Author Archives: ZelinZhang

Being extroverts? or being yourself?

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As I always know, I’m an introverted person. No matter how hard I pretend to be talkative with people, deep in my heart, it only makes feel tired and want to stay further away from them. I believe every introverted person was more or less told that he or she should converse more with others and try to show themselves. Because that is the thing I have been telling since I could speak. Both my parents and I thought this is an encouragement that could help me better, being introverted is surely regarded as a weakness by everyone include me! Things are getting harder for me since I enrolled in Sauder, this is a place where everyone seems confident and fearless to give a speech in front of hundreds of people except me, also in group working, I was always the last who give my own opinion. That frightened me every day and I keep asking myself is Sauder a right place for me, am I belong here? I felt pathetic and even shameful for being an introvert myself.

 

And then comes that ob class, which Wayne played TED talk show to us, the name of that show is the power of introverts. The power? Introverts have any power themselves? That shocked me. Susan, the speaker clarified that introverts should not be shameful for being themselves, there’s actually something that they could do better than extroverts. She told the advantages of most of introverts, include work on their own, think independently and carefully doing things. Those are things I never thought about, I always looked on the bad sides of being introverts. At that point, I finally realized maybe I should accept myself and stop convert myself in a way that I don’t like at all.

Since then, I began not to worry about my introversion every day at night. Since I now don’t regard being introvert as a weakness of me, I’m more confident than before, I could look into other’s eyes when talking. It’s amazing that accepting my introversion actually makes me more extroverted. In group working, I believe it’s essential to find your role in it, I’m still looking for it but I believe it won’t take long.

 

Certainly, learning how to work with other is still important, but facing who you truly are is even more important. That is one of the best class I ever had.

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reference:

YAMAHA’s business empire

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YAMAHA is well-known as a musical instruments manufacturer, has a history of nearly 150 years. However, what most of people might not have known is that Yamaha is also a leading producer of audio/visual product, semiconductors and other computer related products, sporting goods, home appliances and furniture, specialty metals, machine tools, and industrial robots. Although those industries look irrelevant and totally different from each other, Yamaha still did very well in the past one century and even became dominator in some areas. For a company first start with musical instruments production, how can Yamaha set foot in so many irrelevant areas while kept successful. After research into Yamaha’s development till today, I believe its success has a crucial relation with its business culture.

yamaha's corporate philosophy

We learned organizational culture in the study of organizational behavior in chapter 10, which is defined as a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations. Organizational culture has plenty of functions, what makes Yamaha most unique in the world is its boundary-defining role which creates distinction between one organization and others.

Usually, a company’s culture can be obtained from its slogan, philosophy and objectives. Yamaha’s corporate philosophy is “providing excellence in our products and services; continuous efforts to expand our existing market and create new markets; enhancement of research and development on a long range perspective; pursuit of further globalization of Yamaha’s business; fostering positive growth through diversification….” Their objective is to contribute to the enrichment of the quality of lives for people around the world. Hence, it’s much easier to understand why Yamaha entered so many market while remain high quality of products and build a good reputation. Yamaha’s corporate culture encourages company to expand their existing market and create new market, and to achieve diversification in their products. Moreover, it doesn’t focus on the range of market only, Yamaha is more of a consumer-oriented company, so the quality of products and satisfaction of consumer is equally important. This is also reflected from its slogan, that enhancement of research and development on a long range perspective.

We can say that corporate culture has an essential impact on company, however, it is only part of the reason why Yamaha is so successful, the management and operation are things that makes objective come true.

word countP: 383

reference:

http://usa.yamaha.com/about_yamaha/corporate_information/

Their ideas or their legs?

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This Monday April 27, Britain’s prime minister Theresa May met the first minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon in London, formally discussed will the Brexit cause Scotland to leave the United Kingdom. This is a great international event for the world. However, next day, what matters for The Daily Mail, one of Britain’s most popular newspaper was: “Which leader had better legs?” as the picture showed blow.

Many people had been shocked by this comparison of two leaders’ bodies, and accused The Daily Mail of sexism and disrespect of women. And this was astonishing to me too. This is in 21 centuries and feminism is a frequently used word in our life, however, many people still think of women in a 1900s role. Despite the fact that those two women in the picture are the leader of the country and the region, their ideas actually affect this country’s future, when they encountered, people still focus on and make comment on their bodies first. While it’s unusual to see men leader’s legs or any body parts are compared and commented.

In chapter 3, we learnt values and in chapter 4 we learnt equity theory and fairness. It defines value as a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence. Certainly, there are two types of people, people who pursuing equity between men and women, and people have different standards for men and women.

And I believe those two types of beliefs are resulted from different values. By using Milton Rokeach’s Value Survey (RVS), the former people would like to achieve equity in their life which is brotherhood and equal opportunity for all, while for the latter, they tend to be more conservative and narrow minded, they are less willing to accept new and advanced opinions which conflicts to the opinions that they are brought up with.

As the development and integration of the world, open and inclusive value is more shared by people, the differences among individuals are tolerated and respected, so I believe this comparison towards women will be reduced in the future. Moreover, since The Daily Mail has more female readers than male readers, use the title like that could be a way to attract readers and be eye-catching. But is it an ethical behavior would be discussed since this apparently did not help promote the politically right value.

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Reference:

https://goo.gl/images/maj226

My first teamwork experience in university

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I didn’t learn much about teamwork from my figh school experience in China but Since I came here, I gradually know the importance of learning it, and my first formal teamwork last term does teach me a lot.

Our group formed by five people and like UBC, it was quite international. We have one Russian girl, two Canadian born Chinese, two Chinese. One common thing about our group is that we inclined to be accord with task-oriented roles. So that we are always easy to enter that flow state. Although now I realize that if there’s a maintenance-role person amont us, our group might have a better relationship. One thing that makes our comm101’s groups better is that we all have one common goal, that is to do better in the group project or case study, whereas in other group work case, each member may have their own individual objective, which could conflict with group’s goal.

We did get a really good grade for our group project last term. And i admitted that the distribution degree is different. Two Canadian students undertake the most difficult part of our project and had done it very well. That apparently is a good thing for rest of us to work with them, however, in the long term, if we don’t make any progress and keep up with them, there will be a larger gap between us and finally the contradiction can result in the separate of team. For people like those two canadian students, they will try to find a group that suits them and gain really useful things from members.

As a result, to make a group stable in the long-term, each member should have common goal, and equally important, their ability should be in the similar level. Our group did get a really great grade in group final project, but moreover, it’s a wonderful experience for me.

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Who is your friend in university?

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As a first year student and a foreigner in the university of British Colombia, everything here is new and fresh to me. Observing local people’s behavior is one of my habit now. Since UBC is a very international school, one thing I observed is that students tend to make friend with those people use the same language, same race and from the same country.

From chapter2, we learnt that personality is determined and affected by heredity, culture or background and present situation. All these three factors equally and significant affect one person’s personality. According to those three determinants, people who come from the same region and accepted similar education are more likely to have common things in their personality. And most people especially younger generation would like to make friend with people who have similar personality.

From my experience, Chinese students seems hard to get into Canadian students’ social network, while Canadian students don’t seems interested in Chinese Students’ life. That might not be hard to understand, we watched different cartoons, read different books, like different singers through our early years. That all result in a huge difference between Chinese student and Canadian student in every aspect. When we first know someone, common interests will always make people acquaint with each other faster. Therefore, we are naturally attracted by peers from the same country.

However, I personally think to obtain a high quality, long-run stable friendship is more about the commen values shared by friends. We may attracted by common hobbies and personalities easily, but common values between friends usually make friendship lasts long. According to the knowledge we learned through chapter3, two persons who have terminal value for example are more likely to keep a stable relationship since they are both inspired by the fulfillment of their goals.

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Is ZHENGFEI REN the owner of HUAWEI?

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Zhengfei Ren, as the founder and president of HUAWEI Technologies Co, Ltd, was thought to be the owner and largest shareholder of the company by many people includes me, however, the truth is he only takes 1.4% shares of company’s total, with the rests shared by his 82,471 employees. World’s third smart phone manufacturer is indeed not a public company!

In chapter 5 Motivation in Action, we’ve learned this type of payment method, it’s called Employee stock ownership plans and this focus on emphasizing attention to organizational goals. Not many companies adopt such a way to motivate their employees though, usually there is only a few people in an organization getting really rich with rest of people undertake most of work. However, the example of HUAWEI does prove that this is a very effective way to encourage and motivate its labor.

HUAWEI is famous for its Hard-charging workplace charging culture, for every new employee, they are given a blanket and a mattress because they would work late into night and sleep in the office, I have a sister works there and she proved that. For a doubled workload and high-pressured job, one of the reason why employees still want to keep their jobs is related to this ESOP payment system. As we known, HUAWEI is a very profitable and successful company, the dividend each year would be considerable not to mention their salary. Income is especially important for people who live in SHENGZHEN, city where HUAWEI locates since the price level and housing price are top in CHINA. In addition, the ownership of certain amount of shares make each employee feel more responsible and motivated for company, thus, they tend to become more committed and dedicated. Therefore, although we may think those highly educated people would care a lot about the intrinsic motivator or higher level of needs, we need to analyze the specific condition. Here in HUAWEI, the good publicity and good income makes a very decent job.

Nevertheless, whether HUAWEI actually belongs to those employees who own shares are still worth discussing. The share owner staff is hard to take part in the major decision making since so many shares are issued and they are only a small percentage of company. This will result in the reduction in employee’s motivaion. Also, many people hold the view that HUAWEI has a government background, therefore, most of decision making rights are still in management people’s hand, ang HUAWEI doesn’t necesserily need to concern much about the financial problem as the support of government, so making themself a public company to raise capital is not required.

To conclude, ESOP can be just suitable for HUAWEI while for other companies it can be inappropriate.

word count: 453

References:

https://hbr.org/2015/06/huaweis-culture-is-the-key-to-its-success

http://www.employeeownership.com.au/employee-ownership/the-advantages-and-disadvantage/

Recently, it’s easy to see lots of people walking in the streets carrying red cups, from external blog starbucks this blog, I appreciate the idea and regard it as a good promotion example because of several benefits Starbucks gained from this.url.jpg

Since Starbucks launched holiday cups in 1997, its red cups have become a holiday mainstay. But things are a little bit different this year, all 13 types of the holiday red cups are inspired by customers from different countries.

From this Starbucks blog, it demonstrates mainly three benefits gained from this campaign. Firstly, Starbucks does raise its awareness through the new designed cups. There is no doubt that this idea is successful, customers like the new cups and love to share them on to their social medias like Instagram. There are 26,441 posts in total under the tag #starbucksredcup in Instagram with most of them are pictures shows their red cups. People carrying this red cup is eye-catching, it can attract more people to buy a cup of coffee in starbucks.

screen-shot-2016-11-13-at-4-17-01-pm

Secondly, letting customers design the cups does raise the quality of design. “In eight days, Starbucks received more than 1,200 individual submissions from 13 countries” . This is a quite big number of works, among them, excellent design must be found. This both reduce the workload for starbucks own designer and also is time-saving.

Thirdly, red cup design is actually a method to improve customer relationship management. The final chosen 13 designs are all from customers’ submissions. Meet designers This shows that starbucks does wish customers to be part of their business, no matter as customers or designers. They shows highly respect of customers which could indeed gain a better customer relationship.

The advantages of customer-created arts are obvious. Customer’s imaginations are less constraint, each customer has their own style, and the large customer submission could guarantee the quality of design. Therefore, the cups can be of various styles and high quality. In addition, customers’ design usually meets other customer’s expectation, cups are more likely to be popular.

word count: 335

works cited:

https://news.starbucks.com/news/artists-behind-starbucks-holiday-cups-2016

blog 4

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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/

word count: 405

 

Loyalty Program blog 3

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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.

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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.

Word count: 373

picture cited: google picture

Tesla in Michigan

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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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