If the UN was fully funded, they would be able to fund all the projects in the world and in turn lead to a better place for everyone. However, we know that simply giving resources to places in need will allow them to grow however how long will they be able to last? This is why the Arc initiative is a valuable resource to places in South Africa because Social Enterprises such as the ARC allow ideas to be generated, skills to be enhanced and knowledge to be obtained.  Social enterprises also allows for a more specific and focused approach to places which allows for tailored knowledge and solutions based on each case compared to the UN which would have a general solution which may not be the best approach for different places in the world.

This is why overall social enterprises are a valuable resource even if the UN was full funded because the knowledge, skills and ideas generated allow for a more sustainable solution then simply full funding the operations in the area.

In Stav’s blog post, she talks about how shops such as EB Games, Gamestop and other game retailers will begin to lose sales and become obsolete. (An example we talked about in our lecture is Blockbuster and how DVD rentals have become obsolete and replaced by services such as NetFlix). I agree with Stav’s view point on how stores such as these will become obsolete, however the time in which it will become obsolete could be longer then she thinks.

Game retailers such as these in my opinion fall under the section of just entering the maturity stage of a product/service life cycle. Even though we can see the correlation between the digital and physical demands of products in other industries,(Eg. Digital Books and Steam) Gamestop and EB Games are actively trying to regain their customer base. Apart from the points Stav have touched upon, Gamestop has also started to work with game developers in order to attain game items which can only be obtained by purchasing at certain physical retail stores. This allows the business to have a point of difference compared to purchasing digital copies of the game which allows for them to regain a competitive advantage in the market. A key factor which will lead to stores such as Gamestop to becoming obsolete is the rate in which storage technology develops. This is because with the current storage technology, gamers will only be able to download a handful of games before they are at max capacity on their storage systems(1 game is roughly 20-50GB, an average console only has 500GB-1TB worth of space),  this limits the online purchases they can make. In order for Gamestop to face the same demise as Blockbusters, the techonlogy industry would have to develop storage systems with a very large capacity. (Eg. 100TB Systems) This combats the limit of not having enough storage, my predictions is that when this new storage technology is introduced into the market, then stores such as Gamestop will have to find a unique competitive edge in order to stay in business.

Rachel Abrams in her blog post talks about Listerine and its adaptation to the global market. Johnson & Johnson is trying to expand its market with customer-specific products, like alcohol-free Listerine Zero for Muslims, who eschew spirits, or Green Tea Listerine, aimed at Asians. The company has tripled its varieties since 2006. She talks about how Listerine is having a declining dominance among the domestic market compared to 2006. Therefore they have started to adapt a strategy where they have created new varieties aimed at different global markets in order to stay head of its competitors. I agree with Rachel that this is a great strategy used by Listerine to increase its market share not only locally but also worldwide. 

This is very successful from my point of view. Before coming to Canada, I would always  buy Listerine and specifically green tea or orange flavor, however when I came over to Canada i was surprised to see that Listerine did not seem to be everyone’s first choice in mouth washers here, they also had limited variety in their choices. However this did not impact my choice and i decided to stay with Listerine even when moving countries. This example shows how the implementation of new varieties into the global market has allowed Listerine to stay ahead of its competitors. This is due to the fact of increased brand recognition, awareness of local culture and needs, as well as staying with their original formulas to combat germs. This can relate to the idea which we talked about in the lecture of how sensitine has kept its same values of the years and therefore has become successful recently as the values of the company meets the wants of the customers.

Puma’s new promotion with Usain Bolt

Puma as of 2014, is in third place for the sporting goods industry. They have however decided to have a change in direction of goals of the business which abandons its effort over the last two decades which focuses on fashion led consumers, this change i believe is greatly affected by its change in CEO from Jochen Zitz to Bjoern Gulde.  Gulde now wants to attempt to combat head to head with the industry giants Nike and Adidas. Does this sound like a feasible change in market goal? I believe due to Puma’s current positioning as well as their change in  market focuses should allow the business to grow faster than being a fashion led sporting goods business.

The first reason being Puma’s change in missions statement and business’s goals. From 2013’s “Puma has the long-term mission of becoming the most desirable and sustainable sports lifestyle company” to 2014’s “Puma has the long-term mission of becoming the fastest brand in the world”. This is an important directional change in the business because Puma can now utilize its assets to promote its marketing strategies. Instead of deciding to chase the football and basketball industry, they have decided to utilize their celebrity Usain Bolt, and have decided to focus on the track and field segment instead. This is a good directional change for Puma as it allows them to position themselves as a competitor for performance sporting goods, however they’re target market group would be more focused on enhancing the performances of athletes on the track, which can be considered as a market which is not currently  saturated. I believe we will see an increase in Puma sales over the next few years due to the change in market objectives for Puma, which will allow for its stocks to increase in the near future.

Steam is an internet based platform which sells and distributes games over the internet.  There are many reasons for the success of this creation by Valve, however i mainly want to touch upon the operations and business technology management aspect of the business. When revisiting the ideas on Operations, we talked about how dell was able to become successful due to removing a process in distribution, this concept applies directly to Steam. Similar to Dell, Steam bypasses the need for a retailer in between the developers of the games and shops such as GameStop and EB Games, not only will this save time for the customer but also allow for a larger variety of selection as having everything online negates the need for inventory space. They have also been so successful as we can already see examples such as digital books becoming more and more popular and accessible to the users which generates more revenue through the ease of access.

The second reason is because of its business technology management, by having everything digitized, Steam will be able to track the purchases of users and therefore forecast trends of different games which helps with the purchasing of titles on the platform, not to mention with its recent release of” Steam GreenLight“, this allows the customers to choose what they want to be on the store, it also helps smaller developers bridge the gap between customers allowing for a more community based experienced which draws in multiple customer bases. 

In response to Cassandra’s blog post on Pepsi, she stated that “Pepsi has positioned itself as a follower and repositions the competition.”, I believe this is a valid view point in the stance Pepsi is trying take. However i would have to disagree with her, Pepsi is definitely trying to take on Coke as the main competitor for the “coke” drink. We can see for example in this advertisement.

In this ad, we can see Pepsi’ trying to market itself as the main soft drink choice of consumers, however coke quickly decided to come up with a response to this advertisement by saying “Everyone wants to be a hero”. It is clear that Pepsi is trying to directly compete with Coca Cola instead of being a follower. The main reason Coca Cola is able to lead the soft drink industry is because of its decision to create multiple products related to the Coca Cola company instead of focusing on the “coke” drink like Pepsi. With Coca Cola, they have created Vitamin Water and other products which help to increase the brand image of the company not only from the Coca Cola point of view but also from a soft drink point of view which i believe is the reason Coke is able to trump Pepsi in the soft drink industry.