Through learning the topic “People, Culture and Team” in the class, I was especially impressed with the CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh. He was the man that created the miracle of the company. Under his successful leadership, Zappos has grown sales from $1.6 million to $840 million in just seven years by focusing on excellent customer service and delivering the science of happiness in the company.

I always believe that Tony is full of knowledge and has the abilities to apply the theory in the real life. The academic life in Harvard University gave him more opportunities to realize his dreams. When I was reading his article, a sentence grabbed my attention immediately; “I just liked working for Zappos.” He is such amazing and unbelievable that he can make almost everyone want to be there, even though the low wages. He built the open and honest relationships with communication, built a positive team and family spirit, pursued growth and learning in the company. All of his core values helped him understand what customers and employees want to say. Tony’s story shows that company’s culture and service decide its potential development in the future. It’s not about the money; it’s about the culture and responsibility.

Exterbal blog: http://www.crunchbase.com/person/tony-hsieh

Recently, I read Amna’s blog about the success of Snapchat. I think what he wrote is only part of the reasons why the new start-up company, Snapchat, can earn such a great numbers of users. He said that Snapchat’s gain in popularity among teenagers is mainly because there are no advertisements in its apps and also they protect the users’ privacy unlike other social media websites.

I think that his analysis is right, but it does not include all the reasons that they can quickly become popular. The other reason is that Snapchat company is the first one that conceives this idea and then immediately make it possible in real world. Offering quick photo and video sharing in texts is not a hard work, but no one can start doing it. So when Snapchat creates this new technology, it quickly impresses the users and then become successful. Another good point in Amna’s analysis is that he pointed out how Snapchat will develop and earn profits without advertising in the future. It satisfies my curiosity on one hand. On the other hand, he still not forget to analyze this new method if it can make it more profitable.

Amna Masud’s Blog:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/amnamasud/2013/11/12/lean-start-up-snapchat/

The famous Canadian brand Lululemon recently gave a response to the public about their qualities of new designed yoga pants, “Frankly, some women’s bodies just don’t work for it.” As a company, it is not the customers’ faults that they cannot work for the yoga pants. It is the company’s own problem that the products did not work for the consumers.

Recently, I read Ka Yan’s blog about this news. She believes that even though Lululemon start doing plus sizes yoga pants in the future, they still cannot get profit because of the consumers’ view of the discriminatory company. To large extent, I agree with her opinion. Customers that were once loyal to Lululemon before will get angry with their disrespect of middle-aged, fat people and then they will tell their friends and family members about this story. After a few time, a large number of consumers will shift to look other brands to satisfy their needs. This behavior of Lululemon is definitely hurting its brand image which means that it may largely reduce their sales because of negative effects.

Ka Yan’s blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/kayanyang/2013/10/26/lululemon-discriminating-against-certain-body-types/

A patent filing shows Samsung Electronics Co. is working on a device it calls sports glasses in a possible response to Google’s internet-connected eyewear. I think that now the brand proposition will better explain this situation. Though Google designed and posted its product of eyeglass first, Sumsang actually the one that filed the patent form, so Sumsang will have more opportunities to introduce this new technological invention and broad its market. Sumsang enjoys more advantages through applying the patent and also it can lead consumers away from its competitors because they will have a brand loyalty of consumers.

However, if Sumsang can do better on its product differentiation, it can earn more consumers. Since now the products in Google and Sumsang looks quite similar, Sumsang should strive to find their unique selling points or create innovative technical accessories that allow connections between them. A great example mentioned is that it can equip with a touch control or it can directly connect to the mobile Internet that works as a smartphone.

No matter what they do, I reckon that the final goal is to let consumer remember its product and grow interests and desires on it.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/samsung-files-patent-for-google-glass-like-specs-1.2251484

Since Canada is doing well in creating shared value and cross-sector collaboration, companies will have more opportunities to become successful and make more profits in Canada. In our lecture, creating shared value means that a successful company shares its experience or some of their information to help others solve big problems. Other start-up businesses can improve their efficiencies and effectiveness by learning from its strengths. For example, I.B.M. is working with almost 2,000 cities in the world to pull data from many city agencies. One of their works is to predict weather conditions and its impact. This behaviour can prevent thousands of people from natural disasters.

The personal business will finally turn to be the social business, because everything the company does will have an influence to the society. Hundreds of well-known companies are now striving to do some contributions to the whole society. I strong agree with the statement what this article mentioned, “It is time for organizations to step up and take the necessary risks associated with adopting shared value.” It is not only the right thing we should do, but also the competitive advantage we will enjoy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/angela-simo-brown/canada-social-programs_b_4145329.html

Three weeks ago, Yahoo Inc. chief executive Marissa Mayer grabbed attentions of hundreds of advertising executives who snapped pictures as she sat down for an interview with journalist Charlie Rose.

The question is that should Yahoo try to forge closer ties with advertisers and add the advertisements in their apps in order to earn profits? As a Yahoo user, I strongly agree with what Mayer said, “consumers come first”. However, Twitter did the opposite thing in their financial markets and it want to convince other companies big and small to spend on its service. Almost 90% of Twitter’s revenue comes from its advertisement sales. Most investors of Twitter would probably even base their investments on understanding this advertising apparatus.

Back to the original problem, I still recommend the Mayer follow the rules of business ethics. Advertisements will not only disturb the reading, but also make Yahoo lose its’ users loyalty. Adding more advertisements is detrimental to its customers, though the company and advertisers can take advantages of it. Currently, I think Mayer is making the right decision to keep the app ad-free. However, on the grounds of consequences, can the corporate executive in fact support this action for a long time?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/yahoos-marissa-mayer-has-advertisers-attention-but-can-she-get-their-dollars/article14858305/

Recently, Nokia has unveiled its first phablets –extra-large phones – as well as its first tablet computer. It might be the last major event before Nokia completes the sale of its hardware unit, because Microsoft agreed to buy its business in early 2014.

From a consumer’s perspective, I felt confused about their purposes of designing the big phones because Sumsang had already done it before and its big touching screen help Sumsang earn customers’ loyalty to the brand. Thinking about the market shares, this behavior will be have more benefits on Microsoft Company, since it only has a few shares of tablet market.

Based on the passage, Nokia and Microsoft keep the tablet model cheaper to target at the shoppers on a budget and emerging markets. I think that because it positions itself as a cheaper consumer-targeted device, so it will be hard for Nokia to earn great profits in the short run, especially when it faces risks of bankruptcy. On the other side, there may be a lot of people in Asha developing markets also offering low-price mass-market handsets and tablets. Though it has greater demand with lower price, extremely competitive markets in Asha will not help them to be more profitable.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24608498

Peer-to-peerservice is offering information that let people rent or lend their things they want to share, such as cars, home kitchens, and even their pets. However, there are usually more difficult to operate well than it supposed to be, because older people feel harder to get access to the Internet, so they cannot enjoy in this kind of service. Another example is that people do not prefer to borrow things, because they seldom use it for some objective reasons. Some people are not willing to share stuffs, because they feel that they pay for it every month and just lend the things out for one day has many uncertainties.

So what I reckon is that the value proposition of this collaborative economy is to help people in needs match the people with the product or service. It seems that it is a good idea to make the market work more efficiently and reduce the wasted materials or spaces. Nevertheless, I still consider that it takes time for people to accommodate with this lifestyle and grow interests in the engagement. The most important thing the owners need to realize that they need to find the right target of people through marketing research and then do more advertising on it.

link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23963516

From the picture above,  Mr. Alexander, the founder in Maine Mead Works, had gained a lot of profits from making mead drinks. Now I get interested about how he could get profits from various drinks in the market without bankruptcy. As Mr. Alexander said, “people came back to what was good once.” From this sentence, I could see that even though mead drinks have encountered explosion in the past years, but once they tried it and got obsessed on it, they will continue to drink it. So the elasticity of mead is pretty low which is good for suppliers. It also means that people who like mead very much will response inactively to the little increasing price of mead.

Also, the second point is how can Mr. Alexander spread the idea of mead. Some of them do not understand what the mead is made from and have no idea about its tastes. Hence, the channels of distribution is most important for this business. I reckon that they should do more advertising mobile and physically, such as pop up windows and ads in the public transportations.

The following link to the passage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24184527

We could see that Blackberry decided to reduce 4500 jobs in the following days. It seems pathetic for most of employee because they faced huge troubles. BlackBerry have to compete with Apple and Sumsang brand in the smartphone wars, however, it failed the war that make them lose huge percentage of market shares and it is continuing losing.

The value proposition for BlackBerry is its own BlackBerry 10 operating system that differs from Android and IOS system. Nevertheless, now the value of it and the cash they owned have fallen to a lower value that might hardly attract more customers to keep loyalty to it. Also, people’s preferences are changing to touching screen, so if BlackBerry started to invest on invent touching screen, it will not only increasing their cost largely during this hard time, but also make them harder to compete with Apple and Sumsang without experience before. People always think their unique selling point is their full keyboard. If they change it, their patents will not have any values.

As for me, it is better to separate Blackberry into parts and sell their patents individually, since most investors would like to buy their softwares instead of hardwares.

link: http://www.cbc.ca/news/does-blackberry-have-a-future-1.1862945