UN’s major mission is to safeguard the world peace and develop friendly relations with countries globally on the basis of equal human rights. The United Nations is more focused on the social and political aspect of an issue to help a developing country grow better and make social progress. However, organizations like Arc and social enterprises are more focused on the economic and social development of a nation or community. Due to their different focus on the duties, they both contribute a significant part in making the world better.

For example, the story of Osei-Duro clothing tells me that a social enterprise is able to help the local community in several ways, which are really beneficial for a developing country. Ose-Duro’s action of using hand-dyed fabrics increase the employment opportunities in Ghana and at the same time highlights the company’s value of sustainability in an ethical manner.

In addition, by providing a clothing production training package to their employees, it helps the local people become more educated. Such specific benefit towards the locals cannot be provided by the general organization like UN but only enterprises like the Arc etc. Meanwhile, it not only accelerates clothings producing time but also enhances the quality of their products, the increased and better quality production help the company increase their profits.

Reference:

http://assets.oseiduro.com/img/about/slide-1.jpg

Lately, my classmate Yutian Qiu’s blog debates that employees are the main ones in charge of a company’s organizational culture. In class 19, we learned that organizational culture is a combined “shared values and beliefs that considered to be a appropriate way to think and act within an organization”. A positive organizational culture plays an essential role in human resource management.

In my point of view, organizational culture is created by the employer but improved or enhanced by employees as a company grows. The article Beaware of the ‘silent killer’ at Your Company caught my attention. Here, the author compares organizational culture to the silent killer because it is an invisible indicator tells people a company’s core value.

Also, as many exmaples (Lululemon, Netflix and 3P) indicated that in order to establish a good culture within an organization, it is crucial for the employer to firstly give employees enough freedom to pursue their favourites. It fosters a happier work environment and helps the company to become more innovative and profitable. The happiness at work can directly influence a person’s job performance positively

For some companies, a good orgazational culture can also contribute as a competitive advantage. Lululemon stands out in the fashion industry because the company uses this particular competitive advantage to gain customer loyalty, connecting its target market by delivering the good culture (authentic, creative, consistent and personalized) to consumers. And it obviously works! Therefore, it is very necessary for a company to think hard on forming an organizational culture for the further development.

Reference:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ea/80/78/ea8078f9f8fc6017175ee97cdfa04e75.jpg

Personally, when I do grocery shopping, I prefer to purchase food that labelled with “organic” or products associated with “green” as it delivers the company’s value proposition and social & environmental awareness to me. Recently, I came across Women on Business’s blog post regards to the trend of company’s sustainability matters to customers. The post emphasizes the importance for a company to develop its sustainability since more and more customers have started thinking sustainability as their priority nowadays.

As we learned in class, sustainability is a long term development that requires three stages to achieve, including compliance, efficiency and innovation. Also, sustainability is not just related to environment but it connects to the “Triple Bottom Line” indicated as social, environmental and economic aspects. For example, the blogger brings up the economic aspect, indicating even a consumer’s income is low or the world economy is suffering, customers will still buy “greener” producst because of their increased awareness of environmental-friendly concepts and green value.

I agree with her opinion because consumers’ increased awareness can bring lots of opportunities or space for the company to enhance its development by sustainability in an innovative way. Therefore, companies should take advantage of this trend and adjust business plan to create a well structured customer relationship satisfies consumer needs.

Reference:

http://www.kpu.ca/sites/default/files/downloads/energy-sustainability21056.jpg

In the modern world, advertisement has become the major activity in a business model when a company starts up. Each company has to find a way to market its products to consumers in order to broadcast the brand name. Therefore, they have to discover a unique strategy regards to differentiating their business from others in advertising their goods and services. However, the traditional way of advertising may cost a large amount of money, which creates difficulties for the newly entered entrepreneurs. After reading this article, I am truly inspired by Brooklyn Brewery’s founders’ wise way of advertising.

Brooklyn Brewery, a U.S beer company that tripled its sales in 5 years due to its unconventional marketing strategy. As we learned in Class 4’s Business Model Framework, Brooklyn Brewery has considered many factors in the business canvas for the plan. The company advertises their craft beers by sponsoring  events held in the local community and regions. By sponsoring, the company gradually builds up a good reputation and also creates a customer-orientated relationship. The development of Brooklyn Brewery is mainly based upon the “word of mouth”, it not only saves the company’s advertising expenses but also it broadcasts its brand image. Therefore, more customers will come back to purchase their products in store.

Also, the company is expanding its customer segments by targeting markets globally and getting involved in more music festivals or local artists and restaurants. At the same time, the unique way that company introduces its business is by bringing customers back to their website, which is an online platform developed by the company to attract more customers and emphasize its uniqueness in value proposition.

Reference:

http://brooklynbrewery.com/about/history

As we know that marketing strategy plays a big role in a business’s success, recently I came across this article that really tells me the importance of finding a suitable strategy (business model)  in marketing for a company.

Garret Chan, a founder of tealeaves smartly switched his marketing strategy due to the change in customer segments. Previously, the company only targets its products to many hotels but because of the gradual popularity of tealeaves, the target market has been changed into the individual consumers because customers have the demand for tealeaves. Therefore, the company has to find a way to not only differentiate its products from competitors but also needs to change the old way that they marketed their products.

In my opinion, one smart part for what the company did is that by testing out the “people who were already drinking its product” first and then they discovered it’s a good idea to omit one process of advertising its brand on social networks because customers are mostly elderly groups. By leaving out one unnecessary step, the company can save quite large amount of money which they can therefore transfer into a better marketing strategy, which in this case is shooting films to create stories with tealeaves based on its different characteristics. It builds up the company’s brand image and reputation, attracting more and more people to work for the company and at the same time more consumers would be willing to purchase its products. 

Reference:

http://www.tealeaves.com/static/images/pro_thumb2.jpg

As in the article mentioned, the First Nations are making declaration for setting up their tribal park, leading them to be in charge of these properties; therefore, everyone else who wants to use the land etc. will have to get the permission from the aboriginal people. However, with a rapid economic growth, many large industries have been taken advantage of the unsetting declaration from First Nations to benefit themselves. In the article, Dave Williams indicated that industry such as mining and logging will not be permitted in the tribal park. In my view,  it’s due to the inefficiency and disruption to the environment.But at the same time, it might increase the natives’ employment rate because of the smaller-scaled activities.

Also, as what I thought in between First Nations and corporations,  there is a “middle man” in its supply chain that is blocking the benefits that both companies and natives can get. That is the government. From BC government’s point of view on this issue, they “nicely” stated that they’d like to cooperate with the First Nations and improve the relationships. Since the relation is an external factor that affects its economy and they don’t want to lose these resources which help the government to earn more revenue. Instead of saying “not more litigation” in the news,  the government should truly seek out a better business model, considering both sides to maximize their profits.

One of Stav’s blog entry describes the emergence of Pepsi’s market with a competition of Coca-Cola. As two of the products are considered closely as substitudes in the business world, therefore, the factors on how these products influence consumers have been a major part to consider.

To begin with, both of the brands are well known and they share a lot of similarities. In consumer’s mind, they care more whenever the new idea comes across first into their eyes through marketing. Therefore, it requires many operations to put emphasis on their marketing strategy and be creative, to make the strategic differentiable market plans as well as the profit growing plan.

Also, as the company should also make plans on how to target their consumers, because for most of the population, people would choose Coca-Cola over Pepsi, maybe it’s just due to its history since it is earlier launched in this industry. By controlling these factors, the company should easily have a comparative advantage than its competitors. Purchasing power would be another great external factor that help build the path for the company to make marketing strategy.

In Conclusion, similarities increase the company’s competitiveness and therefore the company should consider more about other factors that help enhance its uniqueness.

Recently, I came across the article that talks about the influences of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Protest business wide. The protest not only takes places near the schools, but it also takes places at the central financial centre of Hong Kong. Therefore, Hong Kong’s economy has been greatly influenced throughout this protest. The ANZ Bank indicates that more than $2bn Hong Kong dollars have be lost due to the pro-democracy protests. Since the Chinese government has suspended the mainland tour group or individuals travel to Hong Kong at the moment. This action leads to the following influnces.

As a large portion of Hong Kong’s GDP is contributed from the mainlanders. Because of the large amount of travellers each year to Hong Kong and also the strong consumer purchasing power, Hong Kong’s GDP has been incredibly increased each year. According to this news from CNN, approximately 1.2 million tourists travelled to Hong Kong’s popular luxury shopping district during the Chinese Golden Holiday. However, due to the Chineses government’s action this year, Hong Kong will lose so much money because of the less consumers spending on their products. The closures of travelling Hong Kong directly lead to their market growth and Gross Domestic Product per Capita decline. Therefore, political issues is a very vital part in business as it is the external factor that might increase or decrease the barrier of a company.

The American multinational corporation eBay has recently announced that it is going to split PayPal and itself into two separate companies. From the perspective of eBay’s CEO, John Donahoe confirms this breaking news and strongly believes in both companies’ future after their separation.

Looking back at the past record for two companies’ cooperation, “PayPal’s revenue are growing at 19% a year, twice as quickly as eBay’s”, this fact suggests PayPal’s rapid economic growth and better revenue earned than eBay. Here are some of the thoughts I have regards to their separation.

First, as for PayPal, after separating from eBay, it still generates most of the capital flows and at the same time, the company will have more opportunities for profit growth that will help the business develop its unlimited potentials. The company can specialize on their business operations, which eventually becomes a competitive advantage in the field. The company can be more strategically in making business plans individually as well to earn as much profits as possible.

Also, as for eBay on the other hand, the separation of two companies would directly affect eBay’s overall benefits. According to Porter’s framework in class prep 10 materials; the separation increases the exit barriers for eBay because the competition between eBay and PayPal raises, representing the competition between the field of online shopping and the online payment service field is merging into the market.

Based on a recent article from the Globe and Mail, Facebook Inc. is improving upon its privacy setting by forcing everyone to go through the checkups they’ve created to protect user’s privacy, which can be related to business ethics. As we know from the past, Facebook Inc. has lost quite large amount of customers due to the unprotection of people’s privacy, which is considered unethical because the customer’s personal information is stolen by many advertising companies and related business associations to collect information from their target markets in order to make more profits. So back then Facebook itself failed to meet the global standardization and also failed to obey the law. Many consumers have sued Facebook Inc. due to consumer safety and its violation of human rights. Fortunately, the company has realized the negative impact of exposing privacy that brought to them; they are now trying to balance between doing business and having ethics by providing users with a new tech option to avoid the threats. In conclusion, better business ethics can help form a better reputation of a company, therefore, it provides more opportunities to keep that company beneficial.

Works Cited

Krashinsky, Susan. “Facebook to Unveil Privacy Program in Effort to Reassure Users.” The Globe and Mail. The Globe and    Mail, Sept.-Oct. 2014. Web. 10 Sept.  2014. 

Chiu, Jeff. Facebook Privacy. Digital image. CTVNews. CTVNews, 11 Apr. 2014. Web. 10 Sept. 2014.