http://rack.1.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDE0LzEwLzA0LzAxL2dvdXJtZXQuNWI4YzEuanBnCnAJdGh1bWIJOTUweDUzNCMKZQlqcGc/cfb64f8d/37f/gourmet.jpg

Comment on Ziyu He’s blog: http://blogs.ubc.ca/rita2275/2014/10/05/new-gourmet-burger-in-australias-mcdonalds/

Lack of innovation has always been a weakness of McDonald’s, but recently, McDonald’s in western Sydney shows people an upgraded approach of ordering which customers can choose their own preferences with touch screens displaying 19 options for different ingredients and toppings.

The internal weakness of McDonald’s will be turned into a strength if the customer responds to this new approach is positive. The change McDonald’s made also shows us technology are getting into every single part of life and business, more high-technological elements are added into food industry. This means the process of ordering food in restaurants will be more easily in the future and the cost of labor will be reduced. However, it may cause an increasing unemployment rate in workers without advanced professional skills as the increasing usage of technology.

As s world famous fast food giant, this innovation makes McDonald’s more competitive by attracting more customers and shortening cunstomer waiting time. However, McDonald’s have to consider carefullly aboout the high cost of those touch screens to make it sustainable.

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Amazon Launches Same-Day Delivery In Toronto And Vancouver

Amazon recently launched its one-day delivery service in Toronto and Vancouver, which guarantees that some of their merchandise can be delivered before 9p.m. local time on the same day if the purchase was made the noon.
As a fan of online shopping, I can not believe how many benefits are brought with the launch of this new service in Canada. People no longer need to worry about the opening hours of malls on weekends or holidays because they can simply get what they want by some clicks on Amazon, and get them home at the end of the day with services seven days a week. Also, the service will increase the number of Amazon customers and expand their market because of the high convenience. It is a signal of innovation as well, and we can simply the prediction that the method of online shopping will be more and more convenient in the future.

However, this new service also brings Amazon an increasing cost of all, if Amazon can not handle the relationship between the benefits and the cost of same-day shipping, problems will appear soon.

http://forexreportdaily.com/2013/10/31/canadian-dollar-falls-as-oil-discount-reaches-eight-month-high/

Canadian dollar keeps falling due to the drop of oil price these days. As international students studying in Canada,  my friend and I pay a lot of attention on the exchange rate of Canadian dollars and Chinese Yuan because it really affects our lives.

It is hard to define if it is a positive or negative issue. For new immigrants and international students from all over the world, it does bring some benefits such as saving some money when transferring from their own currency to Canadian dollars. When Canadian dollar was rising before, the unemployment rate rose as well, and the export from Canada decreased a lot. The falling of Canadian dollars may relieve those situations in some cases.

However, people are not really confident on the recovery of manufacturing and exporting industries in Canada during the falling of Canadian dollars. There are so many uncertainties in the value of the currencies the exchange rate change, we can probably have more hopes on the improvement of economic climate.

Comment on Vanessa Friedman’s blog: http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/alexander-wang-for-hm-became-a-case-study-in-anticipation/?_r=0

The selected stores of H&M were crazily full with people who came to get their Alexander Wang X H&M collection. The brand new collection is as popular as any other designer collection of H&M, an d people were not surprised when they were sold out on the first day, and the online part were sold out the next morning.

The collaboration brought huge benefits to both H&M and Alexander Wang. I have seen a survey about why people buy the designer collection, more than sixty percentage of them choose that because they can get Alexander Wang at a quarter of the original price. Therefore, as a luxury brand, Alexander Wang can put themselves into public consciousness and expand their market. As for the High Street brand H&M, this collaboration leads them to  a new platform which H&M and make both high-end and less-expensive designs.

The writer mentioned a question in her blog, “Does it mean that in the context of limited-edition collaborations, the early bird does not necessarily get the worm?” I believe it depends on how people are into the collection, how much they like it, and if they think it worths waiting.

Comment on Xinyuan Wang’s blog: http://blogs.ubc.ca/xinyuanwang/2014/09/09/business-ethics-in-starbucks/

http://www.justmeans.com/blogs/starbucks-most-unethical-coffee-chain-in-the-uk

Business ethics is about applying and examining ethics in the business environment. In the case provided in the website above, as the giant of the coffee market, they did not fulfill their business ethic because of the GM growth hormone in their milk which threaten customers’ health.

As Xinyuan mentioned in her blog, “business ethics is related to every individual, to all stakeholders.” The GM growth hormone product Starbucks provided was a negative example of business ethics. It did bring  Starbucks a large number of profits and benefit their stakeholders in some cases, but customers’ benefit can not be guaranteed.

The spokesperson of Starbucks claimed that they were “offering industry-leading environmental performance in coffee production.” This announcement did redeem their business image a little, but I believe the customers’ health must be one of the most significant sources and the basic thing to run their company.

http://time.com/money/3311917/apple-pay-iphone-iwatch-passbook/

Apple Pay, the feature in the Passbook application, can now turn an iPhone into a wallet by preloading customer’s debit and credit cards.

I think this new technology will explore a brand new market for Apple with the extreme convenience and the large number of iPhone users. Image that you no longer need to take your cards with you everywhere and do not need to worry about losing them when you are going out with your friends, all you have to take with you is your iPhone. Simply swiping your iPhone can get the payment done, this would definitely provide customers with a better shopping experience.

However, the limited locations for Apple Pay that compatible will be the weakness of this high-technology way of payment. There are only 22,000 compatible sites in the world. Although more stores are getting started to upgrade their terminals, the number of available shops will not be large in a short time, which means it will be the limitation of this technology somehow.

I believe the weakness will not limit Apple Pay in a long time, and it will be one of the major ways of payment in the future.

http://time.com/3456692/lamborghini-asterion/

Lamborghini unveiled a hybrid that can go almost 200mph, which is the combination of environmentally conscious and speed.

As a giant in manufacturer of luxury sports cars, the plug-in hybrid concept car Lamborghini recently unveiled represents the advanced technology and development. The market Lamborghini targets at is basically consumers who are interested in environmental-friendly car as well as excellent speed.

People who are rich and passionate about design and speed of cars are the largest market of Lamborghini, and those of them who devote in protect environment will definitely be the biggest fans of this plug-in hybrid. Likewise, when people with environmentally conscious are considering getting cars with perfect performance on designing and speeding, this concept car will be the best choice for sure.

With the unveiling of this hybrid car, Lamborghini expands their market to a brand new world, they aim not only at being fast but also at being environmental friendly. The development and improvement of hybrid cars will lead Lamborghini to a brighter future.

http://time.com/3404380/jack-ma-alibabas-founder-in-the-ipo-spotlight/

Jack Ma, with a fortune of $25 billion, becomes the richest man in China. As the founder of his company Alibaba Group, Ma has worked with Alibaba for 15 years. Alibaba is the largest online retailer in China now, sold 48,000 items on average every minute.

As the No. 1 e-commerce company in China, Alibaba has a large number of strengths. There are three version of the customer-to-customer online shopping platform, Chinese, English and Japanese. It has both B2C and C2C platform with mature development, and has an unbelievable large number of members, over 800 million.

Alibaba also gets opportunities for being the largest Chinese bbs in the world, helping to bring sellers and consumers from all over the world together.

Although it is an e-commerce giant, Alibaba still has some weakness. For example, the large number and the diversity of members make the e-commerce market too competitive, so there is not much profit for sellers to gain.

Threaten also exists for such a strong company. The way Alibaba works provides a sample for its competitor, it is not difficult to copy, and it makes the market more competitive for Alibaba.

Alibaba is becoming stronger and stronger after listed, the company is definitely promising with the excellent leadership of Jack Ma.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2608359/Choc-horror-It-Easter-world-running-chocolate-demand-China-outstripping-cocoa-bean-production-forcing-prices-up.html

The news above is about the growing price of cocoa and the long-term supply storage of it. The problem comes from three perspectives.

The increasing demand of chocolate is one of the biggest problems for cocoa produce industry, especially for countries such as China. The demand market is keeping expanding but cocoa farmers are not paid enough to survive. The rising demand also lead to higher price of chocolate, as the supply storage that might happen, chocolate will probably become scarcer and scarcer. When demand is increasing, and the supply can not meet the amount of demand,  it will come up with the result of higher price of chocolate.

Another big problem comes from cocoa farmers. What they are facing is not only the low wage, but also the failure of heritage. There is no “next generation behind” the farmers, and they have not come up with the way of transforming the chain, the troubles of cocoa produce industry could not be resolved completely unless they could find out a way of solving these problems.

Some investments are now pledged by International Cocoa Organization to both farmers are   processing industries, governments is also helping with economic problems of chocolate. However, it is not a simple problem that can be solved in a short period of time, the relationship between increasing demand and supply storage is needed to be improved radically.

http://hbr.org/2006/12/strategy-and-society-the-link-between-competitive-advantage-and-corporate-social-responsibility/ar/1

The article is aimed at “a new way to look at the relationship between business and society that does not treat corporate success and social welfare as a zero-sum game”. This point of view is mentioned in the Freeman’s Stakeholder Theory as well. Not treating corporate success almost equals to the business in decline that Freeman defined in the video.

A successful business has a lot of responsibilities to take, not only for the customers, but also for the employees, the suppliers, the financiers, as well as the community. It is one of the key elements for a business to be successful.

Many examples are given from the article, a brief one is fast-food and packaged food companies start to take responsibility for those obesity and poor nutrition. In order to meet Corporate Social Responsibility, the companies are responsible for the health of their customers.

In my opinion, targets that a company should set are not only making profits, but also caring about as well as taking responsibilities for all of its stakeholders.