Article Reference: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/mcdonald-s-sales-slide-coke-flat-as-consumer-tastes-shift-1.2807475
Picture Reference:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s

Refer to the article I read, it is said that the sales of McDonald’s dipped 3.3 percent, largely because of the expired meat scandal in China and the U.S. customers’ taste shift.
Business ethics are notably important for any company if they want to succeed. Therefore, the scandal exposed last month hurt McDonald’s really hard; a previous reputation for safe and quality food has been blemished. Although they apologized and changed the supply chain of beef and chicken in China, it takes a long time to get Chinese customers’ trust back because the negative side of word-of-mouth marketing is shown; the scandal drove customers to other brands. In addition, since more people are being health-conscious, the sales of Coca-Cola have shown one percent drop worldwide, especially in U.S.
In order to push up the sales of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, generally speaking, the only way is to make the product healthier. In the short run, the demand of McDonald’s was inelastic past decades; however, more substitutes came out nowadays and people had realized that fast food was not healthy. Thus, in order to adapt to the changes of people’s tastes, McDonald’s had better to produce late-model food with low calories and fat (because American worried about obesity! Big health problem in North America) and be patient to win the fame back. As for Coca-Cola, they need to find a way to produce Cokes with less sugar while the sweetness keeps as the same as possible. It is hard to achieve but if they are not able to overcome the combination of health and taste, they cannot earn more.
The key to keeping pace with or even surpass other competitors is to meet customers’ needs, and at present, we need a healthy diet and lifestyle.

Article Reference://blogs.ubc.ca/stellacho/2014/10/20/58/
Picture Reference:http://freshome.com/2010/02/07/beautiful-efficient-design-in-a-one-room-apartment/
I am impressed with the blog written by Stella Cho, which briefly analyzes the current housing market in Vancouver. I share the same opinion with her because the price of renting an apartment in Vancouver is prohibitive; setting up such a high price system is not smart because the majority of the tenants are full-time students or graduates who just start to work. The current price is not reasonable and affordable, and as she states, the housing market may even crash someday in the future.

Besides the reasons that she provided that why the price is unexpectedly high, I think the government must play a role in the market as well. Because Canada has a mixed economy, the government has the right to intervene once the market tends to fail. They set up a price floor for rental, and have not displayed any willingness to lower the price compulsively. It indicates that, the government still thinks the current housing market makes the society better off, namely, the gain is greater than the loss with respect to economic surplus.

Stella Cho connects the case of her family with her statement, which makes her words more convincible. The current housing prices not only make the community of young adults stress out, but also burdens the old generation by having negative impacts on their retirement plan. The housing market shares some similar symptoms with bubble economy, and I predict that either the housing market are going to crash or the price is going to nosedive in decade, as expected.

Article:http://www.vancouversun.com/news/metro/Unilateral+park+declared+Tsilhqot+includes+Prosperity+mine/10192766/story.html
Picture Reference:http://quesnelcariboosentinel.com/tsilhqot%E2%80%99-nation-consultation-prosperity-mine-proposal
The first nation has fought against the government for centuries to get back their deserved land and rights. According to what the article said, the industry was not allowed to mine or log NEAR their land by the Tsilhqot’in nation recently.
From the perspective of the industry, their development plan has been hindered because the first nation asserted mining/logging would result in impairments of their land and environment.
The first nation, as an external factor, actually is one of the major resistance on the growth of mining or industry. For an industry, they have to obey many a law and take responsibility of the society as the premises of making profit.
Firstly, Mining by force is not feasible; it will violate the law and the vulnerable-enough relations between two sides may deteriorate even further. On the basis of the PESTLE analysis, factors like social cultural, legal, environment and technology cannot be neglected. Because of the environmental issue, they may focus on the improvement of technology to make mining/logging more ecofriendly or at least less damageable in order to make the agreement with the first nation. To do so, their cost structure is going to shift in technology projects (perhaps they can get subsidized by government); in short term, it may cost a lot, but it is long-term prospective world trend if we think deeper. Besides, because the first nation thinks highly of the environment, the company ought to understand their culture or they can break down their programs into small pieces, trying to minimize the influence; meanwhile, they can hire the first nations to work for them, which partially solves the unemployment problem and gets a step move on building a more positive relationship with the first nations.