The amount of money donated to charities dropped for 20% from last year and unsurprisingly they become more active in requesting for donation from people. However, heavy taxes are also pressuring potential donors and left them with lesser disposable income. Therefore, it is understandable that some people might be reluctant to make donations even though they had been regularly donating for years. But nowadays charities keep track of people who made donations before and even frequently give these people home-calls to ask for further donations.

To me, this kind of action is not acceptable as most people feel hard to say no to requests from charities even the donations are volunteered, like  Judith Woods said, “under politely persuasive pressure”, as long as they are not lacking enough capital to make a living. Undoubtedly, marketers for charities are allowed to try their best to persuade people to make donations, but calling to people’s home is really on the edge of violating their privacy. People may not like this behavior while being too kind to say it, and potentially be annoyed to make any further donations. In my opinion, if the detailed use of money is thoroughly planned out and the objective is clear and determined, the government is always the best place to go to, instead of people who already fulfilled their social responsibility through being employed and paying taxes.

External blog: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/judithwoods/100189330/charity-begins-at-my-home/

I understand, to some extent, what JK94 is trying to describe and I think it is an interesting idea to do advertisements even in the public bathroom. Actually, I personally witnessed a few examples of spreading advertisements in this untamed area, but they left no impression to me. In my opinion, the issue here is essentially information overload with fancy pictures and ads allover the places, and people, like me, start to see these as a simple “background”. So if the marketers keep on trying to find every possible area that people might be somehow paying attention to, they become quite annoying.

Anyway, different individuals may have different views on this issue, so bathroom advertising could be an option for smaller businesses that are trying to find a cheap way to start up their marketing. However, the type of product that a business is advertising on through this way has to be fit with bathroom stall advertising, as some companies may not want to relate market images of their products with things happening in the bathroom. For a simple example, food is definitely not appropriate to be advertised under this method.

In all, businesses nowadays have to think out of the box to effectively promote services or products to be sold, and I do believe that there are still endless opportunities to be discovered and used.

Above is a picture spotted at an Australia airport depicting an advertisement over an air-blowing  hand dryer.

Related links:  1. (Commented on) https://blogs.ubc.ca/jaikular/2012/11/17/make-unconventional-even-more-unconventional/

2. http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/advertising/3877666-1.html#axzz2CXkeItFC

Sustainability is always the key for a functional social enterprise, which aims to maximize social welfare and environmental well-being through a set of business strategies. Famous examples of social enterprise are Save-on-Meats and Toms (purchase one for one giving to needy child). They differentiate themselves from non-profit organization by being self-sustained and they generate paid employments. In other words, social enterprises actually attempt to solve the problem rather than simply giving a certain amount of money every year to delay the problem like what most charities did.

However, being a social enterprise is very different with, or in my words, harder than being a non-profit organization such as charity. The specific issue has to be identified and an attainable and usually innovative solution has to be generated for the problem. After everything is planned out, the business still has to compete with other profiting corporations.

After all, it could be very hard to be both competitive while being a social enterprise. But by being genuinely ethical, a corporation would have the power to a larger volume of products than its competitors. For example, considering that fact that many children in developing countries grow up without a pair of shoes, Toms conducted its One for One movement that promises to give a pair of shoes to these needy children with each pair bought by customers.  In addition to consumers’ increasingly ethical-buying attitude, this movement ended up becoming successful and actually helped lots of kids.

Related link: http://www.toms.ca/our-movement/

After reading over Oliver’s blog, I am surprised by the new technology call Near Field Communication (NFC). While feeling astounded by it, describing how smart phones could enable people to buy commodities by simply scanning their phonesover a specialized device, I find this over-developed use of phones uncomfortable.

For me, the most important concern here is the safety issue. From the original way of bargain, to cash for exchange, and to the latest credit cards that have become an essential part of people’s lives, we enhance transactions by improving efficiency without having too much risks. If one lost the wallet, the maximum amount of money that person could lose is fixed; if one lost his or her credit card, password would be an effective protection. However, if a smart phone embedded with this technology was stolen, the person is not necessarily going to be bankrupt, but he or she would definitely end up hating the person who recommended this app for a long time.

Although I understand that this technology is optional for people to choose and make use of, the attempting advantage of this new advancement might, to some extent, lead to people’s irrational choice to therefore become one of the many victims suffering from electronic-devise frauds.

Comment for Oliver’s blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/oliverzhang/2012/10/11/53/

Although made billions of dollars through the selling of its computer software, Microsoft was struggling in trying to catch up with Google Inc. on the Internet market and was losing money due to fruitless attempts. The company was so desperate that it was even trying to buyout Yahoo Inc. for $47.5 billion, which was double the amount of what Yahoo’s market value worse at the time.

Last summer in 2011, Microsoft took another hard try to stand in the Internet market by buying Skype, an internet telephone service, out for $8.5 billion, which is more than triple of Skype’s IPO, $2.75 billion at the time. So unsurprisingly, on this Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it will discontinue its Messenger service in all countries, except mainland China, in early 2013 to ask its users to make the transition to Skype, merging the accounts and contacts for both services.

I think the decision that Microsoft made is at least a good bet. Although $8.5 billion is undoubtedly a lot of money, the huge customer base Skype has is able to offer Microsoft a competitive advantage over Google and other major competitors. Also, Microsoft has the money power to support the decision. Even if the return might not be immediately shown in terms of cash, Microsoft now has the ability to be able to enhance other services that Microsoft has developed, through Skype.

Related links:

1. http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2011/05/10/microsoft-skype-sale.html

2. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/11/06/microsoft-skype-messenger.html

Canada’s national pensions plan (CPP) has currently announced its two big transactions on Friday, investing considerable amount of money into two international sports properties, respectively. Specifically, it took 39% stake in Dorna sports and signed a debt agreement with Formula One Group to finance $400 million of a $1 billion high-yield loan. If these transactions were made by a normal corporation, it would be perfectly fine in terms of a chance of generation extra bucks, but it just happened to be CPP. So for this particular organization, Canadian retired citizens need the money from it for a living.

That reminds me of the supply chain issue about what is the appropriate amount to keep in stock, depending on how serious it could be if there was a surplus or shortage of the supply. In this case, I think CPP better makes sure that it has cash all the time. Otherwise, if this investment crashes, policies involving cutting down retirement benefits are likely to be established.

I do understand that the Canada government will be backing up CPP, but the decisions are really not that wise. Since both organizations that CPP invested in are suffering from lack of financial support to run their teams, there must be something bad in whether it is generally liked by people. Therefore, CPP should invest more reliably rather than take high risk for high benefits.

Related link:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/10/26/cpp-racing-f1-motogp.html

Small-sized, environmental-friendly and cheap-priced electronic car, called the ZEVe ultracompact, will soon be running on the roads of Japan. The establishment of this car costs Toyota Motor Corporation $254,800, only for the approval from Japan’s government, a quota of up to 70,000 units annually. From the perspective of the company, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance”, stated by Yoshiro Sugimoto, a veteran of the company.

I believe that this product will bring about many positive contributions to Japan. For the government’s concern, it reduces pollution. For smaller businesses, it is an ideal transportation option with very low cost. More importantly, it maximized transportation efficiency, as stated in the article referenced below, like “one man driving a four-seat car.”

However, it may cause even more serious traffic problem in Japan, given Japan’s huge population density, because most customers of this car would be those who didn’t have a car initially. Therefore, although it is small, the establishment of this vehicle will not reduce any current existing car; it may only provide a chance for low income people to update their bikes to faster “bikes”. Maybe this is the major reason why the government sets that quota.

Related link:

1. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-04/japan-tries-cars-that-make-the-mini-look-maxi

Samsung is one of the biggest high-end electronics manufacturers, producing and selling phones, TVs and etc. Led by the strong sales of its smart phone product Galaxy S3, Samsung expects its operating profits to hit 8.1 trillion won which is $7.3 billion for a single quarter. Although this expected profit is fairly stunning, Samsung still has unending lawsuits with Apple which sued Samsung for violating several of Apple’s patents. A recent law court that asked Samsung to pay more than $1 billion to Apple also confirmed this shadow over Samsung.

In my opinion, although it will definitely cost Samsung some money to Apple, since I also personally think that Samsung copied some features from iPhone, I still believe that the Samsung’s future performance would be satisfying. It is largely due to its technology similarity with its major competitor Apple’s iPhone and its price competitiveness compared to iPhone. But undeniably speaking, these two companies are dominating the smart phone markets.

Related links:

1. http://www.bbc.com/news/business-19840040

2. http://www.samsung.com/ca/aboutsamsung/

    Tencent is one of the biggest companies in the Internet industry, with more than 700 million user base according to its office site. However, it is widely notorious for its “strategy” in copying products from others in almost every category of the mobile and internet applications. Examples of products of well-known companies being copied are Facebook, eBay and etc. What interested me is that the Tencent’s profit for the first half year in 2012 was two billion Yuan (312,420,000.00 CAD) which was a 54.3% increase compared to that in 2011.

I think there are mainly three reasons for its success. Firstly, Tencent was established as early as 1998, leading to its huge user base; at least all of my friends in China use QQ, which is the major product developed by Tencent. Secondly, many famous companies like Facebook are kept out of the China market, so, to some extent, Tencent becomes these companies for Chinese users. More importantly, Tencent did many improvements and modifications to the products it copied, and most of the products are free!

In all, I’m not really supporting this behavior because it’s not ethically right by stealing other people’s works, but I think Tencent has done a great job in positioning itself in the market, with low costs and risks.

Related links:

1. http://www.biztechday.com/china-tencent-copycat/

2. http://www.tencent.com/zh-cn/content/ir/rp/2012/attachments/201201.pdf

 Foxconn is one of the biggest electronics manufacturers all over the world, holding more than 900,000 employees, which is also where eighteen people jumped from the building with fourteen deaths. The reasons are obvious, due to the extremely harsh working conditions. Employees work up to 16 hours a day, earning merely CNY 1200 ($200) per month, constantly suffering from managers’ verbal assaults and the company routinely violates local labor laws. All these behaviors are considered very unethical and even inhumanity. However, to be noticed, Foxconn is also the biggest external contractor of Apple Corporation, so Apple is somehow partially responsible for this tragic.

Every company is trying to cut down costs, especially for electronic manufacturers, who earn little margin for a large volume, so they survive by being efficient and cut down labor costs is crucial to Foxconn. On the other hand, according to Apple’s annual revenue report, it earned $40 billion revenue for this year. Since Apple has such a strong sale, it should be able to lift up the marginal profits for Foxconn and renegotiate necessary treatment for employee’s working condition in China. Also, whenever tragic happened Apple simply announced what their supervisors found out about which supplier was violating laws and Apple’s commitments for labor protection, without any penalties, which can be seen as laws without polices.

At last, in my opinion, although suicide tragedies happened in Foxconn in China, Apple is also responsible for indirectly causing the tradedies.

Related links:

1. http://sacom.hk/archives/740

2. http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/2066547793x0x585701/beacb369-cb95-4950-acf4-4fbfa3569ec6/Q3_2012_Form_10-Q_As-Filed_.pdf