One of the Canada business network blog called “Keep your business age-friendly by listening to customers”, I find out it is true to always remember to listen to you customers, because only customers’ feed backs will tell you what people want and what they need, if the owner can know what consumers want, they will be able to improve their business, also listen to consumers will let them to feel you are respecting to them, consumers will comfortable to shop here. This is also can build good relationships with consumers, you can monitor social media to hear what people are saying about your business, and increase positive publicity to their company and its brand.

This blog also mention about companies’ owner also need to listen to their employees, because they work in their store and they spend more time with consumers, they know what consumers’ want, for doing this with employees can increase the relationship between owner and employees, everyone wants to work for a fair and respectful company, when you listen to them, they will feel they have rights to suggest owner what to do, and they will feel comfortable work for you. Also no matter what consumers’ age, owners should listen to them, and if it was a positive experience that met their needs, they are more likely to keep coming back.

I am interesting in this blog is because I think customer relationship is very important for a company, a successful company should listen to consumers, therefore this blog might be helpful for some small business.

Reference:

http://www.canadabusiness.ca/eng/blog/entry/4336/

I recently read Shiyun Liu’s Economist predicts long, painful housing correction blog. I learned about nowadays, housing became to biggest problem in the world, the housing price is actually higher than people’s income rate, this means people cannot afford to buy a house in their country.

From this chart we can know that housing price is raising trend from 1997, and from 2007 to 2009, the price was increased a lot, from those years, Canadians cannot afford to buy houses, but people who immigrated from other countries are the big buyers in Canada, because Canada is a immigrate country, lots of people come from other countries and they want to buy house when they arrive here, but houses are limited, therefore they have to increase the housing price and then Canadians cannot buy houses because their income is actually lower than the housing price. When people cannot afford to buy a house they have to rent a house to live, when more people want to rent houses, the rent price will be higher, and have shortage in the market.

This chart is about house rent price and income price, as we can see that the income price is lower than the rent price, therefore people might can afford to rent a house in the future.

But the good new is that David Madani, Canada Economist with Capital Economics in Toronto has been bearish on the Canadian housing market since 2011. He believes Canada is in for a prolonged and painful correction that could see prices fall by as much as 25 percent.

Reference:

Canadian Current Housing Market

I am recently read Xiaoyan Qiao’s blog on China Celebrated Single’s Day With Record-Breaking Sales for Internet Retailers. As we can know November 11^th in Canada is remember day, but in China, November 11^th is signal day, some online shopping companies like Alibaba start a promotion to attract consumer’s eyes, the promotion is that all the stuff they sale online is cheaper than before, some of them did almost 80% off, this is a big temptation for everyone, some people even stay up late and want to be the first one who buy the product, because once all the people buying products at the same time, you won’t able to open the site, the website is jammed. In preparation for Singles’ Day, Alibaba added extra servers and enhanced logistics to deal with the expected surge in demand. E-commerce shopping companies like Alibaba built anticipation for 11/11 by letting consumers put items into online shopping carts before the sales actually began. Tmall said five million customers had already selected more than 40 items each by Sunday evening. Some people even pay extra money to someone who can buy what they want online for them, because they can’t buy it at that day for some reason. Some people just so crazy about online shopping, and we can see that online shopping already became to major alternatives for consumers to purchase products, people prefer to lay on their bed, clicker on their laptop to do online shopping rather than go out and line up to buy what they need. It is reported that Websites under Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. reported more than 35 billion Yuan ($5.75 billion) in sales on Nov. 11, some people even do online shopping over seas, and therefore Internet commerce is a new trend in China. Nowadays almost every company have their website for online shopping, hence for traditional business should really think about how to attract consumer’s attention and make them want to go to your actual store. This obviously is war between online shopping and traditional shopping.

Since 11/11 was very successful, some store owner decided to have “double 12” day promotion on Dec.12th.

Reference:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/business/international/online-shopping-marathon-zooms-off-the-blocks-in-china.html?_r=0

China Celebrated Single’s Day With Record-Breaking Sales for Internet Retailers.

Huawei Co. Ltd. as a big wireless technological company in China had been plan to investment 5G (fifth-generation) technologies in Canada for a new global research and development of new generation wireless technologies, which can bring consumers to have  fast data speeds. Huawei is forecasting 5G wireless networks will be up to 100 times faster than 4G wirelesses. And it allows consumers to download a movie in one second, while Huawei enabling billions on web-connected devices such as cars, refrigerators and medical equipment. Although 5G is still developing but many technology companies also wants to get profit from it, like Ericssion and Samsung. Huawei had been started their research center in Ottawa, Canada, they already began investing in 5G in 2009, Huawei plans to spend another $600-million (U.S.) on its global 5G research by 2018. From 2011, Huawei already invested $80-million on R&D in Ottawa, some of it for 5G, and R&D also partnership with some universities in Canada. It is good to see China and Canada is building more business relationship. This research can bring the world to a new level of techonlogical world.  

Nowadays, lululemon is facing some problem in the market, one of the problems is that their pants can actually see though and the second problem is pants are pilling.

And Lululemon founder Chip Wilson has responded to concerns over the fabric used for some garments by suggesting in an interview with Bloomberg TV that the Vancouver company’s pants just don’t work for all female body types.

His interview made some overweight women felt angry about him, one of the consumer said:” he just didn’t think about the real problem, he can’t just say fat women’ s body can’t wear their products. he need to solve the actual problem.”

When host Trish Regan asked about complaints about pilling of the fabric, Wilson said: “There has always been pilling. The thing is that women will wear seatbelts that don’t work or they’ll wear a purse that doesn’t work or, quite frankly, some women’s bodies just don’t work for it,” Wilson said.

“Even our small sizes would fit an extra large, [but] It’s really about the rubbing through the thighs, how much pressure is there … over a period of time, and how much they use it,” he continued said.

Although Chip Wilson’s interview made so many women angry, but it still can’t stop people buying their products, because Lululemon’s brand already sucessfully spread to everybody, therefore they still have consumers to purchase their products.

From this article we can know brand power is very important for a company, the advertisement must made consumers wants to buy their products, at this point Lululemon did very sucessfully. Lulu lemon

resource:

Interview with Lululemon founder Chip Wilson

http://mobilevideo.cbc.ca/u/pass~fn/1/ls/~g-16×9~http:,,mobilevideo.cbc.ca,/1/ts/~s~__ABR__/1/f/~video_mp4~__LSV__/1/m/t/m/j/p/njtz/cbc01/video.m3u8