Recently Netflix shared with the public how it knows what people want to watch. They revealed that Netflix snoops around on the internet to find out what movies and shows are the most downloaded, so they can update and improve their own site to become more popular. This is a very sneaky method but works well in their favour.

In my opinion, what Netflix is doing is interesting and actually quite smart. Digging in deeper to see what consumers want to watch shows that Netflix has a real commitment to pleasing their consumers and always become more profit maximizing. Lucky for Netflix, searching popular pirated or downloaded shows isn’t illegal. Some may think this is a form of cheating but in all honesty anybody could sear
Netflix is using their skills to acquire the knowledge of the most popular shows and movies to please the consumers. In my opinion I think this is a very creative way of retrieving information and become more popular. ch that information up.

If you have tried to watch free episodes of your favourite TV show, you must know the struggle people go through just to watch their favourite show. Netflix is providing a safe and very affordable place where you can watch all your favourite shows at ease.

Article: http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/10/10/pirate-raid-22/

WIth recent new smartphones being put on the market by Android and Apple, seems like Blackberry has been lingering in the shadows. The past years Blackberry’s sales have dropped by 74%.

In regards to Andrea Ho‘s blog, seeing what has happened to Blackberry over the past few years sparked my attention. I agree with Andrea that the smartphone market is continuously increasing and becoming more competitive. At the moment the main companies that are very successful are Apple and Android. These two companies seem to keep wowing the public and are always trying to keep the consumers interested.

My concern is on how Blackberry will recover from their losses in sales and demand for their product. With such high competition, how will Blackberry get itself back in gear? Even with Blackberry’s release of the new Z30, it barely made an impact in the market. Speaking of barely making an impact, I myself didn’t know that Blackberry had just released the new Z30 until i came across this blog post.

Where is Blackberry going to be in a few years? Will they still be focusing on smartphones, or switch to another niche?

Recently in the news there was a story about a subway station in Moscow that installed a ticket machine that instead of accepting money, it accepted exercise. With the increasing obesity rates around the world, it seems like more and more businesses seem to go through promoting a healthy life style while advertising for their business.

In the subway station, this special machine was installed next to the normal machines that only accept money. While attracting a crowd by its uniqueness and advertising, it gives people who are taking the subway the option of paying for their ticket or doing squats. The machine instructs the person to stand in a certain area in front of the machine and do 30 squats in 2 minutes and then they acquire their transit ticket.

The machine is a part of a campaign run by the Russian Olympic Committee to promote next year’s winter games and also to promote the importance of daily exercise.“We wanted to show that the Olympic Games is not just an international competition that people watch on TV, but that it is also about getting everyone involved in a sporting lifestyle,” Alexander Zhukov, president of the Russian Olympic Committee, told Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

I believe strongly in promoting healthy living and business should advertise their products through healthy living and exercise.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojo9M1cPSPI

In this day and age information technology has become a major part in the business world. It seems as technology evolves and becomes more useful in the office, some businesses are making it a necessity for employees to use these new devices. This implementation develops the need for extra time and money for employees to learn how to use these new technologies and its is costly, depending on what brand of technology the company buys.

Technology is becoming more and more apart of people’s life. Not only in businesses are technologies taking over but also in people’s personal lives.“In future, a digital understanding of what you can do with technology to drive revenue will be a fundamental part of what every business leader needs to know.”

In commenting on Farhaanah Mahomed‘s and Chris Nerney‘s blogs remarking information technology in this day and age, I strongly believe with both that technology is taking over the corporate market. I also believe that IT will increase revenue growth like Farhaanah Mahomed says in his article. The IT department, as technology evolves, will be able to capture new markets, increase revenue, minimize risk and optimize cost bases. I believe that IT will grow to become a necessity in businesses, at any level of management or operation.

Organizational Culture is the sum of individual’s beliefs, values and assumptions in a business, where they are represented as one. Most businesses try and create a welcoming and unique culture within the company. Google seems to take pride in they’re culture and show how with a good culture, employees and customers are more happy.

When hiring, Google favours ability over experience and hires smart and determined people who are looking to work hard and make a difference in the company. Google offers its employees 25 free restaurants, free cars, wired workstations, laundry services and on-site gyms.

Google strongly believes that the most valuable principle in creating a great corporate culture is trust. Google strives to create trust based relationships with all employees and give them choices while in the workplace. Google is building up the trust factor with implementing “culture of choice“.

I believe creating a welcoming and comfortable place for employees is where companies gain the most key factors of having a good business. Employees that love their job will come into work happy and work even harder because they enjoy what they do. The first step in any business should be creating a good organizational culture.

“Some form of humour is used in almost half of all TV advertising, where it often contributes to very effective ads. Humour can make ads more enjoyable, involving, and memorable. However, if the humour distracts from branding and communication, it can impede the ad’s effectiveness. In addition, perceptions of humour are different around the world and across different audiences; this may limit the ability of a funny ad to be used across markets.”, says Millward Brown.

I believe humour in advertising can contribute strongly to a brand. Relating to Apaydin Berfu‘s blog on how humorous ads make brands stronger. People enjoy seeing ads that make them laugh or smile. A key goal of any brand is to make their ads stand out in the mass market of advertising. I believe that a strong and memorable ad is what gets attracts consumers to a product.

An example of a funny and memorable ad is Old Spice. Their ads seem to make you chuckle and believe that they have a good product. Since they have the reputation of having humorous advertising, when people hear the name they think of the funny commercials.

Here is an example of an Old Spice commercial:

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

Do you know what a “Coal Car” is? Well if your unsure, a coal car is an electric car. It appears lately that the electric car is booming in business and lots of car companies are going eco-friendly. When most people hear of the term electric car, they immediately think electricity. But where does that electricity come from? It doesn’t just come out of thin air.

Electricity is produced from fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas, where 67% of the world’s electricity comes from. A good example of a car that runs on fossil fuel is the Tesla model S. This car can run on electricity but is actually designed to run on solar and wind. In the article the narrator says,”he is repeating the gospel of Tesla founder Elon Musk, a vocal supporter of fossil fuels restrictions who says the Tesla will ”help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy.””

This seems to be an unlikely thing to happen, where car companies head in the direction on solar and wind powered vehicles because of how hard it is to capture that kind of engergy.

It seems in the future that electric and gas powered cars will continue to rule because of the easy access we have to these products. Wind and solar powered cars seems like a good idea but is not very realistic at the moment.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2013/08/21/with-the-tesla-model-s-elon-musk-has-created-a-nice-fossil-fuel-car/

It seems like more and more people these days are expressing their artistic sides by getting tattoos and body piercings. These kinds of things, especially tattoos, are quite expensive and usually require people to dip into their savings.

I personally have a small tattoo on my ribs, which I really enjoy and it means a lot to me. So I can understand why people like to express themselves in the form of a permanent piece of art on their body.

In the state of economy these days it seems like people are struggling for money. There are layoffs, pay cuts, bankruptcies and foreclosures lately in the business world. But as far as being low on income, it seems people still round up enough money to go out and get expensive tattoos. In the article I have attached, it explains the reason why people continue to get tattoos even when they are in a financial crunch. The narrator says, “But the very thing that draws us to tattoos in the first place – their permanence – is sometimes what draws us even more when the world around us seems to be spiralling out of control.”

Appears that luxury items these days are slowly becoming necessities for some. I believe whatever income we make we have the choice on what to spend it on and sometimes that means being left with not much in your savings.

http://tattoo.about.com/od/newsandviews/a/economyeffects.htm

Since the newly released IPhone 5s and 5c, many people have been questioning if apple will continue selling their older model apple products. If you came upon the decision between an IPhone and an IPod, which would you pick? It seems like more and more people are leaning towards the purchase of IPhones. I believe that the market for smartphones is always growing and some older products don’t seem to get much attention anymore.

It seems as if apple is continuously trying to upgrade their older apple products to catch the attention of their customers. But in reality, I believe it’s a waste of their money. Most people will choose mobile device because it can do so much more than what a simple IPod can do. I believe that the market for IPods is going downhill.

On the other hand of the story, apple’s new products such as the iPhone 5s and 5c are realistically the same as their other iPhones but with small differences. I believe that apple has come to a point where they need to go beyond what consumers expect from them, so that people don’t loose interest. I believe that apple is at a standpoint in their business, where they would need to introduce something totally new to grasp the attention of consumers again.

Since the Sauder Frosh, there has been many controversies in and around the Sauder School of Business. From a managing point of view, say for example faculty members of Sauder, are very disappointed in Sauder because of the way the leaders and froshees acted the weekend of Frosh. In some cases, the faculty is thinking about canceling Frosh next year. Which I believe would be a really unfortunate thing to happen because after experiencing frosh I made so many new friends and the involvement made me feel more comfortable with the transition from high school to university. From a student’s point of view, canceling frosh would be very unfortunate. I believe that these inappropriate chants aren’t thought about while they are being sung and I do believe they need to stop because it is promoting non-consensual behaviors. I think that these issues should be dealt with in a composed manner where frosh isn’t canceled and people aren’t going to be penalized. Sauder should equip frosh leader training with adults so inappropriate chants aren’t continued and the public is informed on serious issues like rape and drug abuse, so it does not become a topic that isn’t taken seriously.