After reading Elva’s blog, i have few comments to say.

First of all, as we all know Strabucks is already a very successful company, why do they still bothering to do such things. The reason is the a brand need innovation. If a company does not change their products or the services they have this company will be substituted by other competitors very soon. Second, the different cups also bring the brand specialization and reorganization. Once someone is using the red cup to drink coffee, the other might ask which coffee they bought, thus attract more consumers for Starbucks.

Starbucks is a successful coffee company, but it still faces a lot of competition. Since it aims the world market it will have different competitors in different countries which make the entire company needs higher variety of drinks to different markets, and also high quality of coffee to be accepted by all the people around the world.

Motorola was bought by Google on August 15^th 2011. Many people neither do nor understand why Motorola accepts to be purchased by Google, since it is not facing a break out or even a huge decreasing in stock.

Motorola was the most successful mobile producers in many years ago. After many strong competitors enter the market, such as Nokia, Apple, Samsung and so on, it lost its position in the market, and never got it back. Since Google is a huge famous internet company, this corporation is beneficial both for Motorola and Google.

During this acquisition Google is focused on the patents that hold by Motorola, which will be more convenient to do innovation after buying it. Motorola can also benefit from working with internet company which may improve the software in the mobile, and be able to be more competitive in the market with the other big competitors especially Apple.

After buying Motorola the CEO of Google announced that, Motorola will run independently form Google, this action only means changing in boss, but no other actual effects inside the company.

Bibliorgraphy‘

http://it.southcn.com/9/2011-08/16/content_28389258.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola

In general people always think exports more are better than imports more. Actually the situation is different if you think from the different ways.

If you considered from the consumers’ profit, then imports more is better than exports. When the country import something it means the world price is lower than the domestic price. Once the country imports the goods it will bring down the domestic price below the original price which increases the consumers’ surplus. However, this will decrease domestic producers’ surplus because the domestic producers have to drop the price to match the world price.

If you think form the producers’ point of view, exports is better than imports. When you exports it means this country is at the advantage of producing this goods, also means the world price is higher than the domestic price. Once starts exporting goods it will bring the domestic price up to match the world price, the domestic producers will get more thus increase the domestic producers’ surplus. Domestic consumers are harmed because the price is increased thus they have to pay more to get the same goods.

However, no matter imports or exports the country as whole is benefited.

After reading the blog about the mistakes on brand marketing I think the points mentioned in this article can be concluded into two categories.

First: Difference.

In the blog the “me-too” mistakes, “other guys’ idea” mistake and “Everything-for- Everybody” mistake can all undergo in this category. All these points talking about are how important the differentiation is when you put a product into the market. Now matter is the product itself or the entire company, or the idea beyond the goods you are selling should all be specialized in order to stand out in the market.

Second: Run the Business with Practices.

The other ideas can all be concluded under this title. The best business should get the experiences form the market instead of just relying on some data and researches. Although data analysis and market researches are important to some extent but in order to successfully run the business you have to learn form the practices, even sometimes learn from your failure.

For more information :http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2011/11/brand-marketing-mistakes-leaders-must-avoid.html

Recently many companies are linked their business to different social welfare, and most of them are very successful in the business. Such as Body Shophe world second largest cosmetic franchise who are to be know as the number one objector to the animal tests. Also the TOMS Shoeswhich is theAmerica’s most promising social entrepreneur does well in donating free shoes to poor children.

Those two companies mentioned above are only few example of the social concerned business. With the developing of society, people pay more and more attention to the social welfare, thus many company use this to stand out and win successfully in the positioning war by linking their business to a certain social issues. When consumers choose the brands, they certainly want to chose the products which contribute more to the social welfare, and this also make the consumers feel that they are involving in this behavior and increase the consumers’ surplus, and also the entire social welfare have been improved.

Along with the release of Iphone 4S and the death of Apple Inc’s ex-CEO and originator Steve Jobs, Apple news are everywhere in nowadays.

Despite this special reasons, Apple is still a mythical exists in electronic industries. It was founded on April fool’s day in 1976, within a 3 decays Apple now has became the world Top 1 electronic company which holds an impressive market in each aspect of products.

Why is Apple so successful?

Apple has a good brand positioning. Once you mention electronic devises the first bran came up in consumers mind must be Apple.

The most impressive thing is that Apple almost does the best in every product line. For computer, Apple entered the market latter than others, but it distinguishes itself from other brands by using its own system (Mac OS). For cell phone market, Apple gets strong competitive company such as Nokia and Blackberry. However since its specialization in appearance and the impact of the strong brand, Iphone is everywhere. Besides this Apple initiate a whole new product which is Ipad — tablet computer, once it was released the whole market was attracted buy this innovation and brought Apple more successful.

So for a brand, its position among consumers and markets is the key to success.

Pictures Resources:

Apple Market Share is #1 with the iPad

http://tabletcrunch.com/2011/04/26/ipad-tablet-market-share/ipad-market-share/

http://www.pitchengine.com/appcelerator/as-ipad-launch-nears-new-appcelerator-developer-survey-highlights-tight-race-between-apple-and-google/54999/

http://www.puremobile.ca/insiderblog/tag/apple-ipad-2

The Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), Candu energy, signed a contract with Argentina which worth $400 million brought AECL into people’s sight.

AECL has been a financial problem for federal government for a long time.About $1.2 billion money form taxpayers’ pocket has spent on it. It was sold to Crown Company in 2007, and then the Crown Company was bought by engineering giant SNC-Lavalin Group of Montreal.However, after this contract AECL may gains some profits but since it no longer belongs federal government the profits seems not go into governments’ pocket.

Analysis of AECL from Porter’s 5 Forces:

For details about Poter’s Five Forces: http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/porter.shtml

Resources:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2011/10/08/candu-reactor-argentina.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Energy_of_Canada_Limited

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2011/06/29/aecl-sale.html

After reading Johnson Kim’s Bolg about the introduction of a new legislation inU.S. to add higher duties on Chinese product as a fight back to the continuing devalued Chinese currency. I have few commons to say.

U.S.parliament thought Chinese government devalues Yuan on purpose, which results in a big trade deficit forU.S.and causing lost in job opportunities. However according the data the exchange rate of Yuan has kept increasing, which means Yuan has been rising in value since 1994. So why doesAmericaannounce it as devalued? That is because the value of Yuan today is much different than it used to be.

Following figure shows the inflation rate inChinafrom 1980 to 2008, and the inflation rate in 2009 and 2010 is 15.4 and 3.3 respectively. It is easy to tell that Chinese inflation rate kept increasing. In other words we can say Chinese currency is devaluating. The same amount of money today cannot buy equal amount of goods it used to buy. That’s the reason whyU.S.says Yuan is devaluated for a long period of time.  

Resources: http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/252628817.html

         http://wenku.baidu.com/view/55a78fd149649b6648d74726.html

         http://www.forecasts.org/data/data/EXCHUS.htm

On August 5th 2011, Standard & Poors announced to downgrade American credit rank from the highest AAA to AA+, which caused world wide economic turmoil. This is the first time that U.S.A, the superpower country, was downgraded over recent centuries on credit rank.

This degradation not only reflects the problem onU.S.economy, but also on the improper political policies taken by federal government.Video 1: America Downgraded

On the similar situation, Greek credit rating was downgraded from A- to BBB+ by World top three credit rating agency on December 18th 2009, which initiated European debit crisis.Video 2: Greece Crisis 

Now world’s two largest economic entities are facing serious problem on the financial problem and government policies. Another world wide financial crisis is probably going to happen in other days, which can be told from the sluggish stock market.

It will also affect Asian market in which most developing economic entities are located. The developing markets attract more international investment into the economy, but with these unstable factors these rising economic entities are also facing huge financial uncertainty.