Monthly Archives: November 2014

With the introduction of the MDGs( Millennium development Goals), the United Nations has set forth goals which will serve in solving a lot of global issues. However, one thing to realize is that this project/movement is a very long and arduous process. Global Poverty, the very thing the UN is trying to fix is still a grim reality even after so many years of effort and work. With so many issue to focus on and challenges ahead, even the Un needs all the help it can get. The UN is a very large focused organization with big goals and focuses on big issues. But as with so many other realities, the small details are what make or break these big issues. This is where projects such as the ARC initiative come in. They handle the small issues and provide people in poverty with the basics they need to get their ideas started and give them the tools to make their entrepreneurship goals a reality. These people, in term can then go on to help their fellow people by creating job opportunities and passing the knowledge they learned from ARC. In a way, the way this works is that the UN will work from the external aspect by providing funds and aid to people whereas ARC will help them internally by giving them the knowledge and resources to stand on their own feet and manage their own businesses. This way, the UN will focus on the larger scope of their plans and allocate funds efficiently to areas where they are needed and projects such as ARC will manage the smaller scope work and in the end, both will end up creating better lives for the underprivileged.

Brand expansion does not always yield positive results. One example of such a case is this article where Papa John’s, a well known and established American Restaurant company focused on Pizza , faced large amounts of revenue loss through expanding in China. Though the restaurant giant is making an honest profit of 7.7 percent this year in America, It is facing issue in the China market. This market is also the only one abroad where Papa John’s owns its own stores. This decision was made under the objective to better understand and cater to the Asian market. Though the extent to which this decision backfired on the Papa John’s franchise is worthy of notice. The CFO stated that the profits are way behind the projected for 2014, and that coupled with the large capital investment to acquire the Beijing stores, has created pressure on the business to find a profit producing solution fast. What’s interesting about this article is that even for a business as large as Papa John’s, it is possible to run into such problems as demand and revenue projection. The financial and income statements it made for profit predictions based on this decision were proved useless in the face of this issue. In my observation, this is an issue where the marketing and finance departments were not on the same page as the demand of the product itself in another country was not taken into consideration when calculating the expected revenue. The Papa John’s executives are on their way to Beijing to solve this issue, which may also be influenced by the expired meat scandal which occurred over the summer. This just goes to show that many industries link back to each other in terms of resources and these decisions are very complex with so many variables to be taken into account, and even after making these decisions, the result is never completely as anticipated.

Source:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-07/how-papa-john-s-turned-beijing-into-a-money-pit#r=lr-sr

Differentiation strategy and marketing strategies are a central theme in this article as we look at the changing trends in the PC and Microsoft market. As the author has mentioned, PC sales, which were under decline for a long time started to get steady in 2014. Considering that this was “good news”, we can comprehend how dire the situation is in the market. The new windows 10(after windows 8), so aptly named as a marketing strategy because consumers are found to prefer round numbers over odd numbers, is hyped to help the PC industry get back in demand. With different competitors competing to sell their product, Apply is the one out of the others whose differentiation strategy has allowed it to benefit, other than that HP is trying to differentiate by separating its PC and printer business into separate companies. Lenovo has also gained the number one position over HP in the last few years. Windows 8, which alienated consumers by introducing a design they were unfamiliar with was a lesson for Microsoft, and it is a lesson they intend to learn from. I was interested in how windows will gain back the potential consumer base it lost due to changing its product drastically. As it has been told in the article, windows will incorporate the original look by bringing back features such as the start bar as well as focus less on the box interface. Market research and operation decisions have helped Microsoft to realize the errors in their design and the consumer needs. The result was the announcement of features which will allow company owners to keep better control over employee work, a windows compatible with technology ranging from watches to PC,s and laptops. As marketing windows has even released test windows 10 which people can use and provide feedback on how they feel. This is an interesting marketing move which I think will earn more customer bases and loyalties as they will feel more involved in the final product design. In conclusion, I am interested by the marketing and differentiation strategies these companies are trying to employ to gain market share and compete, as well as the relationship between the companies themselves such as Microsoft and all other PC manufacturers. I will be keeping a close watch on the development of Windows 10 and how it stirs p the PC market, for better or for worse depends on how well they utilize the market research and consumer feedback they have at their disposal.

Source:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-06/2015-outlook-pc-makers-hope-windows-10-can-help-sales-grow-again#r=rss

Blackberry made a large impact on the mobile market in the early years of its growth. It has created a large variety of phones ranging from QWERTY keypad ones to smartphones and tablets. The issue was that recently with the increased demand of Apple, Samsung and other known brand phones, blackberry lost a large amount of market share and could not keep up with the demand of other brand phones since around 2009. This article shows how the new CEO John Chen, after coming into the position has worked to solve this issue and help blackberry make a recovery from a failed buyout in the market. Recently the Ontario teachers’ pension bought almost 7.8 million shares of BlackBerry Ltd. (BB) in the third quarter, giving Chen’s strategy a vote of confidence. To start making profit from next year Chen has employed a range of strategies ranging from outsourcing manufacturing to selling real estate and focusing on core business customers. All these strategies have proved successful and gained investor confidence as demonstrated by the buying of shares, and have put Chen on the path to recover blackberry from a failed buyout to having it competing with the Nasdaq Composite Index this year for the first time since 2009 and possibly even beating it. I found this article encouraging in how it shows that different type of leadership and strategies can help a business potentially prosper in some cases, or fail in others. These decisions of business strategy are very crucial and operational management is key to a business’s chances of success. Blackberry, through this come back has shown its potential for market strength and if it keeps attracting investors and stock investments at this rate, I see potential in the business’s success in the future if Chens projected profits for next year are realized.

Blackberry CEO John Chen standing in front of the company Logo.

Source:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-07/blackberry-gets-vote-of-confidence-from-ontario-teachers.html

This blog post caught my attention because it demonstrated the scale of impact that social media has on a brands image and marketing. Debenhams, a British multinational retailing giant which was doing very well in the market till now has suddenly been faced with a lot of negative views and loss of revenue due to a single facebook post. In today’s social media reliant market, businesses are largely affected by what goes on online. In this case, Mr. Aires Loutsaris, the head of SEO has evaluated Debenhams situation and predicted a loss of millions for the retail giant as a result of negative facebook marketing. The issue in question was the tragic death of a shopper in his 40s due to falling from the 3rd floor of the Oxford Street Debenhams store, the next day after the incident, Debenhams posted a picture of a celebrity visiting that same store as marketing, which was interpreted as “inappropriate” and represented disregard for the tragic event that occurred at the same location. Debenhams was then bombarded with negative reviews and customer feedback. “Both its reputation and bank account has taken a huge blow” in the words of Mr. Aires himself. Even financial analysts evaluated that at the rate this negative view is going, the business could be looking at millions in lost revenue. I am interested in this phenomenon and how it managed to affect a retail giant which was well established and had a large amount of brand loyalty at its disposal, so negatively. And I am even more interested in how it plans to counter this problem. Will it simply stop posting any advertisements for a while, or face the issue head on and apologize publicly. Mr. Aires is convinced that Debenhams needs to make a move fast unless it wants to face a large loss soon.

Source:

• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141108010152-83517803-how-debenhams-will-lose-millions-from-one-facebook-post?trk=tod-posts-post1-psum

Organizational Culture is a unique concept which we were introduced to in Comm101 this last week. I remember the article we had to read regarding Zappos shoes, an online show selling business. That article intrigues me with how it described how much importance is needed to be given to a consumer. Corporate Culture is, to my understanding, the behavior and values of an organization in treating customers, employees and the community as a whole. Zappos has very distinct culture where they allow unlimited minutes of calls between customers and sales representatives to establish good customer relations, the CEO of the company works amongst his fellow employees without an office; customers get memberships for free, the employees are picked through a tedious process which relies on their personalities and people skills as well as dedication to work etc. All these factors have shown their effectiveness in Zappos huge success and profits till now. In an interview with the CEO Tony Hsieh, he explained that the main dynamic behind Zappos organizational culture were its 10 core values, which encompassed the behavior of all its employees. These values, though simple enough, play a huge part in the business giant’s success. I found this very interesting because organizational behavior was not something I thought was very important first, but after reading this article and seeing its benefits, I must admit that it seems like a very unique concept and needs to be strongly implemented in many other businesses to create value for both employees and customers as a whole.

Sources:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/14/happy-feet

http://about.zappos.com/our-unique-culture/zappos-core-values

In Ayesha’s Blog , she addresses a key factor which is proving to be a threat to a lot of businesses. This factor is eCommerce, the availability of ordering items and even food online from the comfort of one’s own home. As we have learned that consumers prefer convenient access to a product above other things, online shopping is exactly that. She has taken the example of Staples closing down 15 of its stores as a testament to this threat. I like how Ayesha has emphasized that customer relations play an important role in a business and how this has attributed to the decision to close the staple stores. Good Customer relations ensure that the business is up to date about consumer preferences and also can go a long way towards preventing people from turning to online shopping. One smart strategy that staples has employed in the tertiary sector in response to this threat is to learn from this growing popularity and incorporate it into their business by introducing on site pick up at the stores of online orders. This is a clever move which ensures there is as less opportunity cost to online orders as possible by merging that idea into the business instead of competing with it. I am looking forward to how other businesses will face this threat in the near future as well as the potential growth of the eCommerce industry.

Source:

Staples, Online Shopping