In this article, Burrus talked about “the most important element of any company,” It is not the office, technology, or location – it is its people.

I especially agree with this sentence, “it’s vital that you hire based on attitude and talent. You can’t train people on attitude or teach them a talent, but you can always educate and train to enhance specific skills and talents that will yield superior results.”

It is true that a company needs good equipment and enough capital to run, but without good employees, how can the equipment and resources be used wisely? People are the brain of a company; it controls its values and beliefs, movements and creativity. People with good attitude and talent are especially precious employees, because a strong work ethic and attitude are contagious. These people’s positive features can affect the whole organizational culture, which is the morale!

Hiring people with good education is important, but hiring with people with good attitude is even more crucial.

Reference:

Burrus, Daniel. “How to Hire for Rapid Success.” Web log post. Burrus Research Associates. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. <http://www.burrus.com/2013/11/how-to-hire-for-rapid-success/>.

According to Batrawi’s post, it says “You might consider this crazy, but Snapchat owners have just recently refused Facebook’s offer to buy Snapchat for 3 Billion US Dollars! Yes, $3 billion! This implies that Snapchat owners value it at a higher price than 3 billion dollars, but is it really worth what they think it is?”

This post has led me to ponder about the rapid pace of social media, and most importantly, how fast a new media can be launched and then smothered by other new ones within such a short period of time! This thought might not seem to be relevant to the post; however, it indeed raises a question to whether Snapchat believes what it is worth is correct.

In this day and age, new apps are launched everyday, and the public try them out. Some apps become a popular trend within a short period of time; however, many can be forgotten once new apps are out in no time. This is an era of information overload where the pace of launching new channels for social media is so fast!

That being said, Snapchat might possibly face a decline very soon, so would that be a wise choice to sell it now? Or not? We’ll know the answer very soon in the near future.

Referring to Zhao’s post, “market research and analysis, customization and good partnership play significant role in business decisions and success.” I totally agree with what she said.

Here in this post, I would like to comment on more about customization. Customization is definitely an effective tactics to attract customers. In a psychological point of view, everyone wants to be specially treated, because this gives us a sense of pride and importance, which we all favor. I see customization as a tactics to aim at “showing respect” to the customers. In other words, it shows the customers that “we” the company do care about “you”, and we hope to sell the best product and the best service to “you”.

On November 15, the Globe and Mail had reported that “WestJet’s first transatlantic offerings will begin in June with seasonal, non-stop flights between St. John’s and Dublin, and direct flights from Toronto to Dublin that will stop in St. John’s for refuelling.”

Is this a sign of WestJet’s attempt to grow international? It could be. However, with WestJet’s fleet of Boeing 737-700 planes, each holds only 136 passengers, WestJet might encounter difficulties to grow beyond the domestic flight market. Nonetheless, this new tactics of WestJet can be seen as a good start for testing the European market. At the same time, WestJet can acquire more connections in Europe and building brand recognition. Overall, this tactics is beneficial to WestJet from a marketing perspective.

On the other hand, “Air Canada recently announced a major expansion of its European offerings.” A tactics of Air Canada to counteract the threat brings by WestJet’s new route to Europe.

To compare, WestJet is considerably more economical, but all its planes are single-aisle Boeing 737-700, so this might be a major disadvantage for it. That being said, Air Canada still has its significant position maintained – but the threat is building up!

Reference:

Keenan, Greg. “WestJet to Test Its Luck in IrelandAdd to …” The Globe and Mail. N.p., 15 Nov. 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/westjet-goes-trans-atlantic-with-new-dublin-flight/article15455464/>.

Social media

The power of social media has been attracting marketers to use it as a main channel for advertisement. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, are only a few examples out of the abundant choices. Although being an auspicious trend where both sellers and buyers can access to each other with more ease, the public has started to question whether particular marketing has gone beyond the ethical realm.

According to the Globe and Mail, “on [November 11], Health Magazine attracted some criticism [on Twitter] for suggesting that the best way to celebrate Veterans Day (the U.S. equivalent of Remembrance Day) was with a recipe from its pages for Fresh Berries with Maple Cream.”

The reaction of the public may reflect that advertisers might have abused the power of social media, and even go beyond the boundary of ethics. The disrespectful approach using Remembrance Day as a topic can be very sensitive, as it is a day to spread an educational sense where we should be thankful for what our ancestors bravely did for us.

From this article, I have gained insights that marketing can be as creative as we want, but we should try to avoid sensitive topics such as “the anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11.”

Reference: Krashinsky, Susan. “Is It Disrespectful for Advertisers to Tweet about Remembrance Day?Add to …” The Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail, 11 Nov. 2013. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/should-companies-tweet-about-remembrance-day/article15377812/>.

Energy Aware Technology, a Vancouver-based company that produces home intelligence technology was established in 2005, and since then it has been thriving while gaining positive feedbacks from customers. In the year of 2009, it was described as “the most promising start-up company of the year,” by the B.C. Technology Industry Association.

The product that it produces is called Neurio, which is a device that controls “the power a home uses, and calculates the cost of running individual appliances in real time.”

Demand Curve!

This company has gained great reputation and success mainly because its product is innovative, and it knows exactly what the consumers in the market want – to reduce expenditure as much as possible while gaining the most benefits. By attacking this weakness of consumers, Neurio can successfully be introduced into the market and expand. The case of Energy Aware Technology gives me the insights that to create demand in the market is always a good start-up for any business.

Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-digital/biz-categories-technology/crowdfunding-is-risky-how-a-bc-tech-company-beat-the-odds/article15310323/

Quebec had decided to invest $2-billion in jobs to stimulate sluggish growth. This resembles the situation of a declining company, where it imposes specific strategies to address problems and improve its productivity.

One of the strategies is to introduce renovation projects in the city. This can provide job opportunities and increase the flow of capital in the economy. As in a business perspective, this is what a company should do when its financial situation is stagnant – to increase expense in other areas of the company such as providing benefit packages. This can in return boost up the motivation of employees by increasing their satisfaction.

In a marketing point of view, introducing new projects can be considered as stimulants of creativity, motivation, production, and of course eventually – revenue, as well as, profit!

Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/quebec-to-invest-2-billion-in-jobs-plan/article14725423/

In order to compete with rivals, Ford has planned out a comprehensive strategy which will have its effects shown by 2017. This new strategy is mainly composed of making certain changes in marketing, operations, and also launching new products to increase its competitiveness and its value in the market.

Maintaining “core principle of keeping capacity sized with demand” is one of the major goals of Ford, so as to fully utilize resources and fulfill the customers’ demands at the same time. Besides maximizing the resources to exhibit the greatest benefits, Ford has also been reaching out to more foreign consumers around the world.

Ford has been building new factories around Asia such as in China and India. In an operational point of view, this strategy of global expansion can reduce costs and respond more efficiently to consumer’s needs and tastes.

“By 2017, Ford will launch 114 new or modified vehicles worldwide,” shows the strong prospect of this company. To facilitate the production process, Ford introduces the new “Ford Freeform Fabrication Technology”, which “allows prototype stamping molds to be made within three business days, compared to up to 6 months.”

Link:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/us-business/ford-aims-to-make-its-factories-more-flexible-efficient/article14725318/

“It’s a very competitive world.” as Mr. Joyce, the co-founder of Tim Hortons, had said. Meanwhile, Marc Caira, the new chief executive officer of the coffee and doughnut chain (The Globe and Mail, 2013), has had a vision of improving internal strengths to defend itself from the expansion of external forces. Although Tim Hortons already is the best of speed services in Canada, Mr Caira still believes that they can do better.

We can derive a brief analysis of Tim Hortons in Mr. Caira’s viewpoint from the news. For its strengths, they have good coffees, fast services, and great varieties of patisseries. However, these strengths have gradually turned into weaknesses due to growing competitions. Fast services has to be even faster and accurate in order to be outstanding in the market. Also, good coffees are not “good” enough to stay competitive – more innovation should be added to it as well as introducing more new offerings to attract customers. With respect to the great varieties of products, cutting some to make it simpler might be a good choice to help the supply chain to flow more smoothly as the service speeds up.

Being conservative in a global market these days is dangerous since the competition platform is growing, so as the number of competitors. Thus, sometimes taking a few risks might be a good move – especially moves to empower oneself!

Reference:

Strauss, Marina. “Tim Hortons Vows Faster Service to Fend off Rivals.” The Globe and Mail. N.p., 16 Sept. 2013. Web. 30 Sept. 2013.

As we all know, Abercrombie & Fitch is famous for its delicate clothing designs, its popularity, and of course – hot and sexy models! However, recently there have been reports showing that some A&F shoppers attempt to raise public awareness towards their discontent concerning the SIZES of A&F products!

More than 70,000 people have signed many petitions to urge A&F to offer XL and XXL sizes, the reason is that they feel as if being excluded from the societal trend where wearing A&F products is stylish!

“We recently conducted a global research study on what our consumers think, and the data may lead us to make further changes throughout the business,” a company spokesperson said in response to this issue.

Using the SWOT to analyse the harm that this issue has brought to A&F, there are indeed certain facets that the company has to face and consider. The gimmick of its branding and products is to show ‘skinny’ and ‘hot’ body shapes, but its weakness is that it loses MANY potential customers who are the plus-size shoppers. However, the problem with expanding the market is to raise expense (labour, resources) as well as the cost, which brings many other problems into consideration.

Link:

http://money.cnn.com/gallery/pf/2013/08/07/customer-protests/9.html