Doris Zhao

 In 2006, Levi’s introduced Eco Jeans to the market. The Eco line, included jackets, shirts, and of course jeans, is made of 100% organic cotton under emission-free process. I believe selling Eco Jeans has both opportunity and threat.

  I think the opportunity is that consumers are focusing more on the environment when they are making decisions. Levi’s can gain sustainability advantage by using organic cotton and win more consumers. It is important to invest in organic cotton because it preserves the land the cotton is planted on. In order to produce certified organic cotton, the land needs to sit there for many years while the previous pesticides and chemicals are cleared away.

   However, in the same time, the high cost of using organic cotton may be a threat to Levi’s. The high cost of using organic cotton causes the high price of Eco jeans. The price of a Eco jeans is about $150. Most consumers would rather buy cheaper jeans. Only a few rich consumers would like to try this eco-friendly but expensive products.

  Eco Jeans is still available in a few Levi’s store now, but this eco-friendly product is not so successful as it was expected.

  After learning the target market about The Body Shop, I start to think about Chinese old skin care product brands. Believe it or not, I had used Shiseido for more than 5years and I decided to start using Chinese old skin care product earlier this year. I was so amazing at the perfect effect  after using the Chinese old skin care product with really simple and crude packaging. In addition, the price of these skin care products is really low. However, the market of Chinese old skin care product is getting smaller because of the raising competitor -the international brands.

  I believe Chinese old skin care products are not really “old”; their formulas are natural and tested by a lot of people. These products just can not correctly find and focus on their target market. Young girls like products of famous brands with beautiful packaging, such as Anna Sui, Channel. After using Chinese old skin care product, I think they can set their brands as “cheap, effective because of the natural composition”. They have to make their brands recognizable when consumers compare their products to the international big-name products.

   Christie’s Auction House held an auction in London on 29^th Sep. Many works of art and office facilities used to be in the Lehman Brothers’ European headquarters’ office were sold in this auction. About 300 items were sold in the auction and they worth about 160 million pounds ($253 million dollars). The most eye-catching item was the signboard of the Lehman Brothers’ European headquarters’ office.

   This signboard was bought by an anonymous telephone buyer at the price of 66500 dollars. Besides the signboard, the auction also included paintings, powder boxes and even warship models. Many old employees of the Lehman Brothers joined in the auction because they wanted to save their memories by keeping some of the decorations of their old offices.

   In my opinion, Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy showed the overvalued of the investment stocks. And because the return of investment may be safe or risky, the stockholders of the Lehman Brothers’ had to share part of the risk of bankruptcy. The bankruptcy changed a lot of people from the rich to pauper overnight.

As Kodak invented digital photography in 1986, digital camera becomes the “terminator” of conventional film camera. The sales volume of the roll film in the world is decreasing by 10 percent every year. Traditional film producer, such as Kodak and Fuji, both met bottlenecks in their development. However, after several years’ transformation, Fuji ranks the 4^th in the “Consumer’s favorite digital camera brands”. As the inventor of digital photography, Kodak only got 10 percent of its revenue from digital camera industry and earned no profit from the digital camera industry in 2003. Kodak finally decided to transfer its industry in 2003, several years after Fuji’s successfully transformation.

According to the CEO of Kodak, Kodak will quit the film camera industry and depend all its profit on digital industry in 2014. I think, Kodak is changing its strategy on products and target consumer. And the change in strategy is really important to the company. In my opinion, Kodak can win a lot consumers by it’s copiously products in low-end digital market. But the gap in technology with the competitors (like Canon, Nikon, and Sony) will highly restrict the development of Kodak.

We already know that Burger King want to be a competitor in Russia’s Fast Food Industry. My questions are why Burger King focuses on Russia and what’s their challenge?

After searching some information online, I found that the Fast Food Industry is developing very fast in Russia these years. The per capita consumption per month in Russia on fast food is 18.8USD in 2004 and grown to 23.8USD in 2005. However,  Burger King has many strong competitors, such as McDonald’s. Actually, not only in Russia, Burger King is competing with McDonald’s everywhere in the world. The great advantage of Burger King is the good taste of burgers. In Japan, people can wait over 2 hours for a burger in Burger King. I think Burger King can win a lot of consumers in Russia by delicious and juicy  burgers. In my opinion, the biggest challenge for Burger King in Russia is to focus on the right group of consumers and use various method to attract those costumers. In the meanwhile, this is also the biggest challenge for Burger King in all the other  markets.

Yesterday I read a piece of news which is about the Ch2mhill, a full-service consulting, design, construction and operations firm. According to the Ethisphere Institute, the Ch2mhill is the  “2010 World’s Most Ethical Companies”. I believe this firm must have some special actions on business ethics.

After reading the whole news and the home page of Ch2mhill, I think the main ethical issue is the corporate executive’s focus on the development of their working area. That means they take the environment and pollution as a serious part when they are making big decisions and set up goals.

A firm’s business ethics can be shown in many aspects and environment is an important one. However, many firms do not aware of the importance of this business ethics’ factor. Because if the cooperate executives take environment into account, the costs would be higher and the profits would be less. Actually, a firm can earn more respect, as well as money, if the firm is success in business ethics-just like the Ch2mhill.

  Inspired by Ch2mhill, I learn that business ethics is not easy for firms and cooperate executives because they have to face a decrease in profit which make them upset, and actually a long-term profit they can earn.

(Ch2mhill’s homepage:http://www.ch2m.com/corporate/)

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