Jialu Li 's Blog

The emphasis on the different experience of the three most successful automobiles in Japan, along with the description of business strategies they used, gives inspiration for entrepreneurs about how to manage an effective business. Acura, the premium brand of Honda, firstly involved in the competition of automobile market in 1986, and defeated the Italians, Germans and British thanks to the extraordinary engines, luxurious appearance, and economic price. In addition, Toyota’s Lexus and Nissan’s Infiniti in their introductory adopted the similar strategy, which is recognized as providing a relatively low price to compete with those luxury vehicles attached with high price, such as BMW and Mercedes.

However, idealistically and paradoxically, the number of sales of these two brand vehicles lost out to that of Infiniti. After the unexpected failure, it is worth mentioning that the design of Lexus has been enhanced in recent years, and simultaneously, the Lexus has been equipped with superior engines and a series of high quality devices, such as shiny large grille and “garish LED lights” in order to reverse its negative situation and boost its sales. With great efforts made, Lexus has become the most successful automobile among Japanese cars. To conclude, the main reason why Lexus can achieve success in fierce competition is that it differentiates itself from competitors through a focus on providing exceptionally high quality products, innovative design and high-tech devices for customers.

Source Link:

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/companies-and-industries/how-lexus-won-the-war/

Rogers is recently looking for a new ad agency to represent their wireless phone services and cable other than Fido and Chatr as digital online advertising. Nowadays, handy devices are more popular, and Internet undoubtedly becomes an essential part of people’s daily life. Rogers now focuses on online advertising and emphasizes on digital is supposed to be wise.  The whole market is extremely competitive so far, for the sake of better development, every company should follow the trends and customer behaviors. Furthermore, the number of cable users and newspaper readers is definitely declining, so it is exactly the right time for Rogers to make this decision.

Online adverting enables Rogers to attract more customers, and meanwhile saving cost comparing with printed version. Personally, digital advertising will be the leading trend in the market, the whole market. Technology always leads to revolution; therefore, the changes following the innovation are always needed for every company if they attempt to survive in this competitive world. Take BlackBerry as an example. If a company remains the same, it eventually will be competed by other innovative company no matter how successful it used to be.

Source Link

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/rogers-seeks-new-ad-agency-puts-emphasis-on-digital/article15460451/

As mentioned in the news that “the all-electric Nissan Leaf was the biggest selling passenger car in October”, and “Tesla shares have been one of Nasdaq’s hottest investments”. However, the article claims that the success of electric vehicles(EV) owing to taxpayers. A metaphor is used in the article to explain the reason-“[People] would not buy a gasoline car if there were not gasoline stations”. In other words, complete infrastructure, such as electricity station and other related facility demanded by drivers, is required in terms of the spread of electric vehicles. Undoubtedly, taxpayers pay for those if the government as well as the company attempts to popularize electric vehicles.

There is no doubt electric cars are technology revolution, and they are environmental-friendly and sustainable, and almost every driver wants it. The problem is that the cost of entry regarding both sellers and buyers is too high to afford. Technology revolutions always stuck in this kind of dilemma. It is unreasonable to say that taxpayers “have to” contribute to the electric cars. The infrastructure of electric cars is similar to gasoline cars, so is it also unfair to have gasoline stations from the view of non-drivers? It is always hard for a new product to enter a market and then become more popular in this market, people should look at those products from a long-term view.

Source Link

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/lavish-tax-breaks-contribute-to-electric-car-markets-success/article15465982/

The article briefly describes three models for effective innovation execution, which is model S, R and C. Model S is for small initiatives, which explains that initiatives should encourage their employees to devote their spare time and energy to the innovation ideas. Model R is used for initiatives that can be repeatable and predictable to let full-time employees in departments related to product, service and concept development to innovate. Model C, for customizing innovation, deals with the situation that there are incompatible innovation tasks that should be daily operated.

This post is related to today’s lecture topic, Innovation and Entrepreneur. Many people perhaps sometimes have a creative idea in their mind but apparently, just couple of them to make them to be real. The most important thing I learn from lecture and this article is to “move from ideas to innovation”, rather than keep in the light bulb stage. As lean start-up strategy mentions based on the creative idea, a business model, customer development and agile development are needed. Start-ups should get out of the building to test their hypothesis and build product iteratively and incrementally. This idea is exactly same as the model R; anyway, it’s never too early to innovate.

Source Link

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/three-ways-to-move-from-idea-to-innovation/article15387933/

Lululemon, a company making athletic clothes mainly for yoga and jogging, has a competitive market in North America. The company delivers the concept of health by providing customers with functional as well as stylish clothes, and this is the reason that why lululemon is such popular today.

However, the quality issues of their products have gradually arisen such as sheerness, pilling. Unbelievably, Lululemon’s founder responses to the problem of pilling that “some women’s bodies ‘don’t work’ for their yoga pants”. Personally, it is so hard to understand why a customer is supposed to be fitted to a commodity. Lululemon’s success undoubtedly is because they followed their mission to offer exactly why customers need. This sequence is unreasonable to change regarding this market. Purpose drives a company to success but also can to regression. Taking Zappos as an example, it focuses on the delivery of happiness to buyer, employees and even the society. With this mission, Zappos is perfectly well-developing.

The success of lululemon cannot be denied, and the value the company provided is also visible. However, a profitable company should always be supported by customers, getting into customer minds is essential, but keeping a good reputation into their mind is more important.

Source Link

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/why-lululemon-founder-believes-some-womens-bodies-dont-work-for-their-yoga-pants/article15345965/