Reflection on Marketing Plan assignment

       This marketing assignment is one of the most interesting assignment I have been doing so far. Since it is separated into three different parts, it allows us to incorporate more information into each part also make each part more sound and knowledgeable. Also, the time gap between each due day of the assignment is reasonable, therefore, we do not feel time stress. As the result, the assignment will be done more organized and well-prepared. As well, the teams are randomly assigned by professor, this provide more opportunities for students to meet different people, and in workplace, we often do not have choice for people we work with, it is a random system, this also give us a pre-practice for real workplace. In addition to that, this also train our ability to work with different people. We might even work with someone we don’t really like to work with due to some behavioural, personality or characteristics differences between you have that person.

The most exciting part of this assignment is the third part: video presentation. In this part we need to make our own video to incorporate and present our previous works and our ideas. However, for this part I feel a bit time stress, since not everyone has the video making skills, and the learning process is slow really time consuming if you don’t have any previous or related knowledge about it. The only suggestion I will give for this assignment will be, if we can have more lecture on how to make a video, it will be fantastic. Even though, this obstacle also make us a better team, since we can divide up job, each person take responsible for specific part.

Overall, I enjoy this assignment, what I gain from it, it is more than the mark showed on our assignment. Wish to have it in more classes.

Green Economy 

   Scarcity is the core question for this economics study. Humanity’s wants are unlimited and seem impossible to satisfy. However, global resources are limited and precious in terms of economic growth. In order to reach economic prosperity and high economic level, countries have to pay more and more resources in exchange for a little step of economic growth as time goes on. Therefore, many countries’ economic growth is restricted by the natural resources they own. Also, according to investigation, some countries are considered as emerging economic countries. For example, China and India, but their environmental conditions are relatively worse than many other developed countries. The essay is going to introduce an economic concept, Green Economy, and how it benefits economic growth.

   During the age of the steam engine, oil was being used in many different areas such as steel industries, railway industries and car industries. Petroleum is one of the most important resources for economic growth since that time. It also benefits many countries in the Middle East such as Arabia, Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran because they have a copious amount of oil reserves. In 1960, 11 Middle East countries established the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in order to control the price of oil. However, the reserve of petroleum decreased exponentially as time had gone by. It influenced the global economy in various ways, many countries started to develop and search for renewable resources while other countries fought for oil. And due to global warming, ice is melting in the arctic area. Some economists believe that it will be the last area with many undeveloped natural resources, such as oil. In other words, it means the countries that own more land in that area are going to be the next powerful countries because they have more resources that can be allocated into a developing economy.           

   However, what is the world going to do if the last available resources are drained. Every country seems to recognize this serious global problem so the concept of the Green Economy was introduced and pursued. Green Economy is defined as an economy or economic development model based on sustainable development and a knowledge of ecological economics[1]. Based on the concept, more and more countries are engaged in developing renewable resources such as tidal energy, solar energy and wind energy. Also according to economists’ investigations, developed countries have relatively good environmental conditions while developing countries’ environmental conditions will be improved once the economic growth increases. But the reality is that environment pollutions are increasing rapidly, and there is no time to wait till every country has become well developed. The facts are revealed by The United Nations Climate Conference.

   Therefore, green projects are gradually becoming a priority of each government. Canada, being one of the most developed countries also strive for improving environmental conditions by investing in new energy efficiency initiatives. The report said: the Government of Canada is investing $78 million over the next two years to create jobs in the energy sector and save Canadian homeowners money while improving energy efficiency. It also announced that The Next Phase of Canada’s Economic Action Plan promotes job creation through investments in energy efficiency and clean energy technology. The ecoENERGY Efficiency initiatives will help improve energy efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve air quality and save money for Canadians and Canadian businesses. These initiatives are expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately four megatonnes, which is the equivalent of removing over one million cars from the road[2].

   Saving resources is a global trend, not only is Canada participating, there are also many developing nations joining in. For example, China, is a country important economic role in the world by building many green projects. Three Gorges Dam is one of the green programs in China. It is one of the biggest hydroelectric stations in the world. It has been shown that in the first half of 2011, the Three Gorges Dam produced 39 billion kilowatt of electricity. The annual electricity supply has increased steadily since it was established in2006. The Three Gorges Dam not only saved households’ money, it also helped to maintain the ecosystem around the Yang Zi River and reduce the possibilities of flooding[3].

  Overall, green projects benefit the world in many different ways: it can stimulate economic growth without any negative effect toward society. It can save money, create more job opportunities and protect environment for society. Under the limitation of natural resources, Green Economy and Green Projects effectively bring people the resolution. Now, there are more and more countries striving for developing green projects. All the efforts aim to reach the same goal, Economic Growth with no harm for society and the world we live in.  

This blog demonstrates the importance of a big factor in Marketing Field: Brand Loyalty. There is one quote from the blog says “It’s one of the only brands I can think of that I feel this loyal to and I think it’s because nothing, other than my family, my dog and my friends of course are as integral to my life as the phone attached to my hand almost every minute of every day.” This short sentence truly reflects the feeling of Bryan and also shows how he is loyal to Apple. On the other hand, this also shows how success is Apple in terms of creating customer loyalty. Once the customer loyalty has been created, it is almost 100% sure that customer will insist in buying products from that specific store. According to the blog, it says that “A recent Forbes survey confirms that while 20% of new Apple users have switched from Android to the iPhone, only 7% of Apple users have gone the other way.” This also proves that Apple’s market share is increasing and more and more people get switched and start using Apple’s products. As long as Apple keeps their products at high quality and with their well-done customer services, these regular customers will quickly change into frequent customer, loyal customer and advocates of Apple products.

Overall, this Blog shows the importance and impact of Brand Loyalty on individual and on Company. Brand Loyalty will be a useful weapon in the war of marketing if companies are on the right track.

 http://www.the-cma.org/about/blog/battle-of-the-smartphone-brands-an-apple-loyalist-throws-down-the-gauntlet

      The topic I want to discuss in this blog is: will company be better off if they decide to target on one specific market within a big market circle. For example, within the sport wearing and accessories industry, there are many companies such as Nike, Adidas, Puma and so on. They almost produce every sports wearing and equipments: basketball, soccer, football, hockey and running. At the result, they own large market share and make a lot of profit from it. However, there are still some companies like Lululemon, they target on specific market, Yoga market, and they are operating quiet well and making a lot of profit as well. Another example will be Sony and Apple, they are both 3c and electronic companies that making tons of profits every year. however, in terms of market shares and market involvement, Sony does provide more type of products to the customers. Sony produces TVs, Cell Phones, Laptops, Speakers, walkman and so on. Compared to Sony, Apple manly focuses on producing cell phones, laptops and portable music players. Even though, there are differences in market size and market involvements, both companies are making almost same amount of profits every year. therefore, is market involvement and market size really matter in terms of profit maximizing?

       This can be addressed in many different ways. In terms of market size and involvement, if a company involves in many different areas, the management and quality control of the company will be hard to control and manage. In order for companies like that to make profit, they need to have well-planned and well-structured company managing and quality control system, otherwise, the “larger” the company is, the messier it will be. On the other hand, company like Apple and Lululemon, since they target on specific market, they have relatively less stress and pressure over management, the only thing they need to do is concentrating and focusing on designing new and attractive products to compete with those “large” companies. Also, if a person is looking for specific type of products, for example, a yoga wearing or a smart phone, they will tend to choose yoga wearing from Lululemon and smart phone from Apple other than Nike and Sony. This is because, most people believe they quality will be better if a company only producing on or few specific products.

      Overall, to determine which one is actually better, it’s really depend on what type of business model you want your company to be.

Reflection on Ian’s blog post about Ethic

       Business ethic is always a popular topic in the field of economy. In the economic theory, it says that all the firms are focusing on profit maximizing. As the result, it creates many unethical activities such as the poisoned milk powder issue happened in China. In Ian’s blog, he mentioned that a dairy company named Sanlu. In order to understand this event more clearly, I had done some research. Sanlu is founded in 1956 and it was once being the top 3 milk powder companies in China, had a great reputation. There were many children raised by Sanlu’s milk powder. However, in 2008, sixteen infants who has been fed on milk powder produced by Sanlu, were diagnosed with kidney stones and many were dying. This serious issue attracted many attentions from different group of people and also media. Quickly, Chinese Government stepped in and started investigating. They found that Sanlu has been adding a chemical called Melamine into their product. The effect of that chemical is to increase protein content, however, It has negative impact to human body, specially to children whose bodies are still growing. After the exposure of this, Sanlu’s market share shrieked and disappeared from market.

       This is a good example of illustrating the goal of each private company: companies trying to minimize their cost at same time maximize their revenue. This specific example also prove that companies will use different strategies to reach their goal. Sometimes, company may choose wrong path and end up destroying themselves. However, if company has clear goal and always operate ethically, they might not be the most profitable one, but look at long term development, they will make more money than those who focus on short term profit and act unethically.   

    Top Pot Bakery is a famous bakery in Taiwan. It is well-known for its natural, fresh ingredients and its specially made inartificial yeast. Following the trend of healthy life style, its products attract many Taiwanese customers’ attention. Meanwhile, it also uses marketing strategy such as celebrity endorsement and advertising to shape their brand image and to let more people know its features of the products. Top Pot Bakery also uses talk show as a method of enlarging and increasing its market share. Dee Hsu is a famous Taiwanese talk show host, and she always mentions the bread in her show. Therefore, the name of Top Pot is widely spread out through media. As the result of these marketing strategies, long lining-ups in front of bakery stores are a daily scene even though the prices of their products are relatively higher than others. However, during this summer (summer of 2013), some insiders revealed the fact that not every product of Top Pot Bakery is made by inartificial yeast. As a matter of fact, most products are actually manufactured with inartificial yeast. Shortly after the incident, customers felt angry about it and responded furiously, “we have the feeling of being fooled”, “they lie to us”, “we want our money back.” At this stage, Top Pot Bakery had not only used lower standard ingredients to produce its products, more severely it even deceived its customers just to benefit its own profit. From the perspectives of customers, Top Pot Bakery has broken the rule for being an ethics and trustful company, simply because they lied to customers.

    Due to the market share Top Pot Bakery has in bakery industry, Taiwanese government stepped in and asked the owner of Top Pot to seek the most reasonable and responsible solution to compensate lost of the customers and asked them to send all their products back for testing.

    This issue demonstrates that marketing strategy can definitely push a company to peak. Nonetheless, companies need to deeply think over every decision before putting it into validity to maintain the reputation at a trustworthy extent.

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