Yi-Fang Liu's UBC Blog

Singles Day also known as the “bare sticks holiday”, is an anti-valentine’s day that is on November 11. It has become the new Black Friday and Cyber Monday, as Alibaba is taking this unique holiday into its sales. Alibaba has co-opted the date, by offering deals on its online shopping site; influencing consumers that it is a day for “self-gifting and personal indulgence”. This technique worked, as in 2013 Single Day sales surpassed that of Cyber Mondays, where consumers spend $5.8 billion, which is far more than Black Friday and…read more

Talking about entrepreneur, what is the true definition of it? Mondelez (Internaitonal vide president of global media Bonin Bough) defines entrepreneur as people who see gaps in the market or in other words, “opportunities that nobody saw”, and try to seal the gaps by creating new businesses and make the ‘new ideas’ happen. Before, being an ‘entrepreneur’, according to Amy Cosper, meant having no jobs and trying to make “fast-bucks”, whereas now it means that you are “free” to take upon challenges and think of creative ideas that could make…read more

During class 19, Danielle van Jaarsveld talked about organizational culture and used Zappos as the main example to discuss the importance of creating a ‘happy’ workforce. When we discussed about Zappos’ positive and enthusiastic work environment, I immediately thought of Google’s workplace, which has slides, outdoor activity areas, nap pods, and much more. Google is similar to Zappos as they both have created a positive atmosphere and attitudes to its workforce, which from my perception is a smart way of maintaining efficiency in communication; as seen in Zappos’ organizational culture,…read more

According to Larry Pynn, the author of “Tsilhqot’in set to declare site of New Prosperity mine a tribal park”, Taseko Mine Limited is facing a couple of external factors regarding its plan on developing mines at Fish Lake. Using the PESTLE analysis, Taseko may be facing political, social, and environmental external factors. Taseko may be facing political external factor, as First Nation declares Fish Lake property as part of the tribal park. This would perhaps result Taseko on having a harder time to be able to use the Fish Lake…read more

Bruce Philip the author of the blog article “When Brands Attack”, mentions about the urge that businesses have to become the market leader, through attacking other brands by using advertising. I am sure that most of you have come across a humorous ad, such as the Pepsi ad that mocked Coke (its big competitor), which Paul had showed us in class demonstrating some aspects of value proposition. These brand attacking ads are most of the time a way for companies to directly communicate with audiences as to how their brand…read more

I came across Jessica‘s post that focused on social media and how it has always been a huge way to impact on purchaser’s decision to buy a product or not. I agree that “people are looking for connections” and that is why many people nowadays are seen with mobiles on their hands and scrolling through twitter, and other forms of social media to keep them updated. However, audiences of social media should be smart users and not just gullible users. We should be skeptical of everything we read on the…read more

First of all I agree with Harpreet‘s point of view that the result of CVS quit selling cigarettes would boost it’s public image in a positive manner, but on the other hand it would perhaps cost CVS to loose profit in the long run. From my point of view, CVS would not only perhaps loose money from quitting selling cigarettes but also goods that cigarette buyers usually buy as a complement with the cigarettes; for instance, mints, and gums. This idea was mentioned from our class discussion on business ethics,…read more

One of the first-hand business experiences or knowledge I had that had impacted me was during the Thailand flood, that had caused massive floods in industrial areas, which also included the location where my family’s business was. This was a very devastating time, as many factories ranging from tech to garmented companies lost a lot of money when its factory was flooded in Thailand (2011). The Thai flood has influenced me as it made me realise the domino-effect, where the exogenous shock had lead many big and small firms (ex:…read more