It is shocked that 95% of the new business fail is because they segment their market and position their merchandise wrong.  And this is why milkshake marketing profoundly intrigued me, its extraordinary way of thinking.

Taking milkshake as an example is just far beyond brilliant.  Who would ever thought that people hire milkshake is not for consuming hunger or thirst but boredom?  “Looking at the market from the function of a product really originates from your competitors or your own employees deciding what you need whereas the jobs-to-be-done point of view causes you to crawl into the skin of your customer.”

“We developed this idea because we wanted to understand what causes us to buy a product, not what’s correlated with it”, as Clay Christensen claimed, milkshake marketing(aka jobs-to-be-done) turns out to be a very effective way in allowing a company to build products that people want to buy.

This is a blog post comments on Danny Brown’s blog regarding context marketing( the ability to look into the context of what your customers want and deliver on that need).

Danny Brown mentioned that context in marketing is nothing new when it comes to marketing.  He used email drip campaign as an example, which illustrates that context marketing has been happening for years long before it started to gain tractions in the online space.  The essence of context marketing is pretty self-explanatory, which is understand your customer.

From personal perspective, it sounds to me that online marketing is growing.  As it reminds me of an old campaign states that “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you”.  context appears to be new to online market, and the society think they’ve discovered a new universal truth.  And the challenge for online marketing is to make it contextual.

BBC  News revealed that social media pioneer Twitter has said it will open an office in Hong Kong in the first quarter of 2015.

Twitter wanted to step into Asian market by expanding their business in China, starting from Hong Kong.  The company told BBC that their upcoming office in Hong Kong will enable them to “pursue strategic opportunities in Greater China, such as China export advertising market, Hong Kong and Taiwan advertising markets, media partnerships, and new Twitter Fabric integrated with MoPub for mobile developers”.

Even with Twitter’s extreme optimistic predicted feedback of the opening of Hong Kong office, I personally beg to differ.  With the messaging service being banned from operating in mainland China, the opening of the new office won’t allow Twitter to go into mainland market, which it does not make a difference from before.

This blog post is regarding Kristine Wong’s blog on people’s post of extravagant and luxurious photo depicting their wealth on social media.

It is mentioned that the Canadian Revenue Agency is taking advantages of these post to verify the consistency of their income and their tax return.  “If caught under-reporting income, they might subject to tax penalties or even prosecution.”

From personal perspective, I disagree with what the government has been doing since  it is a violation of privacy from the authorities to take advantage of social media for verifying tax returns.  People’s posts on social media are private, only to share with their friends and not for authorities.  This might lead to loss in trust in the government by the people.

This blog post is comment on Jaruphong Sapkiree’s blog post regarding whether “Apple Pay” might be a game-changing play for Apple.

Apple is trying to succeed in getting consumers to cast aside physical wallets and use their phones to pay at the checkout counter where Google and others so far have large failed at.  As one of the biggest pioneering companies, Apple is expecting positive feedback for Apple pay.

I tend to agree with Jaruphong’s point of view, as it wouldn’t be a booming success, it has been forecasted due to the private security problems it encountered before with iCloud, intercepting passwords, iMessages, photos and contacts.  Users won’t be able to give their credentials to Apple any time soon due to the incident.  However, as technologies grow and people’s desire to possess easiness and convenience in life, electronic payment will be dominating the industry in the near future.

A First Nation delegations group, including Indian Chiefs leader Stewart Phillip, challenge the Harper government to reject a hydroelectric megaproject, which will flood 83 kilometres of the Peace River Valley, destroying farmland and wildlife habit.  The First Nations are confident that it should be a slam dunk case that it is expected to see the opposition of the megaproject.  Moreover, Stewart Phillip declared that “B.C. is Indian land” at First Nations leaders’ summit.

According to a landmard Jue decision made by Canada’s hiegest court, “said the Crown can only justify infringing on Aboriginal title lands by “demonstrating both a compelling and substantial governmental objective,” and that the broader benefits “must not be outweighed by adverse effects on the Aboriginal interest.””

From personal perspective, First Nations’ rights were deprived before.  Their lands, property were taken by the government.  I tend to agree with the Indian Chief, Stewart Phillip, that B.C. is Indian land.  In addition, the major business activities for First Nations are fishing and farming.  Taking away their rights to maintain their lifestyle is unfair.

Tesco has witnessed consistent decline in sales over the past few years, which drastically disappointed one of the most integral investors, Waren Buffet, who has referred his investment in Tesco as “a huge mistake”.

“For Tesco, the mis-statement of its August profit forecast by as much as £250m just became a whole lot more serious.” (Ahmed). Two enforcement agencies are keeping a close tab on Tesco due to this incident. Namely, the Serious Fraud Office (which will investigate if there is evidence of fraudulent behaviour) and the Financial Reporting Council (which governs accounting rules). 

Mr Bailey, the chairman of the Parliamentary Business Committee, told the BBC that his reaction when he heard the news of the accounting error was of “disbelief”.He added he was not happy with Tesco’s response. “They should never have got themselves into this mess and it may be too little too late.”

From personal perspective, it is obvious that investing in Tesco is a mistake as the firm has absolutely no sign of growth and progress in sales and with huge competition through 7 Eleven, Tesco would not be able to survive in the market very long especially with the accounting errors occurring from within the firm itself.

Whatsapp has been known as one of the greatest messaging apps worldwide.  With is change in leadership and ownership to Facebook, one could only hope an improvement in the app instead of drastic changes.  According to the article, Facebook finally got the green signal to purchase whatsapp for 19 billion dollars, issued on 3rd October, 2014.  European competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia said: “We have carefully reviewed this proposed acquisition and come to the conclusion that it would not hamper competition in this dynamic and growing market. Consumers will continue to have a wide choice of consumer communications apps.”

The telecom companies have begun to fear the growing power of US technology.  “The deal is the largest in Facebook’s 10-year history and will give the most popular social networking site a foothold in mobile messaging.” (BBC)

I beg to differ the fear from telecom companies as messaging apps consume a considerable amount of data.  As there’s a growing trend for using messaging apps over making phone calls, telecom companies can focus their resources towards providing better data plans and an opportunity to grow.  As a loyal user of whatsapp, I fear whatsapp being priced out by Facebook as there is a huge possibility of  more than a couple of changes in the app just the way blackberry messenger for an android was much more different from the one on the blackberry smartphone.  Most users still preferred the original version of BBM.

The article demonstrates the Loonie and how the value of the Loonie has been declining since the beginning of the year 2013 with professionals predicting signs of consistent drop in the value of it in the future. With that in mind, it further elaborates on who the winners and losers of this price fluctuations.  With consumers and travellers being the obvious losers and the winners being the exporters to the US or those possessing a lot of international sales benefit from the weakening of the dollar. Conversely, the manufacturers are the losers when the price of dollar grows stronger and encourages more imports of machinery from the US into Canada in order to improve productivity in the country.

This article caught my eye for its informative display from two distinct perspective of potential winners and losers form the weak and strong value of the Loonie and takes into consideration of both the groups rather than an article focusing mainly from one groups point of view and expressing their thoughts.  In addition, traveller and manufacturers are not the only ones thats affected by the fluctuation in the value of the loonies.  International investors would also be the influenced.

Toyota, the world’s very first automobile manufacturer to produce more than 10 million vehicles per year with more than 330, 000 employees worldwide.  However, Toyota chose to go on the path of unethical failure in 2010 by ignoring the safety deficit and delaying call investigations over their own profit-earning.  According to the confrontation with safety concerns, Toyota revealed that the company saved up to $124 million for phasing in side airbags, as well as $11 million for delaying the rule for tougher door locks.

Being torn between making more profit and protecting customers’ rights and safety perfectly fits the “business ethics” situation, which disappoints me that Toyota chose profit without a blink of an eye.  During the board meeting, even the “apology” sounds the company’s only sorry that the got caught.  Performing “ethical business” is not only a legally right thing to do but more than a humane, moral behaviour.  When purchase products like vehicles, the contract is more like a promise than a legal document.  Customers would be expecting more when they bet their personal safety on it.

source : http://www.businesspundit.com/10-most-unethical-business-practices/?img=45148

image source: http://www.autoguide.com/gallery/gallery.php/d/145859-4/toyota-recall.jpg