United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization that addresses humanitarian issues and offers aid and relief to underdeveloped countries. However, the aid and relief given by the organization will only help in the short run. Many resources are tangible and once the resource is depleted, the country will revert back into its original state. With this reason, I believe that the United Nations has to partner up with smaller organizations, such as Arc and social enterprises, to fully help a country.

Since United Nations offers relief to multiple underdeveloped countries, it can only provide funds for the immediate relief of a country. The cost of helping each individual underdeveloped country in all aspects would be too costly for the big organization. That is why smaller organizations, like Arc, can focus on specific underdeveloped countries and help them find solutions to improve the country in the long run. Upward Arc focuses specifically on improving Rwanda’s economy through programs that teach local entrepreneurs how to sustain their business. The Arc Initiative also helps give advice and recommendations for local business in Ethiopia.

Room to Read Program

Social entrepreneurs also play a big role in helping developing countries in the long run. An example of this is John Wood. His program Room to Read helps underprivileged children through literacy. By teaching children to read, John Wood is helping the local communities of developing countries break out of the cycle of poverty.

“Treat others the way you want to be treated.” An extremely important component for successful companies is the amount of trust they have in the customers. When a company trusts their customers, the customers, in return, will trust the company. In Peter Merholz’s blog, he commented on how Amazon and Zappos are putting an amazing amount of trust in their customers not to abuse their services, and are reaping in “longer-term benefits.”

Amazon provides two services that require a large amount of customer trust. First, they allowed honest customer reviews. Although there may be products that will be poorly reviewed, this service will allow people to become more comfortable with online retail. This service would also increase the number of repeat customers. I have bought from another website before, but most of the comments about the product were false. After the one bad experience with the online retailer, I decided that I would not buy from that website again. I’m sure many other customers would do the same in that situation.

Zappos provides a similar service that involves customer trust to increase the number of repeat customers. The company offers free shipping both ways and 365-day no-questions-asked returns. This would be a major incentive for people to buy shoes online without trying them first.

Although, in the short run, there may not be an incentive for companies to put a significant amount of trust in their customers, in the long run, this trust would become an iconic element for the company’s brand. It will increase the number of increase customers, which will equate to more sales/profit for the company.

Source:

https://hbr.org/2010/04/what-trust-brings-to-amazon-za

Last week, Amazon has expanded its same-day delivery option to Canada. Customers from Vancouver and Toronto can now place orders online and receive their packages within 24 hours. Amazon is currently testing local taxi cab deliveries. Through deliveries by taxi cabs, orders can be shipped 7 days a week, including holidays.

Amazon Canada

In my opinion, I believe that this was a very strategic move for Amazon. By partnering with local taxi companies, orders can now be shipped on weekends. Many people go to work from Mondays to Fridays, which conflicts with delivery companies operating hours. I have seen many UPS and Canada Post notes stuck to the window of apartments and houses stating that no one was in the house at the time of the delivery and that the parcel can be picked up at the nearest location. This can be a turn off for many people because when customers buy products online, they expect it to be delivered to their house. However, due to the time conflicts with the customers and delivery companies, many customers have to leave the comforts of their own home after a tiring day at work to go to the pickup location. With this innovative same-day shipping method, Amazon can target customers who want to buy online but due to time conflicts, buy from local stores instead.

Source:

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y14/m10/i17/s03

Recently, McDonald revealed that their social media strategy was to create 14,500 Facebook pages by the end of the year. Each McDonald store will have their own Facebook page where customers can post their dissatisfaction or operational issues. Through this strategy, local stores will be able to address issues more quickly and efficiently.

McDonald

Even though this strategy will require a large investment in staffing, I strongly believe that McDonald will gain more customers after the strategy is implemented. This strategy will show that the company is willing to improve their services and products to maximize customer satisfaction. By letting customers express their dissatisfaction through one-to-one dialogues, it will create an illusion that the next time they visit McDonald  the same issue would not appear again. Therefore, through this strategy, customers who have had unhappy encounters with McDonald would more likely eat at McDonald again rather than go to another fast food restaurant.

In my opinion, gaining back dissatisfied customers will be extremely beneficial for McDonald. Two years ago, McDonald invested in a paid-for tweet with hash tag #McDStories to promote the quality of its products. This campaign was closed down after 2 hours due to all the negative publicity it had attracted. Many past customers were posting their dissatisfaction with their service/product and some were even including hash tags such as #McFail. Through this failed campaign, one can conclude that McDonald has lost many customers due to rare mistakes that employees have made. McDonald’s profit would increase greatly, due to increase in sales, if they manage to gain back all the dissatisfied customers with the Facebook pages strategy.

Sources:

http://www.prweek.com/article/1318971/three-challenges-mcdonalds-will-face-rolling-14500-facebook-pages

http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-twitter-campaign-goes-horribly-wrong-mcdstories-2012-1

Every consumer has the urge to buy the “newest” and “greatest” products. Children will always want the “newest” toys to show off to their friends and teenagers will always want the newest styles of clothes and electronics. In Lily Du’s post, she talks about how this mindset is “fabricated” by companies to convince the consumers that “the idea of wearing down electronics is to be ridiculed.” Even though the product is still usable, it will always be discarded by the owner if the model of the product is seen as “out-dated”. In the post, Apple is one of the leading companies that have consumers with this type of mindset. I believe that this mindset was created by the media. Every time a new apple product is released, there are numerous articles and news reports that display people excitingly lining up overnight to purchase the “latest” model. This portrayal of the public’s reaction creates an illusion that this product is the “hottest new model” and is a must have to be accepted into the general crowd. I believe that this illusion (through marketing and media) is the reason why consumers will never hesitate to retire their electronic for a “shiny new toy.”

The evolution of Apple’s Iphone

Xiaomi is an extremely popular brand in China, known for its cheap prices and durable products. Although Xiaomi is not a well-known company internationally, it has been dubbed by western media as “the apple of China” due to the success the company has had in the past 4 years (fifth-largest phone manufacturer in the world).

In my opinion, I believe that the company’s value proposition is the reason behind the success of this company. The company’s value proposition is to provide consumers with cheap but durable phone devices. Their value proposition directly relates to their customer market. Xiaomi sells their devices near break-even point, which attracts many consumers, since it is almost half as expensive as any other phone in China (around 150 yuan) compared to a Samsung (around 500 yuan). With its low prices, Xiaomi targets all the consumers who cannot afford a Samsung or Apple product. This proposition/strategy not only works in China, but it works in different parts of the world too. In the article, Xiaomi sold 60,000 Redmi 1S phones in 13.9 seconds during a promotion in India.

Sources:

http://www.businessinsider.com/xiaomi-is-the-apple-of-china-2014-10

Taseko Mines has recently hit a wall in their expansion project. With the federal cabinet’s “thumbs down” with their plan of building a new mine, New Prosperity Mine, by Fish Lake, it seems to me that their plan for a new mine can never make it past the drawing board.

Tsilhqot’in first nations currently has title to 1,750 square kilometers of land west of Williams Lake and they  are set upon including Fish Lake into their boundary, claiming that the lake is essential for maintaining wildlife habitat. Although this claim is unilateral for now, if the government grants them the rights to include Fish Lake into their tribal park, then Taseko Mines new project will never be approved.

Picture of Fish Lake

Taseko Mines is currently filing a lawsuit against the federal government, claiming that public officials have been influenced by external factors when making their ruling. I agree with the company that there has been something fishy going on behind the scenes. Tsilhqot’in first nations claim on Fish Lake could be influencing the public officials’ decision, since there should be no other reason as to why the federal government would reject Taseko Mines’ new project. The company’s new project has already been approved of by the provincial government and has support from many communities.

The lawsuit will move forward on October 22, 2014 and the result for this lawsuit can affect the entire mining industry.

Sources:

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/metro/Unilateral+park+declared+Tsilhqot+includes+Prosperity+mine/10192766/story.html

http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/opinion/columnists/taseko-looks-to-courts-in-battle-against-feds-1.1411434

Source: https://blogs.ubc.ca/blessiecanete/2014/09/28/facebook-releasing-your-data-to-   millions-of-others/

After reading Blessie’s blog about Facebook, I completely agree with her view that their new ad platform, Atlas, is going to invade the privacy of users. Recently, I watched a video about a social media experiment. In this video, after searching for people on social media websites through current locations, a guy would randomly go up to the “victim” and start listing out his/her name, occupation, birthdays, pets, and all kinds of personal information. If anyone can search up this much information about a stranger on social media websites, it is hard to imagine what kind of information Atlas can collect and give out to other companies. Releasing these types of information to thousands of companies is basically like putting up all the information about a user onto a billboard, available for everyone to see. Just like what Blessie said, Atlas will be very useful for companies, but for users like us, it will be considered as a major violation of  privacy.

Source for Video: http://www.businessinsider.com/jack-vale-social-media-experiment-2013-11

In late August, Tim Hortons announced that they were merging together with Burger King. The new company is said to have a combined global sales of $23 billion and 18,000 locations in 98 countries, becoming the world’s third largest fast-food company. 

                 Tim Hortons Merge with Burger King

Many Canadians dislike the idea of Tim Hortons, a Canadian brand, being bought by the American fast-food company. TIm Hortons is an iconic Canadian brand and many Canadians see this merger as an overtake of yet another Canadian brand by our American counterpart. Many Canadians would choose Tim Hortons over Starbucks and other coffee brands simply because it is a Canadian company, but after this merger, Tim Hortons will no longer be considered “Canadian” by many. Being a Canadian myself, I can understand why many people feel this way, although, in my opinion, I think that this reaction caused by the merge is completely ironic. This is due to the fact that Tim Hortons has already been bought by the American company, Wendy’s, in 1995.

I support this merge because I see this as an opportunity for Tim Hortons to expand their market internationally. Currently, Tim Hortons has 4,546 restaurants located in Canada while Burger King has 13,667 restaurants internationally.  With this merge, TIm Hortons is planning to open up 800 more stores by the end of 2018, with more than 300 stores in the States, where they have had difficulty gaining a foothold in the market previously.

Sources:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tim-hortons-burger-king-agree-to-merger-deal-1.2746948

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tim-hortons-plans-800-more-restaurants-1.2550508

Unethical Behavior

Employees with good ethics are extremely important to a business. It is the secret behind a successful business. Employees who are socially responsible generally work well in a team atmosphere and they also make better decisions for the business and the public. The issue of good ethics was addressed in the article “The Slippery Slope of Getting Away with the Small Stuff” by Bryan Borzykowski. In his article, he addressed to problems every business faces, employees who commit unethical acts at work, such as slacking off. In Freeman’s video, he also addressed to the problem that some employees do not give their 100% at work. In my opinion, this is a major problem for businesses. Employees who give 80% of what they are capable of doing at work will slowly give 70%, to 60%. This problem was referred to as the “slippery-slope effect” in Borzykowski’s article. If a business has employees who slack off, the business will be less likely to bloom because its workforce is not being 100% productive. Also, employees who see other employees get away with what they are doing will also do the same, contributing to a steady decline of productivity in a business.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140806-the-slippery-slope