Time flys eh? It felt like the first class was just yesterday! And now the final is already here! First of all, i would like to thank my prof for giving such a great team! I enjoyed working with every single one of them. Through the project, i learned how to work with different people, find their strength and weakness, and work together for a common goal. No body is perfect, and people do make mistakes. It sometimes can get frustrating when people show up late or doesn’t finish their part, but if you give them a chance to explain the reason why, you can understand, and forgive them.

Through this project, I learned marketing in a different way. Before i thought that everyone can do marketing as long as they are creative, but it is not true. You have to finish an entire process to put the right product, in front of the right people, at the right time. It is not easy, but it is really interesting.

I think the hardest part for the project is the video. It takes time to plan the video, find ideas, film then cut. I definitely learned new skills with camera and computers. But if i ever going to make another video project, i would definitely bring my own memory card when renting the equipment, because i didn’t know that they do not lent out memory card with their equipment… >.<

The project was time consuming, but it was fun. I really get to bond with my teammates, and by the end of the project, we became really close friends. I want to thank Tamar for being such a sweet person and an incredible prof! I really enjoyed your class and i wish all the best to you and your family!

P.S. please make the final easier…. XD

If i say “marketing wars”, what would come up to your mind? Let me guess… these two companies?

I would be suprised if you didn’t think about these two! Of course they are fighting over each other, there is only that many people drinking carbonated,sweetened drinks. The only way to increase their market share is to steal it from the other company.

They started by selling the almost-identical product: Fanta vs Mirinda; Nestea vs Brisk; Monster vs Rockstar…etc. For me, they are exactly the same product…

Then, they start sponsoring events like crazy for example Coke and its Superbowl.

It’s always been like this

But if we take a closer look, it is always Pepsi.co who’s making fun of Coke:

Coke is always the one introducing new products, like Coke Zero, and trying to promote it’s brand image, for example the commercial they release about obesity.

But Pepsi.co can always find a way around! look how genius!

Coke 0 vs 1 pepsi? get it? I think that Pepsi.co’s marketing department is amazing!

In this marketing war, Coke needs to try a little harder.

I have a love-hate relationship with online shopping. i love it because It is so convinent. You can just stay comfortablly at home and the stuffs will arrive right in front of your door. Also, one can always get some really good deals when the stores are doing some promotion. However, I hate online shopping at the same time too, and it is all becuase of the emails they send out everyday.

Personally, I hardly ever read those emails. They go straight to my junk box. And if i can, I would unsubscribe from the mailling list. It is not because i don’t like the company, but they just send out way to many emails and there is no valuable information for me on the emails.   

However, there are ways to change that. I think the marketing department should read this blog, on why people unsubscribe. It is a great summary on the benefit and disadvantages about emailing consumers. And if all the companies take its advice, i might actually start reading the emails~   

external blog reference:http://blogs.constantcontact.com/product-blogs/email-marketing/why-people-unsubscribe/

This picture stopped me when I was scroling through Karen’s blog. I’ve always loved watching Disney movies, especailly the princess series. All of the princesses looks so gorgeous and elegant.

However…..When i look more closely to this picture…..

I understand why Disney would want to change the looks for some of its characters. A fresher look could bring opportunity and benefit to the company, for example the villains:

I would still want these evil witches or step-mothers to die, but i wouldn’t mind purchasing the products which have their images on, because they look so pretty! Now I definitely would believe that without Snow White, the Queen is the best looking female in that world!

BUT!! What have they done to my Cinderella!!?!!?!! I can’t even recongnize her!! All of the princesses looks a little bit different: Belle’s hair, Ariel’s mouth, and Aurora’s bang…etc, but at least one can still recognize them. But that girl definitely does not look like our Cinderella:

My generation is slowly growing up and we are shifting out of Disney’s target market for the princess series. But no matter how old we are, we still have the special connection with the princesses, they are part of our childhood. When we all become mothers, we will tell the princesses stories to our daughters, and watch the movies with them.

Maybe i’ve watched the movies too many times and spent way too much time hoping that one day i will turn into a princesses just like Cinderella? But when i look at the fresh looking princesses, somehow i felt “old”. This made me sad. Made me feel that the princesses dreams are no longer for us, and the connections will, soon, be gone.

I understand that Disney’s movies are mainly for children, but hopefully the next time when they are trying to promote the new changes, they will keep the “older generation’s” feeling into consideration, since we will most likely be the one purchasing their product?

It’s that time of the year again! All the chinese families are shopping for food, preparing for the big CNY dinner, and getting ready to give/get red envelopes. It is a great time period to be in China: everyone is wearing something red; many temple fairs at different locations with great traditional chinese food; and the best part: FIREWORKS!

Because you are only allowed to play with fireworks within 15 days after Chinese New Year.

Chinese New Year is a night for family. People are suppose to be together with their big family: grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins…should all get together and have a family dinner. However, due to high ticket price and heavy work duties, many young people have decided to not go back home for this traditional holiday. Even though this is understandable, it is still a really sad decision for the parents.

Pepsi and Lay’s recognized this trend in China, and identified this as a great opportunity to for the companies. They had created different commercials addressing this problem. They used great story lines to catch consumers’ attention, and use psychological factors to influence people’s decision, at least this happened to me after i watched the commercial.

Cognitive: people think about their family, and think that Pepsi and Lay’s really care about their consumer. Also, people might think about Pepsi and Lay’s every time they think about CNY.

Affective: People will be emotional after watching the commercial and will have a good feeling/better attitude towards Pepsi and Lay’s

Behaviour: people might go purchase more Pepsi and Lay’s, especially during CNY.

Here is the commercial, it is in Chinese, but has English subtitles. Finish it if you have time, I think it is great!

We might have just discovered the smartest employee of the year! but too bad, he was in the wrong department…

George Costanza, a man who hired a chinese company to finish his work, so he can spent most of his day watching Youtube and surfing the internet,while making “several hundred thousand dollars a year”. Smart, eh?

The most important reason for this thing to happen is money, obviously, and George should feel really lucky if the company decided to not sue him. What he did had not only caused problems in the company, but possibly ruined all his future job opportunities. So let’s hope not only George,but also every individual, and all the big companies, had learned from this incident, and realize how important ethic is in the business world.

After reading the blog “Beijing bling“, I think it is quite amazing how such a unknown company, speaking from a western point of view, can have over $4.5 billion dollars in sales. Chow Tai Fook, the secretive Hong Kong based jeweler, has an has sale that have been  increasing at a rate of over 50% per year. With the expected share prices being lower than expected, it is clear that the struggling ‘global market’ has an impact on every firm.

China is currently one of the largest ‘booming markets’ in the world today, with that in mind, it is easy to understand why Chow Tai Fook has 1,500 outlets located in China. The Chinese jewelery market is increasing at a rate of 15%, which doesn’t surprise me, because with a growing market that number of rich and wealthy people increase, which we can see in the Chinese market. Another interesting fact is how Chow Tai Fook is already TWICE the size of the American posh jeweler, Tiffany & Co.

With the fast-pace emerging Chinese economy, really anything is possible. Chow Tai Fook may be on the edge of being the new leader for world jewelery.

China’s biggest ratings agency, Dagong Global Credit Rating, is threaten the US that it may downgrade the US’s sovereign debt rating because of Washington’s failure to tackle the federal budget deficit. If China does it, this will be the third time with in two years. that US’s debt rate got downgraded from AA to A+, in august, it got downgraded to A.Following Dagong’s foot print, many western agencies did the same thing.

With the US’s economy right now, the only way it can make a change is to lower the value of US dollar and print more money.

But since “China is the largest foreign buyer of US government debt“, by lowering the US dollar value will be a huge loss for China’s own economy. And by downgrading US’s debt rating, it will be harder for the US to borrow money from other countries in the future.

So there is no way the US will be able to pay its debt back. Maybe China is treating the US loan as a “Sunk Cost”, since China’s economy is still doing well. And the reason why China is downgrading US’s debt rate and will be continue doing it, is to sit back and watch US’s “sinking”.

Johnson Kim had said in his blog “Another Reminder China Owns the US” that the US is too late to take the move to be less dependent with China. He also pointed out that if China appreciate Yuan, it “would foster more jobs in America and reduce debt”.  I totally agree with what Johnson said.

An appreciation with Yuan could help many countries around the world. Since China is the top one on the list of countries by export. And this is because of the low value of Chinese dollar Yuan. It is cheaper for countries to import from China than produce on their own. However, as the import from China increases, China will have more power on the other countries, as the other countries lose their employment.

China is not going to appreciate Yuan since it will hurt China’s economy. The world is not going to decrease the amount of importing from China because it is cheapest choice they have. So the exportation from China is only going to increase. And at the end, just like what the Chinese bear said to the American bear in the video:” we no need to conquer you, we buy you.”

After reading Cole Routtenberg’s blog, it had made me to rethink about the existence of HST.

Personally, i never liked HST. After Gorden Campbell release the use of HST, everything suddenly became so expensive! Watching a movie, having dinner at a restaurant, grocery shopping…etc, the 13% is always there. Especially if you are going to a restaurant, plus 10% tips money, the 23% additional charge besides the food seems just way too much!

However, after reading Cole’s post, I realized that i have never looked at HST from a bigger point of view. Because of HST, the government had raised more tax money for health care and other social expenditure. Also, because of HST, small business owner could apply for more tax return at the end of each year, thus increase their revenue.

Also, the government had promised to decrease HST to 10% if people vote to keep the HST. This way, HST would be smaller than the total of GST and PST!

So, why not? I would vote to keep the HST if we can have another chance.