Monthly Archives: April 2017

This entry is based on Cathy Du’s blog called:”WHY IS TESLA SO POPULAR?”

Cathy’s blog inspired me to explore more on the factors leading to Tesla’s success. She explained the key reasons why this company is a market leader, and how it fit into the consumer’s needs and wants.

I would like to explore more on how it survive and then success among extreme and fierce competitions like TOYOTA and Ford……especially when it was a start-up.

“The last successful American car startup was founded 111 years ago. It’s called Ford.” It was amazing for Tesla to establish its market standing so quickly under the competition.

Tesla Motors Revenue

Why? I think it’s because this reason:

Being up-to-date and innovative.  In this high-tech vehicle industry, R&D is one of the most important factors deciding the future of the organization. Tesla did pretty well on this area: they are the pioneers of electric cars, who is keeping advancing the electric-car technology, and bring it to the consumers. It is Tesla’s core unique selling point and PoD, that’s why it differentiate its brand from the well-established competitors.

We learned from COMM101 that it is hard to become No.1 if there is already a market leader in the industry. Tesla is smart about this, it use its points of differences to stand out!

“LinkedIn took a step today to build up its presence in China, and China’s Uber rival Didi Kuaidi took a step to make more inroads into the U.S. tech industry: the two companies have signed a deal to form a strategic partnership covering product integration, technology, recruitment, and brand development.”

This news brought me passion to investigate into the merger or strategic alliance between Chinese and U.S. company. I think the mergers or alliances between companies in this two powerful countries are really exiting to both countries. It is quite different from forming a monopoly because the organizations which agreed to merge or signed a strategic alliance are from different but related industries.

Just like this recent news, the business-related social network company decided to cooperate with the mobile platform taxi-calling application company DIDI(Chinese version of Uber), which will benefit both of them. For DIDI, the passenger(consumer) could connect with driver and rate them, in this way DIDI does not need to audit its driver because the rating system already does the job! For linkedin, apparently this strategic alliance is helping it build more memberships. As a result, DIDI could maintain its market leadership, against its US rival Uber, and linkedin could gain more market share in Chinese social networking market, against Facebook.

So, in conclusion, It is basically good for company to form the merger or strategic alliance. The “synergy” effect will work!

After going through my classmate Trang lee’s blog, something interesting caught my attention.  The blog discussed the most appropriate channel downsizing. “People may interpret the same message differently depending on the way it was communicated and it is extremely important for an employer to find an appropriate communication channel and to maintain a balance between directness and compassion when delivering the bad news to employees.” the blog concluded. Doubtlessly, it is important for us to choose the correct channel when we are trying to delivery message.

In the movie Up in the air, Keener makes several mistakes throughout the film due to her lack of communication skills. Firstly, when she is asked to accompany Bingham in downsizing, she is very nervous and unable to be genuine. With tunnel vision, Natalie follows the downsizing procedures and techniques without understanding the deeper meaning of why certain words and gestures are used. For example, they are supposed to talk about the benefits of being unemployed such as the freedom to chase your dreams or start a new career path while maintaining a calm and relaxed body language. Keener’s anxious demeanor and lack of control lead an employee to proclaim that she will commit suicide and eventually, she does. A more experienced person like Bingham would have known what to say and how to act to avoid severe situations like this one. He understands the importance of being genuine, truthful, and even vulnerable in interpersonal communication. In a more personal scenario, Keener aggressively tells Ryan that he needs to be closer to his unofficial girlfriend Alex. When Ryan refuses to take her advice, Natalie becomes furious and leaves. Natalie has very little knowledge of the whole situation because she does not know Alex or what their relationship entails. Eventually, Ryan does take her advice but ends up heartbroken because Alex is already married and did not want anything serious. Keener used her trusting relationship with Bingham to convince him of her own opinion and it ended badly.