The article “Pay Toilets On Airplanes?” states that Ryanair, an Irish airline wants to charge their customers to use the washroom during a flight. After having read this article, I wasn’t surprised because I have noticed that airlines have been starting to charge individuals for additional items . With airlines, I believe if a company reduces the price of their tickets, other’s will do the same, and as a result, changes are made.

Air Canada is a great example because they now charge for additional luggage, alcohol beverages (unless in business class) and food during a flight. Everything used to be included in the price of a ticket, however, since other airlines started to reduce their prices as a way to be competitive, Air Canada followed. From these recent changes, I’m curious to know whether airlines are losing customers from these extra charges and if so, how many.

I believe that airlines are adding these charges because they want to reduce the price of a ticket. This is a great marketing technique because individuals actually believe they are getting a great deal when purchasing their tickets. After all, the truth is that individuals eventually have to spend money on food and drinks during a flight. So the real question is, are customers actually getting deals on flights, or are they getting tricked into spending more money?

Sources:

http://expatlogue.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/lessons-from-life-in-canada/air-canada/

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500395_162-4833699.html

After reading Monica Goyal’s post, I started to think about the change in companies. Companies now make large agreements in order to protect themselves from being sued, and I believe as a way to confuse the reader. When I sign up for an online website and the agreement is extremely long, I just press “Accept Terms” without reading the actual document. “Accepting Terms” without actually reading a company’s agreement is bad, because we users don’t know what we have agreed to.

Earlier in the year, Zappos announced a large security breach that affected roughly 24 million customers. In response, users launched a lawsuit against the company. Zappos tried to send the lawsuit to arbitration because their “user agreement” stated they were not accountable for this issue. However, once the court read Zappos’ user agreement, they discovered a couple of clauses that seemed unfair, for instance, one allowed Zappos to change their terms and conditions at any time. As a result, the court forced the company to proceed with the lawsuit.

After reading Goyal’s blog, I realized companies are adding clauses that are unfair to users. Companies get away with these actions because a majority of the users don’t actually read the agreement. Therefore, I believe users should start reading company agreements, and that companies should only include clauses that would affect a user in any given situation.

Sources:

http://blogs.itbusiness.ca/2012/11/why-zappos-user-agreement-didnt-stand-up-in-court/#more-4842

(Monia Goyal’s blog post)

http://www.dragonflyeffect.com/blog/dragonfly-in-action/case-studies/zappos/

One of the co-founders of UrtheCast, Wade Larson was a presenter during our November 9^th Comm 101 class. UrtheCast is a company that will be installing two high-definition cameras onboard the International Space Station. Everything recorded by these cameras will be on the UrtheCast website site where individuals can see the Earth at any moment.

When the first video was shown explaining the company, I was amazed because the idea seemed somewhat impossible. Being able to see what is happening in our world, at any time of the day, and being able to fast-forward and rewriting is quite fascinating, especially because it hasn’t been done before.

At the begining of the presentation, I was confused whether Wade was presenting his business plan to us or if the company had already been established. Further on to the presentation, my question was fully answered as he stated the company had already been given money from investors and how the Russian government had signed a 10 year lease with them, allowing UrtheCast cameras on their satellites.

Although UrtheCast’s long-term business plan is great, there are some areas that seem too optimistic. One being that Russia only signed a 10 year plan, what happens if Russia doesn’t want to be involved after, all the hard work and money invested into UrtheCast will be wasted.

Wade Larson also mentioned that UrtheCast cameras will be able to determine where individuals are when they tweet. Reason being, is because they want to prevent individuals from being harassed or hurt. This seems very difficult to do, as a fellow student asked, “how can you distinguish between important tweets and normal tweets”. This was a great question because unless there is a large team of individuals who continuously read through all of the tweets to filter out the non-important one’s, this idea will be impossible.

Therefore, UrtheCast has the potential to be extremely successful, however, I think the company should focus on their website that provides online footage and selling their data to the media before getting involved with the twitter world.

Sources:

http://urthecast.com

http://www.canadianmanufacturing.com/design-engineering/news/urthecast-and-mda-to-pioneer-hd-earth-video-from-space-56318

http://www.gizmag.com/urthecast-earth-video-platform/19020/

The class of November 9^th was definitely one of my favourite Comm 101 classes as we had the opportunity to hear two graduates from Sauder speak about pursuing their dreams of starting a company.  These entrepreneurs spoke of the risks and hard work associated with establishing a company. After hearing Jenice Cheam’s story of the challenges she had to tackle, I realized that anyone’s dreams can come true with plenty of hard work.

Energy Aware is a company that was founded in 2005 by Jenice Cheam. Her companies product is a PowerTab, which is a user-friendly monitoring device that can be stored in houses. Through the use of her product, individuals can determine how much energy they are using in their household and also how much energy they can save by turning off a light, or un-plugging an appliance.

Her presentation was very inspiring as she put so much money and work into establishing Energy Aware. Jenice stated sometimes she couldn’t even afford to eat, and that she had to tutor english for a couple of hours in order to buy something she needed.

After hearing her presentation, it is unfortunate that Jenice cannot sell her products to individual households, but only to companies because there is a loss of potential revenue. The advantage of selling to companies is that they buy in bulk so when Jenice’s company makes a deal with an energy supplier, this means her company will be able sell a large amount of her products.

In conclusion, differentiating yourself, and being able to differentiate your products in the market from other companies is crucial, and thus leads to success. Although I may not establish my own company, her presentation made me realize that each and every graduate from Sauder can do something important in the future.

Sources:

http://www.energy-aware.com

After having read Taylor Carkner’s blog post, I agree with his statements regarding the difficulty Starbucks will have entering India’s market, especially since Cafe Coffee Day already has 1200 cafes operating, in India alone. This being said, Starbucks will have to differentiate themselves from this cafe by targeting a specific demographic that is willing to spend over 4$ on a coffee, and have a somewhat “luxurious coffee experience”. In order for Starbucks to find the right location to open their first store, they will have to research which location individuals receive higher incomes and have higher spending power.

Rivalry is high because Starbucks has to compete with Cafe Coffee Day, a company that is already known and used by local customers daily. Since Starbucks wants to gain customers, another option they can take into consideration is researching what types of drinks and food is popular in the location they decide to operate.

A lot of companies change their menu when entering a new country, for example, when McDonalds opened their stores in India, they offered chicken, veggie and local options rather than beef burgers, because of individual preferences. I believe if Starbucks research’s what types of drinks and food is popular in the location they decide to operate, they could potentially gain more customers, and maybe even steal customers from Cafe Coffee Day.

Therefore, if Starbucks begins to provide local options and traditions in their stores, individuals would be willing to purchase more of their products because it demonstrates that Starbucks cares about India’s culture.

Sources:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/taylorcarkner/2012/09/29/starbucks-looks-to-expand-globally/

(Taylor Carkner’s blog post regarding Starbuck’s global expansion)

http://www.rediff.com/money/report/starbucks-makes-india-debut-serves-mumbaikars-first/20121020.htm

After having read Jonathan Hu’s blog, I completely agree with his statements regarding Dollarama. The truth is that individuals are attracted to cheap goods, because not everyone can afford expensive products.

Dollarama is similar to The Dollar Store, as I have visited both. I believe their store names are deceiving as they’re implying their products are only a dollar, however, when I recently visited the store to look for a birthday card, I was surprised to see that the cheapest card was $1.99.  After noticing this, I looked through the rest of the store and found that there were very few products selling for a $1 or less.

Perhaps when Dollarama was first founded in 1992, products sold in the store were $1 or less, however, since the franchise has grown to be popular, this has definitely lead to an increase in demand, and since the demand rose, the company increased the price. I thought, if I put myself in the company’s position, I would do the exact same, why not raise the price if the customers keep purchasing? It would be a bad business decision not to raise the price. Making a larger profit is the goal of any firm, and as rivalry is extremely high in this type of market, they may as well take advantage of customers.

I believe both companies are taking advantage of marketing because they are inferring their products are only a dollar to attract customers. This being said, their marketing strategy is clearly working because individuals continue to purchase their products, even when the price increases.

Sources:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/jonathansanitizer/2012/10/08/wow-only-a-dollar/

(Jonathan Hu’s blog post on Dollarama)

http://money.ca.msn.com/small-business/gallery/gallery.aspx?cp-documentid=23132005&page=3