Month: November 2013

In light of Zappo’s corporate culture that was discussed in class, I have found another company, Aldo, that has a strong corporate culture which is similar to that of Zappos. Aldo has three core values they work by: respect, integrity, and love. When hired, workers have to participate in activities to better understand the company and the customers. In the Aldo office, they provide team members with bright, and spacious workplaces filled with artwork to help them foster ideas. Aldo also provides personal wellness programs for the team members such as on-site gym and fitness classes.

Comparing Zappos and Aldo, both companies greatly value their workers and have strong corporate cultures that their employees love working with. They both emphasize on corporate culture for employees to be more productive and attentive with their work, which subsequently helps the company grow. However, unlike Aldo, Zappos seem to have a closer workplace and relations with other workers while Aldo has a specific team that gets the accommodations and programs. Due to the fact that Aldo is a centralized, workers in a retail chain might not be as close with one another, whereas in Zappos, the company is decentralized, so the CEO can communicate with all this employees. In addition, Aldo’s retail chains might be unclear of what the values due to the lack of communication and enforcement of the values. While in the office, there is constant emphasis of the core values.

Image: http://urban-trendz80.blogspot.ca/2010/12/aldo.html

With the world rapidly changing, and the technology world expanding, people start to rely on technology to do work for them. Computer programming is becoming more important to find ways to help businesses search for innovative ways to establish a creative platform on the web. However, not everyone is equipped with knowledge on how to use the technology.

With Digital Inspiration, Amit Agarwal is able to give you tips and tutorials on the usage of software tools, services and web based technology which can ultimately help you with your business. More and more businesses are starting up websites for their companies. This type of platform is crucial to helping businesses grow because it’s and easy and profitable way to have access and to understand what consumers like and attract consumers to buy their product. Websites are surprisingly good at making profit if done in a creative and eye-catching way. For every click to your website, you can earn a certain amount of money. While making profit, websites also acts as a medium for advertising. In Digital Inspiration, Amit Agarwal even gives tips on managing your Gmail account and also how to set up ads on your website. Everyone, not just the tech savvy people, should check out this site and gain some more knowledge in the growing world of computer programming. It is a site that at one point of your life, you’ll need.

Image: https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net/hprofile-ak-frc3/373026_5791561181_136089223_n.jpg

Adding on to Tiffany Chen’s post, “McDonald’s next step in repositioning their brand image, effective?”, I do not recommend McDonald having the option of customizing a burger. Though McDonald’s has been changing from fast food to more healthier choices like fruits and salads, I still believe that McDonald’s is unhealthy just simply due to their image. Their value proposition was that they can produce tasty, cheap, and fast food, and even though they’re going healthy, it’s hard to accept. Even if I were to feel like eating healthy, I wouldn’t go to McDonald’s to get my daily nutritional intake. There are plenty of places out there where you can get a healthy meal in a few minutes.

Additionally with starting the customizable burger option, busy customers who goes to McDonald’s to get a fast meal might have second thoughts, now that it’ll take longer to make. With having the customizable burgers, it’ll take away the original value proposition of producing fast food. From my experience with Subway, it’ll take a fairly longer time to choose what to have in the burger instead of having one specific burger already set for you. It’ll mean that McDonald’s line ups are going to be longer, and that they’ll need to add costs for more workers. McDonald will need to have a point of difference in the “healthy” foods menu if they want to stand amongst other restaurants with customizable burgers.

Image: http://todaysfreestuff.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/McDonald%E2%80%99s-healthy-options-menu.jpg

I disagree with Ha Neul’s post, The Best Cereal Commercials. With the world rapidly changing, children are constantly exposed to advertisements through the television, the internet, and other media. Making children the target customer segment is not a mistake in the advertiser’s part, but a plan to make children into life-long consumers.

Studies have shown that children under the age of eight are unable to critically comprehend televised advertising messages, so they are likely to accept the advertisers’ messages as truthful and accurate. Therefore, even though the cereal is definitely not nutritional and the commercial hints that there are nutritional benefits in the cereal, children are unable to comprehend that the cereal is bad for them.

The problem here is that now more than ever, kids have an influence in the parent’s decision to purchase items, and parents are more willing to buy more for their children. When children nag for what they want for long periods of time, parents will eventually give in and give their children what they want. Also, time-stressed parents can be a factor to the willingness to buy goods for their children. Also, busy parents who feel guilty for not spending enough time with their children will substitute material goods.

In addition to cereal companies trying to promote their product with a point of difference in mind, they are also strategically making advertisements more frequent and more attractive so that it can target the influential children consumers that will be the ones buying their product in the future.

Image: http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/En/News/NewsAndFeatures/Pages/Target-market-children-as-consumers.aspx

It comes as no surprise that Walmart is the largest retailer in the world. Several years ago, Walmart began raising its environmental and social standards. In addition to reducing harmful materials, they planned to raise product safety and quality standards in their supply chains. There were concerns about how well Walmart would do economically, especially with the Great Recession beginning. By bettering the environment, keeping the world sustainable, and improving social responsibility, they are adding additional costs that can hurt the company.

However, that was not the case. By raising their standards, Walmart created shared value. Instead of adding costs, they reconceived products and markets by taking out costs on wasted materials which in turn lowers prices for customers. Walmart also redefined productivity in the value chain by reducing their carbon footprints and costs. With this, workers that help supply Walmart can benefit and do better because they are not working with the harmful chemicals in some products, and they can hire more suppliers that are environmental. Customers will also feel better about buying products at Walmart because they are cheap and eco-friendly.

After 5 years, this campaign is still progressing and it’ll take a longer time until Walmart can fully implement a system that is 100% sustainable.

Image: http://www.solarfeeds.com/wp-content/uploads/walmart-green.jpg