While I agree with your point stating that “expanding opening shops would make the brand more common and decrease people’s high brand value mentally”, I don’t believe this was “the main reason” that is responsible for the decline in sale of LV.

As many may have already know, Louis Vuitton is the world’s most valuable luxury brand, products ranging from accessories to bags. Louis Vuitton not only is known for the material it uses in production, but also for its pricing tactics, serving as a status symbol. While some may argue the expansion in stores have destroyed its exclusive image, making too commonplace, please note that Louis Vuitton’s status of wealth has long been standing. Regardless of how many LV stores there are, people would still view LV as one of the biggest status symbol. In my opinion, the decline in sales has to do with the global economic depression that is affecting most European countries and the US whom are still on the process of recovering. The economic crisis has stripped away consumers’ purchase power on luxury products (normal goods), and has kept their purchasing power only on the range for inferior goods.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/xyutong/

Pirate Joe is a local grocery store in Vancouver operating as a re-seller of Trader Joe’s products in Canada. Yes, you are right, the company literally resells products that are being sold at Trader Joe’s. Every week, the owner would drive down to the closest Trader Joe’s located in Bellhingham and buys pretty much everything he could. Despite the high costs of operating the store, the store has become popular with residents who enjoyed the opportunity to purchase some of the distinct private label products offered by Trader Joe’s.

Although Pirate Joe’s could get away legal issues by playing through the gaps and holes in today’s legal legislation system, the way Pirate Joe’s is operating its business is considered very unethical. In fact, their actions are no different from stealing or copying, except the fact that they pay a tip for their actions. What Pirate Joe’s is doing is just not the right way of making profit and sets a bad example to the business industry, as its success would further encourage entrepreneurs to find ways to escape legal consequences in their business operations.

http:///news/canada/british-columbia/trader-joe-s-loses-fight-with-vancouver-s-pirate-joe-s-1.1912400

On Novemeber 3, 2013, the Hong Kong Government controversially refuses to approve HKTV’s proposal for a free-to-air license. While this has come as  a surprise to many television viewers in Hong Kong and workers of HKTV, the Government refuses to offer legitimate reasons for its radical decision. After the decision’s been made, thousands of workers of HKTV have immediately been put out of work (laid off).

HKTV was founded by a Hong Kong entrepreneur named Wong Wai Kay. The rise of HKTV was greatly anticipated by television viewers as they believed it would provide a healthy competition  to the current near-monopolized free-to-air television broadcaster, TVB. TVB’s productions have recently been criticized  for its lack of creativity and the quality of its productions, in which television viewers argued that this has to do with TVB’s lack of competition.

Politicians and nearly 400,000 people who signed a Facebook petition demanded that the government give a full account of the reasons for denying Wong’s Hong Kong Television Network (HKTV) a licence. Thousands vowed to protest at government headquarters on Sunday.

Who would have predicted that a photo messaging application with a wicked looking ghost logo could turn out to be a multi-million dollar business? When SnapChat first emerged in our application stores, we were probably thinking this has got to be one of the most point-less application created in mankind. You open up an image, the image lasts for only 10 seconds before it disappears. Yup, that is called SnapChat.

Like almost every other social media apps, the initial market launch for SnapChat attracted doubts and negative feedback. But gradually, more and more people started to accept it as a trend, putting SnapChat on par with the popular photo sharing app Instagram. Much of its success could be credited to the company for developing a point of difference. Snapchat isn’t thought of as a social network. It’s presented more as a “photo chat” platform, like WhatsApp or SMS. Unlike Facebook, SnapChat allows users to send snaps to multiple people without them all knowing it.   Every photo is sent directly from you to a friend, so it doesn’t seem like you’re bragging to the whole world. SnapChat alleviates the pressure of feeling judged for who you’ve shared something with, perhaps for the first time in the modern age of social networking, and this is what has made SnapChat so addictive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapchat

http://blog.snapchat.com/

The latest series of FIFA have been real eye-openers for soccer fans. The re-designation of match engine and graphic enhancement has attracted enough gamers to put EA Sports’ FIFA ahead of their long standing rival Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer. When FIFA 13 was initially released, it has recorded a record-breaking sales success; sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide on all platforms in the first five days of release. With FIFA 14 being campaigned as the “Best Soccer Video Game” ever made, a great buzz has stirred on online news source and excited gamers’ minds. Although, with no surprise, in just 2 weeks time FIFA has top the sales chart, their sales were down by 24% as to last years’ sales. 

The drop in sales for Fifa 14 could be due to a number of different reasons, not least the fact that GTA V has already taken away everyone’s time and finances. But the main issue is likely to be indecision over the next generation consoles. With Sony and Microsoft launching their latest video game consoles, PlayStation 4 and Xbox 1, in just around a month’s time, people are not sure whether they will buy the game on their current game console or the future generations.

Whatever the reason is, this incident has put me into questioning the marketing team of EA Sports. Whether the drop was because of the launch of GTA V or gamers’ indecision over game consoles, the marketing team is responsible for all of the above.

References:

http://metro.co.uk/2013/09/30/fifa-14-ousts-gta-v-from-uk-number-one-but-sales-down-24-4128045/

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-09-30-uk-chart-fifa-14-sales-down-on-last-years-fifa-13-by-24-percent

Being one of the most anticipated initial public offerings since Facebook, social-networking phenomenon Twitter has recently revealed its plans to focus on expanding internationally rather than just catering to its users in the United States. An outstanding 77% of its active users in the past three months were from outside the US, and many potential investors and analysts see great potential in its international growth. However, Twitter’s advertisement system is still largely undeveloped compared to its social-networking rival Facebook. This revenue stream holds the tremendous potential at the moment and if Twitter is not careful in developing it then the company could end up like Facebook on the stock exchange. Twitter will need to evolve and adapt its development strategies in order to accommodate the different countries around the world it’s targeting.

Countries with authoritarian governments like China have become a large obstacle for Twitter. Its massive potential market for social networking services has already turned over to other its own solutions such as Weibo, Wechat, and Whatsapp as websites such as Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter have been banned. China, emerging as an economic super-giant holds great influence in social media as there are already a significant number of users using these websites in the neighbouring countries of China and even North America. Twitter will need to work extremely carefully with marketers in order to successfully expand overseas.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/business/twitters-ipo-plan-has-an-international-focus.html?ref=media

Blackberry has just received a monstrous $934 million loss due to their inventory charge on unsold Z10 smart phones. They had extremely high hopes for this new smart phone release, believing that it would be the solution in their quest to regain their previous stronghold in the smartphone market. The physical keyboard that Blackberry had previously built into their phones was very attractive to text communicating consumers. I believe this particular segment of customers represented a high percentage of their overall customer base. With an all touch screen front and no physical buttons, I’d say that their new smartphone was tailored to lure in a younger audience; however, I believe this new design may have had the unintentional side effect of causing it to be more closely compared to their main competitor’s product, the iPhone 5S. With relatively similar designs, the main comparison points between the two would essentially be brand name, functionality, and price. With Apple having successfully marketed their smartphone as “premium”, Blackberry’s Z10 appears to be “second tier” in comparison. It would have been beneficial for Blackberry to “test the waters” and get an idea of how well their new product would do over a trial period, even if this would inevitably lead to a higher demand than supply. A higher demand would have been much less dangerous to Blackberry than the current reality they face.

http://www.itpro.co.uk/mobile/20680/blackberry-hit-934m-inventory-charge-over-unsold-z10-smartphones

Nike, an international well-known brand, certainly has a good reputation of making stylish sportswear and comfortable shoes. However, who would have thought that a company as big as Nike has done so little if not nothing in terms of providing a safe and fair working environment for their workers. Although the company makes more than millions of profit a year, the profit margin apparently does not satisfy the shareholders of Nike. Desperate to increase their profit margin, Nike in recent years has moved a large portion of their factories overseas to circumvent the strict working regulations within the United States. Since the third world countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, and India provide access to readily abundant cheap labor, Nike could now reap the benefit of the United States consumer market, while keeping their costs extremely low in offshore production.

In recent years, Nike has been accused of treating factory workers very harshly, stripping away worker’s basic human rights. A former Nike factory worker has recently spoke out against Nike, claiming that workers are often abused physically and mentally by their supervisors at work. “Supervisors frequently throw shoes at them, slap them in the face, kick them and call them dogs and pigs”, says a worker in Indonesia. Mentally abused to the point where some of them did not want to speak up against the bad things that were happening to them, as one of the workers was actually fired after she spoke out against Nike.

While on an economic stand point, it is totally understandable as to why big corporations like Nike are trying to take advantage of the cheap labour cost in third world countries. On a Business ethic stand point, judging by the way they are treating their workers, its organization management is undoubtedly questionable. There has already been a growing concern and hatred among the consumers in recent years. If Nike does not show signs of change or improvement anytime soon, a boycott on Nike is likely going to happen.

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