Entrepreneurship is one of my favorite topics in Commerce 101 so I choose to comment on the blog post ‘Finding the funds‘ which is written by Rena Grewal.
Entrepreneur is someone who takes the financial risk of starting and managing a new venture. I believe that there are several characteristics that a successful entrepreneur should have. The most obvious one is innovation. This is not mean they must be an inventor, but they should have ability to carve a new niche in the market. In my own idea, the second characteristics is that the entrepreneur should be multi-skilled, because when they first start their own company they need to do all things by themselves, for example, promotion, selling and accounting. The last one was mentioned during the class, it is about risk taking.
In most of time, even when people have the characteristics that I list above they still cannot be a successful entrepreneur, because they also face a lot of challenges. The largest problem is associated with capital. Because entrepreneurs generally just have very limited personal savings and because sometimes their business plans are poor which could lead no one wants to invest money. In ‘Finding the funds’ Kickstarter provide a chance for entrepreneurs to raise fund. Actually, I think Kickstarter is also an example of a successful entrepreneur.

I plan to start my own business in the future and I believe the  will be really helpful.

I read a news about McDonald and Coca Cola on BBC website.

McDonald and Coca Cola are two world-famous companies that provide fast food and drink respectively. In the third quarter of 2014, both of them experienced a sharply lower profits. There are several reasons for this phenomenon. I think the most important one for McDonald is the scandal over meat supplies in China. I come from China and experienced this event in Augest. I often ordered food from McDonald during summer vacation, because I am too lazy to cook. However, after that scandal, my parents didn’t allow me to order it anymore. I think a great number of people in China have a same experience as me, so the drop of McDonald’s profit was just an obvious outcome.
It is generally recognised that advertising is an effective way to adopt the value of consumers, so I recommend McDonald has more advertisement to introduce their resource of ingredients and production line. Also they can open their factories and allow consumers to visit.
Actually, in my own opinion, McDonald needs to adopt or improve their food to a healthier type. Because there are increasing number of people become more care about their health, their sales will decrease in the near future without any scandals or competitions.

Same suggestion for Coca Cola.To be honest, I don’t like to drink any carbonated beverage, generally I just drink pure fruit juice and water. I think in the near future there will be more people have a same habit as me. So Coca Cola should think about how to improve their product to attract consumers who want to have a healthy life style.

I am interested in market segmentation that have covered in class, so I choose to read a external blog post Telecommunication.

Market segmentation is identifying different segments within a market and targeting different products or services to them. This is a widely practiced marketing strategy. An example is that Coca-Cola makes many different flavour drink not just the standard cola. This is because that they want to provide various products for consumers with different taste.
Although there are plenty of methods to identify consumer group, such as ages and gender, the blog post points out that the three main ways to segment consumers are value, behavior, and life cycle. Those three factors are likely to be the most important factors that could affect consumers’ taste.
In my own opinion market segmentation need a great number of market research that could consume lots of money and time. However, this still be a very necessary thing that should be carried out in a company. Business can define their market precisely and design specific products for those groups of people and this will lead to an increase in sales. Besides, business can find a ‘gap’ in the market. Gap means a small group of people that are not currently being targeted. When company finds those ‘gap’ and develops new products, their sales will increase quickly as they have a few competitors in the short run.

The external blog that I choose is called ‘SWOT ANALYSIS VS PEST ANALYSIS AND WHEN TO USE THEM‘ that is written by Nishadha in his blog. SWOT and PEST analysis are two important tools for strategic management. There are some relations between these two analysis. PEST is an analysis of external factors which is connected to the opportunity and threat parts of SWOT. Nishadha said that SWOT analysis should be used by the management team in the early stages of project planning, because brainstorming is a great way to introduce all the relevant internal and external factors for each section of the analysis.

I agree with him, however recently I always heard the positive things about this analysis, I want to talk about the disadvantages of it. I think SWOT analysis sometimes could be unrealistic because the analysis is subjective. If the manager does not have much experience or knowledge this could lead company to a worry direction. Another disadvantage is that SWOT analysis does not include quantitative factors, so the ‘cost’ of correcting a weakness cannot be compared with the potential ‘profit’ from pursuing an opportunity. According to PEST, Nishadha said that this one should be conducted before beginning a new project or to help conduct market research. I just partially agree with him. In my own idea PEST analysis is for external enviroment, this means it needs to constantly update, because the external world will change rapidly.

Although there could have some disadvantages of them, they are still an indispensable parts for strategy analysis.

There is no doubt that business needs to care about demands and benefits of the first native citizen. The most obvious reason for this statement is that we are now living and working on their land. Therefore, even the managers or politicians could be foreigners, the benefits and demands of the first nation citizen should be one of the main elements in the decision making process.

Canada is a country of enormous immigrations and immigrants in Cnanada are mainly from Asia and Eorope. It is generally recognized that the eating habit of Asian and Europenen is different from that of the traditional Canadian such as Dakelh and tsilhqot.  Actually, I think the most important objective of a company is to make money, thus if they can just provide one service they will choose the one with the larger number of customers. The problem for the first native is that the number of immigrants increases dramatically that causes a huge number of companies keen to provide foreigner criticize and service and ignore the demand of them.

Second point is about resources. I want to use an example as Canadian salmon company to illustrate my idea. Canada is well known for large quantity of fresh salmon. Both the first native and immigrants love that, but the number of salmon is limited. If a salmon company keeps fishing, exporting salmon and never stop, that will cause the number of salmon drop sharply and thus will have a serious impact on the life of the first nation. Fortunately, Canadian government formulates some policy to regulate the fishing industry (this is not including the first nations). Another example is about education resource. I think some education orgniazations should provide discount for first nation students.

Business really needs to respect the right and demand of the first nations. In my own perspective this is not only an ethical behaviour but an obligation. People who immigrate to Indian land should not destroy their original living style and culture. Besides, there are large number of constitutions are to protect them. In 1976, although the Indian Act allowed the government to control most aspects of aboriginal life, the Inuit and Métis are not governed by this law. This means the first nations still have many special power such as no regulation to their hunting and fishing activities. In addition, the first nations unions have strong power, if company deprives them of right and make them unsatisfied, they may hold some protest marches and then the government will participate.

In conclusion, although the number of the first nations just occupy a small amount of population in Canada, company still needs to care about their demand.

reference:

The indian Act

culture of Dakelh