Day: October 20, 2014

Blog post link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/sunjie/2014/10/05/my-comment-on-unplugged-and-unproductive/

This blog post of Sun Jie has attracted my attention as he said that businesses nowadays are going online, and in his opinion it is a great thing as smart phones and network are being common and popular, going online and going mobile cut companies’ cost as these methods do not require much human resources, therefore no salary needed to pay for the workers and less mistakes could be made.

I did not fairly agree with what Sun Jie stated as I believe that human resources are crucial to a company’s survival value. Refer to what we have discussed in class, Zappos was a good example of showing how human resources and the style of human resource management can be comparatively important to a company. A company was built essentially based on human resources, a great team providing excellent ideas and wonderful services would bring  numerous profit to the company. Zappos’ s call centre proved that point as the company provides the workers outstanding working environment and welfare. I believe that the future of businesses would be mainly rely on mobile or Internet, however, in order to be successful, these businesses would require strong teams to support them anytime when technical issues happen or marketing strategics needed.

(Picture taken from: http://sites.davidson.edu/anthro/global/2012/03/18/starbucks-entering-popular-culture/)

Starbucks is everywhere. Saying that by living in a country that Starbucks is to be seen at each block of a street. But in Australia, it does not seem so much like that. Starbucks entered the Australian market in 2000, and expand massively in the following years, however, it has caused Starbucks to lose approximately 143 million dollars and more than 60 stores closing promptly.

This is then to be investigated, and released that Starbucks has been “too proud” of its brand. In fact, before Starbucks entered the Australian market, local coffee shop like Gloria Jean had been existed and popular for the whole time, and Starbucks, unfortunately having selling their product at a higher price than its competitors. 

Starbucks, owns 23,000 stores over the world, at the end failed in Australia. It can be concluded that Starbucks might be overestimating itself among all other competitors. As a coffee shop, its product might be different with others, but at the end of the day, Starbucks is not much a necessity for consumers. Furthermore, Australian have the sense of supporting its local community, being a little bit exclusive. The failure of Starbucks in Australia hopefully gives Starbucks an alarm of not being arrogant and too confident of its products.

Reference:

Lutz, Ashley. “Starbucks Has Failed In Australia.” Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 28 May 2014. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. <http://www.businessinsider.com/starbucks-closing-stores-in-australia-2014-5>.