Today, I went to Starbucks with my friends after lecture and I realized that they have changed their traditional cup (white with a green Starbucks logo on it) into red cups for Christmas. Also, there are many Christmas-related products like glass cups and instant coffee. Starbucks popular holiday beverages are also returned, including peppermint mocha, gingerbread latte, eggnog latte and caramel brulee latte. From my point of view, it is more than Christmas special— more profits can be produced in this way. A new app is also created by Starbucks named Starbucks Cup Magic. Customers can download for free and use to discover Starbucks holiday characters found on iconic red cups, coffee bags and signage.

     The Starbucks Cup Magic app allows customers to share their feelings of Christmas products. It is connected to Facebook and Twitter, which will make great promotion for their Christmas-special products. When I went to Starbucks today, I found that many people were there to try the Christmas-special although they were not really wanting a cup of coffee. The new arrival of Christmas Classical coffee will probably make huge profits to Starbucks. Therefore, what the red cups really brings about is not only the Christmas Special coffee, but also money.

Today, I read a business blog on Canada Business Network, which talks about mobile websites. Mobile websites is becoming increasingly popular due to the widespread use of smartphones, ITouch and IPad: increasing number of people accessing the web from their hand-held devices. More and more businesses are trying to build their own mobile website in order to reach more customers and get more profits. Compares with traditional website, the mobile websites are designed to fit the smaller screens of hand-held devices. Pages are often simplified, unnecessary images are removed, and slow-loading content such as video is reduced.

It seems that mobile website can bring about many advantages, however, in my opinion, not all of the businesses are appropriated to have a mobile website. Firstly, building website costs a lot. There need money to design, maintain, and repair the website. So, for those small companies with little fund, it is not the best choice for them to have a mobile website. Secondly, there are lots of alternative way to make promotion online rather than establish an own mobile website. For example, advertising on other mobile website, this costs less money. Thirdly, it is time-consuming to promote a new website and let people to become familiar about it. Therefore, it is better to advertise on some well-known websites like Facebook and Twitter to save money and time. Above all, a number of problems need to be taken into consideration for a company to decide whether to have a mobile website or not.

Social entrepreneurs are everyday people with ideas or businesses that deliver a social, environmental or community benefit. They often have a personal experience of the need they are addressing and many are from the communities they seek to serve and help. As such they are uniquely positioned to address some of our most pressing social challenges. Social entrepreneurs are passionate, driven and committed. They are motivated by an unmet need in their community or society more broadly and develop innovative solutions to meet that need. They use business not for the sake of profit only but to achieve a social or environmental outcome.

Blake Mycoskie is said to be a social entrepreneur since he established the company because once he traveled to Argentina in January 2006, he was struck by the country’s health and poverty problems and discovered that numerous children did not have proper footwear. Half of TOMS — the half in their Santa Monica headquarters and in retail stores on 5th Avenue — is entrepreneurship. The other half is charity. After five years of giving shoes, Blake was ready to address another need: vision. On June 7, 2011, TOMS debuted One for One Eyewear, which provides eye treatment, prescription glasses or eye surgery with every pair purchased. 

Thank you TOMS Shoes! That’s the voice from the hearts of us.

TOMS Shoes was launched in Venice, California in 2006 by Blake Mycoskie, who is only 32 years old. Blake built up the company with $300,000 of his own money and TOMS sold 10,000 pairs during its first year in business. He visited Argentina through the race and liking the country returned on vacation. During the trip Blake witnessed children living in extreme poverty, with no shoes to protect their feet. That’s why he got the idea to establish TOMS Shoes. TOMS Shoes has a variety of shoes based on the traditional Argentine alpargataa slip-on—in lightweight fabrics and vibrant colors and prints for women and men. The range of customers for the company is not restricted. Mycoskie gives a promise which says: ” For every pair of shoes purchased, TOMS Shoes gives a pair of shoes to a child in need.” Since its launch, the revenues of TOMS Shoes are estimated $4.6 million and Mycoskie has donated over 115,000 shoes to children in need around the world through a series of “Shoe Drop” tours. The recipient of the People’s Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the Smithsonian Institution, TOMS has expanded to include a line of t-shirts, hats, and infant onesies.

 Blake Mycoskie is an American traveller and social entrepreneur. To learn more why he is a social entrepreneur, see next post please.

Aritziais a women’s fashion boutique that offers beautifully designed clothes that are on trend and high quality. Born in Vancouver, Canada, in 1984, they have boutiques in select markets across the US and Canada, including New York, Vancouver, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, Portland, and London. in the video, Brian Hill introduced how the company developed and their special way of doing business in general. Every retail store of Aritzia has unique feature of architecture which can attract people.

  Aritzia contain several branches at variable pricing level which are suitable for customers at different ages. It is a nice idea of business since they can attract as many consumers as possible in that way in order to larger their revenue. I like Aritzia very much because of they sale all kinds of staff that are in fashion and I can always harvest some wonderful product whenever I go to those retail stores. As compared to other large clothing stores like Zara and H&M, the weakness of Aritzia is its relatively high pricing, which may not be accept by some customers.

    Forever 21 is a popular clothing store which provides fashion products to men and women between 15 and 25 years old with low prices.  Nowadays, there are many clothing retail store selling beautiful clothes with low price, like H&M, Zara and American Eagle. Forever 21 need to find some unique features to make sure there are enough customers although there are lots of substitutes.

    Advantages for Forever 21: 1.it has fashion clothes with different styles which can be chosen by different kinds of people;2. the prices of the products are suitable for many teenagers, so that it can attract more customers; 3. the stores not only provides fashion clothes, also many cosmetics.

   Disadvantages: 1. the quanlity of the products may not be good enough; 2. products in Forever 21 are produced in large quantity so there are many same design. Customers who wear it may not be unique and can always find some one with the same clothes.

POP:

Smart phones take up of a vast market share in the mobile phone business. 

For example, IPhone 4 is very popular nowadays, in Hongkong, eight or nine people use IPhone 4 among ten . 

Smart phones provide thousands of useful application which can be chosen by mobile phone owners according to their own habits and needs.

IPhone4 keeps more than 100,000 application in the apple store. 

Besides, the software and hardware are the most advanced one in recent mobile system.

 IPhone4 uses the ISO system while other advanced smart phones use Android system. Both sorts of system is the two and the only two most amazing mobile software.

POD:

Iphone4 has the unique system called ISO which is only operated in the apple products. 

Iphone4 has a extremely screen resolution which uses Retina.

 Iphone4 is designed by Apple, which is an irresistible attraction for apple fans. Iphone4 has a more elaborate and slap-up appearance. 

Iphone4 will not devalue as fast as other smart phone with Android OS because the new Iphone will not  be released frequently while the phones with Android come into being every week. 

Lastly, if you do not have Iphone4, you actually do not have it.

I watched a video on YouTube which tells some bad effect brought about by Groupon. I find out that Groupon is not always the bad choice, and it has some shortages. For instance, some coupons provided by Groupon cannot be used on weekend and some coupons are only allowed to order certain dishes which are not popular. As for sellers’ side, they need to share their profit with Groupon：a women with a small coffee business lost 8000 dollars because of Groupon . As for some services like nail salon, those customers who make a bid on Groupon cannot make an appointment within six months since too many people are using the coupon. Groupon is not always the best choice, people should think twice before joining it.

It is a business strategy to promote some unpopular products by lower the price. Low prices can always attract customer’s eyeball. Also, they sometimes hide the detail about certain coupon and customers are not familiar about the rules of using the coupons. Due to those problems, buying coupons on Groupon may be a waste of money rather than save money.

Think twice before purchasing!

According to the research, Apple continues to be the iPhone which did $13.3 billion in sales for the June quarter. Apple decided to cut off the price of iPhone 4 to be an half of price, $99 in order to boost the sales before the new generation: IPhone 5 comes into the market. According to the article I read, there are three steps of Apple Business strategy for 2011. First they fertile platforms, second to introduce derivatives with incremental appeal and third step is to create the next exciting platform. Apple’s ability to align marketing strategy and business strategy with product development leaves competitors in the dust as business continuity strategy.According to my observation: For many customers, once they enter the Apple family, they want to have more due to the attractive and unique appearance of Apple products. Apple usually advertises a lot to show the high-tech functions before a new product comes in the market, in order to catch customer’s attention. People will wait for the new product with high expectation and once the new product come onto the stage, people want to have it as soon as possible.

Avco Environmental Services is a small, toxic waste disposal company. It has a contract to dispose medical waste from a local hospital. However, some of the waste was actually disposed in a local landfill; the company can save lots of money from the transportation and disposing technology of toxic wastes. This practice is illegal and can cause threaten to public health. Avco noticed the problem but it determined to ignore it. Avco thought if the problem is being exposure, their competitors will get more opportunities and therefore, they will receive bad reputation and less profit.

As far as I am concerned, this action violates the business ethics. It ignores the public health in order to make more profit and have fewer costs. The company only cares about its own profit. Avco Company should deal with the problem as soon as they find it. Business ethics is the basic principle for a permanent firm.