Jiayu's Blog

A successful and special enterprise that I have heard about is called Laoganma, which is the brand of a chili sauce. Laoganma is quite popular in China. And it is said that wherever there are Chinese people, there would surely  be Laoganma.  I have read about the founder of Laoganma. Her name is Tao Bihua. She is 62 years old now and she is still the chairwoman of  the board of this enterprise.

Tao is such an successful entrepreneur. She started this business by selling bottles of chili sauce by herself. And also, the chili sauce was produced all by herself. The recipe that Laoganma is using today is exactly the recipe that was used by Tao to make the sauce. After she has sold this kind of sauce for while, people began to love this sauce and Tao found it was hard to meet the demand. So she started to found a factory. There was risk, for she is the first one to build a food factory in her hometown and she didn’t know a lot about business. Actually she hardly recognized Chinese characters! However, she solved almost every problems occurred during the organizing of this business using her intelligence. Eventually, Laoganma has been formed. Now this company produces 1.3 million bottles of chili sauce and delivers all of the production to over 30 different countries and regions. It makes over 2.5 billion sales a year. These data indicate the amount and speed of wealth creation of this enterprise.

Lastly, Laoganma chili sauce tastes really nice, you may love to try it!And believe me you can find it in every T&T or Supermarket in Vancouver.

Recently, there has been a “war” between two IT companies exposed to the netizens of China by using the pop-up window on users’ computer. I was so shocked when I first saw the pop-up window of Tencent, which is the operator of the most popular instant-messaging software in China, said that Tencent had stopped service to QQ users whose computers are installed with Qihoo 360’s software. The latter provides free antivirus service for Chinese users.

(tencent’s pop-up window “warning” users to unintall 360.)

I had been totally neutral about the battle between them ever since they begun to blame each other, like, two months ago. Because I have nothing to do with it and all I as a user care about is just my convenient talking with my mom through QQ and my computer safety regarded by 360. But I felt so offended when I see Tencent’s announcement that I immediately decided to use MSN from then on. What the hell should I be the victim of their conflict?!

(a caricature describing the fight between the leader of Tencent and Qihoo360)

In my opinion, no matter how Tencent and Qihoo are competing, no matter how they want the users to know their position, neither of them are supposed to coerce users to choose one from two! It is definitely unwise and unethical for Tencent to take such an active and dragged millions of innocent bystanders in. In fact, this announcement has made big influence in Chinese netizens that it even makes 360 looks better. What’s more, Tencent’s market value has fallen by ten billion HK dollars in the following days. I wondered what was wrong with Tencent’s team. A company should be concerned more about consumers all the time instead of pushing consumers to be back and forth. Basing on the users must always be the core idea of rational competition.

(related link  http://chinese.wsj.com/gb/20101105/bch155725_ENversion.shtml)

On Sept.29^th,two billionaires, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, attended the launch of a BYD new car, M6. Obviously, they have successfully handed celebrity-level endorsement to this to Chinese auto maker that BYD in Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed shares has risen by nearly 30% recently.

BYD has been a really successful company so far. I am so curious about why they can have such an amazing development. And I think reasons can be a lot. After all, Buffett and Gates are not easy to invite, especially at one time..There must be something unique and sustainable for BYD. And when I think through, these three reasons came up with me.

Firstly, BYD is famous of HYBRID cars. And BYD used to be a battery manufacturer. So BYD has advantages of technology in developing HYBRID. What’s more, BYD has a cost-efficient production method which based on Chinese cheap labor. Secondly, the company is aware of the importance of quality. Customers know that BYD battery is pretty good. And BYD does provide satisfying quality in production. Lastly, the price of BYD cars can be really attractive. It’s reported that generally, a Toyota 9th Corolla is not better than a BYD F3 while the price of the latter is only half as the former.

Some critiques says that BYD has a potential to be beyond Toyota and GM. True or false. We can never tell.

Apple’s new product Ipad is becoming more and more popular. It includes almost all the functions that a normal laptop does ,including WiFi, and it’s very light .Although it doesn’t have a physical keyboard or run a traditional operating system ,many people are thinking of letting Ipad replace their laptops on the road.

As a new kind of technology ,Ipad has definitely become the market-explorer in the area of touch-based tablet computer .I admire Jonathan Ive ,the lead designer of Ipad ,a lot! What a wonderful idea! But new area always has pros and cons. It’s reported that big computer companies such as ,Dell ,SAMSUNG or even Blackberry ,are also developing their new products. It seems that tablet computer has an enormous potential to replace laptop in the near future .What’s more, comparing to Ipad’s operating system, Microsoft is working on a touch-based tablet version of Windows that could make the slates even better laptop replacements.

So,will Ipad hold the place of market-leader in this area?Or, can Microsoft or any other companies challenge APPLE and displace it?

Personally, I hope that there will appear more tablet computer products so that consumers can have more selections, especially for someone like me who are used to Windows a lot.

Watch out ,big APPLE, refresh your strategy in positioning .Seems that followers are catching up quite fast.

I have been keeping an eye on the ‘commercial bribery’ of Toyota happened in China these days.And since we did SWOT analysis of Toyota in last case,I am recently nterested to Toyota,including the ‘recall’happened in this spring.I just want to say…What is being wrong with Toyota?!I think,the SWOT of toyota may have to be reanalyzed now.

The firm is accused of illegally using rebates to entice dealers to push their customers to take Toyota car loans, according to Mr. Ye, head of the news center for the industry and commerce administration of Zhejiang province, which oversees Hangzhou.(From WSJ   http://www.cn.wsj.com/gb/20100922/bch120244_ENversion.shtml)

Ethical?Not at all.I don’t know much about commercial bribery,but I can see maybe Toyota is too focus on its finance or profit that it has been going on a totally wrong way which would definitely destroy its reputation and might reduce its sales.

At the beginning of 2010,Toyota recalled 5.6 million cars and admitted their cars could have some kind of sudden acceleration problem because of its paddle. HOWEVER, it is found out that Toyota already knew this problem in 2007, but ignored the problem because the company thought that it was a small problem, that will have no effect on safety.
Also, some critics say that this problem occured because Toyota didn’t focus on its quality, instead, it only focused on increaseing its sales, and failed to keep up with its company’s philosophy, the ‘Toyota Way’. In addition to this, the critics also say that this large number of recall situation will damage Toyota’s image, and it will significantly decrease its sales.

Well,good luck,Toyota.

I have recently thought a lot about points of parity & difference stuffs since I read the material of Class 6 preparation. It’s quite an amazing theory!!I can see it everywhere in our daily life. For instance, I remind my experiences that happened when I was in China. There were several restaurants which provide almost the same kinds of foods around my school. Everyday my friends and I picked one of them to go in for lunch. But making decisions every day before lunch was quite annoying. How can we make choices in a more efficient way? I can do this in a marketing way now. I tried to list some possible points of difference that the restaurant we choose might have from its competitors.

1)       The category of food is more

2)       The service is faster(or we won’t have enough time to get back to school)

3)       The flavor is good

4)       The prices are better

5)       The atmosphere is better

Isn’t it being easier to make a choice? OF course it might be easier to make a choice between a Chinese food restaurant and a Pizza place , because that would depend on which kind of food you are in mood for. But that would also be more relevant to absolute advantages , maybe.

When it comes to business ethics, I would think of Johnson & Johnson  Tylenol poisoning incident in 1982.I have read something about that incident and I really admire the approach of JNJ to address the problem. Although the final death toll was identified as 7,JNJ still spent 100 million dollars to recover all of the millions of bottles of the drug from pharmacies and spent 500,000 dollars to alarm the doctors, hospitals and distribution in the shortest time. Would you really do that at risk of bearing huge losses? However,it is said that the key of the success of JNJ in dealing with the incident is that the company has a
Highest Principle of crisis ,which is in times of crisis, companies should consider the interests of the public and consumers in first place.

And in term of business ethics, the way that JNJ dealt with the problem successfully convey responsibility of the enterprise and obviously won the welcome and recognition of consumers.It’s a amzing case as far as I’m concerned. Of course ,except for that I feel bad for those 7 victims.

So we can see from the case that business ethics is a really vital aspect in running a confirm ,in addressing crises and in the whole market environment.

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