I agree with the author viewpoint in the article. She is a experienced in marketing. The three main point that the author mentioned in the article is strong. I think she got the right strategy of marketing. I learned how to make up a real marketing plan through reading the article.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/marketing_without_a_master.html

In response to Jin‘s post, I am not agreeing with his idea. I think it is a great move that is done by apple. It can capture the market share of the tablets and the andriod are getting in that size of a digtal device. Many people are waiting for a smaller size of Ipad for a long time. Good sales are expected for the new mini ipad. Apple is still staying strong even though Steve Jobs died.

Creating a logo and sign for a company take a lots of time. The first reason that make us remember the brand is possibly the unique name that they have or the special logo. Every year funds are going towards advertising the brand name and establish brand identity.

In the city of Quebec, government and several big company is going on court. The government is forcing those company to switch to a French name. Since the large amount of money is spend on advertising, the big firms are not agreeing with the charge of the government and they are on court. The big company stated that the law doesn’t require company to have a french name.

In my opinion, it is almost impossible for the company to switch to french name. Large cost will be spend by the company through changing all the signs in the province. Other than that, the company will have to re-advertise for the brand. The act of Quebec will scare away future company that are willing to invest in the province.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/11/18/big-retailers-french-signs-court.html

During these few years, being environmental friendly is a huge factor. As the oil price is increasing every year, many people choose to alter through different transportation. One of the choices of the consumers is to buy bikes. Brooklyn Cruiser is one of the bike retail store that excel their sales through the last year. The company is opened up by a former programer, Zagata. Through the vintage design of the bike, it is able to earn a spot in the New York museum. Zegata went through many retail store and he is able to sell all of his inventory in lots of places. The launch of the bike is a great success. The company is able to earn over one million of revenue in the past year.

I think it is Zagata make a smart decision for entering the industry. The demand for bike is getting higher and higher. Through the good use of his marketing skills, he is able to earn market share while the market is still growing.

http://money.cnn.com/gallery/smallbusiness/2012/11/16/best-bikes-commuting/2.html

As my previous post is about the horrible cooperate culture that Wal-mart has, there are many company that has an amazing cooperate culture. During the class, I am amazed about the great cooperate culture that Zippo has. After the class, I decided to learn more about cooperate culture. I figure out that many other company have great cooperate culture too.

Google is one of the best place that an employee want to work for. In order to keep the employee creative, the company have done a lot of work to keep the culture of the company. Different free cafe is located within different areas of the main building of google. The plan of goole is to keep the employee stay inside the company building as enjoyable as possible. The company also has a policy called 20% time. Basically, employee are allowed to spend 20% of their time working on project that they are passionate about.

Being a good company is not only about earning profit, it is about the full package that your company provide. I think google did a good balance between earning profit and satisfying the need of employee.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/39573304/Six_Cool_Companies_to_Work_For?slide=7

In response to Tiffany’s Blog, red lobster is one of the famous restaurant in the town. They separate their company from others by providing good quality of food while maintaining it in a reasonable price. However, I don’t agree with the new chances that the company has made in the menu. The addition of food such as pork chop is going to make the company become more regular. It will become more normal is not as stick out as other company.

Wal-Mart is one of the largest American retailer. The company differentiate from other company by having large variety of different products, discount warehouse and discount department store. As the company has to minimize cost in order to keep the competitive price, the wage of the workers is minimize. Other that wages, the other basic benefit of the employee such as health care is also spiking. Due to the poor benefit that the employee  are receiving, they are having a strike during the black friday. This is going to have an immediate effect on the company. The following time will be the busiest moment of the company and they are lacking employee to work for them. It will cause pressure for the company to obey to the needs of employee.

In the company management prospective, a health company should be earning profit and has a positive working atmosphere. Positive working atmosphere can help the employee to work harder for the company. They will treat the customer better. In order to improve the working spirit of the employee, Wal-mart can either improve the benefits for the employee. Or, they can do more internal gathering between department.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-16/wal-mart-workers-black-friday-strike#r=most%20popular

China has one of the fasting growing economy in the world. Lots of new billionaire is generated from China because of the fast growing economics. With the fast going and competitive work environment, employees are not enjoying their work time. Although many of the new generation is living in the modern dream, they are lost in setting personal goals and they simply is just not enjoying life. They are just too busy in work and cannot figure out the things that they like. Other than the work place pressure, money is also one of the reason causing psychological pressure. The price of housing has quadrupled in Beijing in the past decade, but the salary hasn’t keep up with that. People has to spend all their saving in order to buy a house.

Personally, I think it is pretty depressing for people to work in Beijing. The working hours are long and the price index keep on increasing. The ethics of many big company is questionable. Corruption is happening throughout many big company. Other than corruption, secret trade are also made between government and company. Big cooperation do not have any social responsibility and it ended up suffering most of the population in the country.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-16/to-get-rich-is-not-so-glorious#r=hpt-fs

In these past few years, the social media have been become a larger and larger impact on the consumers. In the past, normal advertising is widely used by company. For example, Visa has one of their large advertise campaign by being the sponsor of Olympics. Visa is the only credit card company that can be used during the Olympics. The policy that Visa as set in the Olympics has annoyed some of the consumers during there. It has ruined the brand image that Visa is trying to create. Visa has spent about $100m on the advertising done in olympics.

In the other hand, social media is a cheap to advertise for company. It allow direct connections between the company and the customers. However, the advertising company has become more irrelevant as the social media is become more and more popular. In my own point of view, the social media is going to be the upcoming trend for advertising. As the new generation has a lifestyle that is are more and more reliable on social media. Combining some advertising in the social media website will help the brand to establish the brand image.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19147393

Housing is always a big factor that all Canadian has to think about in their life. There is always two big question while people are thinking about housing: rent or buy. From the past statistics, Canadians are in flavor of purchasing houses. However, the news is suggesting that renting maybe a better choice for some people. In big city such as Vancouver and Toronto, the price of housing is high. The rate on spending in income and housing is switching every year. Different percentage of mortgage rate is set every year. So, the money that people send on housing is different every year. For example, a house may only take $2,000 to rent and $3,000 per month to buy. People can save money just by renting houses and earning the difference. It can benefit them in the long run. However, since the housing in Vancouver always have a high demand. The price of houses is increasing throughout the past 10 years. It will be a smart investment for purchasing house rather than renting

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/11/06/rent-versus-buy.html