Recently, the story of one Italian girl has drawn my attention after reading one of her blogs, “show your potential”, written by Chiara Ferrigno. She is a famous fashion blogger and one of the most influential and successful social media commercial celebrities in nowadays. At the same time, the brand that she established and the combination of outfits which she has worn have led a new trend of fashion and gain many likes from the public.In addition, this blog has told her personal experience of being a blogger and the advice she think is very useful to us. After wondering why Chiara is so famous and why she could stand out from so many competitors, I started to explore more about her experience and career.

“It’s always strange to think how a small, apparently harmless, a decision can totally change your life.” She wrote on the first sentence of her blog, this sentence has indicated her value toward her career. She starts posting blog since 2009, and at that time there is barely anyone doing that. However, due to her passion and enthusiasm for fashion, she decided to build her own website and post her daily outfits on it. After few months of daily updates, she received the first job offer from one company, which became the starting point of her fashion commercial career. Due to her hardworking and strong sense of the fashion trends, she gains more likes from the public, followed by various job opportunities. However, the short-term benefits do not blind Chiara, she declined a lot of them. Instead, she would prepare and wait for the most suitable one. Just like most blogger, the main source of earning money is from collaboration with other companies, but in order to make sure the quality and reality of her blogs, she never takes the commercial collaboration on something that does not fit her or she does not like. This has help Chiara to build the strong foundation for her future careers.

From my personal perspective, the reason that makes Chiara so success is not just because of luck, but the efforts and strategies she put on it. She is not afraid to start a new kind of business that no one does. Using the social media as the platform to present her interest while earning money from it. Despite she has excellent sense towards fashion, but she knows how to meet the demand of the current markets while maintaining her own features , this became very important factor that make she became successful. In addition, like most of the business, there would be different choices and opportunities provided for them, but knowing the correct value proposition of their career is very important. Moreover, quality is important than quantity, finding the most suitable approaches is something that should take into consideration when businesses are making difference.

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Reference:

http://www.theblondesalad.com/talents/chiara-ferragni/show-your-potential.html

One of the most interesting blogs that I read is from my classmate Mitchell Arlen Guthrie: The real Inception: Product placement in Films & Television.The blog has discussed the impact of the new form of advertising strategy which is products placement on different social media and how does it influence individuals when we choose to buy something. Even though, this is not something new to blog about, as there are many blogs about how the internet and advertising influence our daily life since the beginning of the “social media era”. But because it is such a controversial topics, we could carve out ourselves a really good angle within the advertisement blog sphere. In the blog, Mitchell states how the advertisement influences our decisions. He mentioned that product placement is one kind of indirect method to let the consumer understand what the brands want to promote. In addition, Mitchell has various its content, after stating the phenomenon in nowadays, he wrote the background of beginning of this new strategy and he expresses his own opinion about the promising future of this constantly expending market.

From my personal perspective, there are many ideas that could reflect from Mitchell’s blog. Undeniably. as modern people’s living standard is keep raising, which leads to the expectation of consumer on the goods and services became higher. How to attract customers became very important for the companies. We could see advertisements on the streets or at home every single day. But since when, products replacement has become very common in the movie or Tv drama, as it could leave a remarkable impression on the viewer and have better connection with the viewer. In Mitchell’s blog, he uses the outside resource of  Dr. Lan Zimmerman’s blog about how does the product replacement exert a significant impact on consumer’s view about products, which support his own opinion which makes his writing more persuading. Yet, the data that he uses also indicates the well growing and the bright future of this industry. At the same time, Mitchell indicates the timeline of this industry, which also gives the reader a better understanding of the industry.

In addition, except the blog topic is very controversial and relate to everyone’s daily life. But what actually makes the good blog is not justing using many professional words or quotes from other, but using different data, outside resources and background story with an extra personal opinion. His blog has very good layouts which make readers put more thoughts and understanding on the topic. At the same time, knowing how to make the connection with others by having simple but clear statement will also make a good blog.

In nowadays, with the fast-pace lifestyle, there are phenomenon that coffee shops and cafes have popped up everywhere. Grabbing a coffee became part of most people’s daily schedule. Due to the forever changing consumer markets, people has expected more on the goods and services they are getting.Thus, how to stay competitive in such intense industry became the challenge for the existing coffee shops and those who is plan to start. In contrast, understand how to meet or exceed the expectations from their target consumers became the key part of success.

Starbucks is one of the most competitive and well-know company in the coffee industry. The company has stayed in the upper-scale of the coffee market. For the past decades, by looking at the graph of Starbucks stock market line, there are always up and down, but they could always found the approaches to come up with victorious at the profit reports on the end of each years. No matter what is the real reasons for their success may be, it definitely clear that we have to give credits to the market strategies that Starbucks implementing on. Starbucks has focus on comfort rather than convenience, we could tell that they has put efforts on their interior design and the different goods they are selling, like the different cups regarding the locations. In addition, they has wide range of the consumers, instead of just focusing on specific groups of people, they would customized their services and ingredients to meet the demand from individual, things like types of milk,sugar level and flavours of the syrup, etc. They also would re-make any “failure” drink. The main idea is not just making the products special from other, but make the customers feel that they are special and what they get is worthy to what they spend.

Undoubtedly, they has excellent advertising skills. The secret menu they promote will definitely became the controversial topics. Even they has awful taste, but people would still attract by them when looking at the photos on the different social medias with all pretty “models”. Just like the the Unicron Frappuccino they promote this summer, which also called social media-friendly products.  Just like Preena Gadher, co-founder and managing director at Riot Communications states “The brain processes visuals faster than text – marketing and PR people all know this.”

From my personal perspective, sometimes what makes the consumers will to pay is not just the product itself but the services that their getting and the experience that a brand give it to them. In addition, marketing has significant impact on whether or not the business will success.

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Reference:

• Cresci, E. (2017, April 21). Unicorn Frappuccino mania: Starbucks aims at Instagram. Retrieved October 15, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/21/unicorn-frappuccino-starbucks-instagram-selfie-social-media
• Stevenson, A. (2015, March 09). Schultz to Cramer: The key Starbucks’ success. Retrieved October 15, 2017, from https://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/09/howard-schultz-key-ingredient-to-starbucks-success.html
• Starbucks Business Strategies: Reasons for Success. (2016, October 12). Retrieved October 15, 2017, from http://www.paypervids.com/starbucks-business-strategies-reasons-success/

Recently, a controversal news has attracted public’s attention. Samsung had just released its new product, Note 8. This is the first product of its series that has been released since the extreme battery defects of its previous generation the Note 7. It is not surprising that a there is a lot of debate on this new product. Consumers are re-evaluating whether Samsung’s brand name is still trustworthy after last year’s explosion cases. In September 2016, Brain Green, a customer who had just purchased the Note 7,  found his phone starting to overheat in his pocket. His first reaction was toss the phone onto the ground. Within the next few moments, the phone caught on fire. Samsung took immediate action to replaced the products; however, the replacements experienced the same problem. As more and more phones began to see over-heating problems, Samsung decided to recall all Note 7 phones. They also make a public announcement for their mistakes and the solution to errors.

Unfortunately, even a company like Samsung, who has a strong competitive advantage, had to suffer high consequences. Their share price dropped a dramatic 7% with additionalUS$14billion loss in their market value. Additionally, Samsung’s reputation and brand image suffered with this issue. It was a difficult challenge for Samsung to regain a trustworthy and loyal relationship with consumers. With all the negative news, a lot of people who are now considering Samsung’s newest product, Samsung Galaxy Note 8, are rethinking their choice.  As other brands were able to build their own reputation during the incident. This includes products like the Google Pixel XL, Apple iPhones, and newer competitors such as HuaWei P10. Undeniably, the public does not want to take the risk of caught fires on the electric devices again.

In contrast, a large part of public believe that the Note 8 will be a promising product as it presents a package of industry leading features, including the bezel-less display and upgraded stylus. Samsung also displayed corporate social responsibility by not denying their mistakes and taking action to recall the defected products. Even with significant problems on a previous product, Samsung did not hesitate to become more innovative to not only fix that problem, but create, once again, an industry leading flagship device.

Reference

• Hollister, S. (2016, October 10). Here’s why Samsung Note 7 phones are catching fire. Retrieved September 27, 2017, from https://www.cnet.com/news/why-is-samsung-galaxy-note-7-exploding-overheating/
• Farrell, S. (2016, September 12). Samsung share price dives after Galaxy Note 7 phone recall. Retrieved September 27, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/12/samsung-galaxy-note-7-share-prices-dives-phone-recall
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Last years, the CNN news has reported an unbelievable news which has caught everyone’s attention. The well-known bank Wells Fargo was being ranked on the top pages of every search engine when the news came out.There are approximately two million illegitimate bank and credit card accounts are established secretly without acknowledging their customers. Obviously, the purpose of the Well Fargo’s employees is using this method to boost their sales in the quickest way and reach the sales targets in order to receive the bonus. In addition, after this “secret” is being exposed to the public, the company has fired 5300 employees who were involved in this scandal. This news makes public start concerning about the business ethic in nowadays. This also relates to a controversial topic, what level of corporate social responsibility should organizations reached towards the community and what exactly is business ethics.

In general, the business ethic is defined as what is right or wrong in the business scenario and people has chosen to do something right. However, it also depends on people’s background, position and values. In addition, the business ethic is related to the level of corporate social responsibilities that an organization is holding towards the stakeholder, instead of just focusing on shareholders. However, this leads to a question that has no absolute answer, what level of corporate social responsibility should organizations holding?. From an organization perspective, there are both advantage and disadvantage about corporate social responsibility. On one side, high corporate social responsibility could improve company’s image and reputation in the public, and also gain more royalty and trust from their employees and customers, but on the opposite side, it would waste time and money on the things that do not make profit as the main purpose of business and companies is making profit. Moreover, business is supposed to produce better service and goods to the public instead of caring about the community.

In addition, for the Well Fargo’s case, it definitely shows the example of an organization with poor business ethic. The action that they were done is illegal and unethical. They do not care about their customers, they just focus on their own profit and how to maximize their own personal gaining. The issue of having responsibility is the basic understanding of the ethics in an organization. Ironically, it seems almost too fundamental to mentioned; however, those kinds of unethical behaviors very common in the society. The poor social corporate responsibilities which mean unethical business behavior is often starting by over greed and the addiction from making the profit, it also became an alert to the public to start thinking about their moral value and business ethics in nowadays.

Reference:

-16. 1990: Wells Fargo. (2016). Inside the Investments of Warren Buffett. doi:10.7312/lu–16462-018
-Top Business Ethics Cases of 2016. (n.d.). Retrieved September 12, 2017, from https://www.casestudywriting.com/top-business-ethics-cases-of-2016/