” If the United Nations was fully funded why would we need the Arc or social enterprise”?

The purpose of the United Nation, Social Enterprise and Arc Initiative are the same. The goal of these three organizations is to make the world a better place by providing assistance to underprivileged people and solution to solve the existing social issues. However, the structures and operations between the United Nation and Social Enterprise & Arc Initiative are quite different.

 United Nation receives lots of fund to provide large scale of assistance to both environmental disasters and social issues. It acts like a World Police to keep peace of all countries and protect human rights.  In comparison, Arc Initiative and Social Enterprise have limit access to capital (resources, labours, financial aids, technology) support system. They are generated by social value to connect people from different global communities and to establish fostering relationship through the sharing of the knowledge to increase the economic well being in these communities.

In my perspective, Arc Initiative and Social Enterprise are more inspirational than the United Nation. United Nation donates resources and supervises international behaviours to maintain security and living standards as a way to tackle the issues. However, Arc initiative and Social Enterprise take actions to directly impacting the society. For instance, Arc Initiative establishes programs for a collaborated learning with the community while Social Enterprise innovates many solutions to provide opportunity for uneducated people to become self-sufficient with the exchange of business skills and support of microloans.

I am interested in this blog because I am also a fan of Tim Horton. The reason for it to have strong customer loyalty for decades in such a competitive industry is because of the high quality of services and variety of products it offered. Unique products like Iced Capp as author has mentioned helps Tim Horton to achieve great differentiation and thus avoid the loss from large competition. It seems that the company has much market power in the industry, however, I agreed with the author that the plan of raising price of coffee due to the price hike of beans will still cause the company to lose buyers and eventually lead to a decrease in profits.

To maintain the customer loyalty and keep the company remains profitable, the author has suggested the company to shift from cost leadership strategy to differentiation strategy. It is a very good idea and the company should definitely consider about it; nevertheless, differentiation strategy can also bring some risks at the same time. For example, the products it produce may only be valued by a certain amount of customers. Plus, it is costly and time-consuming for a company to implement this strategy. And before the company can achieve a strong brand image that sets it apart from the competition, the company is also facing the risk of changing consumer tastes. Therefore, in order for the company to proceed a successful differentiation strategy, scientific research is needed. One improvement which the author can make is to suggest different market research methods to the company such as collecting primary data or secondary data from previous researches or directly from the consumer.

In addition to the author’s blog, differentiation-focused strategy is another strategy that the company can adopt. The advantages of this strategy are that the company can enjoy high level of customer loyalty and each of its unique product focuses on only small number of target market segments. As a result, the company is able to ensure that it does meet customer’s needs and wants. Meanwhile, it can create greater differentiation by providing products that are clearly different from competitors who are targeting a broader group of customers. The great differentiation can help the company passes its costs on to the customer without high price elasticity of demand since substitute products are very rare.

In Class 18, three Sauder alumni were being invited to talk about their experience of establishing their companies. The one that most impressed me was Tangoo. It is a website and an app that have a specific target market and the company itself focuses on value proposition to help the customer design the place for social outing based on their current mood.

Although it has many difficulties such as start-up capital dried up in the first place; however, the blog described that after revising its old model to the new concept “pocket concierge”, Tangoo has grown its user to 2,000 in Vancouver and is expanding in provinces like Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary. The reason for this success may credit to the idea of  reducing their consumers time to organize dates. Many people have the same worry on wasting a lot of time to decide locations and prices and often time people will change their decision with the changes of their moods on the day of the meeting. However, Tangoo’s app can help us to easily solve this problem because it will recommend you food and cocktail locations that best fits you after your selection of mood and types of event. I’ve took the initiative to use this app once, and I found that it is really useful.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-managing/leadership/dinner-planning-company-re-emerges-overnight-as-pocket-concierge/article20898113/

This article states that Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd has chose and signed a 10-year deal with Canadian Tire as its sponsorship partner. The fact that Canadian Tire is a Canadian company has helped the company to win the favor of MLSE company. Oftentimes, the culture can affect many transactions and collaborations in the market. For example, the customer may decide to purchase local domestic products than  imported products and  company may decides to partner up with local company.

The contract with MLSE will only benefit Canadian Tire in the long-term. Why? Sponsoring  MLSE’s sports team provides the opportunity for the company to free advertise itself and to participate in more retail chains such as operating MLSE apparel shop. Through apparel shop, Canadian Tire is offering unique attributes that are valued by fans (customers) from different sports team and thus the company may achieve great differentiation in the industry.  This will greatly enlarge the sector of target market, increasing customers who have strong loyalty to their favorable teams. While the company is experiencing benefit of charging a premium price due to the uniqueness of sports properties, it can also prevent other competitors from copying.

Other than Canadian Tire, many retailers such as Wal-Mart Corp., National Sports, Mark’s and etc had also competed for a spot to be involved in the sponsorship.  A quote said by Steven Lewis “Companies are always looking for new ways to connect with consumers.” can help to explain why there is a large competition in the sports market and also in any market. This can also related to Channel segment in business model canvas which we discussed in the class. Example like sponsorship marketing can help the company to reach to their customer segment and achieve cost-efficient.

Professional sports company or sports league are also taking advantage of having sponsors to be the backup when it is  facing potential risks. The company often turns capital raised through the deal into re-investment of the company (operation, hold events).

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/canadian-tire-takes-over-as-mlse-sports-team-sponsor/article14207122/