Ouyang's Blog

Although the assigned marketing plan was stressful, but I thought it was really exciting and entertaining. Throughout this course, I gained and learned many things that are precious to me now. First of all, I made good friends with my fellow teammates. Although we suffered together, but we had good times as we had many group dinners, enjoyed each time when we finished an assignment, and learned more about each other. Another big thing that I learned is how to use iMovie, we youtubed many videos on how to trim, insert, use transitions etc as a team. We sat together for a very long time (20+ hours) just to agree on every decision we made. Surprisingly our group had no negative conflict, when we have different ideas; we just talk it out and see which idea works the best.

But there were a few things that we could have improved to become a better team:

–          Be on time for meetings. Although everyone is very busy, but being at the meeting on time can save everybody’s time.

–          Split more work to individuals. Although our assignment should have the same type of writing, working together as 5 all the time is very time consuming, and we could save more time by doing more individual work.

–          Focus slightly more. When we had to finish something, we would work hard and fast for it, but in-between, there was always friendly chatting between the teammates. This is somewhat inevitable as we became close friends.

Out of all our assignments, I think our video project was the most successful. After we finished the project, we were even proud of it, I think that the 20+ hrs from our team was worth it. I’m glad I took this course.

Thanks to all my group members, and thanks to Tamar Milne for being such a nice teacher 😀

As everyone knows, using laundry detergent is annoying and tiring, as you always search for the correct amount of detergent to pour in for your cloths. Statistically we pour more than what we need, and that contributes to the detergent companies’ profit. Tide has released a new solution- Tide Pod.

In an external blog by Dale Buss, he suggests that the Tide Pod is killing the laundry detergent industry. I agree with that, since when the product hit the market, competitors saw a 2% decrease in laundry detergent sales in just 12 months. From what is going on, Pods have attracted many consumers due to its convenience.

The Tide Pod brought a lot of benefits to consumers compared to the traditional detergents. In each Pod, there is a pre-measured amount of detergent in each package, so people won’t overuse the amount of detergent, consequently that is better for the environment. Not only that, it is impossible to spill anything from the pod, compared to the original liquid/ solid detergents. Another benefit would be that the pod is extremely easy to use; a consumer only has to throw the pod with the laundry and turn the switch on. The pods are very portable as well, their size is small and people can carry few if they needed to do laundry elsewhere, compared to a big and heavy bottle.

This great innovation took “eight years, 450 product sketches, 6,000 consumer tests and hundreds of millions of dollars” and it has shown its benefits to consumers. This product will definitely cause consumers move from traditional detergents to Tide Pod, which will generate much profit for P&G, and other companies will lose market share due to this greatly positioned and advertised product.

other sources: http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/blog/2013/03/tide-pods-are-hurting-some-but-not-pg.html

Back in the days, kids having allergies wasn’t a common thing, but today, many children have allergies to peanuts, eggs or milk. According to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, the prevalence of children under the age of 18 afflicted with food allergies increased by 18% from 1997 to 2007. For some food allergies, the increase has been even steeper. And a Canadian study about peanut allergies conducted on Montreal families showed an increase from 1.34% in the 2000-2002 period to 1.62% prevalence in the 2005-2007 period. After reading this article, I reflected on many parents’ action that might have caused the increase number in allergic children.

In the 1990s, as allergies are becoming more prevalent, pediatricians and other experts responded by counseling parents to delay the introduction of more allergenic foods. But in fact, studies have shown “that delayed introduction may provide no benefit and may actually make things worse”. So what parents were doing is that they only allow their children consumer eggs/ milk/ peanuts after a certain age, and that has caused a higher rate of allergies. What was interesting about the article was that our children’s immune systems may consider foods that weren’t exposed in the first year of life as a contaminant.

These actions has narrowed some peoples’ food choice and made them cautious on eating. This also hurts the economy, as less people can intake these diary or nut products, and those country who produce them in a vast quantity might suffer. A good recommendation for parents to do is to introduce the full complement of a family’s diet as soon as it’s practical, so the immune system won’t act in a negative way. I think people we’ve just over- medicalized food introduction over the years.

Without noticing, time passed by very fast. I still have vivid memories of Microsoft releasing Windows XP, and It being the best OS system, even arguably better than Windows Vista. Today I read an article that says that Microsoft XP only has one year left of support. With that in mind, many small and medium-sized companies still operate in Windows XP, as it’s very stable. According to statistics from Analytics Company Net Applications, 39% of all personal computers, and 42% of all Windows PCs, ran XP last month.

When I was reading through Ma Xin’s blogs, I thought that his ethical post about the Vitamin Water was interesting. I agreed to his point and also found it unethical to state a product healthy while it being as bad as other sugary product, in your case, Coke. It makes sense to me for companies trying to cover their product’s weakness, but have they considered their consumers’ feelings? They use the term “Vitamin Water” to make people think that it’s only a bottle of water that contains vitamins while tasting really good. But in the real case, each serving contains 125g of calories and 32.5g of sugar in total, which is equivalent to a half slice of cheese pizza. I was actually surprised about this.

This asymmetric information brings benefits to the company, but harms the people who purchase this product, as they expected it to be a healthy product. But the asymmetric information may not necessarily be caused by hidden information from the company, but is more likely from the lack of professional knowledge of customers (which in this case: consumers don’t read the nutrition facts).

I think that the government should take more responsibility and make more strict legislation. A possible way for government to do is to require all food companies write down the significant weakness of their products in the obvious place. It’s hard to implement, but it has applied to some products such as cigarettes.

A clothing firm in UK, Primark, sells a mixture of low prices and accessible fashion for different age groups, and has been very successful in recent years. But recently, Primark has discovered that 3 of their Indian suppliers have been using child labour in their factories.  Children were doing embroidery and sequin work was paid unfairly. Primark has taken this very seriously, and responded immediately by firing these suppliers.

As current consumers have more moral and ethics , they are “increasingly demanding companies to produce their products in an ethical manner”. Valuing the working conditions and work wages of workers. And a situation like this would affect Primark’s sales and revenue. But Primark has responded to the public by saying that “under no circumstances would Primark ever knowingly permit such activities”, and as mentioned above, they have fired these firms.

In my opinion, it is hard to control and make sure the suppliers are not exploiting workers, especially when they are in Asia or India. It might even cost a lot more to put in random checks in all their factories. So having an ethical behaviour might be very costly. Not only that, if child labor is prohibited in these factories, the suppliers would maybe even charge more money to account for the cheap labour children can bring. On the other hand, if the company has always implemented ethical behaviours, consumers would give positive support and buy their products, therefore increasing revenue. Moreover, the employees working would also be motivated and excited to work. And there might be new sources of finance, such as ethical investors, or even sponsorships. Ethical behaviour have both positive and negative effects for a company, but it should be implemented for human morals.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7456897.stm