My friends and I were planning for Halloween Cosplay activity. However, the costumes on eBay were incredibly expensive and looked bad. Also, a lot of them are actually from China. So we decided to look up Taobao, the biggest Chinese trading website. But the shipping fees were higher than the costumes themselves.

It occurs to me, there are several websites focused on helping Chinese people buy Chinese products that can provide us with lower shipping fees. Dotdotbuy is one of them. We did the calculation about the price and shipping fees and got a formula for it: [(weight-500 g)/500*39+116]*1.205*1.05, then we found the price is still lower than those on eBay!

Of course we chose Dotdotbuy at last. But as a Sauder student, I would think more of this.

Websites like Dotdotbuy can be seen as an important middlemen. With the help of these or signing contracts with big shipping companies in the future, Taobao can surely compete with eBay. Although now eBay is known by more people, Taobao has good quality and lower price. I have saw their advertisements on Weibo and other Chinese social networks, I think they can change their marketing strategies to broader the market.

When it comes to business ethics, the first case in my mind is a case happened in China in 2008, a famous milk company Sanlu sold toxic milk to babies.

As a Chinese, Sanlu is not an unfamiliar name. It was one of the best loved Chinese dairy-product companies. I couldn’t believe it when I heard over 300,000 infants were poisoned by the melanmine they added illegally in their products, and at least 6 of them died of kidney stones. The news was highly concerned at that time. What’s more terrible, actually a lot of Chinese dairy companies were doing the same thing.

Obviously, the leaders of Sanlu group crossed the line of business ethics that they ignored the consumers’ safety and their social responsibility. As a result, the company itself bankrupted, main leaders were sentenced as well. But in the main time, the case had really bad aftermaths and social influence other than the poisoning and death. Firstly, Chinese people no longer trust the Chinese dairy producers any more. As a survey held by CCTV in 2011 said, 70% Chinese people chose not to buy Chinese dairy products although it had been several years after the case and the government had already taken actions to supervise food safety. Secondly, at the time, a lot of countries, including Canada, blocked the dairy product import from China. I think those two are the crucial influences because these affected the whole Chinese dairy market.

Cites(I did not know how to do this when I post it) :

“2008 Chinese Milk Scandal.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Feb. 2013. Web. 02 Oct. 2013.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

“China Digital Space.” Sanlu –. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Oct. 2013.

http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Sanlu

“Timeline: China Milk Scandal.” BBC News. BBC, 25 Jan. 2010. Web. 02 Oct. 2013.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7720404.stm

“Sanlu Group.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Jan. 2013. Web. 02 Oct. 2013.

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

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