I see one news that interests me from abcNews blog website, which is an external blog review. It says that the quality of gift toys by McDonalds. “McDonald’s is recalling a Hello Kitty-themed whistle given to children in Happy Meals, citing a chance they could choke on some of its parts.” Two children were found in great danger because of breathing in little segments of toy, which attracts medical attention at the end. Now consumers should return the whistle to any McDonald’s for a free replacement toy, including “about 2.3 million of these whistles in the U.S. and 200,000 in Canada from October through November in Happy Meals and Mighty Kids Meals.”

Based on this, my attention is put more on the outcome of this recalling thing. McDonald’s is a well-known fast food store, having millions of branches all over the world, and this might be a big obstacle for them to overcome. This accident hurts mostly the North American area, and children are the target damaged group—their parents must be angry with that, although it does not influence that badly. But there is another outcome, which is that this will not hurt this brand at all because McDonald’s is so powerful that they will not let people lose confidence to this company. Actually, two outcomes are based on the attitude the company gave to this accident—we can regard this as one good example to solving emergency problem while doing business, which interests me the most.

Reference:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/mcdonalds-recalls-happy-meal-toy-choking-risk-26814833

Today I read a piece of news talking about Amazon launching a speaker people can talk to, which is something like Siri on an Apple iPhone. For example, you can give commands such as “play music by Bruno Mars” or “add gelato to my shopping list”. This speaker will run on Amazon Web Services, “continually learns a user’s speech patterns and preferences.” What’s more, it seems that Amazon has had an unusually busy year, “developing a mobile phone, video productions and grocery deliveries”. “Last month, the company forecast sales for the crucial holiday quarter that disappointed Wall Street and investors who are eager to see Amazon curtail its ambitions and start delivering sustainable profits.”

While talking about several similar products, there is a terminology word should be mentioned: product differentiation. Comparing and contrasting two products: Amazon Echo and Siri, their functions are nearly the same: people need to speak “Alexa” to start using Amazon Echo, while people say “Siri”; also, both of them can record what people want and need as they like, which is one convenient way to promote people’s life standard.

However, two products are from two different companies, and their fates are different refer to this unique reason. More people would like to use their smartphones more than Amazon, which hears bitter but that is true—it is good for Amazon to concentrate more on technological development, but I think the company should pay attention on what they really good at and how they could do to proof that, and that would be much better than struggling for one thing that might have nothing feedback.

Reference:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/amazon-launches-a-speaker-you-can-talk-to/ar-BBdm1tn

I read one article talking about show business, which is written by my professor from Comm 101 Section 107, Paul Cubbon, and he told a true story about a graduate student named Sean Clark, from Sauder Business school of UBC. He made excellent achievements, who is a real successful entrepreneur, on making footwear online. That sounds not fun but he did a good job to connect customers with companies directly.

At the beginning, Sean just quit his last well-paid job and start to think about opening a Canadian-based online store since once his wife asked him to take shoes that ordered online but cannot be delivered to Canada. That is a great inspiration, which led him to startup his own business. There are not many stores that want to work with him actually, but as time passed, businessmen realized the importance of the connection with consumers, and an increasing number of brands come and join Sean’s online-service company.

I think this is a great example that shows the necessary of connecting and communicating with customers while dealing with business. Sean is a person with a clear mind, which perceived the chance of making brands working together via the same channel—internet—to deliver products directly to consumers when the environment is ripe enough. As time goes by, more and more people would rely on this channel to buy goods online, and the online company will be more prosperous because of more customers.

References:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-marketing/customer-service/shoe-retailer-was-born-after-zappos-left-canada/article19765911/