Kevin Ding's blog

The news article talks about Samsung’s new design for glasses with thumbnail-sized displays, which are able to be controlled by smartphones and are made for people who usually do outdoor activities or sports. And this idea is said to be inspired by Google Glass, which is an internet-connected eyewear being tested last year.

From a personal angle, Samsung’s new idea of designing the smartphone-connected glasses is really good because it will be a unique product and therefore form points of difference such as providing customers with hands free experience of controlling over their smartphones. But since this is a relatively new type of product, I think Samsung needs to do more market researches to learn about what customers want and don’t want in order to improve their designs and form better strategies. For example, customers want to pay affordable prices and if the prices were set too high, probably few people would buy it since it is not really a ‘painkiller’. And customers don’t want the glasses to be heavy and easily broken because there are lots of body movements when they do sports and other outdoor activities. Moreover, the target customers might only be limited to those who do sports frequently.

Photo Credit:

http://techglam.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/samsung-gear-glass.jpg

James Cowan talks about the reasons why Blackberry is at a continuous downfall position in his post “We respected BlackBerry, but we never loved it”. Basically what he is saying is that BlackBerry has been failing because of its lack of advertising and sales pitch.

I agree with him that advertising and developing good sales pitch is indispensable for selling a product. For example, Apple’s commercial is always simple but attracting and innovative. Lots of consumers simply believe that what shows up in the commercial is exactly the experience they will get by purchasing the products. However, I believe that innovation plays a more important role in selling products. The fact that Blackberry is lack of innovation directly leads to its downward-falling situation. Apple is a good example of an innovative company. Almost each time when it launches a new product, there are some new features. For example, the Siri voice control since iPhone 4S assists users to navigate what they want simply by speaking to their phones. But Blackberry’s strategies do not correspond to customers’ needs and the advancement of technology.

To sum up, if Blackberry wants to survive in the smartphone industry, it needs to change its strategies such as more advertising and innovation on the products.

Photo Credit:

http://www.eweek.com/imagesvr_ce/3236/029813bbtitle.jpg

Andrew Mason, the chief executive officer of Groupon Inc. was fired on Feb 28, 2013 because of the company’s poor operational and financial performance. And this leads us to consider why has Groupon started off from fastest-growing startup in history into the continuous downfall situation.

One reason I think why Groupon is at a downfall position is that Groupon is growing too fast and it does not properly consider the costly international expansion, especially when the economy in Europe is in recession. Besides, the poor relationships with other businesses especially the small startups also lead to the company’s downfall. From my research, Groupon takes almost 50% money from every successful deals that customers purchase. This causes those small businesses who are offering discounts to end up losing money because they not only have to offer ‘huge’ and exclusive discounts but also have to pay high commission cost to Groupon, just for listing the deal. As more businesses are loosing money, they will have no incentive to post deals on Groupon. On the other hand, from a customers’ perspective, if a great deal temporarily swamp a small business with too many customers, the quality of the service may go down so that some quality sensitive customers may not purchase the deals in the future although they are cheap.

Photo Credit:

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02065/groupon-ap_2065679c.jpg

In our minds, Google has always been the most successful search engine in the world. And users rely on Google because it gives them good search results. But what if users’ names show up on the online ads on Google, would they still use it and share their experiences?

In Clarisa Madilao ‘s recent post“Marketing: Google Users become Advertising Tools”, she mentioned that users’ comments on Google’s products and services might be used for its marketing campaigns. Users’ names might also appear on those ads for more reliable word-of-mouth recommendations.

From a personal angle, I totally agree with Clarisa that this movement could potentially offer users more reliable recommendations since it’s based on people’s real experiences, and users can filter the useful information and use it to help themselves make decisions on the choice of certain services and products. However, it is also true that users ‘ privacy could be infringed because their names and other personal information would be visible to the public. Although word-of-mouth promotions are important, Google needs to know that they should be used wisely without the cost of infringing users’ privacy.

Photo Credit:

http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Google_Handcuff_Wide.jpg

In today’s lecture, the importance of managing human resources and creating a strong organizational culture by companies was addressed by the processors, and Zappos was used as an example for demonstration.

To start with, I was really surprised by the fact that Zappos is a company that really cares about its employees. The management team has constantly been trying to create a sound and favorable working atmosphere and a strong organizational culture by motivating the employees.  For example, Zappos’ office is equipped with a dining area that provides employees with free food and snacks. Moreover, the company also covers the employees’ medical and dental insurances. Although these policies may be costly to carry out, however, they are beneficial to employees so that employees have a sense of belongingness and more motivation to be more productive and create more value to the company. In addition, the company also values the experience and satisfaction of its customers. It offers customers unlimited toll-free calls and free shipping and returns service, this really creates both the incentive for existing customers to continue to purchase Zappos’ products and the possibility for the emergence of new customers.

Photo Credit:

http://tweetmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Zappos_pic.jpg

The guest speaker Wade Larson introduced UrtheCast Corp. and its upcoming launching today. UrtheCast Corp. is a Vancouver-based technology company, which will provide users with free high-resolution videos and imageries of Earth from the space. Recently, the company’s High-Resolution Camera has passed its first Acceptance Test and it has been to be shipped to S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation in Russia for further testing and improvements.

According to Mr. Larson, the company will have a competitive advantage in the business field since it will be the only company in the world, which provides near-live HD videos and images of Earth from the space. The images captured by the camera not only will show the environment of the earth, social events and agricultural lands etc. to registered users, but also can be used by businesses and governments for the purpose of forecasting the future. However, I think there are risks of doing this since those forward-looking information provided by Urthecast are subject to a variety of uncertainties and risks, many of which are beyond its ability to control and anticipate. And there might also be potential invasion of people’s privacy in some degrees.

Photo Credit:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/rae13/files/2012/11/urthecast-earth-in-hd.jpg

Stephen Poloz, the governor of the Bank of Canada says that he ‘intends to make inflation control the central thrust of the Bank of Canada’s monetary policy’. He also expresses the possible actions of influencing the exchange rate by weakening the Canadian dollars, because he wants to motivate Canadian businesses to export more goods and services and ‘bring the country’s manufacturing exports back up to historical norms.’ Poloz also claims that he has constantly worked closely with business executives to explore opportunities of the international markets, which the Canadian businesses can export to.

Weakening the Canadian dollars is a great way to motivate Canadian businesses to expand their operation scopes to the international market. Because of the possible action of weakening Canadian dollars by the Central Bank, it would be more cost-efficient for foreign countries to import Canadian commodities. The increase in exports will result in the increase of investments and capital flows in the Canadian market. But on the other hand, inflation will affect individuals badly if the Canadian dollars keep weakening. So it is very important for the Central bank to control the inflation rate by making appropriate monetary policies.

Source:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/poloz-says-inflation-will-be-focus-of-central-bank-policy-1.1870910

Photo Credit:

https://www.fhsu.edu/uploadedImages/virtualcollege/Degrees and_Certificates/Bachelors/International%20Business.jpg

Early in October 2013, China will open a new kind of free trade zone in Shanghai. This free trade zone will include 29 square kilometers of Pudong district in Shanghai.

In China, it always has been the government who took the lead in boosting investment and economic growth. However, the new zone seeks to change that tradition by ‘giving investors the tools to create money-making opportunities, instead of handing it over to them like cake.’ Also, the new free trade zone implies that China is gradually moving from ‘a global manufacturing powerhouse’ into a higher-level economic growth model, which is to do more service-based businesses, high technology based research and development, and attract more talented people from different parts of the world.

According to professor Sun from Fudan University in Shanghai, “We must change the approach where the government takes the lead in investment and instead let the market determine demand and where investments should go”. In conclusion, instead of too much government intervention, a more market oriented financial system in this free trade zone may help to create a much healthier financial system throughout China.

Photo credit:

http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/shanghai-china1.jpg

Recently, Abercrombie&Fitch has been accused of refusing to produce and sell above large-sized women’s clothing. According to the CEO Mike Jeffries, he “doesn’t want larger people shopping in his store, he wants thin and beautiful people.” As for men’s clothing, they are mostly in X-Large or XX-Large sizes because the CEO Mike Jeffries wants muscular men to wear them and he claims, “Abercrombie is only interested in people with washboard stomachs who look like they’re about to jump on a surfboard.” Moreover, A&F only hires good-looking people to work in the stores for the purpose of attracting young and beautiful customers. Some of the employees are even made to perform physical exercises in order to keep good physiques.

This news article reveals the fact that A&F deliberately discriminates people who are not considered to be ‘good-looking’. Also, such business strategy of only providing relatively small-sized clothing for women and large-sized clothing for men makes A&F less competitive in terms of targeting a wide range of customers rather than only targeting thin women and muscular men.

Photo Credit:

http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/50c33be4eab8ea735d00000e-480/abercrombie-and-fitch-ad.jpg

Source:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/not-available-in-xl-abercrombie–fitch-ceo-mike-jeffries-accused-of-only-wanting-thin-and-beautiful-people-8608022.html

Trafigura is a Dutch multinational commodity trading company and it mainly trades base metals and energy, including oil. In 2006, the company dumped plenty of toxic waste on the Ivory Coast in Africa and it not only destroyed the local environment and ecosystem, but also caused a heath crisis affecting more than 100,000 people. After knowing that the price of transporting the waste to Netherlands was much higher than the company’s anticipation, Trafigura ordered a ship to dock the waste until they could find a proper place to dump it. But later on, the waste was handed over to a newly formed dumping company and it illegally dumped the waste. Evidence had shown that Trafigura was aware of the dumping and thus the company was guilty of releasing toxic waste.

Looking back from what Trafigura did, there is an urgent need for other businesses to learn from this incident. Businesses should not try to maximize their profits at all costs. More importantly, they should learn to be socially responsibleand environmentally friendly.

Photo Credit:

http://i2.wp.com/listverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/daily-life-trafigura.jpg?resize=550%2C365

Source:

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-10735255

2. http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/trafigura-found-guilty-toxic-waste-dumping-tragedy-2010-07-23