Month: October 2010

During the past 30 years, government officials residing in China (Beijing) have fled the country after pocketing a staggering 50 billion dollars. It has been claimed that more than 4,000 government officials have disappeared with considerable amounts of money in public funds and state media. It is evident that numerous embezzlements have occurred out of the public eye despite the government’s effort to stop the increase in corruption. These corrupt officials often flee to the United States or Australia to purchase luxury real estate whereby they live lavishly. There they attempt to start a new life with substantial bank accounts in tow as they try to cover their previous illegal actions that helped them acquire vast sums of money. It has been revealed that many of these corrupt government officials create fraudulent identities to disguise themselves and to hide their illicit actions.  If more than 4,000 officials are disappearing with enormous amounts of money, then the Chinese government needs to better regulate or monitor where money is being allocated in order to prevent devious officials from embezzling money that isn’t legally theirs. This relates to our brief in-class discussion on business ethics in general. We discussed that when one is overly focused on trying to achieve one’s personal goals, one can lose moral ground or engage in UNETHICAL business practices. In this case, Chinese officials who were after large sums of money decided to “get rich quick” by engaging in embezzlement, rather than earning it legally.

Link:http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j97pgKgZCZwHmD_Wyd7kf1X03kCA

Orbitz was the brand name of a fruit-flavored beverage that was originally created by  “Clearly Canadian.” These unique beverages resembled lava lamps where the edible balls were able to float or “defy gravity” because they had a similar density to the surrounding liquid. Although the beverage was unique, poor sales caused this company to go out of business. This reminds me of the importance of brand positioning which was recently discussed in class. Brand positioning focuses on getting into the consumer’s mind first as it has been stated that it is easier to remember who is first but much more difficult to remember who is second. Orbitz came up with this creative new idea that consumers had never seen before; however, they were unsuccessful because they were up against dominant established brands such as Coca-Cola. At the time and up till now, Coca-Cola has always maintained strong advertising abilities as they spend millions of dollars each year trying to get their brand out to the public. Orbitz was unsuccessful in that they could not compete against a global market leader such as Coca-Cola which has been around since 1955. In order to stand the test of time, startup companies need to emphasize the importance of brand positioning by perhaps using celebrity endorsements or other forms of creative advertising to ensure its longevity.

Here are some past Orbitz Commercials!

To stimulate sales in America, Wal-Mart marked down prices before the Memorial Day Holiday, which triggered a price war between Wal-Mart and other rival retailers. To grab consumer’s attention, Wal-Mart is taking a bold move by offering average savings of 30% on popular items. Wal-Mart’s motive for instigating a price war is essentially trying to win consumers to purchase from their store rather than from their competitors. According to the article, several Wal-Mart stores have sold out of certain items such as pop since the overall price of carbonated drinks is approximately 20% cheaper than it was a year ago.  There is a correlation to the readings and in class discussion we had on Lieber Light. One of the primary issues that revolved around the Lieber Light case was competition resulting in price wars. Vancouver Light began stealing big customers from Lieber Light by offering considerably lower priced skylights which forced Lieber Light to decide whether or not they wanted to engage in a price war by lowering the price of their products as well in order to stay competitive. Wal-Mart is essentially utilizing the same strategy Vancouver Lights was using. By reducing the overall cost of their products, Wal-Mart was able to steal customers from other retailers to escalate their sales. Wal-Mart figured out that in order for sales to increase in times of recession or an economic downturn, they had to be willing to offer low prices to win consumers.

This is one example of Wal-Mart engaging in a price war with a competitor such as Amazon.

Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37436455/ns/business-retail/