If you haven’t heard the news or seen people on Facebook changing their profile pictures into a yellow band, you must be living under a HUGE rock.

There is currently a huge protest going on in HongKong called “Occupy Central”. The citizens of this beautiful country are fighting for democracy. They do not want China to determine who can be a candidate in the upcoming 2017 elections (BBC 2014).This is by far one of the biggest protests that ever happened in HongKong.

HongKong is one of, if not the largest free market economies in the world. Due to this protest, stocks and the flow of money has slowed down tremendously. This is a huge problem for investors and shareholders all around the world who have placed money into the Chinese market because they can do one of two things:

• Dump/keep their stocks

Which will lead to one of two outcomes:

• If the protest goes on for much longer or get worse, the stockmarket might crash and this might affect the WORLD’s economy negatively because China is such a strong influence in the marketplace.
• If the world dumps all their stocks, the same problem will happen. Stocks drop, world economy affected, might lead to recession/depression.

Let’s give our full support to HongKong and hope that the situation will soon be resolved.

Workcited

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2014/09/29/stocks-monday/16418841/

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-29054196

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102045300#.

Everyone knows about it.
Everyone is excited about it.

The wait is finally over.

Everyone wants to get their hands on the brand new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

 

Apple finally introduced their long awaited product and made it available for pre-order before the official release date on September 19th.
According to Toronto Sun, pre-orders for the brand new phone hit a record of 4 million dollars, twice as much as the pre-orders for the iPhone 5 two years ago (Toronto Sun, 2014). I believe Apple’s  marketing strategy is the key to the success of their products. The specs of the new iPhone is actually mediocre compared to phones from other companies such as the Nexus and Samsung Galaxy S5 but Apple market their products so exclusively that the iPhone becomes almost a luxury good. Another key to the success of the new iPhone is the introduction of two versions of the phone at the same time – iPhone 6 & iPhone 6 Plus. There are very small differences between these two versions (screen size, thickness, resolution, etc). The price difference between the two is only a few hundred dollars.

This can greatly increase revenue for Apple because they can appeal to consumers in 3 different ways:

a) Tech fanatics would buy both just for comparison or collection.
b) With the small difference in price, consumers might think “Oh, its just a few hundred dollars more and I get a bigger and better phone”.
c) With one version of the phone being sold at a higher price, it gives an illusion that the iPhone 6 is much cheaper than the iPhone 6 Plus.

So that is my take on why the iPhone 6 is so successful. Thanks for reading!

Links:

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/09/15/apple-receives-record-iphone-6-pre-orders

http://www.phonearena.com/phones/compare/Apple-iPhone-6,Google-Nexus-5/phones/8346,8148

http://www.apple.com/

 

 

 

 

 

Ethics & Its Importance in Business

What are ethics?

It is one’s judgement about what is right or wrong.

In our lives, we are faced with ethical dilemmas.

 

What is being ethical?

It is to do what is right when facing an ethical dilemma.

 

In today’s blogpost, we will look at one of the biggest schemes ever committed.

 

 

Bernard Madoff is well known as a master Ponzi schemer (BBC 2014).

Ponzi? Is that some type of Japanese sauce?

 

NO, that is Ponzu.        

 

A Ponzi scheme explained very simply, is when an individual from an organisation give returns to investors with money invested by other investors rather than the actual dividend earned from the investment.

 

Although this sounds like a genius idea to achieve my dreams of becoming a millionaire before the age of 30, it is a very UNETHICAL thing to do. It is deceptive and manipulative.

 

 

Madoff stole BILLIONS of dollars from his clients.

 

He mentioned, “It starts out with you taking a little bit, and before you know it, it snowballs into something big” (BBC 2014).

 

 

What goes around, comes around. 

Madoff was turned in by his sons and was sentenced to 150 years of prison time (Bloomberg 2008).

 

Ethics are extremely important for a business organisation. We must make ethical decisions and practice good ethics to develop a good reputation among our clients and investors.  This will develop a good relationship between the client and the organisation, which will ultimately lead to: PROFIT.

And as we all learned in Sauder, the sole purpose of doing business is to eventually make a profit. So start being ETHICAL today!

 

Thank you for reading!

-James Lau Jun Yee (9/9/2014)

 

Workcited

Images hyperlinks:

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/03/0311_madoff/2.htm

http://www.edenfoods.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=109880

http://imotwom.wikia.com/wiki/File:FACEPALM.png

Web sources (Information):

Borzykowski, Bryan. “The Slippery Slope of Getting Away with Small Stuff.” BBC Capital. BBC, 7 Aug. 2014. Web. 09 Sept. 2014.

“Definition of Ponzi Scheme in English:.” Ponzi Scheme: Definition of Ponzi Scheme in Oxford Dictionary (British & World English). N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Sept. 2014.

Levisohn, Ben. “How to Make a Madoff.” Bloomberg Business Week. Bloomberg, 16 Dec. 2008. Web. 10 Sept. 2014.

 

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!