Meng's Blog

With the intensified competition within the high tech market, many businesses strive to seek new opportunities. Recently, Lenovo announced its plan to enter wireless computing. Personally I think it is a good strategic move.

Being the world No.4 PC brand, Lenovo is facing an immense amount of competition. In addition, Lenovo has bought over IBM branch, which has a certain affect on its current cashflow standing. Under such circumstances, Lenovo would need to implement some new strategy, entering new market would be a good move.

Secondly, Lenovo based mainly in China, where the wireless computing market is still underdeveloped. Products such as netbook, smartphone are not yet welknown to customers. Therefore have a head up un this niche market would give Lenovo a competitive advantage over other brands like Dell.

Lastly, the wireless computing products are relatively cheap to manufacture. Comparing to traditional PC and laptops, netbooks and smartphones are cheaper to produce, thus the sales price can be set lower. A low sale price enables Lenovo to enter the market easier and allows it to gain market share faster.

Word of mouth has been a common type of promotion methods. Before the presence of media, the vast majority of customers rely on other people’s comment to make their choice on products/services. Although we are now flooded by other types of promotion both above-the-line and below-the-line, word of mouth still has its power.Imagine you want to buy a laptop, you would go into shop, go online to do some research and price comparison, but ultimatly you would ask people around you for their opinion; in most of the cases, you would more inclined to buy a laptop that your family or your friends recommended.

I think word of mouth promotion is important not  just because it is powerful, but more of the customer loyalty indicated through promotion. When your customers are willing to promote your product to people around them, you can be more sure of their satisfaction with your product/services.

However, as the channels of communication broaden, word of mouth can be rather disturbing. With the expansion of internet, many business promote by asking customers to forward promotion e-mails to their contacts. This might be useful, but it may also be disturbing for some people.

Reading through articles on the Globe and Mail, Toyota’s recalling problem is far from over. Just recently, Toyota recalled 600000 Sienna minivans due to problems with rusting spare tires. Despite Toyoya’s suggestion of cold weather causing spare tire fall off, customer’s confidence on the business has taken another downturn.

Being famous for its quality product for a long period of time, this recalls unquestionably shakened the entire Toyota. For a car manufacturer, safety is one of the major issue, once customers lose their confidence, the business would be very hard to continue operating. Although managers in Toyota promised to solve the safety issue and assumed responsibility for the problem, their brand image are no longer the same. One can expect to see Toyota making less sales in future.

Recalling dose not only making trouble for Toyota, but posed an threat to the entire automibil market. GM has annouced bankruptcy in 2009, which shocked the entire market, now with addition of  Toyota’s safety scandel, business confidence in the automobil is very low. Low confidence leads to less investment overall, thus resulting in decreased revenue. Besides Toyota, other auto makers also need to brace themselves for the storms coming to them.

Smokes from volcano in Iceland has not only covered the region, it also clouded the business world.

Reading news about the recent volcanic activities was shocking to be, but what caught my eys were the potential impact of the eruption.

According to the Globe and Mail, over half of the european flights were cancelled due to volcano, resulting in millions of loss. Personally, I think it is just a beginning. If the problem of volcanic activities escalate, more flights would be forced to cancell; if situation stables, the airport will still need to deal with a overwhelming demand for flight- with the scale of flight cancellation, one can expect to see a shortage in the supply comparing to its demand.

the article in the Globe and Mail also mentioned some side affect, including the infustries that rely on air transportation. for example, food can not be transported by air , thus, if the situation last for another couple days, some area might have food shortage problem,

Besides volcanic activities’ direct impact on the air-transport market, one more thing people should be concerned of it expectation problem. The speculations on volcano eruption has greatly diminished people’s expectation in businesses, which added on to the already-negative feelings people had from the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, if there is no action to control people’s panic, one could expected to see a deepening financial cirsis in Europe with the potential to affect the entire world.

Just about two days ago I did the carbon foot print calculation. To be honest, I had little idea about how the result would be, but I do leaqrn something from the test.

the test was pretty simple, just click on different option to see which one fits me best, what is interesting is that I realized for many thing I wasn’t even sure of. For example, I never bothered to check if the heating system in my room is energy saving, or whether the window in my room is heat insullating. The realization makes me queation myself, if I pay attention to the details, would more energy be saved?

It is also interesting that not only individuals, but businesses also started being aware of our environment. In recent years, many businesses contributed in their own way to raise public awareness on environmental issues. For example, the image below is Coca cola’s promotion on environmental awareness

Although some people may say such actions are just a tactic to promot businees’ image, I don’t think it matters much. It is true that some business behave in a socially responsible way because that is what the customers want, the result is still the same. I think it is better to promote than not, if there can be a win-win situation, then why don’t we do it that way?

According to an article on Globe and Mail, Canada was now the country where most investors are interested in. There are several reasons including the crisis in Dubai and concern of the Greece debt problem(this can lead to value drop in Euro). I think all of the causes lead to a single aspect-business confidence.

Although it may sound abstract, confidence is an important part of a business. As people want to earn profit, it would be quite pathetic to invest in a business where there is nothing but loss; likewise if investor can see-at least think they can see- a chance of profit, they would then be willing to invest. Just like what happened recently,:the financial crisis and debt problem in Dubai and Greece raise doubts in investor; on the other hand, relative stable business condition in Canada (e.g. currency value) boosts investors’ confidence. Consequently the investors will come to Canada.

Business is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. When investors are confident, they then are willing to invest, this investment will in return generate more income and make investors more confident; on reverse, investors are not willing to pay as they are not confident about investing, this take away the chance of a place/country/business to improve, the bad performacnce again decrease investors’ confidence.

In early classes of 486G, I came across the term “mass customization”. I thought it was an interesting topic, so as it was not covered in depth in class, I set out to research about it on my own. Luckily I find one article that explains about mass customization in great detail.

The key in mass custumization is its variability and availability. It is also this aspect that makes mass costumization seems better than  traditional mass production. Mass customizers can quickly customize products (build-to-order) upon customers demand and it can also quickly resupply products. Overall the variability and avalabilty need to be backed up by speend, which reduces the waiting period of products (especially when the products are customized)

In additional to speed, two other aspects are also required to ensure a successful mass custumization model. Firstly, flow manufacturing is very important. Just as the article pointed out, no matter if the product is customized or standardized, “mass customizers depend on several elements of flow manufacturing to enable them to build products economically in any order quantity, even as low as one”.  Secondly, a spontaneous su[ply chain is needed. This is because manufactuer need to ensure that all the materials for custumization is available at any point of production. Having a non-spontaneous supply chain may result in delay in production and even affect the availability of products.