“ If the United Nations was fully funded why would we need the Arc or social enterprise”? When we talk about this question, firstly, I think we should figure out why we need Arc and social enterprise.

The purpose of Arc is increase economic wellbeing by developing business management and leadership capacity through education. We need it because I think education is the beat way to change people’s mind, and benefit our future. We always said that: Delegate to fish in the fishery as delegate. Because we can’t help poor people all the time, the thing we should do is teach they how to get rid of poverty.

As for Social enterprise, this organization is not only just provide fund for poor people, but also help their family to find a sustainable way to survival. The organization teaches underprivileged children, and keeps them away from violations; for their parents, social enterprises use technology to help them get the fair working environment.

The main purpose of the United Nations is maintaining international peace and security; though it has six principal organs control different aspects, but contract with social enterprise and Arc, United Nations is not so focus. The wide control range cause UN week in some specific issues. So even though UN has enough funds, the most of funds will be spent on keeping world peace, like solving North Korean nuclear issue or suppressing terrorists, instead of teaching poor, and help their build up a virtuous circle.

This article points out that the prices in Chinese have been declining for nearly years, but Chinese central bank remained unmoved. The benchmark one-year lending rate remains lofty at 6%, and the writer think Chinese central bank is making a big mistake. However I can’t totally agree with that.

Firstly, I want to say the writer may not know china very well, because reducing the interest rate is nearly impossible in china. The most significant reason why China has a lofty high interest rate is the high demand in the real estate market. Chinese is zealous in buying houses, if the interest rate decrease, the demand of house will increase dramatically; therefore, cause the bubble in the real estate market. As I know, the global financial crisis in 2007 is the result of asset-price bubble in the U.S. housing market, so reduce the interest rate in china is a very dangerous thing.

Secondly, I believe that deflation is not entirely a bad thing in china. As the writer said, lower costs is the reason why the price on commodity decrease, it allowed companies to remain profitable even as their selling prices have fallen. So it will not hurt the companies. And for customers, lower price means their purchase power increase they can bur more goods. We might think people will defer payment or buy the good later, but the fate is the demand still increase in an accelerating rate. Yesterday is the “double 11 ” shopping carnival in China, the largest online shop renewed the world record of the time of breaking 100-million turnover.

The carnival started at 0:00 AM, but at 0:01 AM the turnover was exceeded 100 million yuan; at 0:03 AM, turnover exceeded one billion yuan. It took 38 minutes 28 seconds for turnover to reach 10 billion yuan ($1.6326 billion). Comparing with last year’s figure, it spent 5 hours and 49 minutes for turnover to reach 10 billion yuan.

This fully proves the demand was not decrease because of the deflation, instead the demand increase dramatically.

Overall, I don’t think a slightly deflation and high interest rate have a serious impact on China’s economy.

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/11/chinas-economy

Advertising is playing an important role in a business. It used to encourage, persuade people to buy their product instead of competitor’s; therefore, increase turnover, profit and market share of the company. Nearly every company use ads to promote their product, the competition in the ads industry is also fierce. So how to make a good advertising becomes a serious problem.

Referring to Lauren’s post, I totally agree with what she said, “Advertising and social media can be used not only to increase knowledge of products.”

I think ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is a really successful public service advertising for promoting awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and encourage people for donations to the research. I regard this advertising as the innovation of the advertising industry. Because the cost of this advertising is nearly 0, but thousands of famous people and superstars took part in this promotion. They make videos by themselves and named their friend to join this activity. In this advertising no one introduces what is ALS, but nearly everyone seen this ads will search what is ALS on Internet. I can’t say everyone who sees the video will donate money, but I am sure that most people know ALS because of this promotion.

The most notable is that nobody tired of this kind of advertising. On the contrary people are willing to participate. I know this advertising is different from the normal one, we’ve seen on tv or on the other channels, but I think it is a good example for company to learn.

source:

https://connect.ubc.ca/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_45361_1%26url%3D

Referring to Yi’s post, I couldn’t agree more with Yi ‘s comments on Hong Kong’s economy has a bad influenced by this political issue, and the action what protesters did was a paradox. I didn’t know well about the politics in Hong Kong, and how far the political side plays the role in this event, but I want to say what I have seen is the bad influences on the economic and business in Hong Kong.

Firstly, this civil disobedience movement happened during the national day holiday, at this time Mainland-based, free-spending visitors usually provide a boost to Hong Kong’s retailers; however, the condition for this year was roads blocked, shops closed, sales fell 20 per cent compared with a normal holiday. If businesses keep losing profit, lay-offs may happen, which will increase the unemployment rate in Hong Kong. No one wants this happen.

In the second place, I totally agree with what Yi said “Beijing would be willing to sacrifice Hong Kong’s economy to ensure the power control and the stability of society, especially when Hong Kong is no longer the only open broader in China.” The establishment of Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) will be a strong competitor of Hong Kong in the future. It definitely will threat Hong Kong’s status as one of the top global market financial centers. What’s more, Comparing with Hong Kong, mainland has a so much bigger demographic; therefore tourism can gain a lot of customer in mainland alone, so mainland’s tourism will not suffer much influence by losing Hong Kong tourist, but Hong Kong can ‘t afford the price of losing mainland, free-spending visitors.

So as for as I concern, in the short term, this democracy activists, Occupy Central hurts the business and economics, shops loss profit. In the long term, there are too much uncertain factors. No one can guarantee that economics will recover if democracy activists success, and Leung Chun-ying steps down. I don’t think Beijing government will continue support Hong Kong’s economics development of that happen. Hong Kong may lose its unique advantage to China markets, and its economic will be more competitiveness. Of course this will not happen, because Beijing government will not give up control in Hong Kong, Protest is doomed to fail. I hope Beijing government and Hong Kong government can find a peacefully way to ease the contradiction.

source:

https://connect.ubc.ca/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_45361_1%26url%3D

This article point out St. John’s Is Richer Than Toronto because the GDP in St. John’s is higher than Toronto. The reason is the rich resource wealth and a low unemployment rate in St. John’s.  However, I can totally agree with higher GDP means the city is richer.

GDP is the aggregate production, which measure the economic performance of a whole region. High GDP in St. John’s can prove that the production in St. John’s is high; people can buy more goods and receive high income in St. John’s. But is that means people in St. John’s is richer than others? I search “List of Canadians by net worth” in Google, but to my surprise, no one on the list is from St. John’s. What’s more, GDP is measured by the aggregate income or production, it can’t represent everyone.

St. John’s is rich in oil and gas industry, it means more people work in primary industry as labour, but Toronto is more urbanized, most of people work in tertiary industry, which provide service to customer, like entertainment, tourism and financial services, I think those service increase the living standard of people, so I Toronto is richer.

source:

https://connect.ubc.ca/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_45361_1%26url%3D

   $8-billion Site C hydroelectric megaproject might be rejected because of the opposition from the First Nation. As B.C. is Indian land, First Nation people have the right to make a decision on how to use of the land.

    For First Nation this megaproject is a threat; because of the dam operated by BC Hydro would flood Valley; therefore, destroy farmland and wildlife habitat. Moreover, it has a significant adverse effect on fishing opportunities which cannot be mitigated.”

    For the company, the opposite from the First Nation is also a threat. As the political reason, the First Nation can reject BC Hydro’s megaproject, it leads the company can’t expend their business by operating a new dam. They will lose this opportunity to sell more hydroelectric to the consumer and occupy more market share. This external factor limited the development of the company.

    The population is growing, people need more clean hydroelectric. Population as a social reason will increase the demand for goods, including hydroelectric; however the supply of BC Hydro still remains the same, this means BC Hydro can fulfill the market demand it will cause a shortage. It also have a bad influence on the consumer.

The latest rebranding effort was provide by Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC), which includes a new logo, campaign and brand platform called “Outsiders.” MEC not only provide a comprehensible map for customers to navigate its sprawling selection of outdoor categories, but also has gone deeper than the product level, segmenting each activity in store with a set of motivations and aspirations.

I have been to this store; it is a really good store. The store offers everything your heart desires outdoor, not only bicycles, but also: clothing, shoes, tents, backpacks, canoes, kayaks, all accessories to fishing articles, picnic and trekking articles, you can even find books in this store. The quality of all the products is great. It is not a thrift store, but the prices are reasonable. I never heard the advertising of this shop but I still know this shop and willing to go there again, so the product itself plays an important rule to attract consumers. If the product has a low quality, other factors like channels, customer relationship, revenue streams, key
 resources, key activities, key partnerships and cost structure will be useless.

http://strategyonline.ca/2013/09/19/mec-uses-consumer-motivations-to-inspire-a-rebrand/

LG is making a new brand called “It’s all possible” last year, and change the concept of its advertisement. The advertisement is not focussed on introducing the product, talk about tech anymore; instead, it gives consumers the idea how the product benefit consumers’ everyday life. LG prominent the benefits of using its products which consumers can get. Also, a more consistent brand experience across its marketing provides by LG due to communicate with customers.

In society’s current economic state, the competition within the electronics market is extremely fierce, generating profit in the financial market is exceptionally difficult, a new style of advertisement is a good way to attract people’s attention. We always watch advertising on TV, Internet, billboard, etc. But every time, I feel annoying when I see this advertising, especially, when I watch video online, the only idea in my mind is to skip this and quickly. The new advertising produces by LG really arose my attention, it use a softy way to introduce the benefit I can get from using LG’s TV, and let me feel I really need one. I think this advertising is successful.

David Dobrowolski, a Canadian, operates a car-hire company called Flash Vehicle Rentals in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is a terrible place for driving a car, because this place has no unleaded petrol available, no Toyota dealership, no recovery service, and this place is not safe due to the civil war. In such a harsh market environment, Flash Vehicle Rentals survival and make profit, David even make his business bigger and bigger. So here this a problem, what makes David success? The answer is the breakdown service, which Flash Vehicle Rentals offers. This service guarantees customers to get a new car when they broke their car, no matter where they are in Sierra Leone, no matter how many time they break their car. This is the reason why customers choose Flash Vehicle Rentals with a high price rather than company over another. It allows customers to feel at ease and solves a their problem.

I think this service is a part of value proposition. The price of renting a car is not expensive, and Flash Vehicle Rentals as a normal can’t earn super normal profit just renting cars. The breakdown service adds value of renting the car from Flash Vehicle Rentals. Consumers are more interested in this service than the car. Flash Vehicle Rentals knows the market well and produce the right services.

http://search.proquest.com/docview/1038621442#center

           Saskatchewan, a prairie province of Canada recently set up a coal-fired power plant which capture 1m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. It has never been used on an existing power station at a commercial scale before. Some people think it is a “historic milestone on the path to a low-carbon future,” however; the technology’s high cost makes it limited, and impossible to spread to other parts of Canada, because it will take C$1.4 billion from taxpayers, and unlikely to see much of a financial return on their investment.

         This in an environment friendly project, this kind of project always requires the high-tech as its back up, so the cost is relatively high. Just like Tesla, which has a higher price than normal car. I think we should support a project like this. We can’t just obtain the benefit at the expense of the environment. But in this case, the cost is prohibitive, and cannot get an acceptable financial return. It is true that SaskPower can recoup some of its investment by selling its byproducts, but the revenue is insignificant, compare with the fixed cost of this project. So without government support, no company is willing to set up this kind of plant, which needs high investment and gain low return.

http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21622238-although-saskatchewans-new-carbon-capture-facility-start-technology-still