Cruise ship voyages, who has never been on a cruise ship voyage? Among the friends around me, majority of them have been on a cruise. Usually vacations are expensive and highly sought after, but going on vacation on a cruise seems to be the norm now. Why is that? It is because the prices of these cruise vacation packages always seem to be on “promotion” which makes them so affordable for an average income family to go on vacation. Cruises are rather luxurious, what makes them so affordable? It is because the supply and demand shifts rather drastically from the date of the cruise being schedules to right before departure.

Similar to the varying and fluctuating prices of plane tickets, cruise tickets work approximately the same way-except that it becomes less and less expensive as it gets closer and closer to departure date. Why are companies in such a rush to fill up these vacancies? Because “even if discounting leads to a less-profitable customer, it’s still a customer as opposed to an empty room” and a whether or not a cruise is full or not, it still costs the same for the company to run that voyage.

Now the question that I propose is why does supply and demand for cruises not go back to the market equilibrium? Companies always hope for “a cruise season without a disaster,” but how come this happens season after season? I think that it might be because the companies forecasts are constantly too high. In my opinion, this error results from the mistakes of accounting(management accounting), marketing(market research for future supply and demand) and operations(inaccurate forecasts). With the increase in efficiency and affordability of alternative travel methods and vacation opportunities, perhaps the demand for the cruise industry is on a decline, but I am waiting for the one season when cruise companies do not encounter a “disaster”.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-24/a-supposedly-cheap-thing-the-cruise-industry-never-wants-to-do-again

In the recent reading for class 15 on CSR and Sustainability , I red “Creating Shared Value” by Michael E Porter and Mark R Kramer published in Harvard Business Review and the contents sparked me to make a connection.

If you approach an ordinary student who is not in the faculty of business and ask them, “what do you think business is all about”, most students will reply with key words such as competition, money, or even corruption. In many cases, the negative images of business are somewhat true. Making profit and money are the classic orientations of businesses; on top of that, yes, corruption does happen in companies- perhaps more often than you may think in a variety of ways, but with the new movement towards creating a shared value, I see more to just reach a static goal like gaining market share.

Even after just reading the first two pages of the article, I can already envision the future

From taking note of recent company development and and successful company patterns, I can predict that future companies are going to shift their focus on creating and promoting shared value as compared to simple increasing profit through conventional ways. Popular examples of companies that have ventured towards the unpaved path towards promoting shared values are “GE, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Unilever and Walmart”. I am not saying that these companies have reached the stage of perfection, because no company ever will, but they are moving a step towards the right direction in terms of social responsibility. To shift a company’s focus from simple producing profitable numbers to creating values is a risk and I applaud successful companies. Now I am just excited to find out which is the next company to join this list!movements of companies. I remember a talk that I saw on the internet, it explained why people buy why a company does what it does and not what it sells. Take Apple for example, Apple sells its products as a sign of innovation, to display improvement of technology and for the convenience of the consumers. If Apple just decided to sell any brand-less MP3 player, computers or even cellular devices, then people would not line to for hours to buy their products. Their products aims to make life more convenient and enjoyable, that is also the exact reason why it is such a popular brand amongst consumers.

An example I found from my classmate’s blog on LUSH also explains the influence and growing attention on CSR in modern organizations.

My previous posts were mostly on marketing, but this recent article that I came across reminds me once again how important human resources management is as well.

The social science of the work place is very interesting in my opinion, and often times little changes or habits that we have may dictate our behavior, group dynamics, norms, roles and much more. Such as one issue that is bought up in this article that many people can

probably coincide with, is that who we sit with in our workplace effects our work behavior.

This article did not specifically bring up the word “leadership, influence or motivation”, but those key words are what the author is centering the article about. The very first class that I remember from high school was Social Studies 8. My teacher is an extremely approachable teacher and well spoken of. One of the very first things that I learned from his class was that if “people around you are successful, then you will become successful too”.

In a more pessimistic point of view, as quoted from my friend in COMM 101 Section 105, “it is a dog eat dog world”. In other words, people are greedy and selfish. At the end of the day, we only do things that serve their best interest because everyone else around us are our competitors, or enemies for a more violent tone. As explained in economics, we all have unlimited wants but limited resources, thus we have scarcity. So if one was to analyze this article with an economic perspective. This article would be completely false and something that we should avoid rather than approach. If we had a competitive advantage in being the leader, why would we want to recruit other leaders onto our team to compete with us?

Ironically, society works exactly opposite to what logic and common sense tells us. If we

sit with more enthusiastic and engaging people, then we will indeed be more efficient at our job and therefore bring in more profit. In essence, if we surround ourselves with successful people, we become successful as well.

Especially as a business student, as much as I do not wish to admit, my colleagues now, might be my competitor one day. I initially found it difficult to fully understand, acknowledge and execute what my grade 8 teacher once said, but now I am beginning to understand it. It might be hard to take the first step to sharing valuable information, but after the first step, the rest just follows in sequence.

Personally, I find HR to be a very interesting field of study, so hopefully this blog contains something that you can take away from. Those who ask for referent power will not get any because only those who deserve it will have that power.

Here is an example of a classmate on her analysis on the organizational change in HP. Often times human resource problems are non eminent and takes more than just plan research to figure out the problem and Yiyin here, dug deeper into the story.

Boeing, along with Airbus, are the two biggest competitors in the airliner market and each company produces a variety of planes aiming to accomplish different missions. The most recent marketing technique under debate is Boeing buying back its older versions of the 747 in order to increase sales of the new version- 747-800s.

If I was to make a SWOT analysis for the new promotion of the 747-800s, it would be as follows:

• Strengths: long range, capacity, marketing strategy of buying back older 747s
• Weaknesses: competition can accomplish the same mission, high maintenence costs, less fuel efficient
• Opportunities: international airlines, airline companies who currently own the older 747s, increasing demand for long distance travels
• Threats: competition, increase in fuel prices, increase interest in transporting cargo by rail or bellies of passenger planes

Boeing’s 747 originally aimed for capacity and long range hauls, but with the increase of competition in the market, including Airbus 340-500/600s and Boeing’s own 777 ERs(extended range), many analyses predict low sales for the 747-800. Boeing’s 747’s point of difference before was its ability for long distance travels, but not that point of difference has now become a point of parity among its panel of competitors that entered that market since 1969.

Despite senior aerospace analysis George Ferguson’s negative thoughts on the new 747-800’s, the numbers are showing otherwise. Boeing has been producing 747s since the 1969 and 737s since 1966. I find it interesting how the world’s demands and technology has changed so much, but the airliner industry is still slowly catching up with the increase in demand. Although I predict that the aviation industry will take great advances in the following 50 years, I am more excited to see what future 747 and 737s have in store for the world that makes them such a strong competitor in the market.

Panoramial view from YVR Control Tower of the international and domestic bays taken personally by myself.

The future for Canada’s economy is taking a more and more interesting turn. In relation to my last post about the declination of Canadian economists’ interest in the Canadian economy, the government is also taking steps to become more globalized. What I find even more ironic is that Canada’s global exports fell from 4.5% in 2000 to its current 2.5% despite so much Canadian attention on the international market.

However, Ottawa seems extremely determined that international trade is the way to boost the Canadian economy and I personally agree with this international movement. Not only is Harper visiting Malaysia to “lay the ground work for future trade agreements”, the Canadian airspace is also taking a step towards globalization. Similar to the idea of the airspace becoming increasing congested due to population growth and increase in international trades from my previous blog, our local airport here, YVR International is also reflecting that evolution. With new agreements between Air Canada and Air China and the opening of Canadian flights into Haneda International in Japan, I find this extremely exciting as the world becomes more and more interconnected.

YVR still has potential for growth and I predict that this extra boost in on the business side of aviation is just the start of technological advancement and increase in travel efficiency. Canada’s economy, specifically the aviation field is getting increasingly interesting as the world gets more and more interconnect. I cannot wait to see what new trades and agreements YVR has in store for the world!