Rachel Pang's Blog

With a new year just around the corner, have you started to think about what New Years’ resolutions you’re going to try to set out and accomplish this year? A popular new years’ resolution for many is to try and live a better lifestyle, to exercise frequently and eat healthier. In regards to Jenny’s blog, women are now emphasizing the idea of being healthy, and not on being skinny. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, companies have identified healthy eating as a huge market segment, and have adjusted menus to  encourage healthy lifestyle all while accommodating for tastes.

Revolutionizing the fast food market, one corporation at a time. Image courtesy of www.hercampus.com

Although healthy living has been on the minds of companies such as McDonald’s and Subway for some time now, many other restaurant chains in North America are starting to follow this path as well. Businesses have determined that customers naturally associate words like ‘low sodium’ and ‘reduced fat’ with poor tasting foods. That’s the idea behind many companies’ decisions to gradually reduced the amount of sodium and fats that are used in their foods. Subway has reportedly been reducing the sodium in the breads, as well as their sauces since 2009, however, this blogger’s first time at Subway in 2011 describes the franchise differently. How healthy will fast food restaurants around the world become in the coming years?

McDonald’s vs. Burger King: Who would win?

After a 40 year-long relationship between Heinz ketchup and McDonald’s restaurants, its unfortunate to hear that the partnership has come to an end. Since Heinz’s new executive team consists of the former CEO of Burger King, McDonald’s has decided to call it quits on this partnership. According to the business Wonkblog from the Washington Post, McDonald’s only accounts for a small portion of Heinz’s business, and moreover, Heinz’s business is not primarily focused in the ketchup industry. So was this decision beneficial to Heinz or more detrimental?

What’s interesting to me is to see that minor factors such as a corporate leader’s work history would have such great impact on the partnerships and dealings of a company. Although it is logical for McDonald’s to not want to partner with a member of the competition, it’s surprising that the golden arches would withdraw from a long-term agreement so instantaneously. Moreover, stories of employees being headhunted by prominent companies have typically been a positive transition and experience, however, given this story, it makes one wonder about how each career decision made can have a strong impact on the future of a company.

Snapchat’s instant capture and erase photo messaging system’s has seen it’s popularity soar in the last year, with an estimated 300 million images being sent and received daily. Just like fellow blogger Cynthia describes, Snapchat has become a huge part of my everyday life as a teenager. In attempts to mirror the success of Snapchat, Facebook developed “Facebook Poke” which did not nearly garner as much success as Snapchat, thus encouraging Facebook to offer $3 billion USD for the acquisition of Snapchat.

Reportedly, CEO of Snapchat Mr. Evan Spiegel is not looking to sell his company for another couple of months to allow the app to expand and attract more customers in order to seek a larger valuation. However, from one perspective, if Snapchat plans on doing either of these things, it should not wait too long. At the moment, Snapchat is nearing the peak of it’s popularity and the value of the company will likely fall if they don’t come up with newer innovations. This has been the second time Snapchat has turned down Facebook, proving that it’s not willing to sell its company or join in a merger… at least not yet. Meanwhile according to Wonkblog, Chinse company Tencent is also looking into purchasing Snapchat in order to keep competition off the market. Another blogger, William, thinks that more money can be made for Snapchat, but ultimately, only time will tell whether they’re making the right decision to hold off on merging with Facebook or not.

Did Snapchat make the right decision?

Despite all the controversy that has been surrounding Lululemon from the degrading comments made by the company’s founder to the complaints on the diminishing quality of their products, the Vancouver-born yoga initiative still excels in making their brand a cultural identity in Western Canada.

Having only been created within the last decade, Lululemon has managed to turn a simple product and concept into how many Canadians define “Vancouver”. Widespread success can be credited to Lululemon’s attempts to incorporate the local community into every aspect of their business model. Particularly, Lululemon has opened up the “Lululemon Lab” where extreme Lululemon fans can shop for limited edition designs and styles alongside designers and seamstresses who devise products as the customers shop.

Interior shot of the Lululemon Lab in Vancouver

In addition to being a popular destination for keen shoppers, the Lululemon Lab location also opens up the space for monthly events such as gin tasting and lifestyle presentations, achieving further promotion and engagement of its brand with the community. One of the biggest reasons for me to personally shop at Lululemon is because of the immediate welcoming atmosphere at their stores. The shopping experience exceeds expectations starting from the entry ways filled with pictures and employee goals, to the personalized and helpful suggestions in the fitting rooms. Lululemon effectively reflects what it means for a company to positively impact a small community on a large scale.

The landscape for the beverage corporations has been drastically changed in the last couple of years. While coffee drinkers still make up a large part of the consumer market for caffeinated drinks, the market for tea as well as energy drinks have become a force to be reckoned with in the beverage industry.

A colorful display distinguishing the types of tea DavidsTea has to offer. Image from refashionvancouver.com

In regards to this growing sector, DavidsTea has become a prominent and rapidly growing tea retailer in Canada. Being a relatively new company in the Canadian market place, DavidsTea has grown to 120 stores across the nation and has a rapidly growing popularity among their target market. Meanwhile, Starbucks acquired Teavana in hopes of developing and executing their own line of tea beverages. Recently, Starbucks opened up their first Teavana location in New York City, with prices of drinks ranging from $2.50 to $6. As discussed in Alex’s blog, tea and coffee act as substitute goods for many consumers, however, I disagree with her on spending $5 on either coffee/tea or a chocolate bar being a difficult decision. In my opinion, it’s an easy decision to make to spend my $5 on tea, given the known health benefits of drinking a cup of tea in comparison to the health issues with consuming an entire bar of chocolate. The market for tea is definitely a sector worth considering for businesses looking to expand into the beverage industry.

With so many options of stores to purchase your daily essentials at, how do you decide where to shop? One of the most distinguishing value propositions for grocery stores is that they will typically be well stocked on everything an individual household depends on for the week. Major retail competitor Walmart should not be expected of anything less than this standard.

In spite of this, shoppers are starting to notice that the aisles of Walmart are not as stocked as they were previously. The once full and colorful aisles have become barren property waiting to be restocked once again. With a surge in the number of Walmart stores over the last couple of years in North America, the ratio between stores and the number of Walmart employees have only become more disproportionate. Garnering a poor reputation for meager wages and few rewards for staff, Walmart is losing many of their customers to competitors such as Target and Costco where staff are treated well and have shelves that are consistently well-stocked. By making critical errors such as inappropriately priced items on their online store in addition to a poor staff to customer ratio, Walmart is beginning to lose it’s position as an excellent supply chain managing company.

Will under-staffing and barren shelves lead to the ultimate downfall of retail giant Walmart?

Aisles sit empty at a local Walmart location.

Rogers Wireless, one of the largest wireless companies in the nation, has announced that it does not plan to carry the newest Blackberry device created by Research in Motion.

This decision came was a shock to many Canadians, as Rogers is one of the first companies to work with RIM to promote and distribute Blackberry products. Both being prominent Canadian companies, the idea of embracing joint national brand recognition is under criticism. However, from the perspective of Rogers Wireless, this decision was based on strategy and was not focused on maintaining corporate relations. Using this idea, it can be generalized that Rogers Wireless was trying to get ahead of the rest of the wireless carriers in the market who share the same points of parity in terms of services and products, in addition to opening up more shelf space for products with a higher demand.

On the other hand, this announcement is bad news for RIM and Blackberry fans. By reducing the channels in where their products can be accessed, RIM’s revenue is likely to continue it’s rapid decline, eventually leading to bankruptcy or to being sold. Finally, whether or not this strategic decision will benefit Rogers Wireless in the long run will be an indication of how familiar the company is with their national market.

This is partnership we may not be seeing for much longer

Maxwell House Coffee has been a household brand for instant and brewed coffee for many years. Most recently, the marketing team at Maxwell House devised a new advertising campaign for their flavored coffee creamers, with the campaign centered around the idea of “spooning”. Spooning, a trendy term typically used to refer to an action done by romantically linked couples, recreates the brand to be an edgier, and more modern label. Currently, the brand has a loyal consumer segment, however, with the introduction of this new campaign, Maxwell House hopes to “bring new people into the fold” and target a younger generation of coffee drinkers.

By revolutionizing the consumer segment area of their business model canvas, Maxwell House alters other parts of their business model as well. Given the idea that Maxwell House wants to expand their target to a wider consumer segment by creating a new product, it would be essential for this company to also consider changing their channels. Where their former consumer segment would find their Maxwell House products at local grocery stores, the new flavored creamer targeting a younger generation could consider selling their products on university campuses or even promoting the product at local malls.

The potential success of Maxwell House’s million dollar ad campaign leaves competitors with much to consider about their own branding.

A quirky little snapshot of Maxwell House’s new ad campaign

To what extent will the new code of conduct affect our wireless plans?

Sparking immense controversy in the Canadian telecommunications market, the CRTC passed a new policy which required cell phone providers to follow a strict set of rules when providing service for customers. All cellphone service providers must now ensure that wireless contracts are limited to two years and have price caps placed on how much a customer can be charged for fees additional to the user’s existing plan. Since the creation of this proposal, major telecommunications companies have challenged this ruling, which was recently approved in court. (See article here.)

From the perspective of a cell service provider in Canada, this code greatly hinders the operations of the business. By necessitating that all contracts must end by June 3, 2015, without requiring customers to be charge any additional fees, the company loses a large part of revenue that would have been acquired from either the payments from early cancellation fees or the monthly fees that would have been incurred by the customers. Moreover, by capping the amount that can be charged on added fees allows the customer to take advantage of the provider and overuse roaming and data charges knowing that the cost will be fixed. However, from the perspective of a consumer, this new policy helps lower the cost of owning a cellphone, and makes having a phone more practical and affordable. This policy can be debated from both sides of the argument, but ultimately, it’s up to the court to decide who wins this battle.

Controversy erupted over social media sites earlier this year regarding the depiction of an interracial family in a nationwide Cheerios commercial. Originally aired on television, the 30 second advertisement attracted positive reviews from many viewers. However, once the ad was uploaded to YouTube, racial comments and offensive slurs were used to describe the diverse cast. Despite the controversy, General Mills announced that they will continue to air the commercial and support the idea that families come in many different forms.

Positively impacting their brand and management, Cheerios has demonstrated good corporate ethics in the sense that they continue to support the company’s core values and hold firm to the wholesome image of their company. They have proven to not be easily influenced by the mob mentality of the general public and in many ways have become an ideal model for companies whose ethics are twisted to meet different expectations. In my opinion, General Mills made the right decision to support families of different ethnicities as well as to support visible minorities because society is constantly evolving and the public needs to learn to accept and welcome everyone regardless of appearance or race.

Among the top-profiting companies in the business sector, many still display stereotypes in their marketing that reflect segregation among different ethnicities. As the final screen of the Cheerios commercial suggests, just “love”.

Image is a screenshot from original Cheerios commercial on Youtube.