Working with our group has been fun and happy.  Everyone enjoyed working with each other.  We all contributed our best ideas and efforts to all the assignments.  The marks are earned by all the members.  We efficiently utilized Social Medias to keep everyone on track and organized.  Through Facebook, Google Doc and many others, we are able to communicate well without any physical presence and plan ahead.  Good organizations are also essential in our success.  We tried our best to make sure everyone has chances to comment on all the ideas and opinions.  We distributed the work clearly and talked about everyone’s own work together to retain the best quality of the work.  The best of all, everyone is punctual, creative and hardworking individuals and I am satisfied I could work with such an excellent group.

What we could improve on is we should be more creative.  Everything we have done although is based on hard work; we just searched the relevant information up without thinking outside of the box.  Our new marketing strategies were too common in nowadays industry.  Moreover, for every single assignment, we went over space.  We weren’t able to be selective enough to fit all the important information into the required number of pages.  Even for the video, we still put too much content and not being too selective.  Although going over the limit means we have a lot of information, we should really use some examples to demonstrate instead of theoretical stuff.

Anyways, we had a great time and we sometimes had some leisure activities together and we will keep in touch for the future for friendship and networking.

Driving can be treacherous.  Bikes and scooters zip out of nowhere in neighborhoods, distracted people wander into traffic, and stopped cars and speed bumps suddenly appear.  It takes a vigilant driver to avoid catastrophe.  Someday soon, few drivers will have to worry about car crashes and collisions, whether on congested roads or on empty highways, technology companies and car manufacturers are betting.

Volvo, BMW, Audi and Mercedes have announced that they will begin to develop models with sensors and software to allow the car to drive itself up to certain speed.  The sensors and software have functions including monitor the surroundings of a driving car and even track the driver’s physical state.  The systems can offer auditory, visual and mechanical warnings and evasive actions for possible imminent collisions.  It can also take over when the driver is not doing the right thing!

This video is about DARPA competition for driverless cars.  Driverless cars were originally designed for military to reduce casualties.  Now it is being developed for civilian uses.

Many big corporations like General Motor and Google are also thinking about developing such technology.  This technology is able to drive the car itself regardless whether a driver is present.  It can detect the car’s surroundings instantly.  All the driving stress due to extreme weathers, road conditions and emergency situations means completely nothing to a software as it is a huge deal for human beings.  People in the future can have a nap or watch movies when they drive home.

Statistics proved that by having a driverless system, over 2202 lives from 2008 to 2010 were saved. California and Nevada have already pass the laws for legalizing self-driving cars as long as a human being is inside, able to take over(Clark, 2013).

Reference

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/29/states-driverless-cars/2595613/

This blog is a reply to EA’s official blog:

http://www.ea.com/ca/news/e3-2013-ea-conference-recap

Electronic Arts Inc. is a leading global interactive entertainment software company. EA develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for Internet-connected consoles, personal computers, mobile phones, tablets and social networks.  In terms of EA’s products, we can see they emphasize on both products breadth and depth.  In their recent conference, they announced the releases and progresses of a variety of games.

For breadth, EA started with a few military strategy games as far as I can recall.  Now EA has video games in many different areas like sports, first role shooting and social lives.  EA has been closely incorporating with a lot of dominate sport leagues such as NBA, NFL, NHL to design various sport games for the fans who obsess in these sports and the players.  EA has also expanded into first role shooting games.  EA’s wartime strategy games are great but for the first role shooting games; it is a totally different view of the battlefield which is super engaging.  The most successful game they have ever created would be The Sims series.  The reason is it is a game about a person’s daily life in a simulated world.  The character goes to school, work, dates and everything in real life.  The Sims series made a record about over 100 million sales in the history of video games (Brendan Sinclair, 2010)

While keep developing into new types of games, EA also focuses on bettering their existing games.  For their original strategy games like Command and Conquer, Red Alert and Generals, they creatively implemented a story line in each series while making newer versions from these series.  By doing this, they can attain and retain loyalty from many customers and many consumers such as me who are easily addicted by these attractive games and always expecting the next one.  Every year, EA will come up with sport games for the upcoming sport seasons like this year’s FIFA 14.  The graphics gets better each time and the sport games getting more and more like the real games so customers can surely enjoy and watch their favorite sport at home.  As the technologies advance nowadays, video games only have relatively shorter lives before they become out of date.  However, this is not a problem for EA!

FIFA 14 which is coming out this year, it has improved a lot in many aspects compare to FIFA 13:

I believe EA’s product breadth and depth are one of the best combinations in the world.  By differentiate products like this and define clear positions for them will not only help to attract more customers but also attain their long term loyalties.  Looking into the future, EA is also considering about making games from some famous movies like star wars and moving into the tablets sector at the same time.  These moves will also help in targeting new segments and creating new markets for EA.

Reference:

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-sims-turns-10-tops-125-million-units/1100-6249485/

As Victor (a classmate) mentioned in his first blog, Walmart is able to attain and sustain competitive advantage by their cost leadership strategy.  I totally agree with Victor because Walmart has been so efficient to reduce all of their costs, which allows them to reduce the prices.  Unlike other stores like future shop, Walmart can really offer low prices and provide values at the same time for consumers.  Just by a quick glance at the parking lot, from the type of cars we can tell that not just the low income groups shop in Walmart, a lot of high income consumers also make purchases in Walmart because everyone likes a good deal!  The reason behind Walmart’s low pricing is because Walmart has low supply, operation costs, they make centralization purchasing from the buyers to reduce the operation costs of transporting the goods to different stores and they call this “hub and spokes”.  They also implement a 2% rule which is no suppliers can supply more than 2% of the overall amount of the goods, which is to reduce bargaining power of suppliers.  Walmart is a large distributor nowadays so they attract many famous brands like Coca Cola and Pepsi to be their suppliers to ensure product quality.  Thus, they are able to offer low prices and still provide high quality and valued goods to consumers.

Here is a video about attracting consumers to low prices

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INa__2iXU2Y&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PLs6zAwIMDe3PsvIJqpTvImeYrslGb3QdS

Second reason for Walmart’s competitive advantage is their differentiations.  Walmart stores exits from popular shopping malls to rural places.  It is accessible to everyone and the stores can hardly be missed by everyone passing by.  Walmart is everywhere!  Within each stores, they use 10% of the space as inventory and 90% for sales where the industrial average is arranged as 25% and 75% respectively.  Within each square foot of sales area, Walmart is able to generate $300 per square foot which is also significantly higher than their competitors.  Besides these advantages, Walmart also differentiate to offer membership and build supercenters.  Sam’s club which named after the former CEO of Walmart, Sam Walton is also about low-cost merchandise with high margins and inventory turnover.  A supercenter is a combination of supermarket and discount stores like bakeries, delis, and convenience shops such as portrait studios, photo labs, dry cleaners, optical shops, and hair salons.  Walmart is currently expanding into international markets.  In my opinion, Walmart’s extreme efficient management is truly an amazing factor that allows them to outstand in this intense and mature market.

reference: https://blogs.ubc.ca/vicyou89/

Apple Inc. has been one of the most successful innovative companies in the world.  Largely thanks to its former CEO, Steve Jobs who was super visionary has created a huge market for Apple with billions of consumers.  Apple has experienced huge successes by brand new products like IPod, IPhone and IPad which allow them to be outstanding and sustainable against its competitors in the respect markets.  Apple products are now extremely popular in many countries because the consumers can see the high value within.  App store contains 800,000 apps that can be operated on the IOS system which is a genius idea from Jobs.  With so many apps, users can download them and use them in their own preferred ways to make their lives way easier.  Currently Apple under the leadership of new C.E.O, Tim Cook, is focusing on more innovations both in terms of the products and the systems.

Last month, Apple just lunched two new types of IPhones, which are 5c and 5s along with a completely new system, IOS 7.  The new IPhones are faster and better equipped than the previous IPhones.  They can now verify the user by his/her finger print which is very secure.  Other new features include A7 chip with 64-bit architecture, more impressive iSight camera and ultrafast LTE wireless and so on.  All of these new features lead to one mission of Apple, to make people’s lives easier and easier.  IOS 7 is another awesome progress with revolutionary designs.  Here is a introduction video by Apple on IOS 7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0ErUMeT7uE

Consumers around the world hold high expectations of every product they launch.  Many believe that Apple changed the world and the designs are closer to everyday life.  For example, an Iphone can be used to check weather, stocks, people nearby, take photos etc.  People no longer need to carry a laptop with wireless Internet access or a high digital camera.  All of these useful functions have been built into a tiny, handy Iphone.  Using an Iphone everyday has been built deeply into at least North American consumer’s culture.  By and large, Apple has been amazing with their innovated technology and marketing.  As they are exploring into the future, they will create more high valued products and systems to enrich people’s lives.  On the other hand, there are also some rising issues about privacy concerns from Apple devices.

Reference:

http://www.apple.com/ca/ios/

http://www.apple.com/ca/iphone-5s/ Continue reading →

Recently PopCap just lunched Plants vs. Zombies 2 in App store.  Before that, Plants vs. Zombies 1 had been a huge success for PopCap.  The game itself is fun, creative and attractive with good graphics and modern computational technology animations which had become popular worldwide in a short time.  Due to the success of the first generation, Plants vs. Zombies 2 has reached twenty five million downloads so far and has become the most popular app in many countries.  After it has been released, the game is being criticized by Chinese media and users particularly for the total inner purchase of its customized version in China is twice as the version offered elsewhere and all the levels are significantly after some comparison which enforces the inner purchases from Chinese consumers.

In my opinion, the company was successful in marketing by targeting people mainly from generation Y because they can really see the value by downloading and installing the game on their smart phones and tablets which they can play conveniently without going to a store to line up for the game.  They even offer free price for Plants vs. Zombies 2 to make almost everyone can afford it.  Furthermore, the game itself fantastically designed so everyone who has played it talks about it among friends to let more people know about the game.  Lastly, it keeps developing new games like Plants vs. Zombies 2 to maintain its customers’ loyalties and attract new customers to their market.

However, by increase the price and level difficulty in Chinese market only is unethical compare to the fair prices and difficulties offered elsewhere from my perspective.  When people play this game, they feel all the levels are so hard so they have to make all the inner purchases.  I think offering significantly higher prices in just China makes people there feel like discrimination and disrespect after some comparison of the price and difficulty with different versions.  Many Chinese users claimed that the game can no longer provide us with the value and satisfaction but instead, it has become more money consuming.  According to some media, many consumers gave negative opinions about the game and even some feels the game is just to steal money.  As a result, Plants vs. Zombies 2 has become controversial in the Chinese market and the downloads are fewer compare to other countries.  Now PopCap has realized this situation and promised to update the version in China to make it less money consuming and more fun for the consumers.  Similarily, other apps also did the same thing as PopCap and they all turned out to be losing customers according to statistics.  I believe a company treats all of its customers equally is one of the essentials to stand out in the competitions so in this case, PopCap should charge approximately the same price in the globe.

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