Month: September 2012

The business plan project was quite interesting. My team went through all the business plans in all the volumes. It was quite impressive to see how much information there is in each business plan. The plans were extremely detailed as it showed the financial summaries, objectives, strategies to achieve goals, point of different, market analysis, target market, competition, risks, marketing strategies, and etc. Most of these are things I had learned in marketing. I was tempted to purchase these books as they appear helpful if I want to start a business. Different businesses have different benefits and risks, it is important for me to know the advantages of my region and my target market to know which business plan to choose. My group has chosen a business plan that is not common in Vancouver. The reason we chose it is because it has a huge point of difference. We do not see this business anywhere and my team is quite passionate about this business because of its potential of having a monopoly. We are quite certain that it will attract most target markets.

For the video assessment, it allowed me to pay more attention to the video lesson. Usually it is quite difficult for me to concentrate on videos if there aren’t a lot of pictures. However, knowing that there is an assessment for it, I had to pay attention to every word and floating diagram. Although it said that I can have unlimited tries for the assessment, overall it showed only the mark for the first attempt. I am not too sure if it will actually go towards the final mark.

The articles were rather long and overly detailed. I read it many times and was unable to concentrate on the important concepts because I was distracted by the huge amount of numbers in the articles. There were too many examples of different company’s actions and I lost track of what the article was actually about. I hope the articles could be shorter and to the point so that it will be less confusing and more interesting.

Having a lesson on marketing gave me a better insight on how marketing actually works. In high school, I was taught the 4Ps, price, product, promotion, and place. We were never really taught about competition and the various methods of building a brand. it was extremely helpful to learn how to make a perceptual map. It allowed me to categorize various brands of the same parity into different categories such as price, flavor, or how well-known it is. I have seen this kind of categorization before but have never used it first hand. Doing it today allowed me to realize where different brands stand in consumer’s minds.
The draft we did in class was rather difficult because we were trying to get the sentence to make sense. Our product was Godiva and it was hard to think of function of chocolate other than the fact that it can be consumed. One point of difference is that it is a well known expensive brand and that it would be quite classy to give away as a gift. Overall, I believe our group collaborated well and were gave a significant amount of effort for this mini assignment.

With the increasing natural gas price, the Governor of Pennsylvania is introducing the use of shale gas instead of promoting the use of solar energy. The Governor declares that by using solar energy, its cost will exceed the cost of using shale gas. However, he also states that one of their reasons for using Shale gas is to bring up the price of the natural gas so that the fuel operating cost will increase. This does not benefit the taxpayers as it supports oil companies in maintaining their profits. With the introduction of solar vehicles in the market, most fuel companies will have to close down. The State Republican Senator Mike Turzai collected signed supports to oppose against the use of solar vehicles. He states that using solar energy will increase the electricity bill by $1 billion, however, there is no proof to support this value. Solar vehicles has the ability to solve one of the world’s most crucial environmental issues by reducing the emission of carbon dioxide from cars, fueled by natural gas. Having unlimited solar energy, the use of solar vehicles should be encouraged and supported. The government should not oppose against solar cars just so that they won’t offend the influential fuel corporations.

http://www.examiner.com/article/gov-corbett-says-yes-to-shale-gas-incentives-but-no-to-solar

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