Day: September 29, 2014

Today, there is cutthroat competition between businesses to increase their market share, reputation and revenue. As we know, ambition and competitiveness are crucial to be successful, but there must be regulations to prevent immorality and unethical behaviours. Trustworthiness and credibility are essential for a business to maintain their success, if a company loses it, then their brand image could be hurt which would result as a decline in their revenue. There are many huge companies that didn’t follow the business ethics and faced with protests and boycotts against them.

For example BP was protested for causing “one of the worst environmental disasters ever happened, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Greenpeace played a significant role by starting a boycott against them by using media tools to increase awareness” (Greenpeace, 2010) The disaster was extreme, causing 11 mortalities and 5 million barrels of Oil to spill into the Water.

The main ethical implication with the BP oil spill, is the information that was released to the public. BP tried to keep the incident out of the publics awareness for a while, however i believe BP had the ethical responsibility to make people aware of what has happened. They restricted the press to gain access near to the site, therefore not being able to report on the damages that had been done to wildlife, ecosystems and the general environment. During the time, no laws existed for the protection of wildlife, however I believe that BP could have attempted to replenish its image by standing up for its mistakes and helping Greenpeace create laws and regulations in the place of wildlife protection.

Hence, BP’s attempt to increase market share, reputation and revenue backfired, as they did not act ethically after the spill, rather attempted to cover it up.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/ocgenc/ – Oguz, Can

“Current List of Consumer Boycotts.” Current List of Consumer Boycotts. EthicalConsumer, 7 Oct. 2013. Web. 29 Sept. 2014. <http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/boycotts/boycottslist.aspx>.

Greenpeace. “The BP Oil Spill: One Year Later.” Greenpeace. GreenpeaceUSA, n.d. Web. 29 Sept. 2014. <http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/news/The-BP-Oil-Spill-One-Year-Later/>.

Malik, Stephanie. “Practical Ethics.” Practical Ethics. University of Oxford, 29 June 2010. Web. 29 Sept. 2014. <http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2010/06/ethical-questions-surrounding-the-bp-oil-spill/>.

“Study Shows BP Oil Spill Could Have Been Prevented by Regulation.”Inhabitat Sustainable Design Innovation Eco Architecture Green Building Study Shows BP Oil Spill Could Have Been Prevented by Regulation Comments. Inhabitat, 10 Aug. 2010. Web. 29 Sept. 2014. <http://inhabitat.com/study-shows-bp-oil-spill-could-have-been-prevented-by-regulation/>.

One of the most recent areas of study has been Value Propositions, which takes introduced me to the Article “Positioning” by Al Ries and Jack Trout. In this Article, they discuss how brand imaging and a companies effort to develop their products and company more are difficult in the long run, due to the first impressions of the consumers. Something that is continuously discussed in the article is how a brands name is the upmost important factor affecting its sales and the desire for its products. Taking Apple as an example for a company with one of the most prestige and popular names in the world: “Ries and Trout argue [that] the success of a brand is not due to the high level of marketing acumen of the company itself, but rather, it is due to the fact that the company was first in the product category” (Ries and Trout, 2010) Relating this to Fang Fang’s Blog post (https://connect.ubc.ca/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_45357_1%26url%3D), where she discusses the new iPhone 6 being imported into China and sold for a ridiculous sum of $1800, is simply due to Apple’s already outstanding reputation. It is popular, easy to use and stylish, making people attracted to it and therefor willing to pay more that what is reasonable and stand in queue’s for days. Whats more is that Apple was one of the first companies to come up with the no keyboard/ one button phone, making it as Ries and Trout say “the first in the product category”. Apple constantly upgrades it’s products, making it a kind of addiction for consumers of Apple to always buy the newest software, phone or laptop.

Ries, Al, and Trout, Jack. “Product Positioning.” Product Positioning. QuickMBA, n.d. Web. 29 Sept. 2014. <http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/ries-trout/positioning/>.

Fang, Fang. “Chinese Smugglers Make Big Bucks on IPhone 6.” Web log post. FangFang’s Blog. N.p., 24 Sept. 2014. Web. 28th Sept. 2014. <https://connect.ubc.ca/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_45357_1%26url%3D>.