Lisa Wong

In the past, India has had a $450 billion retail market that was untapped by any foreign retailers. However, India has recently opened its doors and invited global supermarket giants to invest in the country’s retail market. Global supermarket chains, such as Wal-mart, Tesco, and Carrefour, have all long-awaited this invitation from India because giant retailers see India as one of the last frontier markets to invest in. With this approval of allowing foreign retailers to enter, investments and the economy may increase in India. Also, foreign retail giants that enter the market will attract capital abroad and that will help reduce inflation that is currently very high in India. Although there are many economic benefits from India’s new policy, there are also downsides as well. Many political opponents of this proposal believe that this decision will cause a disadvantage by causing a large amount of unemployment in India because many small businesses will be thrown out of work. Therefore millions of small domestic retailers in India are also opposed to this decision.

Policemen standing inside first Wal-Mart in India

Although foreign competition may cause some businesses to shut down, I believe that the overall economic benefits gained from this decision will be greater for the country in the long run since it will decrease inflation, increase capital and increase investments for the country.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-news/global-retailers-wary-of-fine-print-in-india-invite/article2249020/

In a blog post written by Rebekah Ho, she explains the downsides of purchasing a $35 tablet sold in India by referring to our class discussion about the low-priced Tata Nano. Rebekah further explains that although these low prices might be tempting for consumers, their extremely cheap prices indicate that their quality is also extremely poor.

A student from India with the $35 tablet

I agree with this explanation because in order for a product to be priced so low but to still cover the producer’s cost of production, the supplier must have used very cheap inputs to create this $35 tablet. However, Rebekah beings to justify the uselessness of the cheap tablet in small villages in India, stating that with only a 3-hour battery life, the tablet can not always be used, which is something I disagree on. I disagree because many villages in India have never had these technological advancements so if the tablet does lasts for 3-hours it can get villagers connected onto the Internet, where farmers can check the weather or small businesses can have access to their email or to eBay. Therefore, I believe this innovation is useful in India even though the quality of the product may be very poor.

Oprah Winfrey is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the World because she is currently the CEO/chairwoman and founder of two major companies, Harpo Productions and the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Her companies exhibit entrepreneurial characteristics such as rapid success, innovation, and high-risk involvement. By the age of 32, Oprah had her own national talk show called “the Oprah Winfrey Show” and had founded her own multimedia production company known as Harpo Productions, which spells Oprah backwards. Harpo Productions then acquired ownership of the Oprah Winfrey Show, making Oprah the first woman in history to own and produce her own talk show. As a result of innovating and risk taking, Harpo Productions expanded into Harpo Entertainment Group that includes Harpo Films, Harpo Radio, and Harpo Studios. In addition, Oprah also owns her own magazine and television network, called “O, The Oprah Magazine” and “the Oprah Winfrey Network”. According to Forbes, she is now the richest self-made woman in America who is worth over $2.7 billion.

Oprah Winfrey on the cover of her magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine

Oprah’s success has mainly come from her concentration of helping others improve their lives by empowering them to make them feel better, which is also the brand image of Oprah’s companies. This portrays Oprah Winfrey’s entrepreneurship characteristics of being a person that has a high aptitude to pioneer change.

Hilary Carell wrote a blog about TOMS Shoes and the company’s initiative to donate a pair to children in need, for every pair that is sold. She found this initiative very inspiring because it proves that businesses do place a higher importance on sustainability and social responsibility than they do on their company profits.

Corporate Social Responsibility

I agree that large corporations should place corporate social responsibility as a higher priority, like TOMS Shoes, because they have the wealth and power to create a positive difference around the World. However, as discussed in class, many companies use corporate social responsibility for reasons other than to give back. In fact, many businesses view social responsibility as a marketing tactic. For instance, in class we watched Coca-Cola’s Arctic Home Commercial and observed that their initiative to save the polar bears was more of a marketing method used to promote their beverages in white cans during the Christmas season because they only promised to contribute $2 million over 5 years, which is a small amount considering that their company generates billions of dollars each year. Nonetheless, even though some companies are involved with social responsibility for their own selfish intensions, they are still contributing towards a good cause.

A blog in the Economist called “The 99 Percent” explains and argues the main issues that caused the Occupy protest. At the Occupy protests, many banners and signs read “We Are the 99 Percent”, which is a vague but contains a purposeful message. The message protesters are trying to convey is that there is a massive gap in incomes between 99% of the American population to the top 1% of the population. This huge income inequality is displayed on the “U.S. Real Average after Tax-Income” chart provided by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In addition, the author of this blog post claims that the current system in America is prejudice because of two reasons. The first reason is that the system works more in favor for the rich and the second is that the rest of the population constantly has to pick up the bill when the people at the top, such as CEOs of major corporations, upset the economy.

Income inequality between the 1% and the 99%

I disagree with the author’s idea about the system being prejudice because people at the top damage the economy, which is not possible because the CEO has no direct impact on the economy. However, I found the huge inequality of incomes between 1% and 99% very surprising.

Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, known as BHGRE, is a three-year-old New Jersey-based realtor that is moving into Canada with a brand that is focussed on integrating home searches with social media platforms. Over the last decade or so, real estate companies have been fixed on selling houses in a conventional manner, which has caused the industry to become stagnant. However, BHGRE offeres something new to the industry by using social media to sell houses. BHGRE realizes that home buyers have started to turn to social media to involve their friends in the search for their new homes because clients are not only looking for a house, but also for a lifestyle and community to live in. An example of how home searches are integrated into social media is the iPhone app that allows consumers to take pictures of residences and to tag and upload these photos to their social media feeds to receive comments from their friends and family.

BHGRE's Logo

Although there is a risk in establishing their company internationally, this decision of moving into Canada can expand their creative and innovative vision to become the future of the real estate industry.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/tweet-me-that-house/article2189742/

In today’s working world, women are known to be poor negotiators compared to men. For instance, male and female MBA graduates with the same education and experience will not earn the same amount after graduating. In fact, male MBA graduates on average will earn $4,600 more than female graduates in their first job because men are able to negotiate for a better salary. When women do not push for a higher salary in the early years of their careers, the loss will compound over time and by the age of 60, women can lose more than $500,000 because they did not negotiate a first salary well. However, women are not entirely to blame for their passive negotiating skills. It was discovered that men were more interested in working with a women who accepted their compensation without a word and women who tried to negotiate for a better salary were perceived as overly demanding. This fear of being judged as an overly demanding woman leads women to under-price themselves even though their job involves more work and their expertise would benefit their employer by assisting the company generate more revenue.

Successful women can negotiate well

For women to avoid the stereotype of being poor negotiators, they must be assertive when negotiating and must not worry about how they are judged by others because in the long run, women have a lot to lose by not being demanding.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/career-advice/leah-eichler/at-the-risk-of-sounding-pushy-you-should-pay-me-more/article2195052/

Apple’s rapid success has threatened the long-term survival of many other competitors in the industry, like Research In Motion (RIM) and Nokia. Since the launch of the first iPhone in 2007, Apple’s five-year gain has increased to 400 percent while RIM and Nokia have lost almost half of their stock market value. However, the iPhone itself was not the main cause of RIM and Nokia’s downfall since both companies were already creating smartphones. The main cause was that Apple leveraged their products with a vast community of inventions around their company brand, like an ecosystem. Apple’s community brand includes inventions like iTunes and a variety of apps that work well other Apple brand products, like the iPhone. With a large community brand, Apple has sustained a large portion of the electronic device market, which makes survival difficult for competing companies.

Apple's Vast Product Community Brand

Many have speculated whether if Apple has started to lose it’s magic, like RIM and Nokia, especially with the passing of Steve Jobs. As Ernest Fung mentioned in his blog, Apple’s lack of innovation of releasing an extended version of the 4th generation iPhone, instead of the highly anticipated iPhone 5, will benefit other competitors in the mobile device industry. This will be an opportunity for companies to regain market shares that they once lost to Apple and to reinforce their survival in the industry. However, this window of opportunity is quite narrow because Apple has announced that they will release the iPhone 5 on October 14th, 2011, which will add to their large community brand.

iPhone 4S

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/eric-reguly/how-apple-outsmarted-rim-and-nokia/article2195146/

Recently, Netflix decided to increase their prices for U.S. subscribers because they wanted to provide “more choice” for their customers. In July, this price increase only applied for new subscribers but since September 1st, existing subscribers have also been subjected to pay these raised prices. Before this change, customers only had to pay $9.99 (U.S.) a month to watch unlimited online streaming movies and to receive DVDs in the mail. However, customers now have to pay $15.98 (U.S.) for the same bundled package or $7.99 (U.S.) for either streaming movies or mailed DVDs.

Two weeks after this price increase, many subscribers made an impacting choice “to walk away from Netflix altogether” (Globe and Mail). This choice was made by so many of Netflix’s subscribers that by next month, Netflix estimated that they will have a decrease of one million subscribers than predicted in its last earnings report.

Netflix's Logo

In my view, Netflix has made a poor and hasty decision that has really damaged their business and their brand. They did not have the content or enough customer incentive to justify their raise in prices, which caused a tremendous drop in their subscribers. Netflix has to make significant improvements to repair the damages made, especially since their competition has been heating up. Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, should learn about elasticity, as explained on Sharon Shi’s blog, to fully understand how to achieve subscriber happiness and to prevent this downturn from happening in the future.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/netflix-lowers-us-subscriber-forecast/article2167137/

From the investigations conducted by Greenpeace, it has been reported that the textile industry in China has been releasing a range of hazardous chemicals into the ocean, which has contributed to the global problem of toxic water pollution. The pollution ejected from these textile factories contained chemicals with hormone-disrupting properties that are harmful to human health and to the World’s delicate ecosystem.

A pipe from a factory dumps foul smelling waste water into the river

As investigations continued, Greenpeace discovered that these polluting factories in China were associated with many top North American clothing brands. Brands such as Adidas, Calvin Klein, Nike, Puma, Converse, Abercrombie & Fitch, H&M, Lacoste, and Ralph Lauren were using these factories as manufacturers even though they were aware that, as a result of production, hazardous chemicals were being released. Instead of allowing their suppliers to pollute, I believe that these majors brands should be working with their manufactures to influence other companies around the globe of the ethical and environmental initiative to eliminate the releases of toxic chemicals in the ocean.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/Dirty-Laundry/