Recently, there is a Japanese pudding brand called “Mvuke Tokyo (MT)” becoming popular in China. The brand is now known as the “The Hermes of the pudding market”.

First, one of the main factors that made it popular is that: the company used premium pricing-strategy for products, and consumers like the brand not only because of its high quality dessert but also because they can use it as a conspicuous consumption good (in pudding market).

Secondly, I think there’s another factor that made MT succeed. The brand takes strong social responsibility. It gives consumers extra credits/points if they return the ceramic cup. This can reduce the production of ceramic cup, which can lower the level of pollution. This helps MT to gain good reputation on being “green”.

However, the tide of luxury pudding is the main factor that made MT popular; this is its Point-of-Difference. And the main promotion strategy is word-of-mouth, so once the tide is over or the consumers’ taste changes, MT will no longer be popular. This shows MT’s products have short product life cycles, which is not benefiting MT in long period. Moreover, since it’s popular now, other pudding businesses may decide to change their marketing strategies, which may make MT less competitive in its market. Also, since MT only has few stores, this may cause inconvenience for its consumers, which gives its rivals a competitive advantage. MT should open more stores and provide more varieties of products as it’s reaching its peak now. In addition, they have located the stores in the famous shopping malls, which require high rental costs. Since MT has already crease the good reputation and increase the awareness, it can start to open more stores in cheaper locations, which can save costs and help on its expansion.

References:

– Pictures:

1) http://bebeoeil.seesaa.net/article/376208755.html

2) http://tweets.seraph.me/search/Mvuke%20Tokyo%E5%B8%83%E6%AD%8C%E4%B8%9C%E4%BA%AC?page=2

Advertisement plays an important in our daily life. For businesses, they need promotion to attract more consumers. Facebook, a below-the-line promotion, is a good promotion channel; because it is not expensive but promote very effectively.

The article has described ten ways to use Facebook to drive in store and online sales. As Internet is becoming more important for us, and Facebook is the no.1 social network, I think Facebook can be a good way to increase awareness. Small businesses would be able to tell everyone about the business without spending a lot of money on advertisement.

However, there are also disadvantages for businesses that only use Facebook as their promotional strategy. If a business’s target customers are the baby boomers, then this would not be a great promotional strategy for the company; because most elders are still not familiar with technology, and they wouldn’t even see the advertisement, which means the promotion is ineffective. Moreover, since communication error may occur when promoting online, consumers may get the wrong information about the business.

In conclusion, I think using Facebook is a good promotional strategy for small business; however, before using it, the business should be clear on its target customer.

Reference:

picture: http://creativemixonline.com/category/advertising/

An online article on Bloomberg on Nov 4^th, 2014 reports that Canadian dollar’s exchange rate to US dollars has dropped to the lowest point in the last five-year period.  The current exchange rate is 0.1 down from the most recent high of 0.97 back in 15/01/2013.

In accordance to the law of demand, Canadian dollars value dropped because there is less demand of Canadian dollars. This is due to the reduced demand of Canadian oil. Canada is one of the biggest oil exporting countries following OPEC, Russian, and Norway. Oil is the major energy source so when the global economy is not strong then the global need for energy is low.

Also the supply side of the oil industry has grown.  New drilling techniques and fracking are producing more oil than ever before.

The combination of less demand and higher supply has reduced current price of oil.  Oil price was 0.54 per barrel on 2014/05/28 and the current price is 0.25 per barrel.

Canadian oil is shale oil more expensive to produce then light sweet and more difficult to refine.  When the market price is high profits can be realized in Canada.  Likewise when the market price is low then Canada oil fields have to sell their oil at little or no profits and cannot stop producing regardless market price, due to the capital in use.

The profitability of the oil fields have helped fuel Canada’s economy and supported the strong CAD.  Now in this period of retraced pricing on the oil market, the Canadian economy and exchange rate will follow. The CAD value can rebound when the oil prices go up.

My analysis is supported by the fact that Russian ruble also dropped. Russia is also a major supporter of crude oil in the world and Russian ruble’s value dropped because of the same reason.  This is along with this the ruble value has protracted due to the issues in the Ukraine.

As a counter to this is that cross border trade could increase as the devaluation of Canadian dollar also influences the international trade between Canada and USA. Since the same amount of US dollars can exchange more Canadian dollars, the exporters will likely get more orders from our neighbor, and thus stimulate Canadian domestic manufacturing business.

Reference:

Picture-http://capitaltrustmarkets.com/canadian-dollar-targeting-99-100-yen