Potential Risks

http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3441-employee-shopping-presents-employer-risks.html

This article states that the workplace environment isn’t safe for online transactions, given statistics show that ninety percent of U.S. employees who use the internet at work feel that their privacy is at risk. This statistic is proven to show little to no effect on the consumer’s choice to purchase goods online. Purchasing goods online may be a threat to the company because their information may be leaked, which may lead to competitors using information against them.

Since it’s holiday season, people are expected to shop online even more, there is an astounding average of nine hours online at work shopping. This turns out into not only a privacy threat but also a threat of employees wasting time. “Enterprises will lose $15,000 or more in productivity as a result of employee shopping online at work”, this number may be significantly decreased if restrictions were set, but this will interfere with employee job satisfaction, which is also a bad outcome. In my opinion, employee shopping must be controlled, employees should have their own spare time rather than working time to shop online.

Comment on external Lara Galinsky’s Blog

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/not_everyone_should_be_a_socia.html

Lara Galinsky is a senior vice president of echoing green, echoing green is a nonprofit organization that funds new social entrepreneurs, the organization supports new social entrepreneurs into the right direction. Lara Galinsky’s blog describes how being a social entrepreneur is extremely difficult. Being a social entrepreneur isn’t a job for anyone, it requires a strong base, volunteers, initial funding, artists, etc.

One factor that makes me believe that being a social entrepreneur is hard because it takes a lot of effort starting up a social enterprise, and that such hard work leads to little to no profit to the entrepreneur. It takes a true mindset to ignore the fact that the individual could be making a profit with his/her time spent on the organization. Lara states that “If everyone wants to stat a new organization, who is going to do all the work?”, because there are too many people who want to be a social entrepreneur, but too little wanting to do the ‘dirty work’. In my opinion, being the entrepreneur and doing the ‘dirty work’ is doing the same thing, for the same cause.

Marketing Strategy

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-tools/top-tens/ten-ways-to-build-rock-solid-relationships-with-customers/article5085636/

This article describes how to create a solid relationship with customers, although some of these points seem to be obvious, it is crucial to learn techniques into mastering these tips. Having a good relationship between business is one of the most important factors into being successful. I believe that in a business, communication is more important than the actual business idea. Relationships with customers not only keeps them coming, but also creates a diversity of networking capabilities that will benefit the company in the short and long run.

The article states ten tips regarding , language, customer segmentation, increase involvement, encourage behavior, building friends, have higher frequency, ascending customer loyalty, build trust, building connection, and publish newsletters. In my opinion, customer segmentation is most important, a successful businessman must know how to be able to speak with any customers, to talk to each customer uniquely and know how to personalize the relationship. This is the basis to all the other tips, it’s the connection that is built that gives the customer a sense of importance.

Comment on Ariel Liu’s Blog

Warby Parker’s One-For-One Model

This commonly used “one for one” strategy used by Toms and Warby Parker is often successful because the product itself is attractive. This “continuous cycle” creates cash flow which allows social entrepreneurs to gradually expand and keep their business running. I believe that Warby Parker purposely used the criticism against Tom’s Shoes to their advantage, they built their plan to what seems to be doing more than tom’s shoes.

On this “one for one” model, it gives the company an opportunity to increase capital, companies have already ventured to expanding to eyewear, giving a pair of glasses to someone that needs it per purchase. In today’s (nov.15/12) lecture, i learned that social entrepreneurs play a vital role in every part of the world, everyone benefits from social entrepreneurs, rather than only just the ones that are in need.

In my opinion, this strategy only works if the product is demanded by consumers, the social good provided has little influences on consumers, the successfulness of this method heavily relies on the product and how the message is marketted.

Social Enterprise Funding

Social Entrepreneurship, as discussed in October 16’s class, is a social venture to tackle some sort of a social problem by using entrepreneurial concepts. A social entrepreneur is ambitious, mission driven, strategic, resourceful, and results oriented.

This article discusses the initiative program called RBS Inspiring Enterprise, this fund supports youth, women, and social entrepreneurs. There is a 1.5million euro funding pot that will mostly be distributed equally within 100,000 people aged thirteen to thirty. In my opinion, this is a bad idea, I believe that social entrepreneurs should take initiatives, rather than being given support packages. Social Entrepreneurs should start from nothing in order to fully understand social hardships that the world faces. This funding may give opportunities to young people who isn’t serious about being a social entrepreneur, but rather just doing it for the money. I believe that this 1.5million pot should go to fewer individuals or small enterprises that have proven to be a successful in being social entrepreneurs.

http://www.socialenterpriselive.com/section/news/money/20121016/%C2%A315m-the-bank-social-enterprises-inspire-young-entrepreneurs

Comment on Rahul’s blog

Rahul’s Blog “Marketing: Samsung’s Galaxy S 3 vs Apple’s iPhone 5

This article and blog is interesting to me because i personally have been in numerous arguments relating to IPhone vs Samsung. Specifications aside, a large part of either company’s success is the marketing techniques that they use. Rahul alongside with many other people, such as professional analysts, believe that Apple is losing market shares and sales, this is believed to be caused by a lack of advertisement.

One distinct advertisement success of Samsung is being the official sponsor phone of the 2012 Olympics, with the motto “Designed for humans, Inspired by nature” which is fitting for the worldwide sporting event. Many of us have seen an advertisement like the one above, this is an example of comparative ads and relative positioning that was discussed during class 5. Even though this is an unofficial advertisement, it still has an effect on customer’s preferences. I believe that if Apple wants to remain their market dominance, they have to find ways to take such advertisement down because they are losing their brand positioning.

Eurozone’s unemployment Issues

Euro currency is constantly dropping, many different attempts have been initiated to jumpstart the economy, but no methods seem to work. 17 nations that currently use the euro dollar is experiencing an astounding 11.4% unemployment rate, this is substantially higher than 8.1% in U.S.A in the month of August. These statistic states that Europe’s recession is only getting worse.
In my point of view, there are minimal beneficial decisions that Europe can make alone, to improve the economy, Europe must seek help from other countries, but during economic depressions of U.S.A., many countries are afraid that they will only drag themselves down. Politicians need to act quicker and to recover Bank deficits, printing money to purchase bonds is a possible fix, although they must be careful to not cause inflation of the currency. Lowering interest rates may also help banks to recover over time with little government help.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/business/global/unemployment-in-euro-zone-rose-to-new-high-in-august.html

 

U.S. Housing’s effect on B.C. Lumber

British’s Columbia’s lumber industry finally booms, this is due to the current uprise of U.S. housing demands. The article states that U.S. housing cost will raise from $835,000USto $950,000US, which is about a 13% increase in price, and that lumber will raise from $264US to $336US per 1000board feet. This is believed to help with both the current U.S. and Canadian economy, this mutual business creates job opportunities and allow government to set lower export taxes.

I believe that this is very beneficial to both countries, Canada will only grow stronger when U.S. does. House pricing increase will be difficult for the population especially with current economic hardships, but overall in the long run, it will financially strengthen the country as a whole. Rebounds in the lumber industry is important because the natural resource sector is a huge part of Canada’s exports, more than 80% of wood processed from New Brunswick is sent to the U.S. Overall this is a positive effect and will create more job opportunities therefore allowing the economy to naturally fix itself.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/new-us-housing-fires-up-bc-lumber-sector/article4578131/
http://www.google.ca/imgres?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&authuser=0&biw=948&bih=881&tbm=isch&tbnid=vY8588gzsmT_KM:&imgrefurl=http://pranatimberframes.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/community-shared-wood-british-columbia-cswbc/&docid=gM8BE1i4DjjWXM&imgurl=http://pranatimberframes.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/flooring-1.jpg&w=2272&h=1704&ei=pP9oUJjGGKa0igKSt4DIDw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=447&vpy=332&dur=205&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=113&ty=95&sig=107828908946653301253&page=1&tbnh=166&tbnw=219&start=0&ndsp=16&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0,i:90

Apple’s “Dissapointment”


Apple’s expected sales of six to ten million of the IPhone 5 within the first week disappointed shareholders as share prices fell 1.3% during the day of Monday September 24. According to statistics, 5 million IPhone 5’s were sold during the first week, apparently this is considered a “disappointment” which in my perspective is mind-boggling because these statistics considering the industry is extremely high. Samsung compared to Apple has spent much more money in marketing, an example being the sponsor phone for the 2012 London Olympic Games, and which Samsung sold ten million S3’s in two months. The numbers within the two companies are incomparable.  People have acquired such high expectations for Apple that sales below estimated guesses are considered “disappointment”. Share prices may have declined due to an incident on Monday regarding a brawl in FoxConn’s factory, this may have caused people to expect some sort of unnecessary problems regarding manufacturing of Apple products, however; if I held Apple shares; it would be very unlikely that i would sell them in this situation.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/markets/market-blog/apple-disappointment-5-million-iphones-sold/article4563264/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/apple-supplier-foxconns-factory-halted-in-china-after-brawl-of-2000-workers/article4562969/

http://www.google.ca/imgres?hl=en&authuser=0&biw=948&bih=881&tbm=isch&tbnid=FZE9QbVxZF74_M:&imgrefurl=http://article.wn.com/view/2012/08/28/Google_Wants_To_Add_One_Of_Apples_Newest_iPhone_Features_To_/&docid=nLIg2XGy5K4odM&imgurl=http://i.ytimg.com/vi/auzICoixj_M/0.jpg&w=480&h=360&ei=7fRjUNrfNartiwLYkYHoDA&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=355&sig=107828908946653301253&page=4&tbnh=175&tbnw=233&start=56&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:15,s:56,i:328&tx=158&ty=85

Foxconn’s inhumane working conditions

Foxcon slavery-like working conditions

Foxconn is a multinational electronics manufacturing company that originated in Taiwan. The company has large global contributions to their field of specialization, the world’s largest manufacturer of electronic components, creating components to major products such as iPad, iPhone, iPod, PlayStation 3,and Xbox 360. The company is infamous for the series of suicides due to poor working conditions, worker abuse, and seemingly everlasting hours while obtaining low wages. This is such a serious problem that they have internal suicide-preventing counseling.
I believe that this company not only creates moral ethical problems relating to business, it also violates human rights. This is a authentic example of “the poor remains poor, while the rich gets richer” This company have been under investigation but due to low working regulations and high unemployment rates in China, it is difficult to avoid selfish companies from abusing the labor market. I believe that this issue must be fixed by the government itself, external organizations that attempt to help will not alter the system because there are many unemployed people that are willing to replace workers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/06/foxconn-factory-conditions_n_858619.html
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/ff_joelinchina/