the toilet. As mentioned on the video, 2.6 billion people are without proper sanitary toilet. The Asian Institue of Technology (AIT) was given $5 million to fund the research and development for the new toilets, which will span a period of five years. Their design and price will be market-led which means that they will base the product’s features and price on what consumers need.

The BMFG Logo

From the topic discussed, we can see that Bill Gates, founder of microsoft and now chairman, is not just profit driven, but cares about externalities. Having a chairman care about the social cost instead of just profits is really important especially in today’s modern world. Resources are being more and more scarce. Consumers are getting more and more concerned about sustaining their resources, and so are the governments. As a results, regulations are put into place. If a business doesn’t follow the regulations, consumers will be mad and this will lead to lobbying. They may boycott the business until it is gone or the government, for the well being of the society, will regulate bias against the business until it is impossible to operate.

SOURCES:

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/GATES-GRANT-TO-CREATE-NEW-LOO-30191029.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdwvuTrycYU

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Pages/home.aspx

Lobbiest are going against the recent approval of limiting the size of soft drinks which was signed into law by the New York Board of Health. The lobbyist call them selves “New York for Beverage Choices” but as the Huffington Post calls them “Soda Pushers for Continued Profits”, which basically means that they comprise of the fast food restaurants going against regulation so that they can earn profit from the sale of large sized soft drinks.

The reason for this alliance between the fast food industry and the soft drink industry is because the fast food industry gains at least 10% of it’s revenues from the sale of soft drinks alone. Over the years, fast food restaurants like McDonalds have been subconsciously changing the norm in soft drink cup sizes, brainwashing children in assuming that a ‘child size’ of 12 oz coke is acceptable. (12oz of coke equals to 39g of sugar).

Here is a Mcdonalds commercial advertising Coke

This illustrates a clear example of child exploitation in terms of marketing and companies not knowing when to stop. Children are vulnerable targets for companies and as a result, they should know at what limits they should stop. Clearly this is not the case as McDonalds as well as several other fast food chains continue to go against the government regulation for reducing cup sizes, hence continuing an attempt to further exploit the brains of the vulnerable.

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-simon/mcdonalds-coca-cola_b_1874770.html?utm_hp_ref=food

http://www.happytoydepot.com/images/store/items/sign.jpg

Apple vs. Samsung. What may seem like an age old debate for fanboys has now become even more popular topic for the rest of the world. Rather than concentration on “which phone is better” or “who copied who”, I am going to analyse the marketing section of this debate.

Lets start by watching this video.

Incase you don’t understand the video; Samsung is poking fun at the “Apple Fanboys” who would line up days for an ‘The next big thing’ – an iPhone 5. Samsung is implanting the ideas to consumers telling them “Why wait when the next big thing is already here”.

Furthermore, Samsung has clearly placed these ads on several youtube videos based on the iPhone 5 as seen in the pictures below.

Clearly the points of parity for Apple and Samsung would be their latest smart phones ‘iPhone 5’ and the ‘Galaxy SIII’ respectively. But the point of difference for Samsung is derived from the advertisement themselves; that Samsung can offer a similar or even better phone without the hassle of waiting, hence making samsung distinctive and credible for consumer wants. Furthermore, the fact that Samsung acknowledge their competition, consumers won’t think that the brand is untrustworthy and self praising and as a result, making consumers think twice about buying an iPhone 5.

SOURCES:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nf5-Prx19ZM

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/09/17/first-iphone-5-orders-have-begun-shipping-line-begins-at-5th-avenue-apple-store/

Its hard to discuss the issue of business ethics without thinking about “Walmart”. The American Multinational corporation of discount chain stores is not only famous for their very low prices, but also their exploitation of workers.

Exploitation of human labour is the factor that drives the reputation of bad business ethics at Walmart. Employees are put in terrible working conditions and are paid less than half the minimun wage which is the important ethical issue that should be dealt with.

A child as young as 12 years of age working at Huanya Gifts.

In Guangzhou, the minimum wage around the area is roughly 55 cents an hour. However, most workers employed under Guangzhou Huanya Gifts (Manufacturing company that supplies goods to Walmart) make as low as 26 cents an hour! 47% of the minimum wage.

To make matters worse, workers are forced to work with little to no protection in the spray paint department, as they handle potentially life threatening chemicals.

A former employee at Huanya said, “It’s quite noisy, and you stand up all day, 12 hours, and there’s no air-conditioning,” “Sometimes I got $110, sometimes I got $150 a month.”

Needless to say, the low cost comes at a high price.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/business/worldbusiness/05sweatshop.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/business/13ornaments.html?_r=0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nlcnet/4441207596/