I recently read Nikola’s blog on Disney and their expected release of a new Star Wars movie in December of 2015. In his blog he stated the release of a new Star Wars movie would generate company profits and build a strong loyal customer segment

In my opinion, Disney is known for its ever so attracting animated films. As a result, its customer base is mainly towards young children and their love for these animated films. Of course many older audiences enjoy Disney films, but that is only because of their history with these films as young children.

With the purchase of Star Wars and a new movie to hit theaters in 2015, it looks like Disney is trying to expand its already large customer base to new heights. However, the problem with this is that Disney lovers may not be so enthusiastic about Star Wars and therefore may cause them to lose interest in the company. We see this happen ever so often when companies become so focused on expansion, that they forget about their previous customer base. Hopefully Disney will not fall under this category and continue to make their popular animated films.

Nikola Nedev’s Blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/nikolanedev/2013/10/20/disney-finalises-release-date-for-next-star-wars-movie/#respond

Pictures: http://collider.com/star-wars-episode-7-film-dan-mindel/

http://smartwhenshouting.com/disney-infinity-no-girls-allowed/

London based Thinkers50 releases a list of what they call the Oscars of management thinking every two years. Two of the top four world’s most top business minds are Canadians: Roger Martin and Don Tapscott.This list highlights some of the world’s top leaders in management, innovation and strategy. This is astonishing as Canada is such a small country in terms of demographics and for us to have two of the top four is a major achievement.

This year’s list was based on votes from 12,000 advisers from around the world, who assessed measures such as relevance of ideas, rigour of research and international outlook. When thinking back 10 years, Canadians would have never thought to be so high on the list, especially among the most influential in the world. Even women are becoming more and more involved as four of the top 10 on the list are women.

Article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/canada-among-top-in-list-of-world-business-thinkers/article15401210/

Pictures: https://www.google.ca/search?q=thinkers50+2013&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=0A6DUpmuBobOyAH8iIH4Cw&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=664#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=7ICWisKj49hacM%3A%3BT2mleZp63zGuWM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.coachmarilyn.com%252Fmedia%252Fimages%252FThinkers50-2013-gala.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.coachmarilyn.com%252F%3B650%3B225

In early October Rogers temporarily shut down text and phone services to about 6 million cellphone users. They claim it was a software glitch that couldn’t handle the sudden spike in all the network signals they were receiving. Rogers’ reputation will definitely take a hit after this major incident as customers showed their frustration through twitter.

“Rogers can pay for my lost business today!” an angry customer tweeted. “I have been overpaying these criminals for 12 years now. Canadians pay the highest wireless rates in the world! It’s time we get some real competition, I’m tired of the price fixing the 3 wireless companies are doing every year.”

It is evident that consumers are frustrated with Canada’s service providers and the outage only fueled more hate towards the company. I feel that Rogers needs to find a new value proposition that they can offer to their customers as other providers are coming out with cheaper plans that offer the same benefits. Other companies are now establishing more positive points of differences with Rogers that could harm their overall image in the near future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bicMAU4va8w

Article: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/10/09/rogers_reports_wireless_service_outage_company_website_down.html

http://o.canada.com/technology/software-glitch-to-blame-for-rogers-wireless-network-outage/

Burger King has recently released the Big King burger. Which is basically the same as the famous Big Mac burger offered at McDonalds. The Big King was released a few years back and due to popular demand from the customers has been brought back to compete with the Big Mac. Can you guess which one is which?

Why would anyone buy a Big King when they can just buy a Big Mac? The Big king is actually “healthier” than the Big Mac and about 30 cents cheaper. The Big King’s patty is also more like the whopper’s patty and depending on the customers preference could be better or worst when compared to the Big Mac.

In terms of my preference, I will have to taste the Big King before making my decision. However, the Big King has had mixed reviews and some feel it is just a copycat of the iconic Big Mac sandwich.

This image deleting messaging system is now being valued at about $3.6 billion by its own investors. This is shocking as Snapchat is based off of deleting its own products. Users send a “snapchat” or a picture to their friends and within seconds that picture is deleted.

Tech blogger, Roy Murdock makes an argument that Snapchat is actually worth $0. He says that because Snapchat deletes its most valuable data, the pictures, it has no competitive advantage over any other social media sites. In addition, he states they can make no ad revenue and have no patents that other companies are interested in.

However, Snapchat is second only behind Facebook on daily uploaded pictures. In addition, there is so much potential for them to make revenue through different marketing strategies such as adding features to premium members or being able to follow celebrities much like twitter allows.

Articles: http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-business-model-is-intrinsically-worthless-2013-11

http://www.quora.com/Snapchat/How-does-Snapchat-plan-to-make-money

Pictures: http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-vies-for-photo-sharing-crown-2013-66

I recently read James’ Blogon how Pokemon is still popular even after so many years. He stated that Nintendo has a unique marketing strategy in which it keeps its customers loyal. Being a former player, I will admit it was a very fun and addictive game.

Nintendo has made over 60 Pokemon games, an animated TV series (14 seasons), over a dozen featured films, comic books and last but not least, an immensely depth and popular trading card game.

In my opinion, Pokemon has remained popular because it is kid approved. What I mean by this is, all children love Pokemon. The variety of Pokemon appeals to girls and boys due to the fact there are cute and soft Pokemon as well as cool and muscular Pokemon. Moreover, the phrase Gotta Catch em all also appeals to the competitive mindset that children have nowadays in which they must try to catch all the Pokemon in a single game. With these two features, children are going to keep coming back for more and more as Nintendo constantly releases new Pokemon in each of their new titles

James Sanjaya Liauw’s Blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/jamessl/

Twitter recently released their IPO documents and in turn, provided some interesting information about their company. In the documents, it is said that Twitter gets 85 percent of its revenue from ad services and more then three quarters of its monthly users are from outside the U.S. In addition, Twitter also mentions the major risks involved with the company such as technical problems, failure to grow its user base and bad publicity.

Obviously it was not Twitter’s intention to leak this information. Like Scott mentioned in his Financial Accounting lecture, companies don’t usually release important information to the public because of the fact that rival companies can get their hands on it. Furthermore, Scott also mentioned about GAAP, or generally accepted accounting principles. In the document, it predicts Twitter will have a tough time achieving profitability on a GAAP basis in 2013 and 2014. It also reveals that Twitter was losing money on a non-GAAP basis too.

Article: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2052340/10-tidbits-from-twitters-ipo-filing.html

Pictures: http://www.sweetbenannasam.com/2013/08/14/impromptu-twitter-party/

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2013/01/22/were-experiencing-technical-difficulties/

Dear Investor: Your Servicer is Losing Your Money

Fortune 500 companies have started to add instagram as a way of marketing. Big Brand names such as Starbucks, Nike and Ralph Lauren are all top players in the instagram world. A study has shown that the pictures these companies post generate benefits during the day but also evenings and weekends.

Videos, although a fairly new addition to the instagram world, also attract a fairly large crowd.

Fortune 500 companies have found that using highly popular social media networks such as instagram is a great way to get their products out there to the public. Hash tagging and uploading their products is a sneaky but smart way to market their brand. Because there isn’t a finite time to post like on other social media outlets, brands can use this to their advantage to find what is right within their audience.

article: http://mashable.com/2013/09/30/fortune-500-instagram/

pictures: http://mashable.com/2013/09/30/fortune-500-instagram/

West Jet plans to test out the transatlantic market next spring with flights from St. John’s and Dublin. This adds increasing pressure towards Air Canada as West Jet now becomes a competitor to them for the European travel market. West Jet claims that From Dublin, guests can access low costs flights to over 100 cities in Europe.

The only problem with this is West Jet only offers a direct flight to Dublin from Toronto. Cities like Vancouver, Montreal, and Calgary would need to connect in St. John’s. This adds a lack of convenience amongst some customers and would cause them to take their services to other competitors.

In addition, West Jet does not offer the Boeing 767 or 787, but instead are known for their massive fleet of Boeing 737’s. This being the case, experts say West Jet would need to acquire some of the wider bodied 767’s to accommodate for the European flights.

The era of the low cost but efficient West Jet carriers may be coming to a close in the near future as they try to expand into the world wide market. But can they overtake Air Canada?

Chris Sorenson’s blog for Maclean’s: http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/11/15/westjet-bound-for-europe/

Pictures: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/westjet-to-go-transatlantic-with-flights-to-dublin-1.2427850