http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2014/07/26/Tsilhqotin-With-Gloves/

There is no company in the world that will waste any chances for them to make profits. However, in Tsilhqot’in BC, the companies that try to exploit gold and copper no longer have the permission to do so, as the Supreme Court of Canada claims all activities that take place within Tsilhqot’in’s region will be illegal without permission from the Tsihqot’in people.

In this particular case, the rights of stakeholders, which are the Indigenous people living in  Tsilhqot’in , are being violated. Given by Freeman’s theory, it is a manger’s responsibility to combine all stakeholders’ interests. In other words, if any of the stakeholder’s interest is failed to be satisfied, then the business model has a defect. The Indigenous people in Tsihqot’in represents the community and their interest is to protect the environment. Thus, the company’s interest of exploiting golds and coppers is in conflict with the community’s interest. Therefore, the combined interests of all stakeholders is one important element in business model.

While still selling the popular the Slurpees ,7-Eleven has recently introduced a new line selling healthy food including sandwiches, juices and salads. The prices of the beverages are rather expensive. The new juice with a Tony Horton Kitchen label costs $4.99 for 16-ounce. The reason of 7-Eleven adding a new line is probably what 7-Eleven spokesman Margaret Chabris reveals. She says that costumers requests for healthy food were the second to the new Slurpees. 

Being health conscious and the willingness to spend more money on healthier food have become two social trends. In response to that, food companies start to sell food products with less fats and calories. For instance, McDonald which only used to sell trash foods such as hamburgers and fries now adds McDonald breakfast combo that includes orange juice and hamburgers which contains fewer calories. The food companies try to enter market as soon as possible so that their competitors will not increase their market shares by attracting new costumers with healthy food products. What 7-Eleven is doing right now also follows this pattern.  7-Eleven which used to sell food products that are not related to healthy food now begins to introducing a new healthy food line in response to costumers appeals. The article states that more than 100 7-Eleven stores in Log Angeles are putting healthy food on the stock. This indicates 7-Eleven is testing how the healthy food line goes. The reason why 7-Eleven picks Los Angeles is probably because there is a large portion of people who requested healthy food products live in Los Angeles.

Is that really beef in your lasagna?

Aldi, a global supermarket with over 9000 stores in the world, has confirmed there is a 30% to 100% addition of horse meat in beef products. Aldi says the French supplier Comigel is the one to blame yet Comigel shifts the blame to its supplier Spanghero for supplying them horse meat as suppose to beef. Other than the dispute about which is the one to blame, there is also a hygiene issue for the affected beef that the beef potentially contains phenylbutazone which can cause a serious blood disorder. Cecilia comments on the business ethic that is involved in this event. She thinks Aldi’s dishonesty to its costumers and the denial of responsibility exerts a significant negative impact on the company’s reputation. 

From my point of view, I think all the companies in this event are responsible for supplying affected beef and their denial of responsibility doesn’t help in redeeming their reputation. According to Freeman’s stakeholder theory, manager has the responsibility to figure out how the interests of all the stakeholders, the company, costumers, suppliers and community, come together. In this affected beef case, all of the companies violate the business ethics by insulting companies and costumers’ interests. Even though mixing beef with horse meat can lower the costs, but the trust between costumers and company as well as between companies are completely destroyed. Costumers feel betrayed by risking their life buying beef product that can serious health issue while companies will choose other suppliers. As a result of that, all these companies will suffer significant financial and trust crisis.

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/25000-xiaomi-mi-3-phones-to-be-offered-to-flipkart-customers-who-couldnt-buy-earlier-601852

Xiaomi India, a smartphone company which headquarter is located in China, just announced there would be 25,000 available for consumers who repeatedly attempted to purchase Xiaomi Mi3 at least five times in the previous flash sales.  For these consumers, Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra introduced a new system of sale called the Xiaomi Priority Pass. This new system will automatically make Xiaomi Mi3 available to purchase on the consumers ‘s cart. If the consumer doesn’t purchase in a given period of time, then the device will be offered to the next batch of consumers.  Xiaomi also announced more than 300,000 Mi phones were sold in first two months.

Xiaomi is a Chinese domestic smartphone company that provides good quality smartphones in a relatively low price.  Xiaomi’s latest smartphone Xiaomi Mi4 costs about $429. Other than Mi series, Redmi series is for consumers willing to spent less money on smartphones. In particular, Redmi Note only cost about $150 in China. This is clearly a example of Cost Leadership Strategy by setting a low price while maintain a good quality to win more market shares.

Other than Cost Leadership, Xiaomi also gives consumers a popular impression by using flash sales. Since there are only a certain amount of Xiaomi that are available online and online it is the only way to buy them, it means that there are only a few consumers can successfully purchase at a time. Thanks to Xiaomi’s Cost Leadership Strategy,  60,000 Redmi 1S went out of stock in 13.9 seconds, given by the Xiaomi website. Xiaomi successfully gives consumers who successfully purchase Xiaomi a sense of pride, just like what iPhone consumers who try to buy the latest version of iPhone as soon as it is released.

http://bgr.com/2014/10/02/blackberry-passport-vs-iphone-6-2/

The new BlackBerry CEO John Chen provides a honest insight on BlackBerry’s market. He doesn’t expect BlackBerry favors more customers than iPhone does.  Instead of trying to challenge iPhone head on BlackBerry Storm and BlackBerry Z10, which turned out to be a failure, Chen changes the company’s strategy back into what the company is always good at——”Making secure communications tools for corporate power users'” Chen positions BlackBerry as for “anyone that relies on their devices on their jobs.” (quoted by John Chen)  The company is now focusing on the more practical areas, such as battery life, keyboard and synchronization of information across devices.

I think Chen makes a very wise decision on focusing on the edges while avoiding direct competition against the magnates such as Apple and Samsung. Their focus strategy  on providing business smartphones which are tailored for the businessman gives them a distinctive position in the market. They avoid imitating Apple and Samsung’s strategy to make bigger, thinner smartphones with better screen resolutions. In that case, the BlackBerry can earn a part of the market share and make their profits.