The bad state of operation of Blackberry became a well-known thing. The products of Android and IOS system lead to the failure of Blackberry. The appearance of Blackberry 10 still not redeems the situation of Blackberry.

Just like Rio mentioned in her blog, Blackberry missed the best time to enter in touch-screening market and did not make innovation as soon as possible. Nowadays, time changes at every moment, lots of substitutes will appear. Some of these substitutes have advantage of low price; some of these substitutes have more functions, Blackberry becomes less and less competitive. Although Blackberry made innovations in it new product Blackberry 10, it lost its point of difference. At first, Blackberry was famous for its safety and privacy, but now it updated BBM for Android and IOS, it was not as safe as before.

The crisis of Blackberry is not easy to overcome although they cost a lot to invent new application program. If the shortage of application programs of Blackberry is not solved, the market shares will keep decreasing.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/rioxinranli/2013/10/08/blackberrys-new-smartphone/

http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report-blackberry-updates-bbm-for-android-and-iphone-1920030

Tina’s blog on whether Marijuana should be legalization attracts my attention. In traditional thinking, Marijuana is definitely an evil thing. But actually it can create big profit for countries. In fact, Marijuana can also help to prevent diseases, such as cancer, analgesia.

However, I still think it is not ethical to sell or produce Marijuana. There are too many examples about people who are addicted into drugs and finally their families were broken. If Marijuana is legalized, the country can earn large profit in a short time, but what will happen after a long time? More and more residents in the country become addicted into drugs, they will not work, and the country’s economy will collapse.

Furthermore, if there are enough laws to regulate the amount of Marijuana plant, the country can take the risk to legalize the Marijuana.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/tinazhang/2013/09/11/is-legalizing-of-marijuana-ethical/

Nov 11 in China means Single’s day because it is the only day in a year that have four 1s(1111). Now this day is more and more popular among all the generations. Tianmao which is the biggest online shopping website caught the opportunity, applied innovation and then introduced double 11 sales activity in 2011.

This activity helped Tianmao reached the summit of e-commerce. Compared to the data in 2012, the sales almost tripled which arrived $3.1 billion in 2013. This figure is really amazing as it was the figure for only one day.

My analysis shows the success of Tianmao has three main factors. Firstly, it makes large invisible investment (advertisement). You can see Tianmao’s Double 11 advertisements everywhere on the Internet a month before Nov 11. Secondly, it builds great business ethics successfully. For example, consumers have the right to return goods if they are not satisfied with it; before buying a good, they can communicate with the shopkeeper online to know more about the good’s size and so on. Thirdly, it contains a lot of brand names and the managers use their resources appropriately. On Nov 11, all the brand names will have 50% discount and this really stimulates and attracts a large number of consumers. Meanwhile, the IT department of Tianmao also suffers from stress although they have doubled it website capacity.

I believe e-commerce will become mainstream way of shopping for its convenience and high cost performance.

http://en.twwtn.com/Bignews/?ID=49751

Organizational culture is important in sustainable development of a company. According to the lecture about organizational culture, I conclude that strong culture creates strong brand name.

An organizational culture consists of shared values, corporate mission, typical organizational behavior, fundamental assumptions and so on. Through an organization’s logo, belief, physical surroundings we can read their culture.

Why is culture important to an organizational? For example, Southwest Airline that is the only major airline in US and the organization has good reputation among their employees. According to their former CEO said, we can find their employees all have a positive attitude and the manager is happy to see their employees make innovation, for example, use a style of pop music to introduce and give instructions to their guests in their flights. It is easy to affect passengers’ mood and can also create a good mood for employees. Thus, employees can provide higher services and smiles more to their passengers.

When employees can work in comfortable environment, they will be more productive and efficient. When employees are happy during their work time, they will love their job and then their organization, they will mix their personal willingness with organization’s goals. Therefore, that’s why strong organizational culture can hold employees together.

http://www.brandtoolbox.com/blog/strong-cultures-create-strong-brands/

Amazon as a big online shopping, it is an example that utilizes information technology. Amazon collects data about the things you are searching for or have searched before, so that they can make recommendations to you from their database and provide the good you have looked at. It is a way to use MIS to target customers, make them feel it is convenient to shop in Amazon.

Recently, Amazon changed their business model again; they introduced Sunday Package deliveries in several large cities. I believe the new idea will attract consumers to buy things because of the fast delivery, but just like the blog said, the cost for Amazon to build warehouses is also large. However, if we are always reluctant to make changes or apply innovations, how can we make progress? Furthermore, time is elapsing, things on the world are changing at every moment, if you do not make change, you will be outdated and finally become a loser.

Thus, by changing their business model, Amazon’s sales will increase although their cost of building warehouses will increase too. However, if we look in the future, the change will be a wise decision.

http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/11/amazon-constantly-audits-its-business-model/

“Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is defined as the voluntary activities undertaken by a company to operate in an economic, social and environmentally sustainable manner.” Each company should fulfill social responsibility whether the company makes profit or not. The main performances for default of social responsibility are making pollution, unfair competition, tax evasion, make false advertisement and so on.

Nowadays, big companies always do a good job on fulfilling social responsibility. They really set as good examples for small business. For instance, Walmart does great on the sustainability. They try to supply 100% renewable energy and create no waste for years. Also they do well in philanthropy and create lots of job opportunities for Canadians.

Social responsibility is not easy to fulfill, it will be a long process to do it well. Maybe the cost of doing these things is high, however, if one day you do it, it will create a positive image and good reputation for your company. Thus, when you are fulfilling social responsibility, you are gaining invisible wealth meanwhile.

http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/topics-domaines/other-autre/csr-rse.aspx?lang=eng

http://www.walmartcsr.ca

On Oct 1^st, the American government announced the intention to shut down. The shutdown of the American government is result of no budget deal reached in Congress. In Congress, the House Republicans did not allow the new budget plan to pass except for the Democrats who agreed to delay the Affordable Care Act. The shutdown of government will continue if the impasse isn’t solved.

The direct effects of the government shutdown are closures of national parks and some agencies and the furlough of over 800,000 federal workers. The closure of national parks leads to dissatisfaction among tourists. However, social security is still running. Therefore, in general, the impact on the common American’s life will not be that serious.

According to past data, the shutdown of government in 1996 generated a 14 billion dollar economic loss for America. If this impasse continues until Oct 17, America will reach the upper limit of the debt ceiling, and it will have a serious impact for the American economy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304373104579107480729687014.html?mod=trending_now_1#articleTabs%3Darticle

When a dramatic growth happened in energy drinks in recent years, relaxation drinks began to rise silently at the same time. This article talks about the positive and negative effects of relaxation drinks.

Compared to Red Bull and Monster, strong brand names for energy drinks, Just Chill, Neuro Bliss and some other brand names for relaxation drinks are weaker. But the good taste of the relaxation drinks will be a powerful advantage.

In the present society, both students and employees have greater and greater pressure; some of them prefer to have a relaxation drink to relax in the afternoon. Also, some insomniacs believe relaxation drinks have less influence on body health than hypnotics. Thus, the market for relaxation drinks is huge and customer demand is unfulfilled.

However, relaxation drinks are not as healthy as they actually look. The ingredients such as melatonin, valerian root and L-theanine look safe to most people but no one knows what will happen if they are mixed with a medicine. There are safety concerns.

According to my analysis, relaxation drinks have market opportunities because the loosening legalization of the ingredients, an unsatisfied market and special consumer groups. However the safety concern will be a big weakness for the development of relaxation drinks.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304373104579109283589583074.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

This article talks about how Chinese people regard the inheritance tax. On Sept 27, a Chinese newspaper reported that there would be an important meeting about whether to levy an inheritance tax in November. This news led to a heated discussion in China. According to a vote in Sina Weibo, 69.1 per cent of the people are opposing, 26.9 per cent agree and 4 per cent are neutral. On the basis of this data, it is obvious to conclude that most people in China are against this idea.

Personally, levying an inheritance tax will have a positive effect. Firstly, the distance between the rich and the poor will be shorter. The inheritance tax is the money that is taken from the rich and used to help the poor. This will also be a test for the ethics of rich Chinese people. Secondly, people will have the motivation to buy things because they can pay less tax afterwards. Thirdly, it will be a good chance for the Chinese to change their attitudes toward money. From ancient times, the Chinese people believe money or other assets should all be given to the next generation, and only a small number of people are willing to donate money to improve social welfare. The inheritance tax is a way to promote the assumption of social responsibility.

In general, levying an inheritance tax is beneficial for most people if the government can use the inheritance tax in the right way.

 http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/10/03/talk-of-inheritance-tax-sparks-debate-in-china/

On the Sept 8^th in 2008, the Ministry of Public Health of China announced that a chemical material contaminated Sanlu milk powder. Sanlu was a leading company in China and they had a better reputation among the trade at that time. Therefore the number of babies who suffered from kidney stones and renal failure were over 1200 and there were even two babies died. After this incident, China started a large research on their food safety and the result was not optimistic.

In my opinion, when people were motivated by big profit, they become blind. They started to have a fluke mind, so they are brave to do illegal things. But actually they paid more for their action, for example, they lost their reputation and consumers’ trust, they lost even more money. All these advantages that they had before become their weaknesses. For those kinds of people, they have no sense of business ethics when they face huge profit. And the result of losing business ethics is to become a secondary company from a leading company or even the company will go bankrupt like Sanlu Company.

In conclusion, business ethics is a basic condition for a successful company, cause it can help a company to earn reputation and attract more supporters. It can also help the company to build a better internal environment.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2008/0917/p01s03-woap.html