A popular and famous makeup guru on Youtube, Michelle Phan, was a co-founder of the company Ipsy. The company provides an interesting service and good targeted towards women and teenage girls. For ten dollars each month, Ipsy provides customers with a bag of sample sized and full sized beauty products from a variety of brands. These products have been tested and highly recommended by a team of stylists, who choose what products to include in the ‘glam bags’.

The Ipsy website is unique in that they provide video tutorials informing customers of ways to use the products in the glam bags. The website also contains quizzes that customers can take so that the team of stylists at Ipsy can recommend the right type of products for their glam bags.

I find this a very creative business idea and would definitely sign up for the glam bags if the website shipped to Canada. Unfortunately, it is currently only available for residents of the United States. With so many different brands and products in the beauty industry, it is hard to weed out the best products. Not to mention, it is disappointing to purchase an expensive full sized product, only to find out the product does absolutely nothing for you. The appeal of Ipsy is that it is inexpensive and allows customers to sample a variety of well known or new products.

The topic of social entrepreneurship really interested me when it was brought up  in class. I suppose I never fully understood the concept of it until this year. It’s amazing how people are able to create a social impact while still making profits using their business skills.

While searching online for information regarding social entrepreneurship, I came across Darell Hammond, the founder and CEO of KaBOOM! Hammond was 24 when he read an article in the Washington Post about two children that had no place to play and suffocated playing inside of a car. Inspired, Hammond then became determined to have playgrounds accessible to every child in the United States so a situation like that would never arise again.  The organization, KaBOOM!, then came to be and has built over 2000 playgrounds since it became officially founded in 1996.

This story was inspiring to me because someone at such a young age was so determined to make a positive impact on society. Hammond discovered an issue and made the effort to do something to resolve it. I really look up to those that are not only concerned with money, but with making positive returns to society as well.

I came across an article on Small Business Trends’ blog titled “How to Turn Website Visitors Into Buyers“. The blog post provided advice for online retail websites to attract customers during the busy holiday season.

A recent survey about holiday shopping trends by PriceGrabber found that 88 percent of respondents plan to research their holiday gift purchases in advance to find the best deals.

Online retailing is a growing trend. I see more and more retail stores now opening online retail websites. As an online shopper myself, I was interested in what tips the blog would give to make buyers out of visitors. There are many times I would go on a website and add plenty of items into my online shopping cart without the slightest intentions of ever actually purchasing them.

The post suggested things such as free shipping, special promotions and prevention of shopping cart abandonment. In other words, online websites should offer points of differentiation to set them aside from their competitors. Apparently, websites that offer free shipping with a minimum purchase achieve the best results.

I think that special promotions definitely entice customers to make purchases. Especially during the holiday season, when everyone is on the hunt for gifts.

How to Turn Website Visitors Into Buyers– Fred Lizza

In response to Shawn’s blog, I agree that those ads that are played before a video are rather irritating and irrelevant to the video I am watching most of the times. Not to mention, the ads are extremely repetitive for someone that is an active online video watcher. Who wants to watch a Maybelline  mascara commercial when you’re just trying to see the new trailer for a new movie that’s coming out soon?

However, I do think that Web-Video Advertising is good for companies in such a way that they can reach out to a great audience. Sites like Youtube are growing communities. It has come to a point that successful youtubers with many subscribers can earn great amounts of money through their videos. It would make sense that companies want their ads to appear on wildly popular videos. I believe web-video advertising would be more effective if the advertisement before the video was actually relevant to the type of video that follows. Wouldn’t a company want their advertisement to reach the target market of their product?

I recall a time before youtube placed advertisements before their videos. However, I do understand the rationality of web-video advertising, as inconvenient it may be to the viewer.

Today in my comm101 class, an article “How Target Figured Out a Teen Girl was Pregnant Before her Dad did” appeared in one of the lecture slides. The lecture was regarding management information systems and business technology management. Although only a brief section of the article was posted in the slides, the title of it certainly caught my attention. I found the article online to find out exactly how Target could find this sort of information, as I was rather curious.

Apparently, Target assigns an ID number to customers that are connected to them through their credit card of email address. Targets puts together histories of purchases for the ID numbers. They then compare the purchase history of women that have signed up for Target’s baby registry and watch for common purchases made by the women. Due dates within a range could even be estimated through analyzing certain products in purchase histories.

More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy.

I find it unsettling that Target uses this system to deliver coupons to the right person at the right time. I understand that technology systems can be extremely useful to companies but I find that estimating women’s due dates is taking it a bit too far.

Today’s class lecture was particularly interesting to me because it referred to the unique supply chain of Zara’s. As a fan of Zara’s, I was always baffled by how quick the merchandise in the store would be changing. I would spot an item I liked during a visit to the store and the item would be gone by the time I came back a week or so later.

Generally, most apparel retailers commit to clothing designs six months in advance. Zara, on the other hand, only require several weeks to take a design from the drawing board and bring it to stores. Forecasting plays a big role in decision making for retailers. It helps retailers decide what and how much they need to carry in their stores.

I can definitely see the big advantage Zara has with their fast supply chain management. If one design is unpopular with customers, Zara is not left with a huge amount of unsold inventory and can quickly bring new designs to stores. If an unexpected trend suddenly appears, Zara can quickly incorporate the trend into their designs and get it to stores before the trend fades out. Fortunately for Zara’s, their supply chain is difficult to copy.

Polka Dots Are In? Polka Dots It is!- Seth Stevenson

Red Lobster, a popular chain of seafood restaurants, is expanding their menu to include porkchops and chicken. They are diversifying their menu to respond to their declining sales. Starting October 15th, the new menu will be introduced, which will be including pork, chicken and more fresh fish. The majority of the new items on the menu will be priced at $15 and under.

The chain’s parent company, Darden Restaurants Inc, have decided to rebrand Red Lobster. Not only are the menus changing, the restaurants are being remodeled as well.

How will the public respond to the ‘new’ Red Lobster? The restaurant chain has always been known for serving affordable and delicious seafood. It’s point of differentiation that set it aside from other seafood restaurants was its affordability of good quality seafood.

Credited with bringing the prestige of expensive seafood dishes to everyday people, Red Lobster realizes that budget conscious diners are eating at home more and when they do look for a restaurant-David Graham

 

A new menu provides more variety, which can attract more customers. Providing more variety repositions the brand in consumers’ minds.

Red Lobster puts pork chops and chicken on menu to attract new customers– David Graham

Back in 2011, a Lancome ad featuring Julia Roberts was banned for the excessive use of photoshop. UK’s Advertising Standard Authority was the one who banned the ad, insisting that the image of Robert’s flawless skin was much too unrealistic.

The ad promotes one of Lancome’s foundations, which promises to give off the appearance of perfect skin. Although the ad was banned mainly for it’s exaggerated claims, the ad also raises an ethics issue. Should businesses have the creative freedom to advertise however they like?

It appears to me that media has always portrayed an unattainable image of beauty to society. Society is heavily influenced by the media, especially young girls. They see images of famous celebrities on television and in magazines and aspire to be like them. Many teenage girls struggle with self esteem, as their perception of beauty imitates what they see in the media. Although it is not necessarily a company’s duty to promote self esteem, there could be many positive effects on society if more companies were to do so.

Julia Roberts Ad Banned in the UK for Abuse of Photoshop– Brennan Slattery

Seeing the growing popularity of online shopping, Aritzia is finally diving into the world of internet retailing. The company has been successful in expanding geographically, it only makes sense that they take the next step to commence an online shopping site.

Aritzia’s target market is aimed at young adults and teenagers. They carry various designer brands but also produce their own brands as well.

Now that Aritzia is introducing their first online shopping site, they plan to differentiate themselves from other retail sites. They plan to provide detailed descriptions for the clothing items and reusable shipping boxes so that customers can return their items easily if not satisfied.

“We want our e-commerce site, like our stores, to be a place where the consumer likes to go both to shop and be inspired. …In some cases, they may go to the site with no intention of shopping but be inspired by an article to buy something.” (Brian Hill)

It seems that the internet retailing will work well for Aritzia, seeing as they have already built up customer loyalty. Their site will contain editorial content, which serves as a point of differentiation that sets them apart from other online retailers.

Aritzia fashionably late to Internet retailing-Marina Strauss

As one of the world’s largest athletic brand, Nike faces great criticism in regards to their use of labor sweatshops in Asia. The public was astounded by the allegations of physical and verbal abuse taking place in Nike’s sweatshops. It was found that up to 50% of the factories limited their employees’ bathroom and water usage. Employees were forced to work over sixty hours each week and were punished if they refused to work overtime. In these sweatshops, women are much underpaid, hardly enough to cover their basic living. Workers have claimed to be both verbally and physically abused by their employers. Although the use of sweatshops in Asia reduce production costs and enable companies to rake in a much greater revenue, the importance of morals and ethics still come into play. Being such a popular and well known brand, Nike has an image to uphold. Though Nike claims to put effort into resolving these issues of abuse among their factories, some are skeptical as to how dedicated Nike really is to put an end to the horrendous working conditions of their Asian factories.

Sources:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2005/apr/14/ethicalbusiness.money

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2014325/Nike-workers-kicked-slapped-verbally-abused-factories-making-Converse-line-Indonesia.html