The Square: The First Step into the Industry

Netflix has released plenty of original television shows these years. Now, it is aiming at making original films at the silver screen. The Square, a documentary film made by Netflix, is about the political unrest in Egypt. This documentary film won prizes at the Sundance Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival, and will qualify for Oscar consideration.

Why choose to start making Netflix’s original content?

Original content attracts more new subscribers. For example, the original shows, House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, helped Netflix to gain 7 million subscribers in nine months and rapidly boosted the stock price. Now, Netflix has more than 40 million subscribers in the globe.

New ideas

Netflix wants to break the old stereotype that movies only can show in the cinema when first releasing. Netflix’s movies can be watched both on Netflix and in the theatre like what TV does. Also, Netflix tries to make its films based on consumers’ desire. From my point of view, that is a very good point. In order to reach a win-win situation, films firstly are supposed to satisfy more consumers based on their wants. Then, more consumers will be loyal to Netflix and Netflix will gain a good repute, which finally leads to a high profit.

Reference:  http://business.time.com/2013/11/04/netflix-is-making-a-play-for-an-oscar-next/

Single’s day is a popular culture holiday for Chinese bachelors on November 11. The date is chosen because “1” represents single people. This holiday is created by Chinese people a few years ago but quickly becomes even more popular than Chinese traditional Valentine’s day.

However, according to Fengqingyang’s blog, merchants are the happiest people. On November 11, 2011, many unbelievable miracles happened. For example, Taobao reached a new daily on-line turnover record, 5.2 billion RMB. The other miracle was that a low-budget Chinese movie called “Lovelorn thirty-three days” got 3.5 billion at box office partially due to first releasing on Singles’ day. It is thought-provoking question that what the significance of Single’s day is.

For me, Single’s day is for singles to celebrate their bachelor life. For people who want to stop their bachelor life, they can confess their love to their target. However, most people only consider this day as a shopping time, which loses the original purpose of Singles’ day. How to celebrate in Singles’ day? For instance, Single’s day is supposed to be spent like parties and karaoke for bachelors to meet new friends. The day should be more meaningful other than going shopping.

References:

http://xwzm.blog.163.com/blog/static/169088481201310118022715/?touping

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

According to Joey Luo’s blog, Drink Evian to “Bring out the Baby in You”, the value proposition of Evian is young lifestyle and pure living attitude. Evian uses its classical theme of babies in advertisements to convey the message “youth is not a matter of age, it’s an attitude.”

Joey uses many interesting videos of the previous advertisements of Evian with its brand history of it to show that Evian successfully established its unique image and status. The unchangeable value proposition helps Evian to become the most popular water brand especially with babies. The slogan of Evian is “Drink pure and natural, Live Young”, which gives Evian a positive image and makes a closer relationship with customers. The advertisements spur an emotion that Evian is youthful and pure.

Evian uses cute babies as a leverage to promote its goodness and catches people’s attention. For instance, in video embedded in Joey’s blog, grown people become small babies in mirrors. It shows that Evian is pure and natural, and drinking Evian makes people younger and vivid.

Joey’s post makes it clear that Evian is an example of success which chooses the right value proposition, leading to its market dominance.

Reference:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/jojoluoo/2013/11/05/drink-evian-to-bring-out-the-baby-in-you/

In June 2013, a lawsuit towards Monster Energy was filed by the family of a girl who was dead after drinking monster energy drinks in 2011. Similarly, Red Bull will get a wrongful death lawsuit since a man was dead while drinking Red Bull energy drinks in 2011. Actually, according to a study in 2009, there were 18 deaths and 13,000 hospital visits due to energy drinks. Those death incidents provoke people’s thinking about risks of energy drinks.

How do death incidents affect energy drink companies? Firstly, the health concern affects people’s preference. Fewer people will buy energy drinks, which negatively influences the energy drink market. More importantly, the death incidents are negative publicity. Deaths have a negative impact on reputations and images of energy drink companies.

According to some foods safety tests, Caffeine in some tasty energy drinks exceeds the safe dose, which causes health incidents. For me, it is not ethical to add too much caffeine to get a better flavor since the people’s health is impaired. Ingredients of some energy drinks should be redesigned so that they contain lower level of caffeine and still keep the good flavor.

References：http://business.time.com/2013/10/28/red-bull-sued-for-85-million-in-mans-death/

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

Amazon quietly changed its shipping policy without any press release. Free shipping standard is changed from $25 to $35. This change in shipping policy seems to disappoint customers who only buy some cheap things form Amazon. Some customers may change their mind to consider whether they will buy things from Amazon or from other ways. As estimated, Amazon loses $11 per person by changing this policy. However, in fact, the move will maybe boost Amazon’s sales.

The prime members doubled in lessthan two years. The prime members who pay $79 annual fee have unlimited free two-day shipping. Also, they have attractive prime service of using Kindle lending library and watching videos. Amazon will convince more people to be its prime members since it is lucrative. Changing free shipping standard from $25 to $35 triggers more people to be Amazon prime members. It is because if a person is a prime member, he will buy much more things to achieve his money’s worth with the free shipping.

In the long-term, I believe Amazon will gain more profit than before, since changing the shipping policy aims at stimulating more customers to be Amazon prime members. Amazon takes the advantage of consumer psychology to generate more loyal customers. Tempting services Amazon offers is attractive enough to maintain an increasing numberof customers of longstanding.

Resource:  http://business.time.com/2013/10/22/better-add-more-stuff-to-your-cart-because-amazon-just-made-it-harder-to-get-free-shipping/

Chanel Liu’s post, “Why is Hard to Buy an iPhone 5S These Days?”, indicates that Apple used a strategy called “hunger marketing”(the commodity producer reduces the quantity supplied in order to trigger a higher demand) to gain a much higher profit.

The fact is that iPhone 5S is enough popular so that this marketing strategy is practical and useful. Due to the preference of consumers, iPhone 5S becomes a trend and a large number people desire and have a plan to buy it. As a result, there is an inelastic demand. Even though the price goes up, many people still want to buy it. Now, the shortage emerges because the quantity supplied is noticeably lower than quantity demanded.

However, here comes out a question. Can competitors take any advantage of the shortage of iPhone 5S? Although some buyers such as buyers who are in urgent need of smartphones will give up lining up for iPhone 5S and choose other models of phones, Apple still has a much higher possibility to win the battle. It is because Apple released 5C as the alternative in order to keep its consumers.

Resourse: https://blogs.ubc.ca/chanel111/2013/10/03/why-people-cannot-buy-a-new-iphone-5s-these-days/

Nowadays, although some people are getting employed, their jobs are much more menial than their education. For example, people who are expected to political scientists become bartenders.  According to a report, mal-employment increased by 9.3 percent for college students from 2000 to 2010. The result is partially due to the Great Recession in 2008.

Actually, college graduates did much better than people with a high school degree. Therefore, to this point, the graduate qualification seems to be fairly important. Since companies only have limited jobs released, they prefer more skilled workers.

The mal-employment triggers a noticeable problem that those mal-employed people earn half of what their degree-appropriately peers earn. For people in cool majors such as liberal-art and humanities, they face more serious problems in finding matched jobs. However, it does not means that cool majors are not worth studying. People in cool majors are also supposed to have certain social skills as people in other majors. If those people want to break down the barriers, what they have to do is to have a positive mentality and to learn more practical skills to adjust to the social trend.

Reference: http://business.time.com/2013/10/02/foroohar-forget-unemployment-time-to-worry-about-mal-employment/?iid=biz-main-lead

On the social network sites including Facebook, there are many annoying advertisements. Some of advertisements are relevant, but most of them are equal to spam.

Since Facebook received many complaints about ads on the site, it plans to tweak its formula for choosing ads to make those much more relevant. If people are interested in the ads, they can click on them or share them with their friend. Oppositely, if they find the ads are really annoying, they can report them or hide them. Facebook will receive feedbacks about the ads and get a user’s personal tastes from both actions.

Moreover, this action of Facebook may risk alienating advertisers. There may be a potential impact of revenue changes.

From my perspective, this is a good idea to tell Facebook people’s preferences. In the future, there should be more relevant ads and less irrelevant ones. However, it is not effective. In most situations, people will skip the ads instead of closing them no matter they are annoying or interesting, because people do not want distract their attention from on-line communication and spend time on closing the ads.

  Resourse: http://business.time.com/2013/09/28/facebook-is-making-its-ads-less-spammy/

Ubisoft Entertainment SA, the video-game maker, invests $373 million in Montreal over the next seven years in order to expand its operations. The company expects create 500 new jobs in Montreal.

The company said they would also invest in the expansion of motion-capture technologies experts in the city as well. It also said it anticipated to offering 3,500 jobs from about 2,500 jobs today.

In fact, the company benefited a lot from government tax credits and financial aids over the ten years. In return, the growth of Ubisoft enhances the status of Montreal as one of the best digital –games centers in the world.

For the government, it makes adjustments to allow new job categories, which in accordance with Ubisoft’s plans. New jobs that Ubisoft intend to provide cover almost whole range of skill-requirments for development.

New jobs that Ubisoft promised to release help the government to reduce the unemployment rate in a sense. More people such as the underemployment and undergraduates get opportunities to earn living. As a result, there may be a local economy boost in Motreal in the future. The action of Ubisoft will be a win-win situation for both society and the company.

Resource: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/ubisoft-to-expand-montreal-operations-add-jobs/article14600598/

Walmart released a long list of banned factories including many Bangladesh factories because of serious or repeated safety problems, labor violations or unauthorized subcontracting. However, the fact was that at least two factories on the blacklist were still shipping clothes to Walmart once and once again. Walmart spokesman said these factories were allowed because of confusion over whether Walmart’s standards applied. He also said that Walmart would publish the safety audits of its current suppliers, which was considered hollow.

Many garment retailers have signed an accord to pay for fire and building safety upgrades of Bangladesh factories. Unlike them, Walmart haven’t signed any accord. Instead, Walmart just said they would improve the safety standard without any legal binding.

Moreover, on the blacklist, Walmart didn’t offer any details about those banned factories, and many family businesses were unfairly tarred. They became victims without knowing reasons and accordingly got a bad reputation.

Walmart can be regarded as a hypocrite in this case. All facts show that Walmart in a way violated business ethics. In order to gain more profit, Walmart exploited those sweatshops in expense of others’ interest. Its behaviour somewhat violated legal issues as well.

Resourse: http://business-ethics.com/2013/06/17/1606-walmart-accepted-clothing-from-banned-bangladesh-factories/