Blog # 10

Sport today is turning into a business, with many companies involved and ever growing prize money for the sportsmen. Do you think it’s a positive or negative development?
These days, with growing numbers of companies being involved and with the increase of prize for sportsmen, the traditional sports have been developed into a business. When some people doubt the change of the essence of sports, I, however, would claim this trend to be a positive development for the following reasons.

Taking sports as a business increases people’s attention and concern on sports, and thus can gain more benefits in the duration. To run the business more successfully, publicity of the sports will be conducted more vigorously, which will surely attract more people to take part in. In addition, this indicates that, as other economic activities, investment in sports can also generate profits, so that more money can be put into this field to promote its development.

This encourages more gifted people to participate in sports to develop it to a higher level. Attracted by being the focus of so many people and encouraged by the high prize through winning in sports, more geniuses in this field can be stimulated to display their talent. Also, to achieve the aim to realize their dreams in life, competitions for the winners will be fiercer, which helps to tap their potential to the most.

To sum up, developing sports as a business not only benefit more people but also develop sports itself. With a clear understanding of this and continual effort in the field, sports can bring us more benefits in the future.

Blog # 9 Comment “Shave your money. Shave your time.”

“Shave your money.Shave your time.” is a very attractive title can catch people’s eye. This is an article written by my classmate Jennifer. This article talks about a razor-blade company named Dollar Shave Club, successfully catching people’s attention using the power of internet.

Dollar Shave Club is a company found by Mike Dubin, just got it started. This company sells razor-blade, which is not some product required high technology and they also has numerous competitors. However, Dollar Shave club success. It use made a creative video and put it in YouTube and people have a great fun to watch it. If we tend to think of the video in term of million of dollars, not in million of views, we will notice that Mike Dubin just earn a huge profit. Actually, it is true. A recent article by fastcompany.com suggests that if D.S.C. remains its current growth rate, Mike will ”have nearly a million subscribers at the end of his first year.”

After the huge success, maybe Mike Dubin will rethink his company’s strategy. I really endorse Jennifer’s advice, which is he can launch a special section for women. Sometimes women also need to wax in daily life, and most waxing product in the market now are not as convenience as razor. Therefore it will be an great innovation in the market and it will be worthwhile.


Source:
https://blogs.ubc.ca/jenniferzhen/2013/10/08/28/

http://newhiteboard.com/2012/04/19/dollar-shave-club-an-entrepreneurial-success-story/

Invisible advertisement: Revenue model in Twitter

Almost everyone saw the headlines these days about Twitter got a great start on New York Stock Exchange. As a successful social network, Twitter has its own way to grasp consumers’ hearts. For instance, Twitter has simple user interface with invisible advertisements which can compete with any other social networking and it is all its advertising models.

Four major advertisements occur in Twitter’s main page. First they advertise in Trend section, every first piece in Trend is advertisement with a little yellow arrow and for example, “#BlueberryOatmeal” is for McDonald’s. Secondly, they advertise in search page. Like other search engines’ ads system, it is run by the key words other companies bought.If Dove buy the keyword “meal”, the first result message will be Dove’s advertisement though it does not include the keyword you search. Thirdly, they have advertisement on Twitter’s timeline on the home page. Even you do not follow that user, it will still show in your home page. Nonetheless, everyone will only get once and it will disappear when you refresh your home page.Moreover, you can also click “dismiss” thus you will not receive any advertisements from this brand. Fourth, there are recommend brand you should follow in the sidebar.It is possible that people wondering whether it is ad or not, and yes, Twitter benefits from those companies which display ads that remind you of their brand.

From the news we know that Twitter’s ad revenue in 2012 climbed to 259 million dollars, maybe it is a good chance for other social network learning how to rebuild their revenue model.

Source: http://www.emarketer.com/newsroom/index.php/strong-2011-twitter-ad-revenues-grow-86-259-million-2012/
http://news.yahoo.com/twitter-ipo-live-twitter-stock-opens-73-pct-155351969–finance.html

Want to be a leader like Jobs? Don’t do that

Steve Jobs is legendary for leadership. As all his colorful story said, he is a great leader with powerful strength. Many people want to imitate him, his actions, his language and most important is people want to copy the way he lead his company. For that, that totally is not a good idea.

He did not obey any pieces in management handbook. They always tells us that leaders should be sincere, considerate, modest and cares your personnel. However, Jobs is not only a dictator but also a leader who exceed his authority. He judge by intuition not data and insult staff often. The good thing is he is adept at judging the chances that is benefit for Apple’s strategy. He is a charismatic leader with execution. Therefore the Apple which lead by Jobs has the fastest decision-making, execute step by step and everybody take their responsibility. His talent and shortage all belong to him, if he live without those shortage, his foresight will not be implement deeply. Thus, even though Steve Jobs is not a nice boss traditionally, workers in Apple still feel heat breaking when he retired. The conclusion is, if you do not have the ability and talent that Steve Jobs have, then do not imitate him blindly. Just identify the distinctive strengths you have and magnify them and lead with them. Then you will be a extraordinary leader.

Source:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jackzenger/2013/08/22/the-big-lesson-about-leadership-from-steve-jobs/

What’s special in Amazon’s third quarter 2013 financial highlights?

As Amazon’s third quarter financial highlights in 2013 is coming up, numerous people seems really disappointed to their loss. However, before that we should better look at is there something special in their financial report.

Amazon highlights some new products and services we should pay attention to. It can help us go through its process in third quarter.
– New kindle Fire HDX: latest hardware techniques and high-accuracy screen
– Mayday Button: offers real people tech support in fifteen seconds
– New Kindle Paperwriter: five new functions include study plan
– Kindle Matchbook:consumers who bought physical book can buy eBook at the lowest price
– Kindle book market in Mexico: include two million books and more than seventy thousand books are in Spanish
– Login and pay service: people can use their Amazon account pay bills in other online retailer store.
– Amazon’s pilots: spacial pilot project for children
Amazon make pages on what they did in the last quarter especially for the new achievements but their financial report still very appealing. That’s the reason why though their have a quarterly loss, the stock price still climbs. As usual, Amazon will hire and train tens of thousands seasonal workers for the holiday season in forth quarter. The number of seasonal workers exceeds seventy thousand this year and compare to the corresponding period last year which is fifty thousand, Amazon’s deficit had been largely reduced than last year.

Amazon’s financial report is always the most tricky one. It is hard to understand the implication behind the financial report because they always give the explanation of any negative financial information in details. In fact, for investors, Amazon has been the margins of profits and losses more than a decade. However, we know that if they really need to earn profit, Jeff Bezos and his team has a thousand processes to show rosy financial figures next quarter, but it never came.

This is the spirit of Amazon, before making a dime, do the right thing first.

Source:http:
//www.geek.com/tablets/kindle-fire-hdx-mayday-button-offers-real-person-tech-support-in-15-seconds-1571869/

Snapping up in Single day!

Yesterday in China, an online shopping website called Taobao which is run by Aribaba created a miracle.Every November 11th is the Single day in China, Taobao turns it to “online shopping day” since 2009 and named it “double eleven”.Over twenty thousand business joined this shopping party and all their products have over fifty percent off. All of those elements composed of an unique Single day and according to the latest news,the value of transaction on November 11th in 2013 was more than thirty five billion RMB!

Now online shopping is so popular that people keep asking “Will shopping in mall displaced by online shopping?” My answer is no. Online shopping has a big problem — shipping. Like the single day, it will create a huge challenge for logistics and usually consumers will wait more than a week for their packages. Plus,shopping in mall is an social activity so that it will not disappeared.

However, e-business is the trend today.The internet marketing have brought huge impacts on the traditional retail trade.Because of the difference of operation mode between them, the online business has magnanimity customer’s data comparing to the scare customer information of the traditional mode of retail business. In conclusion, though online shopping has some shortage, it still plays an important role in market and there will be more people use it in the future.

Source:

http://www.techinasia.com/china-ecommerce-sales-day-2012-tmall-taobao/

MUJI:The Way to Success

Nowadays most brands want every body to know who they are and what they produced. There are huge amount of people failed and also some of them are successful, like MUJI. When people live in too much information, every body chases their unique characteristics and shows how they are different from others and apparently MUJI is not one of them.

MUJI’s idea is all about living in a simple way.Its designs and products are all comes from its main idea and they do not even have a logo.People are labeled in every aspects of living in modern society and it expresses the social levels and vanity.However. Muji ‘s concept is directly opposite from it. It abandons every detail which is not necessary and makes products as simple as possible. In Muji’s theory, products are no longer only for use, it helps people to find the beauty of nature and get addicted to it.

In conclusion, Muji’s idea of “no brands” theory makes it becomes a successful company.Besides, Muji is not only selling a product to consumer, but also a simple life style.

Source:

http://yingweitan.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/muji-on-strategic-marketing/

What’s wrong with Walmart in China?

As we know, Walmart is one of the biggest retail company in the world. Walmart has become the largest chain retailer in America after the forty years development and it gained  many praises and awards with its superior and unique enterprise culture from its debut. Since 1996 Walmart began to expand market in China and at that moment, all people thought that would be a huge surge to the local retailers. However, after these years, Walmart did not shows prosperous development in China. What caused that?

One of the reason is the logistics problem. Unlike America, China’s public transit is usually crowded due to the huge population and undeveloped structure. This situation makes Walmart’s supply chain does not work well in China. For now, Walmart only have two supply center in Tianjing and Shenzhen therefore Walmart cannot build its shop intensively near the supply center. In conclusion,Walmart do not express its superiority in logistics, instead, it increase its operation cost.

The main reason Why Walmart China is not as successful as it in America is because Walmart meet the local problem.Walmart used to image copy its operation strategy in every place in the world include China, but it failed again and again. The fact is, a company can copy its own strategy but the local culture cannot be copied as simple as that. The company culture cannot only be posted on the handout or scream some slogans, apparently it must go deep in every staff’s heart.The fact had already told the truth: do not only pay attention on expansion, or you will forget the basic culture development.

According to the analysis above, Walmart China still have a long way to achieve its goal.When it combine its system and technology with the reality in China, the combination will shock everyone in the word.

Source:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46009614

http://marketresearchernote.blogspot.ca/2012/08/how-can-walmart-succeed-in-china-lesson.html