Month: October 2012

The article in The New York Times titled, Olympus and Ex-Executives Plead Guilty in Accounting Fraud, describes the consequences companies have to face for providing false information on their financial statements. The company was charged with inflating the company’s net worth in it’s financial statements for five fiscal years. It is known as the 1.7 billion dollar accounting cover-up. The CEO took responsibility for this act of business vice , however the people who were actually responsible for it and are being chargeed with fines of up to ten million yen and sentenced to up to ten years in jail.

The overall consequences that the company now has to face implies that the the fraud relating to its income statements was not worth it in the end. Not only were the prosecuted employees fined, but the company itself was fined up to 1 million yen. Further, the CEO, who accepted responsibility for the company’s actions but actually did not play a part in the act of fraud was fired. Something we can assume that is not written in this article is also that the company’s reputation; which was exceptionally good, is now suffering. It is also assumed that shareholders in the company have decreased in number due to the realization of the company’s actual net worth.

A lesson here to be learned by all is that it is never worth it in the end to lie about the success of one’s business as it will most definitely hurt it in the future.

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Save on Meats is owned by Mark Brand, a young entrepenuer who has built a reputation for himself in Vancouver. I recently read an article on spacingvancouver.ca called Restaurants that Changed Vancouver: Save on Meats. This article focused on the positive social effects that this restaurant had brought to the Vancouver community. Author Katherine Burnett talks about how Brand employs marginalized and unskilled residents of Vancouver’s downtown east side giving them a source of income, feelings of worth in society, and an increased skills base. This article attracted my attention because I had recently learned about social entrepeneurship in my commerce class and I believe Mark Brand can be classified as a social entrepeneur.

A social entrepeneur works to drive social change and create a lasting and transformational benefit for society (Roger L. Martin and Sally Osberg, 2007). Mark Brand is working to create a lasting change in Vancouver’s community by providing jobs for the unskilled and unhireable thus taking them off the streets and giving them the opportunity to make a buck. There are many entrepeneurs in the world who have done amazing things to improve the lives of many people just like Mark and I truly hope that more and more entrepeneurs follow in their footsteps so that a better tomorrow can be achieved.

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After reading Arsh Basi‘s blog post regarding the implementation of a calorie reader on vending machines, I could not agree more with Arsh in the sense that stating calorie counts of different products will not help shape a healthier America.

When one is thirsty and is looking to quench that thirst with a cold beverage, most people would not stop to consider whether or not they are making a healthy decision, they will simply find the nearest vendor, be it a store or machine, and purchase the first tastey cool beverage they see. In this case, people would not care to see the calories displayed on the screen of the vending machine they are purchasing from, instead, they are more interested in the feeling of a cool fizzy liquid sliding down their parched throat. On a different note, I disagree with Arsh when he states that by displaying these numbers, companies are trying to promote the sale of their other products in the machine. This does not make sense to me because why would a company attempt to harm the sales of one of its products only to increase sales of another one of its products? If a company truly wanted to increase the sales of its other products, they would work harder at promoting and advertising the certain product through ways which did not harm the sales of the other existing products it owns.

In the end, a fizzy drink is satisfying and a calorie count on a vending machine would not stop someone from quenching their thirst.

After coming across Hannah Vandenberg‘s recent blog post regarding Samsung’s marketing techniques, I was immediately prompted to blog about this topic as well. I competely agree with Hannah’s stance and viewpoint on the cleverness of Samsung in it’s advertisements. With the release of it’s new Galaxy S III, Samsung saw a rough ride ahead especially with competitor Apple’s new iPhone 5 being released. While some companies would have seen this as an extreme threat, Samsung used this to it’s advantage as it began showing ads comparing the iPhone 5’s out-of-date design and features to the Galaxt S III’s futuristic and advanced technology.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJafiCKliA8

This was a very clever move for Samsung as it was not only able to flaunt it’s new features, but it was able to do so right next to it’s competitor. In showing an advertisement like this, Samsung differentiates itself from Apple’s iPhone and attracts not only new Samsung customers, but also previous Apple customers.