Author Archives: yvonnehuang

11/17/13

How much do you know about entrepreneurship?

This blog refers to Slava Rubin’s blog “Ignore these startup myths”. (http://upstart.bizjournals.com/resources/advice/2012/10/31/slava-rubin-ignore-these-startup-myths.html?page=all)

Before Class 20 Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Comm 101, my understanding of successful entrepreneurs was risk takers who can come up with innovative ideas and find the best time to launch their products or services. However, the lean start-up concept totally changed my thought. The “five myths of startup” written by Slava Rubin, the CEO of Indiegogo which help thousands of entrepreneurs bring their startups successfully, makes the idea of entrepreneurship clearer to me.

1. There is no “right” time to start.

Slava Rubin and his partners started Indigogo during the financial crisis in 2008, the biggest economy decline recently. However, the company “has hosted more than 100,000 funded campaigns and become one of the most popular crowdfunding sites on the web.” Indiegogo’s success shows that there is no right time to start a business as long as when you are passioned about an idea and ready to conduct it.

2. It’s not all about idea.

Idea may be crucial, but the demand of your customers determines whether the idea will be successful or not. So here comes the lean start-up concept. No matter how brilliant your ideas are, the primary focus should always be on collecting customers’ feedbacks. Rather than sticking on detailed business plan based on assumptions, it’s better do experiments with your customers because markets can change more quickly these days.

Sources:

Indiegogo’s Slava Rubin on the Myths of Entrepreneurship (March 11, 2013) Retrieved Nov. 17, 2013 from Entrepreneur.:http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/226048

11/17/13

Social Entreprise in China

This blog refers to Allison Jang’s blog “Promotion social entreprise behind Myanmar’s closed door.” (https://blogs.ubc.ca/allisonjang/2013/11/15/promoting-social-enterprise-behind-myanmars-closed-doors/)

I agree with Allison’s idea that “I like that people from the other side of the world are working to maximize benefits for Myanmar’s people through the promotion of social enterprise, rather than jumping into an untapped market solely to create profit.” However, that somehow makes me think of my hometown China.

Ironically, I’d say that if China had helped Myanmar to re-enter the global market, the chinese government would solely attemped to create profit without considering social and environmental factors in Myanmar, just like what China did to itself after cutting off the country with the outside world for almost 200 years. Although China’s economy have seen dramatic growth during the last 30 years, its problems are also mounting, such as pollution, abusive labor practices. In the other word, China’s businesses activities are almost booming without social enterprise.

“In foreign countries, the charity has developed for hundreds of years and then social enterprise originally came up. In China, we have everything in a few decades.” As explained by Li Fan, the co-founder of the first social entrepreneur membership organization in China, it is really a challenging task to promote social enterprise in China because it’s hard for many Chinese to understand doing good and making money at the same time, especially the older generations. However, it is reasonable to believe that younger generations of China and newcomers to China would do better on promoting social enterprise and hopefully China would become a country that contribute to the world in a more social and environmental friendly way.

 

Sources:

Social entrepreneurship in China: Small but growing Retrieved Nov. 17 2013 from : http://www.flyingblueclubchina.com/inspire/whats-hot/social-entrepreneurship-in-china-small-but-growing

The social enterprise emerges in China  (Spring 2012) Retrieved Nov. 17 2013 from Standford Social Innovation Review: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/summercamp/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/The-Social-Enterprise-Emerges-in-China.pdf

11/17/13

Marketing: Being just the opposite of want businesses want?

This blog refers to Xuan Zhou’s blog “I s advertising always a good behavior?” (https://blogs.ubc.ca/sophiezhou/), which argues about Junk Food’s ads not being responsible to tell its true information to customers. It reminds me of many other businesses which intend to make profits by making deceptive ads.

Early this year, Coca-cola introduced  a new product line “diet soda” and produced ads touting how easy it is to work off calories by drinking a cup of Coke. As marketers’ point of view, they expect this health campaign help build a good image for the company and get more health-conscious consumers. However, as many researchers indicate that sugar-sweeten beverage contains nothing nutritionally beneficial but often leads to many diseases such as obesity, the company’s health campaign is doomed to failure.

How comes Coca-cola’s marketing be just the opposite as the business want?

While the starting point of Coca-cola is good since consumers are now more health-conscious than ever, the fact that the company cheats its customers by providing untrue information of its products makes it failed.

I agree with Xuan Zhou that for businesses, “being social responsible for the whole society is much more critical than making money.” Negative Controversy brings by deceptive ads is the one thing that businesses would never want. Not only would they risking losing loyal customers, but the diminished trust in business lead political leaders to set policies that undermine businesses’ operation.

It’s good to see that business are more aware of creating social value as an important way to succeed, but deceptive marketing is never a smart way to achieve it.

Sources:

Soft drink makers accused of using “Big Tobacco Playbook” (Aug 19, 2013) Retrieved Nov. 16 2013 from CBCNEWS: http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/soft-drink-makers-accused-of-using-big-tobacco-playbook-1.1362598

11/15/13

Why are employees so important?

Google, which is regarded as the best workplace in the world, puts lots of effort on “creating a workplace people never want to leave”. For example, it creates a cozy environment for people to work in by providing many different places within the company such as gyms, micro kitchen. Besides, the company designs spaces with different scales that allows employees to design their own spaces. All these efforts aim at making employees feel more comfortable with their working environment.

Why is it so important for employees to feel good? Here’s what I think.

Good employee’ performance leads to more consumers. As many businesses strive to figure out ways to learn more about their consumers in order to gain more profit, they often forget the fact that it is employees who create the products that customers consume.

Employee is actually the other crowd that businesses should pay equal attention to. Today, however, there are still some companies don’t aware of that, and think that the money they saved from building a good working environment can help maximize their profit.

As employees have more rights than ever today, businesses have to realize that figure out appropriate ways to maximize their human resource such as providing good working environment is a very important thing to do to make the businesses more profitable; and they should.

 

Source:

How To Create  A Workplace People Never Want To Leave By Google’ s Christopher Coleman. (April 11 2013) Retrieved Nov. 15, 2013 from BloomBerg Business week: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-11/how-to-create-a-workplace-people-never-want-to-leave-by-googles-christopher-coleman

11/11/13

Liberation Wrapper: The more you learn about your customers, the more successful you will be

Recently, Freshness Burger, the national hamburger chain in Japan, introduced a sneakily  designed burger wrapper which covers diner’s mouth with a printed “ochobo” mouth (small mouth).  In Japanese culture, “ochobo” is regard as an attractive feature of women. As claimed by Freshness Burger, the sales of its classic large burger to female customers was raised by 213% compared with the previous months due to this change.

The  success of Freshness Burger’s campaign shows how a better understanding of consumers’ behavior would help a business to achieve its success. Before this “Liberation Wrapper”, it might be a traditional view that women tend to eat small burgers due to their low capacity of eating. However, in most East Asian countries where women are relatively conservative, a large open mouth is considered rude and ugly in public so that most women would cover their mouths  when opening them to conduct good manner.

I think that kind of misunderstanding due to stereotype of consumer behaviors exists in many businesses. Businesses are actually losing potential profits because of that. Therefore, when it comes to interpret consumer behaviors, it is very important for businesses to discard stereotypes and have a deeper understanding of the cultural, social and personal factors.

Sources:

New Japanese Face Masks Let You Chow Down on a Burger While Maintaining Your Dignity.  (2013, November 5) Retrieved November 11 2013 from TIME: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/11/05/new-japanese-face-masks-let-you-chow-down-on-a-burger-while-maintaining-your-dignity/

 

10/13/13

The line extension trap: Things to keep in mind when introducing new products

Companies are always trying to improve their products to cater to consumers’ new tastes and needs.  So was Aston Martin. In 2011, it began to produce Cygnet, a type of small car which focuses on “economy” segment of car-buying market and aims to help urban and city people save fuels and space to park.

However, it’s not a surprise that Aston Martin has to end production of Cygnet small car this year, though the concept of “economy” cars is really a good idea. Here’s what I think:

Firstly, for Cygnet, which is basically a Toyota iQ model, yet with fancy Aston Martin badging design such as the signature gaping maw grille that will additionally cost consumers $34,000 more than a Toyota iQ, it actually loses its comparative advantage to its rival on the point of parity.

Secondly, it is true that loyal consumers would pay a lot for the luxury brands instead of for the actual products. However, Aston Martin’s failure to put its focus on the Aston Martin bling design rather than the innovation of “economy” cars clashes its brand positioning as luxury cars. The use of Toyota iQ’s basic model weakened Cygnet’s point of difference as an Aston Martin. After all, unlike Channel or Gucci, the most important value of a car is more of its function, rather than its interior design.

Sources:

BBC NEWS, Aston Martin to end production of Cygnet small car (2013 Oct. 9) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24455948

Akweli P. How the Aston Martin Cygnet Works (2011) http://auto.howstuffworks.com/aston-martin-cygnet.htm

 

 

 

10/7/13

Cultural difference is a main task for a company to enter a new market

China is considered as one of the world’s biggest markets with great potential, not only because of its large population, but also because of its rapid economic growth. So, for those world giant businesses, expanding their markets to China has always been one of the major tasks.

However, in e-commerce, even one of the giant companies eBay have withdrawn from Chinese market. Why? That is because those business models that can survive in China are totally different from the business models in foreign countries, especially the Consumer Relationships part.

For example,  the auction model in eBay stop people from talking, while the selling mode in Taobao encourages communication between consumers and merchants, which caters to Chinese customers’ nature of bargaining. In addition, in the auction model, the product which has been there for the longest time will sit on the top of the website, while in Taobao, it puts the newest products on the top.

In my point of view, in order to enter a new market, one of the most important things to consider is to understand the local culture and consumer behaviors. Different business models are required for a company to survive in different environments.

Source:

David W. E-commerce Bigger in China than United States (2013 Sep. 19) http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/19/business/on-china-alibaba-e-commerce/index.html

 

 

10/6/13

Social Media: Find your own position and consolidate it

Nowadays, there are multiple ways for people to connect and share contents. Basically, the properties of these social media can be divided into two main categories. One caters more to the people who are interested in sharing contents about public events, whereas the other one creates an relatively more private environment for closed friends to connect. These two categories represent most users’ needs.

Twitter, which is popular due to its nature of simplicity for people to share their thoughts and recreations, or anything else they encounter, is now seeking to add new features such as music service in order to compete with up comers. However, “It’s pretty innately easy to figure out what to do with Snapchat or what to do with Pinterest, with Twitter, it’s not simple to figure out what to do with the service,” said Debra Aho Williamson, a principal analyst at eMarketer.

As Gene Munster says, “The future of social is not going to be a winner-takes-all scenario, no service can be all things to all people,” I think for every single networking medium, it’s actually more important to create its own distinctive positioning which makes it clear to people why they should use its medium rather than others’, hence, to establish consumer loyalty and attract more users.

Sources:

The New York Times, The Swarm of Rivals Seeking Share of Social Media Pie (2013 Oct 6)

 

10/5/13

The past, present and future of the Fast-food industry

Fast-food was created to cater to people’s need of convenient and efficient way to get meals since modern people tend to live fast-paced lives. For years, fast-food companies have been competing with each other through enhancing their service and offering new products to attract new customers and establish customer base.

Since the fast-food market is fairly saturated in most developed part of the world, the whole industry is now seeking growth through expanding its market to less developed countries as well. In recent years, more and more big fast-food companies begin to enter the African market because it presents great potentials with large population, growing economy and globalized similar needs.

However, it’s only a matter of time that fast-food industry will sometime be saturated in Africa as well. I feel that at this point, fast-food companies should not be satisfied with their present situation and usual strategy of changing flavor of their products. For the future of Fast-food companies, it would be more important to be the first to offer healthy and cheap products with good flavor since people now are more health conscious.  Like what’s happening in Burger King. It is now offering “low fat fries”. Low fat fries provide people with a healthier way to eat potatoes. As  Michelle Obama said that “If anyone can make our kids eat their vegetables, it’s all of you.” Developing healthy and tasty fast food is surely the future of fast food industry.

Sources:

Reuters “Burger King to offer low fat fries” (2013 September 24) http://www.iol.co.za/business/companies/burger-king-to-offer-lower-fat-fries-1.1581913#.UlBVXVJDuJs

Oliver J. & Tatiana N. “Fast-food giant want pizza the action in African” (2013 Oct 4) http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/04/business/fast-food-giants-africa/index.html?hpt=ibu_c2

09/11/13

Business can create profits by being responsible for the society

I partially  agree with Friedman’s idea that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits within the rules of the game.” In an attempt to make more profits, firms would, for example try to lower the cost by make the best use of their limited resources or introducing new technologies which make their production more efficient. However, many business are using the conventional wisdom, in which they gain profit through causing social problems. For example, firms make profits through providing employees with poor working environment and resist environmentally improvement in order to save firms’ costs.

Personally, I think that business ethics could somehow push up business’ profits, and at the same time allow business to be socially responsible as it is mentioned in the passage: “Ethics give competitive edge”.

For instance, employees would improve their quality of service and be more productive when firms create comfortable workplaces for them. Moreover, it’s also a matter of fact that firms will be more efficient when there is no resource wasted. In addition, business can actually gain benefits by operating in an environmentally friendly way. It helps business to be more competitive, to operate in a sustainable way, and to focus on long-term growth that could create profits and make values for stakeholders.

Sources:

Bradwell M. Ethics Gives Competitive Edge (2013.9.10) http://allafrica.com/stories/201309100433.html?viewall=1

Michael P. Why Business Can Be Good at Solving Scoial Problems (2013.6.10) http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_porter_why_business_can_be_good_at_solving_social_problems.html