Through my research, Walmart’s success in china mainly due to the takeover action of local (Chinese) supermarket called “Trust mart”. This takeover costs Walmart 1 billion dollars but the benefits in long-run will be definitely over that.

Initially in Chinese supermarket industry, Carrefour occupy the biggest market share, followed by Tesco , Trust mart, etc. It is very hard for the new producer to join the market since the market is more or less already saturated. The scarce land resources make it is the company like Walmart to construct a new mall in downtown of megacity like GUANGZHOU.

However, Walmart take advantage of its own huge capital flow and takeover the second largest supermarket franchise in China directly, combing with a few Walmart opened before this takeover, it becomes the largest supermarket franchise in China and take numerous advantages. For instance, the market in central GUANGZHOU named “Trust mart” before now named Walmart.

The next step is easy for Walmart, just do what they do before in Western country. Economics of scale makes the price lower and indeed much more competitive, the mature management team organizes all stuff in order. The variable cost for Walmart is lowest so its price is most competitive in the market. For the huge sunk cost, as long as Walmart take advantage of variable cost, as the time goes, it must result in multiple returns in near future.

Reference：

Zhang, Yuanfeng. “Wal-Mart’s success in China.”yuanfeng zhang’s blog. N.p., 8 Oct 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.

First and foremost, it is reasonable for micro-condo to exist in market since it is market itself which creates it. Toronto is a cosmopolitan city like NYC and Tokyo, so the micro-condo will success and that is what some customers really want.

The existence of micro-condo proves that the demand for housing is essentially the demand for function of housing but not the space for housing. People’s satisfaction will not be affected much if they just have smaller space to live but enjoy similar facilities. We can even conclude that the utility per dollar people spend is higher for micro-condo as they pay less to it.

The author mentioned the problem of opportunity cost while it is hard to quantify it indeed. Each individual has own evaluation of this trade-off.

On the other hand, we should know that the market segment for micro-condo is not as large as traditional housing. It will raise problems as housing is a type of goods that we cannot re-produce it when we find there is excess supply or any other problem exists. Consequently, the market research for the demand and type of demand is paramount is this case.

Reference:

Sara, Da. “The Market will Eventually Tell….” Jia Sheng (Sara) Da’s Blog. N.p., 6 Oct 2013. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.

The attachment blogs show why people need a budget and how people can form a budget by software in a more efficient way.

People need budget not because of you need a perfect balance of payment but you need to be in charge. “ In charge” in someway means you need to be in control of how you pay your bill. The balance between long-term and short-term goal is what budget do. Retrospect to what we have study in Economics, when we consider a consumption decision, it is a capital good or not is significant.

That is what the software can help us, it can distinguish the type of consumption you do today and analyze the expected return of future (if it has). Help you to make decision in more technical way. Also, the software can analyze if your consumption is “healthy” and warn you. If you weight more in consume food than you expect but you total spending is in budget constrain, people turns to ignore those difference, however, it may put potential threat in your future budget.

In my point of view, an organized budget not only necessary means you have a excellent financial plan but also you get an predicted overview of how your daily life goes. Every aspect of your life will be changed subsequently cause you are an more self-consistent person.

Reference:

Miller, Amy. “Staying on budget might be easier than you think.” Amy Miller. Excel Blog, 31 Mar 2011. Web. 9 Nov. 2013.

After considering components of financial market and examples of how it finances capital for company (IPO). It is important for us to have a understanding of the characteristic of the financial market, including participants.

Financial market as a whole is the largest and most efficient market in the world, it breaks the limitation of space and time (of transaction) to make a deal. It provides chance to everyone to join the transaction, especially in first and second market. It must be noted that there is no difference between each force in the market qualitatively, the only difference is how strong the force you held, or in other words, the quantitative difference. This feature makes financial market offers everyone chance but simultaneously everyone risk, proportional to how much you held now. It seems the fairest market in the world.

However, otherwise, the big agency like banks and mutual funds can take advantage over the amount of capital they own by manipulating the market price in all sub-markets, making profit out of nothing, like what George Soros do in 1992 and 1997.

Overall, as we comprehend the essence of financial market is the counterbalance of confidence of investor in money term, we should rationally make our decision in financial market.

Reference:

Beattie, Andrew . “How did George Soros “break the Bank of England”?.” Investopedia. n. page. Web. 3 Nov. 2013.

The great corporate culture can benefit company both internally and externally as the satisfaction of the employee and customer can both be increased.

Internally, as the employee have used to the corporate culture, they will find they can manipulate work more efficiently in company’s eyesight. If all employees do in such a way, it is like the “resonance” and the multiplier effect will show great advantage. Externally, for example, as the call center staffs understand the culture, especially as they do “narratively”, the after-sale (or pre-sale) service will be prominent.

The determinants of the evolution corporate culture are essentially people. What people can do in a company to perfect culture is differ from one to another. As a manager, a precise vision and value of company is paramount, everyone will follow it. As a employee, in a more practical way, they should combine their own personal characteristic with corporate culture

The most significant, and simultaneously, hardest part is to let customers have a positive feel of your corporate culture. My opinion is to make everything simple and find what customer really need. It is more or less the problem of reverse selection and counterbalance between “create culture” or “fitting culture”.

Reference:

Coleman , John . “Six Components of a Great Corporate Culture.” Havard Business Review. N.p., 6 May 2013. Web. 29 Oct. 2013.

In developing countries, becoming entrepreneur is a popular idea among publics. While as each individual faces different challenge when they set up their own business. The industry as a whole has its problem.

As we can see from reading material, the business owner can face problems like quality control, excess demand, etc. The essence problem is lack of knowledge of business operation. However on the other hand, they are full of enthusiasm and handle problem in their unique way showing their intelligence. For example, the under-develop of infrastructure makes the traditional marketing method ineffective in Africa so the business owners pay their attention on advertising and promoting their business and products in Facebook.

In somewhere like Asia and Africa, the market is plenty of chance and the competition is not as fierce as Europe or America. Just like every developed country also experience those era which creates huge wealth to both individuals and society retrospective to last 2 centuries.

Africa definitely will become the fastest growing economy in decades, mainly based on numerous entrepreneurs, to combine the traditional western business management knowledge with the local experience. The development of Africa even turns to have more potential than Asia because their GDP will base on domestic consumption rather than huge export gains.

Reference:

Hotten, Russell . “Africa: Where everyone wants to be an entrepreneur.” BBC News 12 Feb 2012, n. pag. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

Basic necessities like food, water, shelter and clothing are some useful materials for every human being to perform daily functions. As a producer of necessities, the chances of revenue being boosted up are relatively high due to the fact that basic necessities are very inelastic.

Likewise, Domino Pizzas in United Kingdom is doing extremely well proven by their strong growth rates. Not only their deals from walk-in customers are rising, sales completed over the Internet and mobile devices are doubling too.

Despite the good news for Domino’s, the price of the stock seems to be affected by the recent growth rate. The contemporary share price is €593.00 and it is actually considered as a relatively expensive share price. To keep the stock price low, the company announced that they intend to decrease UK store openings from 60 to 50.

Personally, this is a wise decision to be made since having the stock price to escalate following the company’s development is not very ideal. This is because to maintain such elevated rating of the stock price, it must be followed by a rapid growth of sales and profit, which might turn out to be a threat to the company.

References:

Ficenec, John. “Domino’s Pizza Now a Hold.” (2013): n.pag. Web. 7 Oct 2013. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/>.

“Domino’s Pizza Share Price (DOM).” (2013): n.pag. Web. 7 Oct 2013. <http://www.lse.co.uk/>.

Twitter, as one of the world biggest online social networking service provider, has troubles on their financial statement. It shows that twitter has made deficit on their business. They lost about $79.4 million on $317 million in sales in 2012.

As the aim of running the business, the managers decided to raise $1 billion on in its stocks market debut. Why do managers of twitter make such decision?

The twitter company is keeping growing these years, the data shows that there is over 200 million users sent over 400 millions twitters per day. The current outstanding number of users in Twitter led most of the businesses advertised their products on the website which then drives up Twitter’s annual revenue. However, some experts point out that twitter shouldn’t rely on selling advertisements. As the growing rate of increasing users is declined, twitter must carry out other strategies for earning profits.

Additionally, Facebook as a competitor to Twitter, threats the growth of Twitter. According to the data on 2011, Facebook actually earned more profits than Twitter. Since more and more people using Twitter and Facebook on electric devices, Twitter should seemed this as an opportunity to compete with Facebook.

Reference:

“Twitter wants to raise $1bn in its stock market debut.”BBC NEWS Business (2013): n.pag. BBC. Web. 6 Oct 2013.

“Twitter not yet profitable.” BBC NEWS Business (2013): n.pag. BBC. Web. 6 Oct 2013.

“More Twitter ads are coming soon.” BBC NEWS Business(2013): n.pag. BBC. Web. 2 Oct 2013.

Samsung Electronics had made a forecast report on their earnings for July to September quarter. Unlike the forecasts made by analysts, Samsung is actually capable to make a huge success by having a 25% jump in operating profit comparatively to the previous year.

Before the publishing by the financial forecast, many analysts were expecting a slow growing rate on Samsung’s profit, since they assumed Samsung might be affected by other cheap mobile phone makers. However, Samsung did a phenomenal job due to their successful brand positioning.

Not like Apple who provided expensive iPhones only, Samsung sold both high-cost and low-cost smartphones, that strategy allows Samsung to become the leader of the world phone market. In order to compete with Apple’s iPhone in the range of high-costing phones, Samsung introduced Galaxy S4. Otherwise, Samsung did a better job in low-cost smart market. The company recognized the opportunity of growing emerging market as the key of success; hence, they introduced the low-cost smartphones to focus the emerging market in India and China. Samsung would earn huge advantage and tended to get to consumers’ mind easily, since they was the first company who introduced low-cost phones to these countries. The success of phone selling in China and India contributed a lot on Samsung’s financial report for June to September quarter.

References:

“Samsung forecasts record quarterly profit .” BBS NEWS Business (2013): n.pag. BBC. Web. 25 Sep 2013.

Recently, I have watched a movie called “inside job” which describes how investment bank cheat the buyer of the financial derivatives during the financial crisis of 2008. It is not a traditional type of cheat, which concerns the non-conforming goods. It is more about the moral obligation in essence.

The financial institution such as Lehman brother and Goldman sachs sells numerous highly risky CDO mainly consist of bad credit house loan to buyers. The problem is those firms claim that those CDO is rated highest, which means those assets are safe and definitely profitable. When those derivatives’ market collapse, the innocent buyers suffer from it and the banker gains. The banker can even make more profit from the CDS that they cooperate with the insurance company.

The shocking fact is that those bankers are not being arrested, instead, they have better works. The public blames their action and can do nothing at all. This is mainly due to the loopholes of the laws. My opinion is we can not always look for the law to limit the action of people, the law can not be perfect at any time. The law is designed by human beings , so the human beings can definitely find the weakness of it. The core problem we should consider is everyone in those society must have social obligation. we can not do immoral things to cheat others.

Reference:

Charles, Ferguson, dir. Inside Job . Dir. Marrs Audrey. Sony Pictures Classics, 2010. Film. 16 Sept 2013.