Monthly Archives: November 2014

Chris MacDonald talks about businesses’ responsibilities through the example of Jack Ma, the founder and executive chairman of the Alibaba Group, in his blog post, “Alibaba’s charity is good for the developing world—but its business is better.”

In his blog post, he states that Jack Ma says “When you have more than $1 billion, you have responsibility” which shows Jack Ma’s view on businesses’ social responsibility. Jack Ma believes in giving back to society, so he personally has set aside $3 billions of his IPO earnings to donate to environmental and educational projects in China. In addition to that, Alibaba Group, as a corporate side, donates 0.3 percent of their revenue. Additionally, Chris MacDonald mentions about the value of the Alibaba Group business which demonstrated when he says “[Alibaba] enable enormous quantities of mutually-advantageous exchange.”

Thanks to the business he founded and the activities they offer, people could connect to each other and commerce is enabled. From Jack Ma, I was able to learn what the responsibilities of businesses are and why businesses have to give back to society. Also, Jack Ma demonstrates the actual action of giving back which I admire.

http://businessethicsblog.com/2014/09/25/alibabas-charity-is-good-for-the-developing-world-but-its-business-is-better/

Every customers have right to know about the product that they are buying. However, Hyundai and Kia just got caught from violating their customers right to know; they understated the carbon emissions of several car models and fined $100 million, as well as carbon credit forfeitures valued at more than $200 million. Their total carbon emissions were exceeding 4.75 million metric tons than what they reported to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

From this incident, Hyundai and Kia got critical negative effect on their ethical image of the brand and they lost their customers’ trust. Not only the lie affected the companies’ brand name, but it also negatively affected the environment due to over 1 million vehicles’ incorrectly measured emission rate. Some customers must have bought the vehicle because of its lower emission rate to contribute to improving environmental issues, but their effort just turned to nothing because the companies fooled their customers to make more profit. 

To regain their customers’ trust, Hyundai and Kia should pay off the fine,  apologize about their lies and demonstrate that they are willing to change and innovate for better goods and services which will take long time to do so.

http://time.com/3555696/hyundai-kia-fined-carbon-emissions/

Pizza Hut, which is owned by Louisville, Kentucky-based Yum Brands Inc. and based in Plano, Texas, is franchise restaurant that is specialized in pizza. Although they are well-known pizza restaurant and spread all over the world, they are going through decreasing of sales; they have reported declined sales for eight straight quarters at established locations.

The biggest reason of the declining sales of Pizza Hut is that Pizza Hut has strong rivals such as Domino’s Pizza. Domino’s Pizza’s sales are increasing while Pizza Hut’s are decreasing because Domino’s Pizza managed to decrease the price and successfully attracted consumers by going ahead in the price competition.

To regain their customers, Pizza Hut completely renewed their brand; they have a new logo, new uniforms, and new menus. For their new menus, they created new recipes involving flavours from all around the world. This is really smart choice of Pizza Hut because it makes them special compare to other brands. Instead of competing with Domino’s by using cost leadership strategy, Pizza Hut invented their own way to stand out; they decided to offer different menus to re-attract customers. Because of these changes that Pizza Hut tries, the future of the brand seems brighter than it used to be.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/pizza-hut-revamp-adds-global-flavours-to-menu-1.2831667

“Remembrance Day is a day where we remember. The point is not to exploit and profit from this day.” – Toronto’s Corporal Chuck Krangle

Gap Canada sent out emails to their customers on Monday which promoting the “Remembrance Day deal” in which a vest was being offered for $19.99. Cpl. Chuck Krangle’s sister also received the email and forwarded it to Krangle, a Toronto veteran, who decided to have an interview with CBC and uncover Gap Canada’s frowned upon product promotion.

Remembrance Day is a day to remember those who fought for the freedom; it is not a day to make profit out of. This action of Gap Canada disappointed many of their customer which critically affect their brand’s ethical image. Even though Gap Canada apologized after the email promotion, their greedy money driven image which caused by the mis-marketing displeased their customers and it will take long time to regain their customers’ trust of the brand.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/gap-s-remembrance-day-deal-not-appropriate-toronto-veteran-says-1.2830820

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/11/11/retailers-face-backlash-over-remembrance-day-promotions

“These have bright colours, they have pretty patterns.  When you feel them, they’re soft and squishy.  If I were a child, it would look like the perfect item to put into my mouth.”  – Dr. Marcel Casavant, study author

Laundry detergent pods are tiny laundry detergents packaged to-go so that people can just throw one pod into the washing machine, thus saving the convenience of  pouring powder or liquid detergent when they do laundry.

Because of its appearance, however, approximately 17,000 children younger than 6 years old in the U.S. have ingested the detergent and suffered from toxic chemicals. As Dr. Marcel Casavant stated, they are usually colourful, soft and candy-like, which may appeal to children.

A large part of the laundry detergent companies’ sales is taken by individuals who have families with young children. Because the companies did not consider enough about their customer segments, the possibility of children ingesting detergent, and how dangerous these incidents could be, poor young children had to go through the dangers. Even though laundry detergent pods are convenient, the failure of designing proper package that suits to their customer segments caused such hazard to happen; thus, companies always have to consider their customers in every part of their products.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/laundry-pods-pose-serious-risk-to-young-children-study-says-1.2827529

http://www.livescience.com/48698-laundry-pods-risk-children.html