A Little Journey in Life

Shoppers Drug Mart is currently trying to offer more banking options to its customers. By mainly selling prescription drugs, and other over the counter drugs, Shoppers Drug Mart has limited products to offer customers. In order to be successful, it will have to gain many customers in a very competitive market. With Loblaw and Canadian Tire already offering banking services to people, Shoppers will need to find a way to attract customers. The question is does Shoppers have the system and money to accomplish this? Security will be a main issue that will rise up. Will they need to invent/ create a better safer system that customers will feel more secured about? What about locations? Brands? Other banks? These are all questions Shoppers will need to consider. One of the reasons as to why Shoppers is heading into this direction is because they are losing money on selling pharmacy items only. Shoppers originally already offered a credit card through a joint operation with MBNA before adding more services in the finance area. This means that Shoppers probably have analyzed and decided that it will gain more revenue by adding this service and has predicted that more than enough customers will be attracted to the offer. As this is not a minor decision, Shopper will need to make sure that their analysis and prediction will be correct or else the consequences will be severe.

 With more people “glued” onto the Internet, the Internet has truly become a place where people can connect with others. Businesses can take advantage of this opportunity and “connect” with their customers. Having successful social media will allow one company to excel greatly. Advertisements on the side of popular Internet places, such as facebook, will allow many people to come in contact with the store. Presently, newspaper advertisements are obsolete. Not many people are relying on newspaper to provide them with new, instead gadgets such as the itouch and smart phones will allow a person to connect to the Internet and receive the same information for free. Television advertisements are also more costly, therefore advertisements on websites may be one of the cost effective ways to capture people’s attention about the store/ company. Many large companies are turning to social media to help gain customers. Disney, for example, launched a website for its customers to upload their picture and allow other people to see it. Although Disney will have to spend money on this website, however, it will help gain customers. People seeing other people’s picture may motivate them to “go try” the rides for themselves hence Disney earning more revenue. With more people than ever, blogging and actively participating in social network sites such as facebook, hotmail, and twitter, business can take advantage and make people recognize themselves there.

In the newspaper The Province, an article with the title Mongolia Aims to Tap Coal as New Cash Cowwas featured in the September 15, 2010 edition. This article explains how the there is a large coal reserve located south of the Gobi Dessert. The amount located there “could be Mongolia’s black gold” and “Mongolia could earn up to $600 million”. After discovering this area, ” the government [has] began accepting bids from mining firms.” In this article, since the revenue from the coal is so great, the government has been overlooking the effects that mining from this area has on the land. The Gobi Dessert is has been scientifically proven to be growing at an alarming rate, yet the government has chosen to ignore this fact and continue to mine. The threat of desertification is present, however the government neglected this fact and decides to mine in that area.

Picture of a coal mining area in United States http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/09/majority_of_american_public.php

I definitely do not think it’s unethical to charge different prices for the same product. If people are to lazy to do their own research as to where the product is less expensive and are willing to buy the product at a certain price, then yes, it is ethical to charge different prices for the same product. I feel that prices should depend on the location at which the product is sold.  For example,  if the product is sold in a wealthy neighborhood and people can afford to buy it at that price then selling the product doesn’t cause a problem plus it would help the company to earn more revenue.  However, if the same product is sold at a less wealthy location then it would be putting more financial stress on the people, who already have trouble managing their financial issues.

The concept of charging differently for different people is known as Price Discrimination

http://www.econmodel.com/classic/discount.htm