March 31, 2013 · 10:42 am

Reflective Post on Assignment III

(source: http://lukekenny.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/174/)

After one month of hard work on our Marketing video, it is finally finished and will be presented in front of the class. The assignment is a rewarding practice for all Marketing students, because not only our marketing knowledge was testified in planning, filming and editing for the video, team bonding was also greatly enhanced.

To begin, our group sat down at a meeting room in Canaccord Learning Commons to plan the video, and we decided that we’ll be capturing the busyness of Vancouver to portray the place and promotion strategies for Zara. Also we’ll go into Zara to conduct a store tour to demonstrate Zara environment, price and product.

Few days after, we borrowed a HD Handycam from CLC and headed down to Robson Street and Pacific Centre. After few hours of shooting, we obtained a lot of raw videos about Vancouver’s skyscrapers, office towers and commercial district for our voiceover’s background, the Zara store, and interviews of pedestrians who just walked out from Zara for their opinions about Zara.

After the filming was done, we edited the video using iMovie. None of us knew how to operate the iMovie program, but after we watched Youtube tutorials and used Google to find blog posts about iMovie together, we coped with all technical difficulties and produced this video. My team worked diligently to assure video quality and we always consult each other before making a decision.

This assignment is an important lesson for our team to apply our marketing knowledge, to put together a marketing portfolio, and to play around with video making. Both I and my team learnt a lot in this process and we strengthened the relationship with each other, and I’m glad that the time we spent in DML and video shooting paid off!

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

March 20, 2013 · 10:24 pm

Social Media: Your Recruiters are Watching You

 

(source: arhhra.com)

Do you remember what you typed for your blog, twitter or Facebook last time? Each of these actions could easily allow others who are either familiar or strange to you to know what you did in the past and how you live your life. On the positive side, social media allows people to know more about you to help you expand your human network and enrich your relationship with friends. However, if you are recently looking for jobs, you might want to think more carefully before you press that “Enter Key”. Social media is an open platform where people have the rights to talk freely and share openly through the thin air.  If you posted or are tagged on Twitter doing something that’s inappropriate in recruiters’ eyes, recruiters who paid attention to these could pass on you for the job offer when they are evaluating your candidacy. This can be explained by the halo effect in marketing, and it states that if you have a bad first sight for someone or something, you may carry this negative attitude to your later interactions with this person. As well, the emergence of social networks for professionals such as Linkedin has given many people a chance to be recognized professionally more cheaply . The problem with this is that a lot of the times int would present yourself differently to different employers for different job requirements, and having a Linkedin could cause recruiters discrepancies about you if the way you present yourself in the interview is different from your online profile or how others commented about you. Hence, it’s important that you are aware that recruiters are paying close attentions to your behaviors online, and make sure that you always present yourself in a positive way even online.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Social Media

March 14, 2013 · 12:14 am

Does Brick and Mortar Retail have a future?

 

(source: vigcapital.com)

We used to go to nearby Blockbusters to rent the latest movies, now we can watch just the same content with Netflix online. This is just one example of how technology has reshaped our lives. Despite of E-Commerce’s emergence, The Shelf Edge recently blogged about the opportunities for brick and mortar retails. Like many X and Y generations, the author is also someone who often purchases electronics online for a bargain. Because the author wanted to get the product immediately for his mother-in-law, he ended up going to Best Buy for a computer. During his visit, he received important information and great services from a Best Buy sales representative who inspired him to come up with this idea that traditional retail can still prosper and compete with online shops.

I agree with the author. Yes, computer does save us time going to a store and provides us with a wider range of shopping selections. However, traditional distribution channels do have competitive advantages that are defending themselves from their digital competitors, especially for service-oriented companies like Best Buy. For instance, an important step in providing good service is to know what the customers want, even though surveys can be conducted to reduce the knowledge gap between marketers and customers, important signals from buyers like their body languages and facial expressions can only be sensed by experienced humans, not computers. As well, traditional retails can bridge the communication gap between the sales people and the consumers. For example, when you look at the descriptions of a computer online, a lot of people don’t know what the specifications would do. If you are at Best Buy, you can access their computer experts before sales and after sales to make sure you made a well-informed purchase, and it’s more likely that you will have a better user experience with your purchase. Therefore, I believe that brick and mortar retails will still exist for many years to deliver their best values to customers.

4 Comments

Filed under Retail

February 18, 2013 · 12:58 am

Reflection on Alex Cheng’s “Ethical Sales Tactics in the Housing Market”

(Info Planet： Night Views of Global Cities)

In Hong Kong, the value of apartments has been calculated in “gross floor area” for many years. Major setback of this metric for customers includes the functionality of this metric. Many property developers in Hong Kong including the popular Cheung Kong Limited (SEHK: 0001) and SHK Development (SEHK: 00016) have been publicized about their exploitation of “gross floor area” to earn more profit by boosting the metric with non-functional areas like some long narrow corridors at the side of a room which has little to no apparent use for the consumers. Therefore, the government implemented a new measurement for housing by indicating the saleable area, which aims to provide better transparency for buyers to protect them from unethical developers.

I agree with Alex’s ideas about the Saleable Area policy. This policy not only adds advantage to the consumers by helping them to obtain symmetric information about the housing market, but it also reduces incentives for developers to manipulate the metric; due to Hong Kong’s leading position in the global housing market, the successfulness of this implementation will have significant implications on other similarly expensive housing markets such as London, Shanghai, Singapore and Vancouver by guiding them on future government policies and responses to such concerns.

Beside the short term purpose of providing more functional areas for consumers through creating better transparency, the Saleable Area Policy also serves a long term purpose to have unethical marketing strategy on real-estates ceased to work through improvements on government policies, market education and corporate social responsibilities, which would help people to gain more confidence about the housing market to strengthen or stabilize the economy, and also allow more people to be able to afford a home in the major cities by freeing more usable spaces.

4 Comments

Filed under Real Estate

January 27, 2013 · 2:42 am

Weibo brings change to China

Source from TechInAsia

Undoubtedly, the emergence of Weibo, a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook in China, has important meanings for celebrities who want to get more exposure, for companies to promote to the general consumers, and for people to connect with friends in diverse ways, but perhaps the most impacted one would be on shortening the communication distances between the Chinese government and its people. Weibo, a fast media product, has much marketing importance to the Chinese politicians.

As an example, the news of the police chief of Chongqing sought refuge in the US consulate in Chengdu after falling out politburo member Bo Xilai was publicized most immediately on Weibo. The news was spread out very quickly by people sharing and commenting, and soon the world was informed of the news, which pressured the Chinese government to handle this issue in a fast and transparent manner. Before Bo’s issue, no rumors about the politburos were ever exposed in China due to the censorship. As we can see, the growth of fast media in China allowed people to receive messages more easily and even acted as an agent for reducing political corruptions, and Weibo is a powerful tool for that.

This improvement in speech of freedom did not come without resistance. Referring to Bo Xilai’s case, Weibo had to ban users from commenting on other people’s posts for several days, and several users who posted speculation about a possible coup in Beijing were arrested. Henceforth, in order for the Chinese government to better service its people as well as to keep people align with its political vision, Weibo and other fast media marketing tools are important for establishing the necessary trusts and transparencies. By doing so, a more open, harmonized, and less corrupted China will be within sight.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Social Media

January 18, 2013 · 7:32 pm

Feed Scandals of the Fast Food Giants in China

A Chinese farmer collect eggs at a chicken farm in Hefei in eastern China's Anhui province in November 2009. A recent report published Nov. 22, 2012, said that a chicken supplier to KFC used harmful chemical additives, sparking food safety concerns. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

A Chinese farmer collect eggs at a chicken farm in Hefei in eastern China’s Anhui province in November 2009. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Recently, a poultry supplier to fast food chains KFC and MacDonald was discovered to have accelerated the growth speed of chicken by using a chemical called “instant chicken”, which is harmful and can cause health concerns for consumers.

As we know, the fast food chain giants KFC and MacDonald captured most of the market shares of the industry in China. As clear leaders of the industry, KFC and MacDonald multiple scandals including the Sudan food chemical scandal, the illegal cooking oil scandal, and many other food safety concerns would affect the behaviors of other restaurants who look up to them and damage the whole industry’s reputation.

KFC and MacDonald had done lots of great marketing campaigns that can be written or have already been written into case studies for business students to learn from. Being customer-oriented and socially responsible companies have frequently advertised by the two. Disappointingly  their profit-driven behavior formed by the stock market and management has caused the company to go across the line and disregard the health of consumers.

It’s much faster for a company to go under than for them to make their way up; as reflected by the share price of Yum! Brands.Inc., the stock price of the company dropped by over 12 percent from the date of the scandal being publicized to today, which is less than a month, due to the loss of sales and loss of people’s confidence about the company.

This ethical issue reminds us the business students that, being unethical is not the good option for operating business. As we can see from the case, just a small mistake made in KFC’s supply chain caused the company billions of dollars. And, it’s important to remember that product safety is highly valued by customers.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/china-news/chinese-kfc-chicken-supplier-in-feed-scandal-319725.html

Leave a Comment

Filed under Food

January 9, 2013 · 5:50 am

Welcome to my the K-Blog!

Hi, welcome to the K-blog.

My name is Kevin Zhuang, UBC BCom 2015, the blogger.

I will be introducing various Marketing-related concepts, commenting on a fellow classmate’s blogs, and reviewing on an industry professional’s article.

I am looking forward to interact with you! Stay tuned!

Sincerely,

Kevin

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized