Re: Staples Struggling for Growth. The rundown on the original article is basically: Staples must go to extreme measures to increase profits in times of market-share decline. The blog goes on to address specifically how competitors such as Wal-mart and online distributors ie Amazon are biting a little too much of Staple’s consumer base for their comfort. This issue, however, is obviously not unique to Staples. Even a decade ago, specialty stores co-existed with larger, multi-product distributors, due to their greater range of specialty products. Fast forward today, and information and transportation are exploding almost faster than the market can keep up with, and broad product-range distributors are gobbling up the opportunities to expand with greater ease than ever before. Retailers/wholesalers such as Wal-mart, Costco, etc, are finding it easier than ever to sell an ever-increasing variety of products: Wal-mart’s recent grocery department, for example. And many specialty stores that cannot so easily expand are feeling the crunch. People are increasingly opting to shop at places where they can get the majority of their shopping done at to save both time, and, if the retailer is know for fair prices, good value. It’s just more convinient. Specialty stores such as, but no limited to, Staples, don’t really have anywhere to go in terms of expansion, and so must fall back on cost-cutting to displace their loss in revenue. I believe retail “giants” are only going to become more powerful, until many now-prospering specially retailers are left consumer-less, unless they too can expand in some way and offer products of sufficient uniqueness and quality to overcome mega-retailer’s range of products and ease of shopping.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/davidprestage/2012/10/08/staples-struggling-for-growth/

Re: McDonald’s profit boosed in U.S., Europe

The original blog on the subject was basically adressing the strategies utilised by McDonald’s to hold such a strong position within its market, despite the existence of much rival corporations; such strategies included: cost-advantage; differentiation; and focus (however, I disagree with that they utilise “focus” simply because their consumer-base is so large; therefore, I will be addressing only the prior two points). I agree that McDonald’s takes advantage of both cost-advantage and differentiation to garner success- but I would like to address how, exactly, McDonald’s can do so when in the Porter’s article, it states that companies that are between two strategies within the same level of operation perform poorly. I believe McDonald’s overcomes this belief for a couple reasons: 1, they mastered cost-advantage to the point of becoming the biggest fast-food chain in the world; the strategy became indifferent of the company itself; 2, they waited until the strength of their name was such that missteps would cause minimal recoil to the company. Once stable, McDonald’s looked to broaden it’s marketing approach, not by ditching it’s cost advantage, but by adding it’s McCafe, consistent also with the chain’s cost-advantage approach. Because their consumer-base was already established, they did not have to worry about sending mixed messages of both “quality difference” with “cost-advantage” as much as a lesser-known company because the world already knows them for their cheap price, and mixing it up with differentiation gathers positive attention for the company, rather than confusing customers.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/bettyhuang/2012/10/07/mcdonalds-profit-boosted-by-u-s-europe/

Political tension between China and Japan is resulting in the latter cutting car production in the former by roughly half after the Japanese government purchased a group of “disputed islands in the East China Sea from their private owner.“ With sales of Toyota vehicles in China down 40% from this time last year, and violent protests continuing outside the company`s China-based production factories, it`s no wonder Japan is slowing down it`s production effort within it`s neighbour`s borders. The big idea here is just how much influence political issues can have on businesses, all other factors constant. Toyota has their target demographic, they have their strong value promise, a strong product, strong marketing, as well as consistency in all of these areas. But all that aside, roughly 60% of their success this year has been independant of their business plan. 60% of Toyota`s sales was totally out of the company`s hands. That`s a huge share of sales to have no control over, for any company, and the fact that such a portion of a company`s success can go up in smoke due to political conflict is reason enough for governments to take corporation wellbeing into account when acting potentially unfavourably with respect to countries of major production importance to their own.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/japan-carmakers-cut-china-production-half-nikkei-032354276–finance.html