Following blog, is not really related to any business issues, but it’s the topic the matters for everyone, especially for commerce students, future successful entrepreneurs obviously! Recently in one of our classes we discussed the issue of education. It’s a question that arises in life of each person at least once: Does education important? Does education means successes?

First of I’d like to say that we have a degree “inflation” nowadays, even the half of a century ago degree had more meaning then now, it wasn’t that available for everyone and to get people actually had to work hard. Many people say that college graduate makes 1 million dollars more in the lifetime then a person without degree. But my questions is why it happens like that? Because these people are smarter? No, because they are motivated enough to reach success, so they would be successful even without the degree. I think business and education have the least correlation. Education is not even in the top 5 features that are required to be successful business man:

1. Seeing the big picture – being a visionary is most important. If you can’t see it, you won’t shoot for it.
2. Speed of Execution – taking action while others are researching.
3. Never giving up; being the bull dog; finding a way to make it work.
4. Being a life-long learner.

There are hundreds of huge, well recognized brands nowadays. We all know them so well, we are not even their clients, but we still know them so well. They are everywhere around us, they influence our life, they set up trends for the next five years, they create our lifestyle. We all have to have Mackbook, get a cup of coffee in Starbucks before class, and grab a lunch to go in McDonalds. But how did we make our choice? Why did we choose these brands? There are many “classic” theories about it, and how consumers make their choice. However, now I would like to focus on rather unusual theory, which attracted my attention.

All the companies try to come up with a great advertisement, with a “catchy phrase”, something that will differentiate their product from other products. However, recent researchers showed that consumers behavior is influenced not by actual advertisement, but by environment around them. Things that we see in everyday life influence us and change our consumer taste and preferences. For example, after launching NASA’s Pathfined on Mars in 1997, demand the Mars chocolate bar increased dramatically (the fun fact is that the name of the company has nothing to do with planet Mars, it was named like that, because of the founder last name). Also, people who live next to the shore have to are more likely to buy, Tide detergent, because they often witness tides. So the question is still open, should big companies spend great amounts of money on advertisement or should they try to influence by changing the environment, which would remind us of their product?

There is a huge increase in the market of tablets in the the past two years. It is still dominated by Apple and their iPad, but products like Samsung Galazy Tab, Androind, iPad mini joined the market. Conclusively, rivalry raised, all the three corporations trying to sell more of their product.

In my opinion competitions is a positive sign. It benefits for the consumer. Couple of years ago, when iPhone and iPad were dominant on the markets, with no competitors, it clearly let them monopolize the market. However, nowadays situation changed, first of all consumers have more choice, they can pick a product that satisfies their needs the most. Secondly, quality of products increase, all the firms understand that if they want to beat their competitors they have to produce high quality products, constantly include different technological innovations. And finally, consumers can choose products by a price factor, not everyone can afford expensive Apple iPad (it is interesting that Apple also realized that, and released iPad Mini), and now with a greater variety consumers can find substitution for it, for a reasonable price.  That is why a use of tablets increased dramatically and will continue to. Following tablets start to take over the market from laptops. The latests surveys show that tablets can complete around 80% of laptop functions for users.

Peter Nowak states in his blog that the new Apple product – iPad Mini is still relatively expensive. However consumers, would prefer buying iPad Mini, then paying extra 200$ for usual iPad. iPad Mini is missing a Retina display, but at the same time it is smaller and lighter, some people may argue, that these are the main features that consumer are looking for in tablets. Following, the questions arises, why do we need a usual iPad if we have iPad Mini that satisfies all our needs, plus has a lower price. On the other hand, different problems arises, iPad Mini is a competitor of Samsung and Android tablet products, that already positioned well in the market. Does it mean that Apple created more problems by producing iPad Mini?

I would say no. Many people argue that as Steve Jobs passed away, Apple started going down. It’s also the first time that Samsung sold more phones in recent quarter, then Apple sold iPhones. However, if we get back to our iPad case, we can look at it from the different perspective. Apple tries to increase their market share, and to dominate in a “small tabloids” market as well. Moreover, they give a choice to their consumer, there are still many segments of consumers that would stick to usual iPad. Also, Apple has to give an answer to “iPads dilemma” with a release of new generation iPad, that has to make the diffrence between two iPads and determine target audience for both of these products.

Blog source:http://www.canadianbusiness.com/blog/tech/106441–apple-s-ipad-mini-dilemma

Business and environment are usually controversial concepts in our mind. Environmental organizations always complain about pollution that businesses cause to environment (CO2 air emissions caused by planes, production chemical waste etc). At the same time business always argues and ignores all the environmental rules in order to maximize their profit. Of course there are some restriction, quotas, taxes imposed by the government, in order to decrease emissions done by the companies. However, even if the companies follow the rules and restriction, they still end up being not eco friendly.

In my opinion, things changed nowadays, people learned that you can make money out of anything. Environmental business became one of the top opportunities in our century. Instead of looking at the environment as on the enemy, modern companies should try to use it for their own benefit and earn profits by saving the environment. I think that the main problem is not actual polluting of air, or rivers, because there are some factors that we can not change. On the other hand, huge part of a pollution is a waste, that happens because firms are not being efficient enough to use smartly their resource and minimize their waste. Approximate numbers say that we waste around 55% of our energy and 40% of food. Following what I suggest is that if this waste could be minimized, following cost would also decrease. These two would bring benefits to both: businesses and environment.

In my opinion, nowadays, modern businesses have ability to develop their technologies and work towards waste minimization. It can increase costs in the short-run, but it would greatly decrease costs in the long-run perspective.

Article used: http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorieclark/2012/07/12/the-environmental-opportunity-your-business-is-missing/

As Hilary Rejto said in her blog – Canadian employment rate increased by 52000 job place, that increase was unexpected and positively surprised many economists. However, there is also a down side, which brings more of a negative effect then benefits for economy. I would like to elaborate more, explaining why is it bad for economy.

This increase looks beneficial for the Canadian economy in the short-run, because creating job places is beneficial for economy, social factors etc. On the other has, in my opinion, it has different impact in the long-run. That is so called inverse relationship between level of unemployment and inflation. In our case, it means that as number of job places increased in Canada (unemployment decreased), inflation rate also increased. In other words, general price level will also increase on certain types goods. It follows from basic macroeconomics (Phillips curve principle) . Creating job place, and paying people salaries are huge costs (especially for extra 52000). Following it will increase costs of production (variable costs) for all firms, businesses or any governmental organizations. The only way to escape these costs is to increase prices on their good, which will generate more revenue.

Conclusively, there is no reason to be happy (in long-run) about 52000 extra increase in job places.  However, some economists hoping that people are naive make a nice promotion for themselves, which leads to misunderstandings and wrong objectives for country’s economy.

Picture source: http://adsoftheworld.com/files/images/greenpeaceUnemployment.jpg .

I was always wondering about Starbucks successfulness. It seems that whatever you get in Starbucks is the most basic stuff that you can easily get at home. However, Starbucks is one of the biggest coffee shops in the world. What makes Starbucks so attractive to people around the world?

– Of course coffee and other hot drinks are the main products, however it is not it. Right marketing created special “Starbucks atmosphere” and that is the key. Comfortable chairs, fireplaces, free wifi etc. All these factors create a unique social experience and when the most people go to Starbucks they look exactly for it. Howard Schultz says: “My business is not fill up stomachs, but fill up souls”. Also the actual products that company offers is important, that is why Starbucks has hight quality hot drinks and “snack” type of products. Others things that make Starbucks special are the small marketing details. How nice it is when people who made your drink call you by name which written down on your cup. Another thing is that Starbucks is always light and sunny, usually doors and windows in Starbucks located on the South or East. One more thing is that Starbacks keeps traditions, all coffee shops has the same design and interior as the (first) one that was open in 1971 in Seattle. Things like selling music in Starbacks, putting their company sign on cups, holder – also do their job.

For me personally, Starbucks is the perfect example of successful marketing campaign, which consists of many small details that create special atmosphere and a social experience. Starcbucks is like an international culture in 21st century.

Source Article: http://ubr.ua/business-practice/ups-and-downs-in-business/sekrety-populiarnosti-kofeini-starbucks-167897

Picture Source: http://smartcanucks.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/starbucks.jpg

There many talks recently about football (soccer) as concept nowadays. This kind of entertainment grew so much for the last century that it is not simply a type of sport anymore, it is business.

Top football teams pay huge amounts of money for their players (C. Ronaldo €94 ml, Z. Zidane €73,5 ml etc.), money people say that it’s complete waste of money, while there are so many other important issues in the world. However, if we look at it from the other – business prospective we can state that football players are investments, which generate revenue for their employers, following their market prices determined by demand and supply law. Players offer their service to the football club the same as doctors, coaches,  cooks  and the rest of the stuff. Moreover, players don’t usually have their license that’s why sometimes they are  just being sold to the club where they don’t wish to play, but as in any other business are they signed a contract and have to follow it. Also as football players the same as their clubs pay a close attention on their image, marketing, ratings etc. That’s the why we can often see them on TV ads.

Conclusively we may say that footballer players and football industry of course a bit different from usual types of market. However, it has the same business concept as any other business industry, and huge costs of it and money transaction determined by the market.

Source article: http://thefinancesoffootball.blogspot.ca/2012/03/why-do-football-players-earn-so-much.html

Picture Source: http://c257.r57.cf3.rackcdn.com/football_02_temp-1318227598-4e928e8e-620×348.jpg

      As Manuela Stoyanova stated in her blog, Apple released an iPhone 5 around 2 weeks ago, and already there many discussions around it. Does it actually better than iPhone 4s, and has elements that promote it to be a new generation Apple product?

I am not going to list different characteristics of both them, because it was done in my colleague’s blog. First of all I would like to say the Apple is the huge trans international company, with the biggest capital value on the market, and their products clearly win competition on 21st century’s market. If we look at the numbers, then we can see that despite any criticism Apple doing more than fine, and their sells go up. Moreover iPhone 5 is the fastest selling iPhone made by Apple so far. Following, here is the question arises: Should Apple bring any real, significant changes for the next generation iPhone if anyway they are doing fine? Moreover, it is a publicly available information that Apple constantly makes new patents,so we may conclude that they are actually work on new technologies and develop their products. However, they are probably just save it for the new generation products. In addition to it, it brings another issue, ethical one. Apple knows that consumer will buy their products anyway, following they don’t make the level of technological and design change that they could possible do. On the others hand, it is fully their choice, because whatever anyone says, they are still the largest and the most competitive company on communication technological market.

Picture source: http://canindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/18/apple.jpg .

In my first post I would like to talk about something global,  something that we all have to deal with – one of the biggest companies in the world Facebook and their ethical issues. You can’t really compare Facebook to any other company because they have a huge number of users (around 1 billion), following they have to make their service safe and comfortable for everyone. The problem with Facebook is that they constantly change privacy settings in order to make users information public, so when we usually click through “Terms and Condition”, it’s better stop and read, because somewhere there you agree to reveal your personal information to the whole world. The reason why Facebook does it is that our information gets to search engine and will appear more often, following it will also generate more “clicks” or “views”. Facebook makes 90% of revenue from ads, majority of them are priced per-click. Here is the answer: facebook makes revenue by selling their users.
There are two types of big companies: great investments and great businesses. Great businesses care about what consumer’s needs, how they can improve their service for users.  Following their profit builds on consumer’s satisfaction. However, there are great investments type of companies that just try to flip their users over, in a dirty way, basically assuming that “they’re not that sharp to see a couple of details in Terms and Conditions, and who really cares?” That’s what makes facebook not a great business, but just a great investment.

Article : http://calacanis.com/2009/12/13/is-facebook-unethical-clueless-or-unlucky/

Video, you have to see that “Mark Zuckerberg gets hot under the collar over your privacy issues and sweats” : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3hu3iG8B2g .