Bell has established itself as one of the commanding telecommunications companies in Canada, and while this wasn’t the case before, it is evident due to Bell’s advancement into GSM technology during the 2010 Winter Olympics has helped them in achieving this. While using CDMA (no sim card), customers were not as attracted to Bell’s network, me being one of these customers; one of the main reasons I signed my first phone contract with Rogers instead. Using CDMA also drove away international consumers from making use of Bell services while in Canada. Bell expanding their infrastructure to incorporate GSM network technology has allowed those coming from abroad to make use of their services. The initial impact of this is described on this website,

http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/iphone-news/bell-releases-2010-vancouver-olympics-network-usage/

While in the case discussed in class, to most it seemed that the Olympics were a huge waste of money, but after realizing facts like this, and how Bell was able to expand its image and become the massive company they are today. Because of the Olympics Bell was forced to make these advancements, and who knows how long it would have taken them to do this otherwise. As a result Bell was able to expand its brand to accommodate more people. I was shocked after looking into it at how much the Olympics helped Bell, despite the $200M investment, I believe it would not be as expanded and advanced as it is today without the pressure the Olympics put on it.

With the iPad’s evident success, other companies have realized the benefits of releasing such a product in the market. A company that capitalized on this is Samsung, with their recent release of the Samsung Galaxy S Tab as their version of a tablet on the market, but has Samsung made a worthy competitor to battle the iPad? There is no simple answer to this question, yet. The Samsung Galaxy S Tab annihilates the iPad in certain specs such as having double the RAM, and allowing up to 32 GB of expandable storage. Along with this, Android software supports many features the OS for the iPad does not, including full Adobe flash support, multitasking, and the most important being unrestricted access to applications; Apple is known for harshly censoring apps. But even with these features, the simplicity the iPad operating system offers seems to be attractive to those who aren’t tech savvy yet want to own a tablet. Apple has seized the non-tech people in the market with their attractive and user-friendly product, leaving them oblivious to the benefits offered by the more complex Android tablet. They have positioned their brand to those going for style and simplicity (which happens to be a vast majority), and have done it successfully. Apple has taken over this market, for other tablets to be successful, they need to position their brand to other consumers, or find a way to overtake Apple’s target, which is unlikely considering the time advantage they’ve had.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/204779/samsung_galaxy_tab_vs_the_ipad_compare_for_yourself.html

During class, in particular the Zappo’s example, I have learnt the importance of Customer Service. While it seems that its more common sense than anything that customer service is essential, it amazed that it can play on customer loyalty. The outstanding customer service provided by Zappo’s has allowed them to excel as a business and attain an ample amount of satisfied customers. A specific example, is when the lady called trying to haggle a discount out of Zappo’s claiming she had found the product cheaper elsewhere, while she had in fact already placed the order for her item. The lady had shopped at Zappo’s before and while they may not have given her the discount she desired, she ordered with them nonetheless. Having worked in the customer service industry (fast food chain), even then I never realized the extent to which extraordinary customer service can affect your customer service count.

In my opinion, the class on entrepreneurship happened to be one of the most important classes of the year. As soon as I left this class, my head was filled with different ideas I could implement into a brilliant business idea. This class was unbelievably inspirational to me and got me thinking about all the other entrepreneurs in the world. Two of the most successful entrepreneurs that had incredible success because they believed in their ideas, are Walt Disney and Mark Zuckerberg. These two geniuses managed to make something out of absolutely nothing while dropping out of school, which have resulted in two of the most well known businesses in history. I’m not saying that an education isn’t necessary to achieve success, but this class changed my direction and path I had previously set for myself before coming to Sauder; it has inspired me to possibly take up entrepreneurship as my specialization, which I had not even considered previously. Although implementing your own idea often results in failure, the guest speakers made clear to not let this de-motivate your ambitions. I learned that being an entrepreneur is learning from your mistakes, and brainstorming new and intuitive ideas to correct these mistakes. Entrepreneurship involves challenges, but possible payoffs from these challenges make it worth the effort.

Recently, North Korea issued an attack on their South Korean neighbors, making it the first act of violence in years. When thinking this article, many of us seem to focus on the hatred between the two nations themselves as opposed to the economic impact this can have on the world. With Seoul being the second highest populated city in the world, and controlling the corporate headquarters of some of the largest companies in the world, consumers in North America have much to worry about. Samsung, Hyundai, and LG are just a few companies based in Korea. Retailers like Best Buy and Wal-Mart will suffer significantly, ultimately resulting in an economic disaster.

When you investigate deeper into the issue you realize another potential threat in this battle, China. I thought about it and realized with China as a communist supporter of North Korea, this could result in the US going to war with China. The economic impact of this can be catastrophic as trade with China is colossal all over the world; the result of this will especially have substantial effects on North American consumers. I believe its essential that this issue be solved or businesses and consumers will suffer significantly.

This link further explains this issue:

http://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2010/05/how-a-new-korean-war-would-affect-u-s-business/