Behrad is talking about the impact of one of the biggest events in 2016-Brexit on Jaguar in his blog befrad’s blog. PEST is great tool here to discuss the multiple influences on Jaguar. Behrad stated that the major affecting factors in this case would be political and economical.

It’s easy to understand why these two factors are major. As a british brand, when Britain was in EU, jaguar enjoys the lower tariff when trading with other EU countries, which is certainly benefitial because 57% of their cars sold to EU countrieds. When Britain left EU, the free trade agreement doesn’t exist anymore which make the tariff go back to the normal level, the raise in tariff would result in a higher price in Jaguar’s main customer nations, which will cause the loss of competitiveness and then falling in sales. This is of course seen as a bad effect on Jaguar generated by brexit.

However, the good impact from brexit may compensate this. The performance of Jaguar after brexit might be consistent with the whole manufacturing industry in UK. From both Behrad’s blog and the economic analysis we can deduce that Brexit would give Britain a crucial opportunity by allowing it to broker its own trade deals with non-European Union countries; indeed Britain could even have a unilateral free trade policy. Non-European Union countries may find negotiating with Britain easier and quicker than dealing with the European Union’s bureaucratic machine. Here, Behrad gave an example of china, the booming economy in Asian coutries make huge potential market for Jaguar. If Jaguar can enter those markets successfully, then maybe brxit is a good thing for Jaguar.

Other than it, the outcome of depreciation in pound Sterling is actually good for exportation. Lower pound sterling price would increase british products’ competitiveness in international arena. As a result, it is favorable for the sales for all the UK’s product. Nevertheless, the depreciation of UK sterlings are not expected to be long, according to the exchang rate policy in ul. Someday, the market force will push the exchange rate back to normal.

Behrad hold the view that entering Asian market is a back up plan, while i disagree with that. An clear evaluation can be given in behrad’s blog that why the limitation of brexit outweigh the      advantages of it. But it’s still a well’completed job by explaning clearly both good and bad effects on Britain.

work cited: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/08/04/brexit-puts-brakes-on-auto-industry-as-new-car-sales-slow/

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Zina‘s blog loyaty program discuss the effectiveness of the loyalty program for customers and companies. The aim of running loyalty program is clear for companies, as Zina stated  the difficulty of acquiring new customers substantiates the importance of loyalty programs for businesses as they attempt to amass brand loyalty. There are plenty of ways in achieving loyalty program as written by Zina. Using simple points system, a tier system or charge an upfront fee for vip benefits. How can company benefit from those methods? Differentiation is significan.

Starbucks is successful case for loyaty program and does give customer incentives to buy their product. Their use of mobile app which combines infrastructure decisions to facilitate marketing strategies unlike other traditional and simple reward methods, take advantages of modern and widely used technology-mobile electronics.

Nowadays, mobile electronics plays a such significant role in people’s life, it is actually recording our buying behabiors which could assit the company to research and adjust their marketing strategies. In additon, consumers only need to download an app so that they could receive all the discount or reward information and when they make a payment, the only need to show the app to recoud the purchasement. This is particularly convenient for modern people.

From the case of starbucks, we learn that the using of loyaty system should be differential to attract customers and be tightly link with the newest technology. Not all the methods can work efficiently. the potential loss caused by those should be stated. For example, the discount given to customer will result in a loss in profits.

The effect on customers, as the link in Zina’s blog shows American households hold memberships in an average of 29 loyalty programs, but are active (meaning earn or redeem at least one per year) in only 12 of them. Companies lose money on time and effort, and customers get no more value from the businesses to which they are “loyal.” Customers actually pay more for this, but can we say consumers make loss through this? maybe not because they gain utility from each product they purchase and the price they buy them is lower. Zina didn’t explain detailly why to say the loyalty program is “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” for customer, that is, she didn’t state the fact that those various of loyaty program forces people to purchase more.

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picture cited: google picture

As we all known, tesla had gain a huge popularity in the few past years through its innovative automobile manufacturers model. But the fact that may surprise most of people is that in many states in America, tesla cannot sell cars at all.

The reason behind this is that tesla has a different business channel than other automakers. Tesla sells its own cars directly through its own branded stores and online, without any other middlemen or franchised dealerships. On the contrary all U.S. states have laws that prevent automakers with existing franchisees from opening their own dealerships to compete with them. However, dealer associations in a number of U.S. states, including Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, have tried to expand the law to include manufacturers like tesla that don’t franchise dealers.

Nevertheless, some states like Michigan have taken an extra step and passed laws that ban direct sales. The result is tesla could only have shown room in these state but cannot sell cars. Although two years ago tesla had applied for a class A license, which would allow the automaker to open a company-owned dealership in the state, the license is still denied by Michigan government. To respond this, tesla claims that they will continue to take steps to defend the rights of Michigan consumers. We now don’t know what step tesla will take to defend consumers’ rights, but one thing that is certain is that tesla won’t change is direct sell model. Apparently, a company-owned dealership could have lots of benefits. It saves the cost for those middlemen and thus won’t pass the cost on consumers. Also, with less number of distribution channels, tesla could focus on maximizing the efficiency.

However, the thing is should tesla insist on sell directly to customers in those states that ban direct sale. Because the time spend on waiting those states to pass the law that enable tesla to finally sell cars is unknown, there would be huge loss of potential revenue. And changing the way of distribution may be favorable in entering new market as dealerships are usually more familiar with the local market.

works cited:

http://fortune.com/2016/09/16/tesla-denied-license-michigan/

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1098276_ftc-calls-michigans-tesla-ban-protectionism-for-dealers

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