Bianca Siregar's Blog – Page 2 – Just another UBC Blogs site

Burger King and Tim Hortons agreed to merge

Burger King and Tim Hortons have reached an agreement of merging the company, creating the “world third largest quick restaurant company”. Tim Hortons has agreed to buy the American burger company in order to make a new-merge restaurant without changing the speciality from each one, this is done for expansion purpose.Burger King has been in breakfast business for 30 years but still hasn’t made a significant growth when its compared with larger player especially McDonalds and Starbucks . While Tim Hortons, also been struggling to growth the US, primarily through unit expansion; but still not significant change visible in the market .

The merging agreements will include sharing of retail space and and management corporation. This means, the two company will soon announce a new company name. This merging has bring contradiction, since Burger King will move its headquarters to Canada. This means the move will cause shrink payment to US company taxes, many has question if this is one of Burger King’s strategy to lower their tax bill.

Marc Caira, the CEO of Tim Hortons stated ” We will be in a better position to take our brand quickly and efficiently to a global customer base”. For the customer segment, we should consider how the new business will affect the demand of both products. For instance, if the new company will be launch in Vancouver, would it attract consumer more than Tim Hortons attract customer before? How would the market interest increase if the two company don’t offer a new product and promote Point of differentiation? Especially for city like Vancouver,majority of population are highly concerned about health and food quality, and with, the merging of the two company ; its safe to say that the products they offer wouldn’t improve the growth of sales by much .Indeed, as a new company they will want to find the segment which is most profitable to use, most suited for the product that being offered.

I believe, Tim Hortons and Burger King would need to improve their strategy to capture market attention by their decision to merge. By both established brand names the companies already owned, this event should be treat as an opportunity to enhance and promote both companies even more in the mind of global customer.

Image source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tim-hortons-burger-king-reaction-u-s-cracks-down-on-tax-inversions-1.2774913

Work Cited

Janus, Andrea. “Done Deal: Tim Hortons Agrees to Takeover by Burger King.” CTVNews. N.p., 26 Aug. 2014. Web. 05 Oct. 2014

Is the Body Shop too good to be true?

As one of the leading beauty products in the world, Body Shop has been recognized across the world as a socially and environmentally responsible company. In the official website, I found the Global Values report. This report basically present its research and development, sourcing and producing, distribution and packaging , as well as the stores, staff and franchise;which basically helps customer to understand the companies’ vision and mission. Here the link to The Body Shop’s Global Value Report

I see that the transparency that The Body Shop trying offer to the customer is also a part of their differentiation strategy. When we are looking at the other beauty product manufacturer such as The Face shop, or Bath and Body works, its uncommon to share their research and company’s value to the public. In the report, the information is very well explained and its actually increase my interest to the products, it helps to raise the awareness of sustainability that the product offers. The Body shop maintain its Differentiation Strategy; by constantly maintain its ecological profile. Not only selling products in ethical method, The Body shop branches out and build ‘The Body Shop’ Foundation in 1990, this foundation helps pioneering frontline organization in term of funding; this focus on human right, the environment and animal protection. Here we can see the business is “giving back” to the world community.

Through future findings, I also found that the values that Body Shop’s strategy has offer has brought some question and contradictions. in 1994 Jon Entine an American Journal published a book about how how Body shop’s value is seen as “hypocritical marketing”. Through this evidence, we could also argue that the strategy practice has been significant which makes the company stands out from its competitor.

Nonetheless, its consistency and integrity of keeping commitment and value of the company , I believe The Body shop has abled to preserve the customers loyalty and maintain the sales through out the year of operations. This example shows us that not only the value of the company such socially-responsible campaigns generate more profits to the businesses

Work Cited

“Swot Analysis Of Body Shop.” 123HelpMe.com. 04 Oct 2014
<http://www.123HelpMe.com/view.asp?id=167571>.

Urban Outfitters, not so “cool” anymore

Urban Outfitters is a perfect example of popular multinational clothing corporation that has been successfully captured its main target markets; teens and young adults. Urban Outfitters develops the multi brand strategy. It is not only selling its own products,but it also merge other clothing companies that has the similar style and selling it in one store. There are wide variety of products, ranging from clothes, apartment accessories to music accessories. Through this strategy, the Urban Outfitters has created a young and innovative company that successfully captures the growing market demand of one-stop destination for lifestyle destination.

Despite of its success ,The Times article highlighted 13-mistakes that Urban Outfitters did during these past years and has catch the market attention. Some Urban Outfitters products has successfully offend different groups through logos on T-shirts/ sweaters, which includes Black, Jews and Native Americans and many more. In addition, Urban Outfitters also has stolen a woman’s necklace design from its the designer, and selling the identical piece online.

Through this cases, Urban Outfitters has been struggling to re-position its brand in the mind of customer. Its difficult to regain the trust and loyalty back from the customer, after after the 13 consecutive mistakes that makes customer question the quality of authenticity and products that Urban Outfitters offer. These mistakes will change customer’s perspective to the brand’s image; if before Urban Outfitters is seen as a “hype and cool store that understand teenagers style”, now Urban outfitters will be seen as design stealer, not-creative, and “not-so-cool” store anymore.

When the main target market is on the age range of 18-28 years old,living in a generation where information can be access easily its important to carefully manage and protect a companies brand image. Hopefully, the creative team come up with more innovative,products that could help the marketing section to restore the Urban Outfitter reputation in the market..

Work Cited

“13 Urban Outfitters Controversies.” The Week. N.p., 15 Sept. 2014. Web. 03 Oct. 2014.

Image source:http://theweek.com/article/index/220370/racist-navajo-attire-and-7-other-urban-outfitters-controversies

Indonesian subsidized fuel, whose faults?

Link to the article- Reuters.com

The significance of the article above is about Indonesian new president Joko Widodo who wants to gradually decrease the subsidy allowance of petroleum in Indonesia. This issue has been a continuos issues since the subsidized fuel was first introduced in the early 2000s.

Low-income earner have been struggling to keep the subsidized allowance at its maximum possible level , as price of petroleum is highly influential to determine price of goods in the market. We can see that this local issue has several business ethics that could be considered.

As being mention in the article, the raising of fuel prices is a sensitive issues since it is the main reason behind current account deficit of Indonesian economy. In addition, this issues has repeatedly created massive demonstration in the capital city,Jakarta.

There will be few negative consequences for different stakeholders in the market, as the president tried to cut the subsidized allowance. First of all, the demand of petrol in the market will decrease, this will also decrease consumer confidence as the general price of goods and services will eventually start to rise. This will lead to more of social issue, such as demonstration, increasing crime, or even higher rates of unemployment. For Indonesia’s economy, this issue will also resulting inflationary pressures that could drive off investors (business confidence decreases). In longer term we may assume, that this could also be a threat of decreasing Indonesia’s level of GDP.

In counter situation, if the government keep the subsidized or even increase the the subsidized fuel allowance there would be several positive consequence arise. Consumers will consume more petrol in the market, and therefore companies or small business will produce more goods and services (consumer confidence increases). This could also be an opportunity for small business to enter the market. However, the allocation of resources of petrol will be worse off as the usage of petrol will create negative externalities of consumption such as increasing rate of rate pollution.

Here we can see there is great amount of social responsibility that the government own, as the pricing decision of petrol here is creating pros and cons in the market. In broader sense, the government practice can also cause sustainability in Indonesia. All in all, it is highly suggested that the government should increase or at least to keep the price of petroleum in order to minimize the spill-over cost in the society.

Work Cited

Gayatri, Suroyo. “Indonesia’s next Leader, Widodo, Faces Party Divided over Fuel Subsidies.” | Reuters. N.p., 05 Sept. 2014. Web. 10 Sept. 2014

Indonesian fuel subsidies contributing to income inequality

Deficit threats by fuel subsidies

Comment on peer’s blog post