I would like to talk about another blog I read in the Harvard Business Review. It is about how managers should not only being objective and strict, but they should also create strong bonds with their employees. It suggests that the existence of trust in the workplace is indispensable. Nowadays, the continuously innovation of the businesses is a really important reason of why trust within the workers is essential; it is common that new things can be very challenging, and can cause fear, anxiety, etc. in the employees. However, a good relationship with the manager can make the employees feel more comfortable. Managers have the ability to help employees to face their fears towards new goals, to take risks, and therefore, to have success.

I found that this article is very useful, as it provides us with information about the employees behaviors and how an employer should manage them. I also agree with this blog with the fact that managers should not be only bosses, but rather a person with whom the employee can count on. Definitively, a requirement for a business to be profitable is to provide a good environment to its workers.

If you want to read the original blog please use the following link: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/11/are_you_getting_personal_as_a.html

When I first read Michelle’s Blog I was so surprised by the fact that Wal-Mart, who is one of the biggest retailers in the US can be so unethical by having sweatshops in Bangladesh in order to minimize costs. Personally I used to buy a lot of my things in Wal-Mart as their prices are very low, and as we can find everything we want. However, I agree with Michelle with her point of view, which is, that it is totally unfair to treat people like that. I think that is not only the fact of the money and the long hours the employees have to work, but it is also a problem of morality, of ethics, of respecting the human rights. I can say that even they way I used to see Wal-Mart as a customer has totally changed.

I really think that in a business, not everything is about money, not everything is about making profits. We also need to care about the employees, the environment, the society. That is the key factor for creating a good environment in the workplace. And a good workplace is the key factor for a successful business.

If you want to read Michelle’s Blog, please visit the following link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/michellelee3/

I found really fascinating this blog, which was originally post by Hamza. I found specially interesting the fact that this is a very common concern in every student life. Some people may think that it is better to start a business immediately as it takes time for a business to grow, and as recently graduates we are young and with a lot of enthusiasm, which means that maybe by the time we are 30 we will already have a profitable business. On the other hand, other people may think that it is better to gain experience before entering the competitive and risky world of business.

What Hamza proposed in his blog is that it “depends”, whether a graduate student should take the decision of starting his own business or first gaining experience from someone else. I agree with him with the fact that the idea of business and the passion of the student are key factors in order to become an entrepreneur. But in contrast, I think that it is better to gain experience first. The world of business is very challenging, it is true that in the university we learn all the theory, but applying it in the real world is a different issue, is more difficult. So we first need to learn from the experience and then we can start working on a bigger goal. I believe that we need to go step by step. If we speed up too much our objective of starting our own business, we are very likely to have a lot of problems and to loose a lot of money, as we don not have the enough experience and the knowledge required.

To see Hamza’s blog please visit the following link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/hamza/

Pete and Gerry‘s Organic Eggs is a large – scale producer that has innovate the industry of egg production with the objective of making a difference in our world. We can now ask ourselves how an egg producer can help our society? And the answer is that there are multiple ways, such as saving energy, reducing wastes, giving a good treat to the animals, and avoiding the use of the pesticides and fertilizers.

All these measures in order to help our environment, and even the health of its customers are remarkable, but what is even more inspiring is the vision of this company. It not only implements the mentioned measures, but it is also a recruiter of small family farms that supply the product, instead of being a large factory farm. This criterion clearly supports the the small family farms businesses, as well as it helps with the preservation of its surrounding environments for future generations.

After reading the background and the purposes of this company, a lot of questions may arise, such as: “How can a small farmer make a difference?” or “All those measures will affect the profits of the business?”, etc. As an answer to those two questions, I can say that even one person can make a difference, and if we join all the efforts that each one of us does in order to help our world, surely we will have a better future. Maybe for a business taking these kind of measures, profits can decrease, but I think that first we need to be ethicals and realize that profits are not everything.

If you want to read more about Pete and Gerry‘s Organic Eggs please visit the following  link: http://www.peteandgerrys.com/organiceggs

Creating  a good teamwork culture in a company is indispensable for the well-being of the business. It is important to make rules and to build habits in the workplace in order to have a good environment where all the employees can have a good relationship between them, where the employees can trust their managers and vice versa. However, maintaining this state of well-being can become very challenging for businesses, specially during certain situations or events that a society faces, such as presidential elections.

How can this event damage the workplace environment? An answer to this question can be the fact that even though political debate and enthusiasm is very important within a society, it can also become very harmful inside a company, as it can have the power to destroy good relationships between employees. This kind of issues inside a company can have long-term impacts, this is why it is so important to managers to take measures in order to minimize these kind of debates.

Now, another important question arises: “How should the employers face these situations?” I think they should not show themselves too strict about it, instead they should talk to their employees and they should train their workers so they will be aware of the importance of a good teamwork culture.

To read more about different solutions and points of view in order to face these kind of situations that can harm the workplace, you can visit the following link:

http://www.corpmagazine.com/executives-entrepreneurs/expert-advice/itemid/9978/dont-let-election-politics-disrupt-your-workplace

As we already know, Social enterprises are companies that use commercial strategies in order to help and make improvements in people’s lives, as well as improvements in our own world that nowadays is facing a lot of environmental issues. What really surprised me is how HopeLab helps its customers with a very unusual product. As it is known, usually video games are seen as a threat for kids’ mental health. However, this company propose not only video games that are not harmful, but that help children who suffer diseases, such as cancer, obesity, etc.

It may sound unrealistic, but surprisingly it is true. For example, HopeLab’s product “Re-Mission” is a video game developed for kids with cancer, in which they pilot a nanobot named Roxxi as she travels destroying cancer cells, battling bacterial infections and managing side effects of the treatment. And it is even more surprising that scientific research has shown that it is an effective tool.

When I read the title of the article announcing this company, I wondered: “It is possible for a business to help people even with issues such as their heath problems?”. So if it possible, imagine how wonderful our world could be with more social entrepreneurs like HopeLab.

Since the decision of establishing a company is made, it is done with the intention to expand, to grow, to gain a good position in people`s mind, in order to be more than just a company but a brand in which people could feel comfortable. Now, I will present a case in which a bad decision, maybe caused by a bad marketing research or the lack of one, can lead the company to a failure.

This case focuses on the purchase of “Cerveceria Suramericana” ( an ecuadorian Brewery) by AMBEV  (a multinational Brewery which is the 5th largest brewery in the world). This multinational brewery decided to buy “Cerveceria Suramericana” in 2003, when this company was already well-known for their products, like the beer “Biela”. This ecuadorian beer company had worked hard for many years to compete and gain market against the company “Cerveceria nacional”, producer of “Pilsener” beer, which is identified as the ecuadorian beer. So hard was the effort made by “Cerveceria Suramericana” that it started to gain a lot of customers, it had such a good position in people`s mind that people started to say “let`s have a biela” referring to the desire of having a beer. But in the time of the purchase of the company, AMBEV decide to rename the product in order to introduce to Ecuador one of their popular products that is “Brahma beer”.

The problem lies in the fact that this decision made AMBEV to start from zero and to try again to earn the market that “Cerveceria Suramericana” already earned, and meanwhile they let a lonely “Pilsener” to monopolize the ecuadorian market, and to own the space of that company that once was so well positioned, and now is still trying to regain what once was theirs.

In this blog, I want to talk about the importance of the Marketing research for a business, but specially the importance of making the right questions in the research. It is essential for a company to make a Marketing research before launching a new product or changing one of their products that already exists, in order to know how the consumers will react towards this and if the idea of this new product is profitable. However, a very usual mistake while doing the research is asking the wrong questions, which can lead the company to misunderstand the results and therefore to make the wrong decisions, which eventually can lead the business to decline.

A very useful example of this fact is the case of Coca Cola in the early 1980`s when Coca Cola`s market share was decreasing and Pepsi`s was rising, consequently, Coca Cola decided to change the formula of their coke and make its taste “smoother”. In order to do it, they made a Marketing research, in which they asked to their consumers how would they feel if the company added a new ingredient to the formula, just to realize that only the 11 percent of the consumers will be angry; by having this research as a guide, the managers decided to launch the new product. As a result, they had a lot of negative reactions from their consumers; what really happened is that they did not do the right question, they asked how the consumers would feel if they added a new ingredient to the formula; when the right question was: “how the consumers would feel if Coca-Cola was replaced with a drink that tasted different”.

We can see with this example how what seems a little and insignificant question can alter a whole Marketing research and therefore make it useless when making the right decision for the company.

For more information about this case please visit the following link:http://www.marketresearchsurveysoftware.com/market-research-and-the-coca-cola-problem/

As we all know, brand-positioning is a very important key for every business, this will define how people perceive the company, this will define if the firm is the number one or not in people`s mind when they think about a specific aspect. Brand-positioning is definitively a fundamental aspect for the success of a firm, therefore, if the brand does not have the correct marketing, it will surely decline.

An example of how the wrong marketing can harm a company is the one of Walmart, which is one the biggest retailers in the U.S, that used the wrong positioning statement, that ended up decreasing their sales; their last positioning statement was: “Low prices…Always low prices! “, this statement seems to be very attractive but the real result is that it made Walmart seem like just a place where people can get cheap things, more than good quality products, which later led people to think that this brand was just for people with economy issues. Another reason that explains why this positioning statement is not a good one is that due to this advertisement people just think of Walmart as a place to buy products  with a lower price, so when the company does not low the prices too much, the people instantaneously stop going to Walmart shops.

As a consequence of this bad advertisement and its results, now Walmart has a new positioning statement, which is “Save money. Live better”, it seems to be a little change, but actually it can help a lot with the growth of the business.

For more information about this topic, you can visit the following links:http://www.evancarmichael.com/Branding/72/Wal-Marts-brand-positioning.html http://www.donaldcooper.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=166:artworldslargestbizchanges&catid=28:creating-delivering-and-communicating-compelling-customer-owning-value&Itemid=58