There are plenty of social problems need to think about in each country. For example, how to find a good place to help homeless people, how to reduce pollution and how to improve medical services. These problems are generally solved by the United Nations, but an increasing number of people are start to work on these problems and introduce new process to solve them completely.
Some people think because we could have a fully funded United Naions so the social entrepreneurs are not necessary in each country. I do not agree with this opinion because the United Naions can only use money to solve these social problems. An entrepreneur can teach people how to solve these problems by themselves, which mean in the future people in the area such as Africa and South America can improve the theirliving standard by themselves but not by receiving donation from other countries.
I think the difference between social and the United Nations is that social entrepreneurs are more likely to teach people a way to solve problems but the United Nations only gives them money and help them solve problems. This is really similar to have a lunch. A social entrepreneur will teach people how to cook, but the United Nations only gives people food.
In a long run, teaching people a method is obviously much better than just providing them with money.

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

The fast development of UNIQLO is written by Xiaoling Xie (the fast development of UNIQLO). The most important reason for me to choose this article is that UNIQLO is one of my favorite brands. This is not only because the clothes they are cheap but also the Japanese fashion style. UNIQLO founded in 1949. It already have 66-year-history. Violin said that UNIQLO use a similar model as DELL which its direct business model. In this way, the cost will decrease and finally benefit consumers as spend less money getting good clothes. Besides, in this way I think UNIQLO manufacture can involve a total control on thier products. I say that this could have some risk during the transportation channel. Another thing I always want to compare UNIQLO to DELL is the inventory control. DELL always hold a small quantity of products, but UNIQLO choice to maintain the optimum level of store inventory by monitoring sales and stock on a weekly basis. I reckon this could be a better action than DELL. Actually, I Don’t think the keep the quantity of inventory as low as possible is the best way. While it is an undeniable fact that maintaining low level of inventory can reduce cost, it’s not the situation that low level of inventory is always a better choice. In my own prospective, if there are some unexpected situations happened, for example, a dramatic increase in demand for one season, in this way consumers could be unsatisfied if they cannot get the products. Another example is that if there is a fire in factory or strike happen, when UNILQLO hold more inventory they can keep their retail store keeps running a period of time.

The point of Xiaoling I support mostly is the competition for UNIQLO. ZARA and H&M are also the store that I usually attend. And I think both of them have the exact same target group of people. However, I found that UNQLO has different focus compare to others. UNIQLO focus on the material to make clothes, but ZARA and H&M are focus on fashion design. As the development of technology, there are a lot of new materials be produced, but there is still a group of people include me like to wear clothes with comfortable and natural materials such as silk, cotton and wool. In this way, think there UNQLO can improve even faster in the next 10 years, because there are increasing number of people care about materials of clothes.

reference:

Business model of UNIQLO

Wikipedia

Air France pilots have called off a strike that has lasted for two weeks and cost the airline hundreds of millions of euros. The strike started on 14th, September and at 10th day in strike both union and management agree to enter talks.
So what is the background of this strike?
This is due to the new strategy from air France-KLM chief executive Alexandre de Juniac. He wants to build up a new budget affiliate called Transavia Europe. However, union do not want to support his plan. During the strike, Juniac said he was prepared to put the project on hold for four months, but unions rejected that offer out of hand. Although the strike end, there are still some differences are unresolved, this means there are still some problems that union and management need to keep thinking and consulting about.

In my own idea, strikes are generally due to three reasons e.g. wages, working conditions and working hours. However this one is a special case. Because this one is because workers do not agree to the plan of managers. I think in this way the power of union is over strong, because although staff could participate in the decision making process, they are not the final decision maker. They should listen to the manager who have more knowledge about stategy. Besides, I think company could choose to use conciliation and arbitration, which are third party that could recommand a optimal solution.

This new reminds me about the teacher strike in Vancouver. Government, management and union should not just think about them self. They should sometimes firstly think about the impacts to consumers.

Cite:

BBC news,http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29401056

There is a good news for both EU and Canada.The European Commission and Canada have unveiled the details of a new trade liberalisation agreement; this means that almost all consumer tariffs will be eliminated. For me, because I am a fan of the Clarks shoes. Therefore, this could be a great chance for me buy cheaper shoes than before. Businesses in both areas can benefit from this agreement too. This agreement covers a wide range of products, such as chemicals, machineries even an insurance. This new remind me about advantages of free trade. Free trade means no restriction or trade barries exist that might prevent or limet trade between countries. Trade barries includes:tariffs, quotas, voluntary expot limits etc. The advanteges for free trading is firstly, offer consumers wider choice of products. Secondly, import and export raw materials and products can improve economy. Thirdly, import goods and services from others can creats additional competition for domestic product manufacuters. The most significant problems for this chould be that local firms may loss lots of profit because of the large competition. The obvious example is the situation of BlackBerry today.

cite:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29375747

BlackBerry lost a huge amount of money in recent years. I think this is mainly because of the quick development of their competitors, for example, Apples and Samsung. From the bar chart, we can clearly see that the market share of BlackBerry reduced quickly in the last three years. In contrast, the market share of Apple and Samsung increased, this is probably because of their rapid development of technology and the fashion design of the cellphone. The maker in April showed some improvement of business, but they still need to work hard and find a good way to overcome those problems. Iphone6plus already launched in America and Canada; thus, this could be a bad news of BlackBerry, because there are a lot of ‘fans’ of Apple. For instance, in China an Iphone can be sold at a high price. BlackBerry still have many challenges to overcome.

cite:

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/personal-tech/BlackBerry+edges+closer+black+bottom+line/10238727/story.html?__federated=1BY DAVID FRIEND, THE CANADIAN PRESS SEPTEMBER 26, 2014