As we know, United Nations, an intergovernmental organization established to promote co-operation, devote many expenditures to address core missions of security and development in many developing countries. Although funding can be helpful in many ways, money is not the panacea to settle  many intractable economic problems. In other words, we need to solve problems entirely rather than stagnate the situation just with a bunch of money. That’s why social entrepreneurship exists; why Arc develops. Social entrepreneurs seizes opportunities others miss to improve systems, invent new approaches and implements them to social problems.The social entrepreneurship matters because it represents a signal for sustainable development instead of limiting to a temporary solution.

From preparation readings for Class 20, I know Maryanne Mathias‘s clothing company encountered struggling to meet the quality standards for international market. The problem here is not about money, though UN actually wouldn’t pay attention to such a relatively small business. However, through researching for textiles and operating in a sustainable and ethical manner, Maryanne learned from social entrepreneurship that she missed the bigger picture. After changing production processes and giving employees correct trainings and tools, her company resulted in reducing damages and having profit gone up. This example shows me the power of social entrepreneurship.I believe the future development trend for entreprenuers  is to improve or innovate on process and new product by their own hands.

Reference:

http://www.entrepreneurstoolkit.org/images/0/0f/Social_Entrepreneurship.jpg

JEFF,KROEKER.”Production Issues Threaten to Unravel High-end Fashion Label.” The Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail, 13 Sept. 2013. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

After waking up in the morning and checking my social media as usual, I was shocked by the news that first RMB10 billion(US $1.6billion) sales this Single’s day(also known as “Internet shopping festival”) of Alibaba, the world’s largest e-commerce platform, in just 38 minutes. As we always know, people will make many orders on this Internet shopping festival for various attracting discounts. Yet I still haven’t expected that the e-commerce growth is China can be so rapidly increasing. I peruse a Blog analyzing reasons for Alibaba’s success and its future development and have a deeper comprehension about customer segment and customer relationship.

The rural market can be a new growth engine with the propel of digital media mobile platforms. Unlike middle and higher class in urbans tend to focus intangible service and luxury goods, people live in rural areas are more inclined to buy normal good online due to the lower price and the convenience of online shopping. Besides, China’s demography in rural areas far exceeds those in cities. Rather than focusing on young populations live in big cities because they have higher acceptances of e-commerce in the early age, nowadays Alibaba’s customer segment gently shifts to fuel the rural economy.

According to the blog, Handu,the largest online retailer in the Apparel category on Tmall, sets different assortment and promotion strategies (lower-priced items, deeper discounts and more “fast fashion “products )to optimize mobile design and provide better customer experience. It is really crucial to do some market research and improving their shopping experience as much as possible. Through this way, we can build a solid customer relationship and therefore attract more potential customers.

Reference:
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/ceibs/files/2014/11/baba-post-nov11111.jpg

Chiang, Jeongwen. “Mobile And Rural: Dual Engines for Alibaba’s Future.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 11 Nov. 2014. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

Instagram is a free photo sharing app. Recently, I came across an Article declared that Instagram ads coming to Canada soon.As we know, free service comes with a price and that price is ads. Launching in-steams advertisements in Canada is a further step after ads launched in US,UK and Australia. With huge users base, I think this act is profitable  and can be sustainable if Instagram at the same time ensure customer services.

There are many official accounts of diversified brands on Instagram that have more than 10 thousand followers and typically receives a few thousands” like” post. Build a fancy and popular official accounts is a good way to broadcast their brand image. Since people already have a conception that ads do exist on Instagram, it will be much more acceptable for them to have launched ads in their stream.

For free apps, the most important thing is customer service. Launching ads may decrease the experience quality when users use this app.However, Helen Pak ,the strategist who helped coordinate ads launch in Canada, announced that they will try to make sure those ads can be as natural as possible and there would be no ads for very light Instagram users. In my opinion, it is very wise to notice customer service is the core part in future development. Only target usually users is a great way to differentiate its users and protect their feelings and ensure user experience. In this way, users still have “absolute control” over their feed and can stop future ads post just by click an icon in right corner. I have confidence in launching ads on Instagram, but since its still a too early level, maybe only time can tell us the future development of this act.

Reference:
http://i.cbc.ca/1.1275810.1378812773!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_620/hi-instagram-852-cp-0374405-8col.jpg

Press, The Canadian. “Instagram Ads Launched for Canadian Users Monday.” CBCnews. CBC/Radio Canada, 10 Nov. 2014. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.

Recently, my classmate Ryan McCaig expresses  idea about a to be released feature of Iphone, Apple pay. This feature allows people to pay by their Iphones in a similar way to credit cards. The introduction of Apple Pay is a crucial step for Apple to differentiate their product and an attempt to branch online payment market. I would like to add some opinions based on his post.

However, with existing established and domanited Paypal, can Apple Pay success in the competition?  On the one hand, as Ryan mentioned, Apple’s extremely large customer bases, as well as deals with major businesses such as McDonald’s and Macy’s, provides a solid foundation to compete in e-commerce industry. On the other hand, from the competition between digital books Ibook and Kindle, we can get some clue. Over years of development, Amazon and Apple are each competitive in e-book market. They offer unique features of annotating, reviewing and sharing content. For general reading purposes, Amazon has a wider selection of books and the online store is easier to access from any device. On the other hand, Ibook allows for copying and sharing selected text from ebooks which may be favored by student and researcher. So for Apple Pay’s performance and competition with Paypal, maybe we can only see in future.

Reference:
http://img.qz.com/2014/09/apple-pay-tim-cook.jpeg?w=1600

Chavanu, Bakari. “Kindle vs. IBooks: Which Is The Best EReader For Your IPad or IPhone?” MakeUseOf. N.p., 8 Sept. 2014. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.

Recently, I read my classmate Zhongnan Xu’s blog analyzing  Risks of globalization . In his blog, he clearly states that resource constraint is the most perilous risk to globalization.
I totally agree with this opinion because increased competition results in skills shortages in key functions, thus creates more demand for effective planning process aligned to dynamic resource management capabilities. Zhongnan Xu’s analysis helps me to realize that increasing rivalry in this industry cause the barrier to entry to be comparatively high for new firm. Since the firm has low market power and faces drastic competition for resources, it can even be hard for companies to find sufficient and appropriate resources, not to mention future expansion in international market. Supply chain is the most important part for a company to hold a spot in a new industry and have future development. Only sufficient resources and dynamic resource management capabilities ensure a solid foundation for the company to enhance its business model.

Secondly, I think strategic choices is the potential opportunities, but risks as well. With the development of globalization, many companies simply decide to “go international” without analyzing the business environment, political and cultural factors,etc,in foreign market. It would be better to pretest the local responsiveness of the product and accordingly make some changes rather than produce standardized product locally. For example, McDonald’s has an incredible variety of culture specific food items across the planet. One example is Australia’s Chicken Mcbites are now being tested in Michigan, and full-size wraps common in Europe are being testes in new markets like UK. They have many products that are bound to be hits but just have to find correct area to expand them to.

Reference:

http://paragkhanna.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/globalization-edudemic.jpg

Rathi, Ghan Shyam. “Global Strategy of McDonald and How It Reached All Corners of World.” Academia.edu. Ghan Shyam Rathi, n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.