Monthly Archives: November 2011

From the external blog post: The Products Chinese Consumer Wants, I found many useful information on the consumers’ behaviour and preferences. Unsurprisingly, China’s consumer goods market expanded rapidly over the past 20 years. The reason to that is that the increasing  number of first-time buyers, who are desperate and eager to buy goods and services that were previously unavailable or unaffordable. With so many new products in the market, the consumers don’t know what to purchase, therefore they try new products.

Interestingly, in 2010, 20% of China’s urban consumer spent more money than they did the previous year because they were first-time buyers; but that number dropped to just 5% in 2011, since the first-time buyers have bought some items that  they wanted already.

In the past few years, there wasn’t enough(alot of) fresh milk that could be supplied to the majority of households. But recently, as more milk farms being created, milk has become much more available to people. In 2005, over 85% of Chinese consumers had tried drinking milk, so the market leader Mengniu( of the milk industry) changed its slogan from “one cup of milk a day” to “three cups.”  By 2010, Mengniu’s revenues had tripled to around $4.5 billion. This post gave me an idea how much the effects of the availability of products can affect consumers behaviour.

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After reading Grace Kim’s post: Apple – Introducing Siri on iPhone 4S, there was a strong suggestion that the new iPhone 4s is a failure to apple and a disappointment to the public, I somewhat agree and disagree to that comment. Since Apple has been revolutionary in the IT technology, it is disappointing how they did not put effort in changing the physical shape of the iPhone. But they did expand tremendously in the field of voice control. Many phones have had that function for the past few years, but none of them were even close to Apple’s Siri. So I think that at least the idea of entering and expanding the field of voice control is commendable. It is not futuristic to imagine a phone that is intelligent enough to communicate with us in the next few years.

Not only that, I personally think that Apple might have purposely released iPhone4s with not many improvements to build up the huge surprise and gap between 4s and 5. It might be a marketing strategy, while earning the profits from the keen Apple fans who will buy the 4s anyways, then releasing the 5 to attract the current 4 holders and taking profits again. So in my opinion, the release of 4s is more of a disappointment but also a build up for iPhone 5.

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Apple – Introducing Siri on iPhone 4S

After reading Joanna’s blog post: Gradually Goodbye to DVD’s, I agree that the DVD sales are plummeting and consumers are slowly straying away from purchasing discs. But the decision of Warner Bros’ and Sony implementing the new creation: the “digital locker” service to replace DVDs and to compete with the low priced Netflix  is not entirely a winning idea.

It is evident that there will be huge rivalry between the “digital locker” products and renting a movie. One which will be extremely cheap-renting, and one which is long lasting-digital locker. But have they considered the purpose of DVD? People now days can just download high quality movies straight off the internet without paying a single penny. Although pirating is “illegal”; However, it is not enforced at all. In my perspective, DVDs are bought for collection and for reminisce. If people can just get movies for free, why would people buy the “digital locker”? Therefore, I think that the “digital locker” should not replace DVDs, it will sacrifice the purpose of DVD for nothing.

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/as-dvd-sales-die-hollywood-puts-its-faith-in-the-cloud/article2196633/

Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving Day in the US, traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. On this day, businesses open very early and offers promotional sale. As people know, the US economy is still struggling, but this Black Friday may boost up the economy again.

According to a CNN/ORC International poll, 23% of americans say they plan to go shopping on Black Friday, higher that the past few years. Similarly, 37% say they plan to spend less on gifts this year than last year, compared to roughly half in 2009. These surveys suggest that people are going to purchase more than last year. Relating to the economy, the increased turnout could provide a much-needed boost to retailers looking to jumpstart sales in an otherwise weak economy. There will be a huge flow of cash, the revenues companies recieved may be used in investments, or hire the unemployed, and therefore boosting the economy again.

The only immediate side effects of this day is that, the tough economic times will still take a toll on holiday shoppers, where nearly half say that current economic conditions will make this holiday more stressful than the past years.

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http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/25/news/economy/black_friday_poll/index.htm?source=cnn_bin

As one of the “100 Brilliant Ideas of 2010”, Foursquare, spotted the over growing popularity of smartphones. From researches, smartphones will be the most commonly used mobile device in the US. Therefore more apps and tons of money will be made.

Foursquare is a mobile application that gives location of friends in nearby areas, guidence as well comments of places to “hang out”(cafes, museums, shops, etc.), and at last discounts to stores. Now with over 10 million users, the application is very successful and popular. The idea of this application is extremely clever, at the launch of the program they did not have the discounts to stores , but as this application bring more customers to businesses, companies realizes the potential of Foursquare. They offered deals with the Foursquare company, if they bring more customers to businesses, they will offer the discount only to foursquare, which will in turn bring more buyers to Foursquare.

This app is about making the city playful and easier to navigate, as well as incentivizing people to explore. Although Foursquare hasn’t turned a profit yet, but over time, the fixed cost will diminish. In the future, Foursquare will have a positive profit, but more importantly change peoples’ lives.

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http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2010/june/206722.html

The flood in Thailand brought many frustrations, it not only disrupted the natural habitat, but it also affected many industries. The second quarter of Toyota, which has its factories set in Thailand, dropped its profits by $1.03 billion (18.5% of its total), due to the lack of supply caused by the flood.

Toyota even withdrawn its profit and vehicle sales forecast due to the uncertainty over the flood impact. According to the chief executive of Fukoku Capital Management in Tokyo, the flood is going to “sustain for quite a long time, recovery start from maybe the next year” and will significantly affect the sales.

And until now, the Toyota spokeswoman said that they have lost 150,000 outputs just from the October flood. And they will have to reduce outputs to other countries such as the US and Canada.

These cutbacks have come at a time when Toyota was starting to ramp up global production to make up for lost output after the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan in March. These unfortunate natural disasters in the Asia regions has caused severe economic problems, it would especially take industries in Japan to recover.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15633051