McDonald’s Corp (MCD-N 97.76 0.84 0.87%) on Thursday said it plans to spend $2.9 billion US to $3 billion next year to open 1,500 to 1,600 new restaurants and remodel about 1,000 others.

As we all known, McDonald is the biggest hamburger chain in the world. Although they have had a large market share,  they want to be more profitable. So they want to increase their overall commodity cost to make their food better.And they also want to invest more on employees and employers to make sure their services.

I think it is worth to invest money to improve themselves,so that they can be competitive and keep themselves being ahead of the hamburger industry.

Although they spend a lot of money, they can earn large amount of money from their sponsorship. So 3 billions doesn’t seem like a huge amount for McDonald’s corp.

source:http://www.bnn.ca/News/2013/11/14/McDonalds-to-spend-up-to-3B-on-new-restaurants-remodelling.aspx

Twitter is a typical BUSINESS combined INTERNET example we analyzed on class.

Twitter provide a convenient place for people to  contact with each other. This is a new lifestyle for us. The company owns a large market share in U.S.

The earn money by cooperating with the firms and doing advertisement for them on the twitter website. As  a socializing website, it has a large number of visitors everyday. So this is a good place for the companies to do advertising on their web.

The twitter team develop their web by knowing SWOT well. They get informations of their weakness by customers’ feedback on the twitter. This is a good and convenient way to know what they are doing well and what should they improvement in the next step. The information provided by users can be trustful and reliable.

Facebook can be the biggest competitor with Twitter. Personally, I think twitter should find their common sector and differences with Facebook. And then try to make a difference and meet what users really want. Such as offering worldwide service but not only in NorthAmerica and European countries. They can try to access to Asian countries to win more market share.

The company meet what customers want can have a good development in long-term period. I think twitter does very well by doing business with internet. And this may be the biggest reason why twitter can competite with Facebook and dominates action in busy U.S marketing.

Canada’s existing home sales fell 3.2% in October compared to September, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. No big deal right? After all housing sales were brisk through the summer and bigger picture-wise Canada’s housing market has been on a near-constant upward trajectory since 1997, hitting all-time highs on a regular basis.

The prices of the house in Canada increased steadily, especially in recent years. The most obviously example is the housing price in Vancouver. Increasingly immigration cause the huge needs of housing, and this is one of the most important reason to explain the high housing price.

With the economy increasing, people can earn more money. And high living standard lead people trendy houses.

The other reason is that  most business man want to buy houses and sell to others, so they can earn some from buyers. And it is also called “black market” in econ101.

House price is hard to be controlled because the houses are not direct belong to the government but some individuals. And the high price is caused in a long term but not short term, so it is hard to be controlled.

source:  http://www.bnn.ca/News/2013/11/15/Housing-Story-RAW.aspx

According to the RBC 2013 Retirement Myths & Realities Poll, a large majority (80 percent) of Canadians believe they will get to choose the day they retire, but in reality 41 percent of retirees report they didn’t leave on a date of their choice.

Mostly people retired because their employer asked to, the main reason is health problem. They are always given retirement notice about one year before they really retired. Not surprisingly, most of them enjoy the retirement. They have worked for the company for almost 1/3 of their lifetime, they do need to retire to enjoy their life.

It is reported some parents just delayed to retirement in order to support their children’s education fees. So in the modern society , the high pressure may lead people hard to enjoy their life even though they are able to do so.

In my opinion, people retire earlier isn’t a good idea for the company in some aspect. For example, the company will lose the most experienced worker if they retired earlier. It somewhat cause the brain drain.

But for the employees, I strongly agreed they should retire early and come to enjoy their life.

You can never control the date you retire, but you can make a perfect plan. So you can better prepared financially.

source:http://www.bnn.ca/News/2013/11/15/Retirement-may-come-sooner-than-you-think.aspx

Canada likes to be known as a country where hockey is king and the beer is good. It is obviously that Canada has a great impaction of beer market these years.

The beer industry contributes a lot to the whole society. The beer economy accounts for one in 100 Canadian jobs, or almost 1 percent of gross domestic product, says a new report from the Conference Board of Canada that tracks the economic spinoffs of the brewing industry from the barley field to beer fridge.

Also, the beer industry has a wide marketing. The analyse shows that the lowest consumption of the beer in BC is 205 bottles per person, which means that the beer industry has a stable development.

The development of the beer industry can also benefit to lots of chain industries in the worldwide. For example,Governments get 44 cents of every dollar Canadians spend on beer.

Although the cold beer makes Canada’s economy hop, it still loses market share because of the wine industry, but not that much. The beer market share decreased from 50 percent in 2002 to 44 percent in 2012. The beer industry still plays the main role in Canada.

 source:http://www.bnn.ca/News/2013/11/5/How-cold-beer-makes-Canadas-economy-hop.aspx

China released a raft of detailed reform plans on Friday, promising sweeping changes to the economy and the country’s social fabric as it seeks to unleash new sources of growth after three decades of breakneck expansion show signs of faltering.

With the aging problem and economy problem in society, China relax one-child policy .

This decision was approved by the leaders’ meeting. And this policy seems to be a sizeable step in the right direction.

The aims of the reform:

-aid Chinese economy and help re-balance the global economy

-help fuel the stock market’s strongest rally in only two months

-help to shift the main growth drivers away from investment

In order to achieve these, Beijing wants to encourage millions of rural Chinese to move to live in urban areas.

source:http://www.bnn.ca/News/2013/11/15/China-announces-major-economic-and-social-reforms.aspx

A recent BMO survey suggests small business owners in Canada are more confident about the future than they were last year. (Liam Richards/Canadian Press)

This is a survey interviews 301 canadians this year. The result shows that there are almost 62 per cent people believe the business will be better in 2014 ,while  only 16 per cent people think the business will be worse.

As the article says,  we get that this can be a good news for the economy. People give more confidence to the bank so that they can invest more to their business. Such behaviour  can promote  a good effect to the whole marketing.

Although there are still some people do not trust the bank, it can not effect the big marketing. At least they fell positive about the future ,even though the future may not be really good.

Brands like Harley Davidson built strong communities long before social media even existed.  (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

This article tells us the way to build an effective social marketing strategy.

At the beginning of the article, it tells us one of the most important strategies is to building awareness to customers in 20^th century. But nowadays it can benefit competitors somewhat . So the marketing promotion function has changed.

There are 4 main steps companies have to do.

• Clarifying the mission
• Identifying Analogues
• Focusing on structure
• Create a community (not an audience)

Apple considers to attract customers by using their concept of  the  smart  phones. They clarifying their mission as design.  The apple products have unique looking and system compared to other brands. Personally I strongly agree that the company should identify the barriers like the competitors. The team should figure out how to win the market share among the large number of competitors, such as Sumsang , HTC ,blackberry and so on. As for the apple community, they are huge and professional. One of the reasons why can Apple be one of the most successful brands in the world, the internal structure of company contributes a lot.

So we can see the importance of the brand positioning and value propositions in this article.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/10/06/how-to-build-an-effective-social-marketing-strategy/#faa8f7

This article is talking about the BlackBerry failed to win the smartphone wars.  The company has struggled to compete against Apple and Samsung the smartphone market.

BlackBerry  smartphones are faced mainly to business customers.  They are kind of lack of understanding of markets and they didn’t analysis the marketing really well. So BlackBerry has less market share than Apple and Samsung nowadays.

They do transition to survive BlackBerry, but it is failed.

BlackBerry has finally taken the wraps of its BlackBerry 10 enabled smartphones Z10 and Q10. Z10 is a 4.2 inch touch-screen phone, and Q10 has a qwerty keyboard. BlackBerry is betting that Z10 and Q10 will help the company capture a market dominated by Samsung and Apple.  But blackberry’s market share also not tend to be good.

Personally I think that the blackberry should change their transition way. Although they launched new product, they didn’t think about the marketing. They still face to European countries as they did before but not tend to explore the new marketing. As a Chinese I have to say that a large number of  Chinese prefer blackberry to apple . If the blackberry Q10 and Z10 launched in china earlier than the iphone5s and 5c ,  I bet that most people would choose to buy blackberry but not iphone. Then the blackberry would have  a  big marketing than before and high profit. Then the company can use the revenue to develop some new  domains.

Finally ,the most important reason why they failed the marketing is their lack of understanding of the market. The market is driven by customers’ personal phone preferences, and the team should know better about the customers’ mentality.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/does-blackberry-have-a-future-1.1862945

In May 2010, Walmart’s U.S. stores pulled its “Miley Cyrus” line of necklaces and bracelets, three months after the Associated Press informed the chain that the jewelry contained harmful amounts of the toxic metal cadmium. Long-term exposure to cadmium can lead to bone softening and kidney failure. It is also a known carcinogen, and research suggests that it can affect brain development in the very young. Cadmium in jewelry is not known to be dangerous if the items are simply worn, but concerns come when youngsters bite or suck on the jewelry, as many children do. Walmart said that while the jewelry is not intended for children, “it is possible that a few younger consumers may seek it out in stores.” “We are removing all of the jewelry from sale while we investigate its compliance with our children’s jewelry standard,” Walmart said.

-The stakeholder in this case are labour unions, community groups, grassroots organizations and Wal-Mart customers.

-For this situation, i think

for labour unions,they should correct their judgement of values not only for making money ;

for community groups,they should make a rule of business activities and obey the business ethic

for grassroots organizations, they should supervise their commodity flow

for Walmart customers,they should protect their rights and make a judgement of things that they want to buy

-I recommend that the Walmart should apologize to customers first and give support to sufferers. Then they have to do survey to find out why this happened. So they can know what they should do to  adjust  their products to be accepted to customers better.