As Sony recently announced that they would soon launch the brand gaming console, the PlayStation 4, game maniacs are lining up to get their first hand on product. Pre-ordering that would probably take around 2 weeks to ship after the product will be announced, seems to not be quick enough for some people. Impatient consumer would be wiling to spend even twice as much just to get the exact same product sooner.

This behavior, is seen to some as opportunities for some people and companies. Some individuals are selling the launch version of the PlayStation 4 for as high as $611 on eBay, which is really high compared to its msrp of $399 available through Sony website and Amazon. Apple is one company that uses this to gain more profit, by selling their products at more expensive prices during its launch and lower the price as the product markets. Beats, Blackberry, and other electronic selling companies are also good examples of how companies take advantage on people’s impatience and excitement to new innovations. No matter how much more money they pay, and how long the line-up is, consumers are always excited and impatient to get the newly launched products.

Embedded Blog: http://consumerist.com/2013/11/15/yeah-people-are-doing-that-thing-where-they-pay-too-much-for-new-gaming-consoles-on-ebay/

With the issues of global warming rises, the awareness of being Eco-Friendly doesn’t only hit people, profit maximizing companies are also taking its own individual steps to preserve the earth. Not only it is beneficial to the earth that we and these companies operate in, it also helps the companies in a lot of ways which provides another reason why some companies chose to be eco friendly.

One, is that the practice of reducing, reusing, and recycling proofs to be a way for companies to lower costs, which is the first key to maximize profits. Promoting an environmentally friendly business or methods can also set a unique value proposition, setting the business apart from other competitors and attract new customers, those who especially are nature conscious. Based on Keenan Manhas‘s blogpost, one company that takes this approach is IKEA Canada. The company has decided to purchase a 20 turbine wind farm site in Alberta, projected to be done in 2014 and costing $90million. I personally agree to Keenan’s comment that it is a fantastic idea, not only it allows IKEA to be self energy sufficient, it also creates the image of a environmentally responsible company.

Embedded Blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/keenanmanhas/2013/11/15/ikea-canada-buys-wind-turbine-farm-in-alberta/

Source: http://www.business.qld.gov.au/business/running/environment/environment-your-business/benefits-environmentally-friendly

With just being two years olds, Snapchat’s growth in popularity has been unbelievable. It is considered by a lot of people in recent times to have overcome the popularity of Facebook, and as the largest social media site, Facebook sees Snapchat as a big competitor, and Buyout seems to be the way for Facebook to eliminate this new entrants and become more powerful. Being valued at almost $4 billion, Snapchat turned down the buyout offer from Facebook, which in my opinion is a smart decision.

Snapchat officially joins the club of tech start-ups being valued for billions of dollars in the market. Looking up to how Groupon, Facebook, and Twitter gained success, it is very reasonable and strategic for the company to turn down the offer and grow their business originally even though it currently holds no business model and sales. This is a strong argument to contradict Eugene Worifah‘s comment of “I fear Snapchat may regret not taking the multi-billion dollar offer currently on the table from Facebook”, because even though new ideas might come out of another genius’s mind, Snapchat’s power has already put them first on consumer’s mind when it comes to photo messaging.

Embedded Blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/worifah/2013/11/18/snapchat-how-quickly-you-have-grown/

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2507136/Snapchat-turns-3-billion-Facebook-offer-hopes-receive-higher-bid.html

Long & McQuade is one of Canada’s biggest and most popular retailer of musical instruments. Since Jack Long first launched the company back in 1956, it has grown to be one of Canada’s most successful family business with 62 stores across 10 provinces and an annual revenue of $300 million.

Jack’s son, Steve Long is currently holding the throne, has recently revealed some secrets to his family company’s success.  Their business plan which only comprised of only corporately owned stores, with no franchising at all as they prefer to keep an intimate and family owned feel. Also they avoid taking business from smaller music stores but rather they take over small music where the owners cannot handle the amount of time it requires or the owners may be too old to continue their business. They avoid franchising because of their strict ties to their business model it would be ‘counter-intuitive’.  They also strive for customer loyalty and have developed an in house financing program, which allows them to be a lot more flexible with the ‘artistic type’ who may not always be on time with their credit card payments. This more classic method of doing business allows for their indisputable success.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/long-mcquade-ceo-on-family-owned-business-success/article15478894/

A business is considered micro if it employs 50 or less individuals, or one operated by a self employed person without paid help. Believe it or not, this this is the kind of business that has been playing a primary role in creating job sectors and economic growth in the province of British Columbia. According to 2013 Small Business Profile, there are approximately 385,000 micro business operations, which represents 55% of all BC private sector employees, and 26% of the province’s GDP.

This is a significant boost to the economy, as it creates employments, innovations, and stimulations to new economic activities. The goods and services that the business produce has been remarkable, resulting in the biggest service oriented GDP across Canada as well as $12.2 billion worth of merchandises shipped out locally and internationally. An interesting fact about these micro businesses, is that it is mostly comprised of older self employed individuals, and they tend to work longer hours which increases the overall average of productivity in Canada. Despite the recent economic uncertainty, the consistency of the entrepreneur in BC has been the key to the success of these micro businesses, as they have been very optimistic in their expectation for the future.

Source: http://www.abbotsfordtimes.com/small-business-is-big-in-our-province-1.684590

With winter season approaching, resorts in the west coast region of Canada and the US are putting huge investments in expanding their slope areas and facilities. Whistler- Blackcomb, the largest mountain resort in North America is spending $8 million on two of their newest and most technologically advanced lifts, the Harmony six and the Crystal Ridge Express that will transport 1600 more skiers per hour. In addition to that, the resort is also investing $3 million in a new snow making system.

Other resorts in the West Coast regions are also investing a lot of money in different ways, in effort to be the king of the region. From Schweitzer Idaho resort’s bigger terrain parks, Fernie Alpine’s  new runs, Mount Hood’s larger parking lot, and to Steven’s Pass’s new lodges, hundreds of new features to attract more people has been established. The budgets for these resorts to upgrade are massive, however it is believed that the investment are most likely going to be break even and turn into profits in a short period. The sports that these resorts target, skiing and snowboarding, are currently the fastest growing sports in North America, which is a big opportunity for this type of business.

Source: http://seattletimes.com/html/outdoors/2022252926_newski17xml.html

A company’s value proposition summarizes why consumers should buy a product or service from the company. But In order for a company to overcome the noisy competitive world market, one must  have a unique feature that differentiates it form other competitors. A unique value proposition communicates to customers the special contribution that is not featured by other company.

Unique value propositions, varies from one company to others, it mainly depends on what kind of business the company is selling. Product based companies, would look for high perceived values such as beautiful design, sophisticated technology, ease of use, and the ability to fill a need better that other competitors. Such examples can be seen with TD Bank’s coin counting feature, Jansport’s backpack lifetime warranty, BestBuy’s price match guarantee, etc. Service provider companies does it in a different way, through faster response time, higher level of expertise, and the ability to time the service offering that you have with a particular need. However, a value proposition can also be intangible. The Body Shop is one case, it gained a rapid growth from its  ethical approach, which was to distinguish themselves from other beauty products that mostly ignore ethical values.

Sources:

http://lbpost.com/business/small-business/2000002892-whip-your-business-into-shape-determine-your-unique-value-proposition-in-8-simple-questions#.UlLueGTwKYk

http://www.widerfunnel.com/value-proposition/how-to-create-an-awesome-value-proposition

Revenue streams, refers to different method a company can use to get their incomes. According to these articles, the second most used social media company, Twitter, is lacking its variant of revenue streams. Event hough Twitter’s revenue keeps going up, almost 90% of it has come from advertising. Promoted tweets, trends, and accounts has been the only way twitter is making money, which according to these articles, is a major future threat because the loss of advertising could harm the company’s business and as a whole.

Analysts think that  Twitter needs to find new streams of income, maybe through the charging of users to access the site, or maybe to look up to other company such as LinkedIn, where it generates its revenue from three streams; advertising, subscription, and recruiting tools, and Facebook, through its advertising and gaming. Twitter’s only reliability to its tweeting feature, is endangering the company itself as it relies the whole business to the content quality of its users. Diversifying revenue stream is very important for a company, because if one channel stops working, some sort of balance in where the income is coming from,  can be generated by other channels.

Sources: http://www.buzzfeed.com/peterlauria/how-twitters-business-model-is-just-like-broadcast-tv-only-w

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2013/10/04/twitter-ipo-proves-the-social-media-business-model/

It’s interesting these days that company’s ethical values has been considered one of the most important aspect of a company. Ethical behavior and corporate responsibility, doesn’t only bring up the company’s social reputation, it also gives significant financial benefits such as attracting more consumers, boosting labor satisfaction and productivity, as well as attracting more investors, keeping its share price high.

Clothing companies such as H&M, Marks & Spencer, Zara, and Topshop, have all been linked to numerous death cases due to poor working condition in their factories, by their safety and unfair wages.

Recently, a survey conducted by YouGov shows that most fashion consumers would pay more for ethical clothing production. Theoretically, companies that can emerge and brings up a sustainable and ethical concept of their production, will gain more benefit and profit as they will attract more of these ‘poverty and working conditions’ aware customers. It might be hard for clothing companies to satisfy the world fashion market that demands large volumes of quality clothing, however, human rights should never be violated no matter what the situations are.

Sources: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/06/ethical-high-street-clothes-supply-chain-bangladesh

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/09/12/london-fashion-week-ethic_n_3914479.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

For the last decade, Lance Armstrong has been the most respected and the most talked athlete in the world. Earlier this year in January, his highly-respected status suddenly plummeted as he was caught doping by the USADA. This didn’t only affect Lance himself, but also all of the organization and large companies sponsors such as such as Nike, Trek Bicycles, Oakley, etc. that were associated with him. Lance might suffered an approximately only $150million, while his sponsoring companies had to face even more complicated problems, not only these companies had to endure some financial loss, but they also need to take care of the problem and deal with the consumers. This was one of the time where business ethics had to take place in order to survive, as these  companies had to apologize to public and drop their sponsorship with Lance, to convince consumers that they do not support or even associated with any improper behavior. In my opinion, these companies have taken a great step to move forward to benefit all the stakeholders as they are maintaining their positive account. Trust and well-kept reputation will benefit the stakeholders, and satisfied stakeholders will generate good businesses.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/lancearmstrong/9626597/Drug-cheat-Lance-Armstrong-facing-financial-meltdown.html