Blackberry, a smart phone that was used to be on the top position in the smartphone industry had lost many of its customers to new rivalries like Apple and Android. Why would this be the case? Blackberry has been very popular before the iPhones have launched in. Even the U.S. president Barack Obama used Blackberry to send personal messages to his wife. The answers were explained in my friend Cathy Lee’s blog post.

President Barack Obama using his beloved Blackberry

In Cathy’s blog post, she has explained that Blackberry was lagging behind its competitor Apple with its new phone BB10 available one year behind the current new iPhone 5. Also, she has stated that Blackberry needs to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses in which I agree with her point. Although Blackberry has its main feature BBM, that would considered as a point of difference from rivalries. They are losing millions of loyal consumers to Apple, Android, and Samsung as what Cathy has talked about that the similar WhatsApp messenger is available.

BB10

This can be viewed as components in Porter’s five forces model in which increased rivalry and substitutes lead to unattractiveness. RIM has becoming more unattractive to customers because they can not provide what customers are looking for.

Picture reference: Google image bb10

Clothing retailer Gap Inc. has found out that one of its vendors in New Delhi India was using child labor in the process of making its clothing. The children employed were sold by their families. They had to work long hours without wages and their working place condition were worst that the hallways were filled with dirty sewage from flooded toilets. This might lead to disease and cause health concerns for the children, but the sweatshop did not care about this concern. The children  would got beaten with rubber pipes if they were working inefficiently. Also, these young children worked with their hands for long hours because of making hand stitched blouses that were going to sell in the western countries like the United States for a price of $40 dollars each.

The issue here is that Gap will lose its loyal customers after the news is out. No one would want to buy a sweater that was made in inhumanity ways. Thus, this would lead to both a decrease in sales and profit. Even Gap try to put a large budget to restore its image later, it would not help. Its reputation is damaged inside the mind of the customers.

Picture reference: Google image