Comm 101

According to Brad’s blog post; “Shomi Shutting Down”  it is clear that netflix is dominating the video streaming market. As netflix was already at the top of the market, shomi’s business plan to enter the market a few years ago should have been re-evaluated.  Netflix currently has more than 5.2 million users in Canada and if I were to suggest anything to the CEO of shomi at the time, it would definitely be not to enter the streaming.

Brad’s states; “The strength of the Netflix brand makes it difficult to compete against.” I completely agree upon this statement, brand name reputation is vital in a large market. According to cnet.com “netflix leads a streaming market that’s close to peaking.” This statement is essentially saying that the streaming market is about to peak. Shomi may have made the correct decision to shut down if the market will soon go down hill. Furthermore, shomi did not enter the market strategically, as they were only available to rogers and shaw cable customers in the beginning. This narrowed down their customer base from the start and they needed something big to grow.

Point of differences are what stands out among a strong company. If one firm can own their POD in a large market they are bound to do well. Brad talks about shomi’s business model resembling to many similarities to that of netflix’s. Shomi could not stand out and competing against a strong brand name is undoubtedly difficult. Netflix offered a low price of $7.99 a month while shomi offered $8.99 a month, personally I have been a netflix user for the most recent years of my life and I can say that netflix has exceptional varieties of television shows, movies, and documentaries.. I would not consider shomi unless they offered a lower per month membership or newer varieties. One suggestion that I can positively make for any company is this streaming market is to stream brand new movies right after they are released. This option can be strategic however it would negatively affect the movie theatre market.

Overall, it is essential companies develop a strong point of difference to dominate a demanding market. It is challenging to compete against a strong brand name such as netflix especially when they control most of the market. Shomi’s decision to shut down was strategic in the eyes of a student as netflix currently and always will dominate the streaming market.

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According to Anita Cambell and her blog about “85% of small businesses get customers through word of mouth.” It is clear that word of mouth really does have an impact on small businesses. Now, keep in mind of the key-word “small”, during a recent survey in may of 2014 it was conducted that word of mouth was leading this small business when being discovered.

However, this may not be the case for larger companies, as we may know there is this search engine called “google”. Word of mouth and google complement each other in the line of research. If I am told to visit “that restaurant” or to buy “those new shoes”, I will be researching them after I am told the given information. Word of mouth has a substantial impact on my views and what my friends inform me about a product or service I will often just accept their views and opinions and do no further research.

With my (customer) opinion aside, I would like to discuss business owner’s views. In Cambell’s blog. Cambell suggests owners to: 1.) Check your businesses in google at least once a month. 2.) Conduct a regular customer survey. 3.) Communicate and reinforce to employees the value of raving fans. 4.) Create easy ways for customers to share word of mouth.

Cambell’s four “to-do list” recommendations, gives small business owners guidance in order for word of mouth to increase. More so, customers are more likely to talk about your small business. Any feedback is strong feedback; negative comments will help improve the small business and positive remarks will tell the business what they are doing correctly. According to Cambell, “word of mouth is number one method of attracting new customers.” I completely agree upon this statement. In my own personal experience with products and services I most likely will hear about it from someone else prior to advertisement or other marketing concepts.

Furthermore, I strongly recommend small business owners to encourage word of mouth upon their customers and to try Cambell’s 4 suggestions. If its just a survey attached to a receipt, or a simple question to your customer “Did you find what you were looking for? How did you enjoy our service? Any recommendations you may have?” All these questions can easily be answered, and any answer is a good answer for business owners.

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As a part-time employee in the province of British Columbia, a 4 dollar and 15 cents raise would drastically increase my urge to work. I found Ethan’s blog post on “the fight for fifteen” to be extremely valuable and persuasive in my thought towards the increment for British Columbia’s minimum wage. As an increase in the minimum wage may seem ideal and motivational for the provinces unemployed, it may eliminate more employees than gain. Large firms would lose lots of money to keep around current employees and than would have to force laying off their workers. This would not affect the higher class of our population however, this may disrupt the smaller firms and young working class.

Currently BC has a minimum wage of $10.85 an hour which was currently just raised last month. I completely agree with the idea of raising our minimum wage however, that being said I do not agree with a dramatic increase. Small increments more often seem ideal. As we have learned in class strategic firms try to narrow down as many variable costs as possible to increase the profit, hourly wage workers are variable costs and will be eliminated if the costs are too high.

As Ethan stated in his post to compensate for the higher production costs, the price of goods will increase which will lead to inflation. If shall such inflation shall such appear this would completely disrupt the economy and we could face an economic crisis. I completely agree with Ethan how this would cause much harm to the British Columbian working class and I believe that the minimum wage shall keep rising at the rate it’s going or maybe a slight increase.

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https://blogs.ubc.ca/etam/

Those people you see in restaurants and in class taking a bunch of selfies every few minutes are not just infatuated with how they look. Snapchat is a commonly used social media app that allows communication with one another by sending photos or short videos with text to specific friends or posting it for all your friends to see, currently 150 million people use snapchat daily, including many famous celebrities and news websites. Snapchat’s competitors consist of other social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Recently Snap introduced their first hardware system; Spectacles are picking up where google glass fell down except in a different way. Spectacles are more affordable than google glass and they excel where google glass could not. Instead of strapping a $1500 pair of technology onto your face like google glass did, snap came up with a design that is differentiable and gives them a competitive advantage over the much failed google glass product.

Snap differentiates their product from Google Glass by a more “mainstream” product, rather than pricing spectacles at a high cost like Google Glass performed, Snap will promote the sales of these new sunglasses at a price of $130 competing with lower end smartphones, and Apple air pods. This gives them a competitive advantage over some of their competitors however, when you see what $130 could get you in a sunglass store, and compare the look to the Spectacles the pros for the spectacles is that it relates back to snapchat, the pros for other sunglasses is they are much more attractive to wear. Although some may say that the Spectacles strive on their “hip” look, I personally find these glasses unpleasant to look at. I would much rather put $130 towards a pair of ray-bans or Oakley’s. That being said, the market aimed for these Spectacles are the 150 million snap chatters that use the app daily. Furthermore, Google currently has 1.17 billion searchers per month and if they failed with google glass, maybe snap may fail as well? The only difference is the more affordable fact that spectacles carry in its name and also much less features than google glasses.

Overall, I would not spend money on these unfashionable sunglasses when I see my opportunity cost as ray bans that are actually appealing to the human eye. Although some may like this new look, I cannot strongly suggest that this new product will succeed.

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Murphy, Mike. “The Most Genius Thing About the Snap Spectacles Is Their $130 Price Tag.” September 30. 2016. Quartz. Accessed October 2. 2016

http://qz.com/794920/the-   most-genius-thing-about-the-snapchat-spectacles-is-their-130-price-tag/

Smith, Craig. “100 Google Search Statistics and Fun Facts.” August 29. 2016. Expanded Ramblings. Accessed October 2. 2016.

http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-a-gigantic-list-of-google-stats-and-facts/

Yu, Howard. “Snapchat Moves in Where Google Glass Gave up.” October 1. 2016. Forbes. Accessed October 2. 2016.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/howardhyu/2016/10/01/snapchat-moves-in-where-google-glass-gave-up/2/ – 7cbc8a820903

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