Xuanya Liu's Blog

What United Nation can offer is financial aid. However, what social enterprise and programs such as Arc can do is more than just offer fund. Because United Nation needs to fund for many less developed places, it is hard for United Nation to know what people in each place really need, perhaps more than just money.

Picture from: The Globe and Mail

What undeveloped places need is to fuel economic growth and economic growth depends on local businesses. This is exactly what Arc Initiative aims to do: Help local business of undeveloped places by providing business advice. Arc initiative, hosted by Sauder school of Business, for example, Shega Shero Eatery, a restaurant in Addis Ababa, is threated by competitors in that area. But the owner of Shega Shero Eatery, Tesfaye, participated Arc Initiative workshop and used new business model she learned in Arc Initiative to make more profits.

Picture from: The Globe and Mail

The growth of local businesses brings many benefits such as increasing employment rate for people in that area. Another example is Salem’s Ethiopia, a craft boutique in Addis Ababa. Under the aid of Arc Initiative, the owner of Salem’s Ethiopia expanded the factory of Addis boutique and hire more people. Hiring more people provides more job opportunity for local people.

Picture from: The Blackboard Blog

To fundamentally solve social problems, fund is far from enough. At this time, social enterprises play roles to change the situation in many ways such as using technology to provide convenience for disability.

Spending least money and maximizing satisfaction of traveling are pursued by travelers. Airbnb exactly provides financial benefits for both traveler and hosts who want to rent out houses for short-term. As Joban mentions, Airbnb is a disruptive innovation compared to traditional hotels. Unlike hotels charging high price, Airbnb offers a platform for traveler to find cheaper place to live and hosts who can not rent out their houses for short-term. Basically, Airbnb uses cost leadership strategy to make traveling more affordable for people especially those with low income.

However, Airbnb’s strength is becoming a threat. For example, many Airbnb hosts are violating states’ short-term rental laws. (Clampet, 2013) At the same time, tax issue also obstructs the development of Airbnb since renting out rooms should pay tax. These benefits to hosts seem to be a problem.

Picture from: Going Local Travel 

Though Airbnb is under pressure of such issues, I still think Airbnb would be a strong competitor in hotel industry. Airbnb not only provides a way to reduce cost of traveling but also provides another choice. By living in house instead of hotels, travelers truly experience local culture and lifestyle. This is what even high-end hotels cannot offer to travelers. This creates point of difference.

Thus, I think as long as Airbnb solve those problems, it would growth faster and faster.

Reference:

Clampet, J. (2013, October 7). New York State Attorney General Subpoenas Airbnb User Records. Retrieved November 12, 2014, from http://skift.com/2013/10/07/new-york-state-attorney-general-subpoenas-airbnb-user-records/

Resources: http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2014/jul/08/airbnb-legal-troubles-what-are-the-issues

Picture from: http://www.goinglocaltravel.com/2012/03/22/airbnb-buys-crashpadder/

As Ariella mentions in her blog, Ebola, a deadly and infectious disease, spreads all over the world and has an impact on business. True, Ebola affects macro environment of travel industry.

Politically, some countries plan to ban flights from Africa to keep virus of Ebola out of countries. Governments spend more money on precaution, forcing governments to find other ways to increase revenue.

Socially, Ebola evokes fear and mistrust in the world, causing social unrest. One direct manifestation is that some airlines to West Africa have been cancelled and fewer people travel to Africa.

Furthermore, Ebola blocks global trade and deeply affects companies which have factors in West Africa because now they have consider about their employees’ health issue.

However, I think Ebola only interrupts the business for short period of time. As doctors innovates more effective treatment, fear would decrease. Also, people who are afraid of traveling to Africa can go to other countries for trip. Thus this would not cause airlines to lose large amount of customers. And so-called travel ban in many economists’ eyes is ineffective and ridiculous and is opposed by economists. Thus, Ebola does not risk business so profoundly, at least for now.

Ariella London’s Blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/ariellalndon/

“Amazon, the retailer and entertainment company reported on Thursday that is lost 95 cents a share in the third quarter, compared with a loss of 9 cents in 2013.”

Amazon fails to realize its goals to make more profit this year. Instead, its stock is falling. What cause Amazon’s decline? We could analyze from internal and external factors.

Unlike eBay that includes variable categories of goods, Amazon mainly focuses on selling books and electronics and provides fewer commodities such as clothes and shoes. Furthermore, Amazon charges higher price compared to other similar website. Less diversified goods and relatively high price are weaknesses for Amazon.

With more and more online stores such as Alibaba’s Taobao developing, Amazon has more strong competitors. Also, many brands tend to have their own official website to sell goods as a way of improving customer relationship. Normally, consumers prefer to buy goods on the official website since many companies provide all their goods on their own website but website like Amazon only provide part of goods of those brands.

Amazon is trying to improve by overcoming internal weaknesses and looking for new way to compete with counterparts. On the one hand it enhances music and video and music service to attract more customers. On the other hand, Amazon plans to open its physical store, which would be an advantage over its competitors.

Resource and Picture from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/technology/amazon-loss-quarterly-earnings.html?_r=0

Picture from: <http://www.turtlegardens.org>

Establishing partnership with aboriginal people enhances national cohesion and benefits social harmony. The core idea of partnership is to share resources and therefore promote development of both sides. First Nation partnership is an important issue for Canadian government to deal with. The cooperation between government and First Nation enhances the development of companies.

Picture from: Sunnews

Aboriginal people own a portion of land with abundant natural resources which is not available now. But if the government builds partnership, some companies, such as energy companies can use the natural resources, at the same time, offer job opportunity for those aboriginal people as exchange. Aboriginal people can become not only labor force but also consumers. The energy company can cooperate with local community and provide energy for that region.

Resources:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/background-the-indian-act-1.1056988

Yahoo sells a portion of stake of Alibaba Group and tends to invest Snapchat, a popular photo and messages sharing app among young people. As we know, Yahoo’s investment in Alibaba undoubtedly makes profit simply in terms  of  investment return. And now Yahoo targets to a potential company. But would the investment in Snapchat also be a successful try?

Snapchat allows users to set the time that they want the system to automatically delete photos they upload and does not allow other users to take screenshot. This function protects users’ privacy. And that is the “Point Of Difference” between Snapchat and its competitor Instagram. However, users worry about that other users could still take photos of what they upload by using other phones and camera. Using Snapchat means to take risk of privacy disclosure. Establishing trust with users is not a easy task for Snapchat. Thus considering this reason, Snapchat may lose a portion of users. Besides, Snapchat mainly targets on young people while Instagram targets on broader users. Snapchat may not have large market as Instagram has. Therefore, Yahoo needs to consider carefully before making decision about investment to Snapchat.

Resource and Picture from: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/yahoo-in-talks-to-invest-in-snapchat/

If you ask people in China whether they have ever bought commodities on Taobao, most of them would answer, “Yes”.

Alibaba always knows what customers need. Alibaba knows that Chinese need a website to purchase commodities with cheaper price so it designs Taobao and Tmall. Alibaba targets on broad customers and satisfied the need for both buyers and sellers. Taobao mainly targets on low to middle class consumers  and small merchants while Tmall targets on middle to upper class and big merchants which sell some well-known brands.

Alibaba knows that Chinese love discount so it designs “Shopping Day” which discounts the price and provides e-coupon for consumers. Such strategy promotes sales and draws more attention from customers.

Alibaba knows that Chinese consumers do not trust strangers from website. To build trust between buyer and sellers, Alibaba provides verification service and designs Alipay.

Alibaba sees things from customers’ point of view. It caters to consumers’ need as much as possible, eliminates customers’ worries and maximize consumers’ satisfaction. That is why Alibaba gets success.

“Tax Inversions“ are a popular strategy for American companies to save money by moving their tax domiciles abroad.General Electric, for example, recently sells its entire appliance division to a foreign company, Electrolux of Sweden, for $3.3 billion. (Sommer, 2014) By doing this, General Electric not only promotes its products to the other countries in the world but also automatically increases its profit with paying less tax.

In the name of promotion and development, General Electric seemingly benefits itself without violating law and rules. But if more and more companies in the United States utilize such strategy to reduce the cost, the government tax revenue in the domestic will decrease. Thus in some degree, “Tax inversions” violate interest of the whole country. Business as a whole, connects each group of stakeholders and requires each group to be responsible. Law is not the only standard to determine whether a company can implement a strategy. Besides law, there must be other standards such as a company’s social responsibility to evaluate the implementation of the strategy.

Picture from: https://www.ralstonreports.com/blog/poll-two-most-popular-things-nevada-are-margin-tax-and-gov-sunny

Reference: Sommer, J.(2014 September 13). Jeers and Cheers Over Tax Inversions. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/your-money/jeers-and-cheers-over-tax-inversions.html?ref=international

Friedman has proposed that the responsibility of business is to maximize the profit without violating law. But is it easy to strictly obey the law? And is law the only rule for corporation to obey？Sometimes when corporates or individuals strive to make profits as much as possible, though they may violate the law but violate certain rules called “BUSINESS ETHICS”.

A protest at a Gap store on Thursday in Chicago, in response to the disaster in Bangladesh.

After a building including several clothing factories collapsed in Bangladesh, individuals have concerned about the safety of such clothing factories. Some clothing companies ‘reluctance on signing for safety standard of factories provokes protest. As Freeman mentions, the interest of suppliers, consumers, employers and employees cannot be isolated. In this case, while cutting cost and increasing profit, these companies are also supposed to ensure the benefit of their employees since the employees play a important role to create value for the company. On the other hand, if these clothing companies truly protected rights of employees before this collapse event, they would not be blamed by the public. The public opinions actually damage the companies’ image and established reputation. And those brands may lose customers’ trust.

Stakeholders in business have interactional effect on each other. Hence, being responsible for each of the groups is the equally important as making profits because all of these groups affect the profit that companies can make. What make a company truly successful and profitable is the company’s ethical spirit.

Resource and Picture from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/business/global/clothing-retailers-pressed-on-bangladesh-factory-safety.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&