One questionnaire brought up by an internet user in quora.com asked why Yahoo! is declining since the mid 2000s and Beini Chen from the University of British Columbia also elaborates of the reasons of decline in Yahoo!. According to recent research, Yahoo!’s “prominence” in the market will only take up 13%, while that of Facebook will be over 16% in 2011. In the beginning of 21st century, the interaction of internet users has changed that,  Prem Chandrasekaran said from the quota.com,  “The internet really went from a one-way channel for information dissemination to a two-way, contributory street.”  Some have made predictions of the decline of Yahoo! since the mid 2000s as people adopted the use of Google and Facebook. The major two threats for Yahoo! are most certainly Google and Facebook. As a internet consumer and user myself, I have seen people using now casual socially accepted terms such as “google it,” or “Facebook me,” which simply demonstrates their high brand values and powers that the search engine and social services provided by Yahoo! are not anymore the best channel for people to use anymore.

You need to ask first how entrepreneurship is different from a businessman or the CEO of a company. Misunderstanding comes from the implausible assumptions that both are the same because they run a business. However, the critical point has to be made in what an entrepreneur does. Dr. Ahn, a professor of advanced institute of convergence technology at Seoul National University states, “a person is evaluated not by his or her words and thinking but his actions and choices.” Entrepreneurship endeavours to CREATE a new value that has never existed before.  This “-ship” does not specifically indicate a person who is sensation-seeking, has a great skill in writing a business plan, nor wants to be rich. However, this “-ship” does indicate a person who tries to discover a novel field of work in the world in spite of flooding uncertainties  and difficulties.

Melinda and Bill Gates have shared their belief in the importance of the act of improving education in North America, specifically in the United States of America. Bill Gates has elaborated in this heperlinked blog, “the Gates Notes” that uneducated workers who have not received college level education double the number of those unemployed workers who have been educated in college level education.  As the America faces such profoundly unsettling nationwide economic issues, concerns for the quality of teachers and education for children are greatly neglected. With an increasing need for highly-skilled workers, the future of the US economy does not seem to be promising as well.  Although the absence of college level education will not totally ruin your life, I find the education I am currently receiving somewhat helpful as a postsecondary student myself. Some classes and lectures may include contents that one finds useless and nothing to connect to real life situations. However, in general courses of education, people attain more knowledges, skills and most importantly, realizations through one’s learning processes. I believe that learning matters more than education. Yet, learning process can accelerate and exceed when it is met with education.

As I observe people satisfaction when they purchase a good deal of money to get a car in North America, the impression has always been much more about the usefulness itself than conspicuous consumption. When you are entitled to buy your own new vehicle in compliance with how much of income you make, you look into the micro factors associated with the car such as how gas-efficient it is, how safe it is etc. rather than decisively choosing the luxury cars such as Audi, BMW, Volkwagen etc. just because you have enough money. Continue reading →

If you are in an unfamiliar place to travel, then you will stop before a train or any transportation ticketing machine trying to figure how it works. Also imagine if your next destination is cross over the board. Here come the SilverRail in emergence to solve this problem international-wise. Wholeheartedly voluntary work to make it easier for ticketing travellers expands to USA, Canada, Britain, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. This business focuses on differentiation in a broad sense. Simplification of ticketing process which cooperates with all sorts of rail suppliers will be integrated into one platform. However, even if their measurement of inconvenience from travellers, their threats still exist: it is also common for travellers that having difficulties in finding ways is fun part of journeys and not many business travellers will change their choice of transportation to train just because the ticketing process has become easier.

The only two ways to attract and entice travellers to the train transportation would be only if their ticket sales grow significantly and there is a decrease in the price of tickets. The second recommendation for them is to target at social factors of consumer behaviour by showing, for example, how cozy and comfortable trains are for families or travellers to enjoy.

In the face of threatening rise of Barnes & Noble(B&N), Amazon.com has become a bigger threat of crushing down B&N.  As it launched its online-based business in 1995, many critics predicted on the fall of Amazon as the new bookseller business came into the market, Barnes and Noble. However, the unpredicted upside-down has happened by Amazon. In the meantime, Apple, one of the greatest business in making tablets, has become now sensitive to the rise of Amazon.com.

Amazon has launched the production, a tablet computer called Kindle Fire which is to compete against such products as Nook Color tablet by B&N and Apple’s iPad. Kindle Fire is sold in the market at much cheaper price, $199, than that of iPad, $499, and Nook Color, $224, an effort by Amazon to make its own product to be attractive and valuable to customers. By definition, operational effective is achieved when a business implements practices similar services,  which already exist in the market, in different ways.  Also, Amazon’s selling the tablet computer at a cheaper price can be categorized as cost leadership as well.

In order for Apple’s iPad and B&N’s Nook Color to be able to win over the competition with Amazon’s Kindle Fire is to concentrate on maintaining their customers who have loyalty to the brand. Amazon’s Kindle Fire, however, has disadvantages in terms of having less loyalty than those two businesses. Apple and B&N, if there is no way to reduce their prices, have no other choice than improving their products and gain more loyalty.

http://www.economist.com/node/21530980

We learn from the class 4 that there is now inevitable competition on price between two companies, Lieber Light of Fraser Co. and Vancouver Light Co. Both companies are in business of production of skylights. Lieber light Co. recently celebrity its 50th anniversary,  beating that of Vancouver Light in experiences, quality of services and quantity of loyal customers. However, the uprising of Vancouver Light is becoming a threat to Lieber Light because of its strategy in targeting customers with much lower price. Although there is still a considerable gap in the quality of services from two companies, customers and remodellers of houses now shift their purchases towards Vancouver Light. This shifts in customers’ minds finally broke out a crisis and Lieber Light is negatively reinforced to lower greatly to be able to compete with Vancouver Light. But the weakness of Vancouver Light is that it does not emphasize on quality of services and possession of loyal customers who have dealt with them for a long time, which Lieber Light has succeeded in for the last fifty years. I think Lieber Light must keep on emphasizing the production of quality service over that of Vancouver Light to win this competition.

The Madison Ave. spa Wellpath in New York strived to attract loyal customers by running discounts on the “deal-of-the-day” Web sites. Wellpath spa provides women who look for health and beauty that are gentle and highly effective to become better and more beautiful looking women. Their service includes Zerona laser treatment, radio frequency using Velashape and Carboxytheraphy etc. Wellpath cooperated with the biggest dealmaker, Groupon, making better daily deals on Website to attract and intensify the number of customers to the place. This drew women from places to benefit from coupons to get their wrinkles removed but only temporarily. This marketing instantly draws and catches the eyes of customers to come to the place once but does not make them their loyalty.

“The consumers were being told: You will never pay full price again.The merchants were hearing: You are going to get new customers who will stick around and pay full price. Disappointment was inevitable.”

From my point of view, since merchants seem to expect to prosper afterward their having invited customers for once, they should be satisfied to have benefits of spreading awareness of their brand because the input for this output is undoubtedly high and risky.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/business/deal-sites-have-fading-allure-for-merchants.html?scp=1&sq=wellpath&st=cse

Although ethics should play a significant role as in missionaries of humanities of society, it does not play a central role in businesses making profits and productivity high. The purpose of business is to survive as a organization by making profits and benefits. To supplement for this purpose, an organizational goal is to be oriented toward creating development itself. They are eager to do so whatever it takes. Even if it violates the moral standards and regulations, in a situations in which importance of improvement is more weighed upon, they may ignore those that hinder their speed toward success.
  For example, in northern Mexico, in the state of Chihwahwa, labor issues are quite severe in terms of ensuring their health issues and work hours and environments. The companies in Mexico make those Mexican labourers work from 8 am to 10 pm. That’s not just 6 more hours of work added than that in Canada, their work life is miserable in sweatshop factories; literally, they are forced not to even dream about making labor unions, work load of the day, highly unsafe working conditions, no rest time longer than 10 minutes, standing up for work all day long and, most importantly, their payment per hour, making three to five dollars a day.

http://www.playsweatshop.com/index.html

http://www.labor-religion.org/