I really enjoyed and cherish the experience that I share with my team for the marketing plan assignment, we started knowing nothing about each other ,and as the term progresses, I had the chances to get to know their fascinating ideas . I learned that working in a team is marketing, because we are consistently communicating and promoting our ideas to each other all the time, and I realized that the most important thing for the team to function properly is through effective communication from every member. In addition, I unearthed that Marketing does not only exist in textbook, it is in our everyday life; the way we connect with the world, the way we present ourselves etc. My ability of working in a team environment enhanced , and moreover, I corporate with my team member better throughout the process. The thing I would do differently next time is, in the future, I will try to get to know my team member more well before we started get on hands on project, because I think that will result in better corporation and more relax atmosphere. My top takeaway from this course is that , no one can succeed by themselves, in the real world, we have to work in a group and have to know how to work in a group in order to be successful.

This article dragged my attention because first of all, LuLulemon is a well-known Canadian women clothing brand that represent the current young women sport-wear trend, and I personally like to buy Yoga pants and other outfit at LuLulemon. Lululemon recent recalls of its good selling black Luon yoga pants on March 19th; due to its sheerness concerns, which definitely attracts eyeball of the media. Lululemon stated that “the affected items represented approximately 17 per cent of all women’s bottoms in our stores which was firstly offered for sale back in March 1st, and the result of this recall be will a loss of $22 million dollars(The Vancouver Sun).” Many marketing professionals and media joke about this recall and put it as this revealing material recall is completely not necessary ,because of its target market. I personally consider this is as a smart move that LuLulemon planned; in hope to make massive appearance infront of the public and the media is for sure the most powerful channel to achieve this, thus,this recall can interpret as a “big commercial” for LuLulemon. Lets consider the cost-benefit of this recall, invest money in commercial will cost far more and not as effective as this recall event.

Source:http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Vancouver+based+Lululemon+recalls+yoga+pants+says+they+sheer/8119987/story.html

I am very thankful to see an news article like this one to teach people how to avoid being charges unreasonably by their wireless provider without even realizing it.In addition, I recently encountered many news articles like this one; people returned from pleasant oversea trip to home find out about their humongous roaming phone bill and was left in shock. I can personally related to these people because I received these unexpected bills myself ,around $500 at the end of the months from the over usage of data. I was pretty disappointed and speechless when I got the bill and tried to communicate with my phone provider to negotiate a possible solution, however, after several attempts to settle this bill, I was provided with no alternate solution but to pay the bill.After reading this article, I’ve come to an understanding of the nature of how phone provider can charge its users based on data roaming, and it tells people eight different effective ways to avoid it. I hope for those who uses their cellphone to browse internet or uses data should pay attention to their bills and know how to use it worry-less.

Source :http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2013/03/12/cell-phone-horror-stories-10-ways-to-avoid-humongous-roaming-bills/

After reading this post on internet personal information privacy, it causes me to started to think is it really worth it, like the blog mentioned ;to trade off of our privacy in return for a better customer experience of getting “free” access to more contents online? I now feel the trade-off is sometimes dangerous and not “free” at all, companies are luring people to provide them with personal information for the purpose of data collection in order to make marketing analysis to achieve long-term profit. However, I personal think it is not a business ethic problem, it is a cost-benefit problem for the people to decide whether to use this service or not, and sometimes, it is beneficial and worth it to trade in our information for the services it provides. In this mobility era, we are always communicating with each other through wireless network and making connections to variety of online services, without the access of those network, it is hard to build and maintain connections with the outside world.

http://www.the-cma.org/about/blog/you-are-the-product

Hi Xin, I enjoy reading your blog on ethics, which gives me a deep insight and bring me into awareness of really starting to read and think about the nutrient labels of “healthy” foods and what did we really put into our body. From my personal experiences, I admit that I would choose Vitamin-Water over spring water after exercise or work out, because I think it gives me more nutrients, but after reading your blog, I felt when people making purchase decisions, they should not focus so much on the packaging but rather the content itself. On market nowadays, the trend is promoting green and healthy food and label them as superior foods, companies that establish themselves as a brand that produces healthy foods can therefor charge a price that it higher than the substitute goods . This is indeed a critical marketing ethics issues that should be brought into the sunlight, companies that wants to charge a high price for a bottle of water, in order to do so, they have to make the package very attractive and sometimes this can become misleading information for the consumer. Pathetically , instead of putting more healthy ingredients into the product itself, businesses now spending most of their money on marketing to make their product looks appealing.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/xinma/2013/01/13/vitaminwater-healthy-beverage-in-nam ethical issues/

       This article examines four business ethical dilemmas in Marketing; the one that drew most of my attention is the topic of “How far can you go in stealth Marketing”? Every company on the market wants to advertise and promote a positive image of themselves; some companies hires professional actors to praise their goods and services on various public settings without disclosing their employer. To me, I consider the stealth marketing to be misleading, unethical and unfair to the consumer. Nowadays, shopping online is a very popular consumer behavior and customers can only attain the information about the product from it’s description and the reviews from the buyers, thus, the reviews plays a critical role in terms of the sale, because of the stealth marketing strategy, which might lead consumers into making bad purchase decision or buying products and do not meet their standards. Stealth marketing can not go very far in the competitive business world, because once the customers find out the description of the product does not match with the product itself, they will never come back and buy from that company again, so  being honest and realistic is the only business strategy to build long term reputation and customers.

source : http://career-advice.monster.com/in-the-office/workplace-issues/ethics-in-marketing/article.aspx