When I first heard about the idea of one-for-one model, I believe it is meaningful and can actually make a difference in the rural areas. I bought my first pair of Toms with the feeling that I am helping the society. This famous model is now adopted by more companies. However, is this model really effective? Can this action help those poor kids in the long run?

Although it is good for Toms to focus on one-for-one model as a solution to poverty, the unintended consequence is huge. First, this action would undermine local shoes’ businesses, especially those medium to small-sized ones. People won’t buy any shoes if they can get free ones. Also, this model can create dependency, sap local initiative, and pleases developed world buyers of one-for-one products more than it actually helps combats poverty. Overall, Toms gets a successful marketing but without actually solving the root of poverty. 

There is an old proverb in China, which is “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I think this just illustrate the key problem of one-for-one model. Yes, Toms is a shoe company but it doesn’t mean that Toms should only focus on providing shoes to make the world a better place. If a business really wants to take responsibility, it should focus on “teaching people how to fish” instead of just giving them the “fish”. Toms is not concerned about the deeper causes of poverty thus inhibiting long-term solutions.

On the contrary, SoleRebels is doing a great and innovative job. SoleRebels aims to provide jobs to Ethiopia citizens and pay excellent wages to their employees. It also provides medical coverage to its workers and their families. With extremely high and straight wages, medical coverage and free transportation, SoleRebels is actually building its own business model and giving incentives to the workers to work hard and get rid of poverty.

Compared these two Social Entrepreneur-ships, in my opinion, SoleRebels is actually solving the poverty problems by “teaching people how to fish” while Toms is just simply providing shoes to poor kids.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/one-one-business-model-social-impact-avoiding-unintended-consequences/

http://www.toms.ca/improving-lives

http://www.solerebels.com

Blackberry, a company had $20 billion in revenue and controlled half of the smartphone market, now has less than one percent in the cellphone market. Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis started this business and they engineered a pioneering pocket email device which made blackberry popular than ever among CEOs and presidents. However, after Apple and Google entered into the market, everything changed.

I made a SWOT analysis for Blackberry.

STRENGTH

1.Extremely secure telephones at that time.

2.Focuses on specific consumer groups—governments and corporates.

WEAKNESS

1.Failure in marketing because of poor promoting endeavors.

2.Highly dependent on government and corporate contracts. (main consumers)

3.Absence in the tablet market. BlackBerry’s Playbook tablet was a failure move.

OPPORTUNITIES

1.Growth of tablet and cellphone markets.

THREAT

1.Rapid technology changes, high investment in research and development to ensure survival.

2.Fierce competition, mainly from iOS and Android devices.

3.Involvement in legal issue.

losing the signal can be said as one of the key reasons of why blackberry fell. It did not see the coming threats from Apple and failed to adjust its products to fit the environment. It dismissed the need to do anything about the situation in the short term. Unlike Blackberry, Google realized that the world would change so it scrapped its keyboard plans. Blackberry aims at efficiency, security and all the other things that matters for businessmen. However, market demand tends to prefer cellphones with fun and beautiful design which are completely different from Blackberry’s core idea. Also, people now are used to touchscreen phones instead of keyboard phones. Blackberry would be eliminated from the competitive market since it failed to do any technological improvements or changes.

This story tells us the importance of knowing the external influences on business (threat and opportunity. Businesses need this information to make decisions about how to change its product or services to survive in the market. Blackberry failed because of losing the signal.  

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/behind-the-downfall-at-blackberry/?ref=topics

http://shop.blackberry.com/store/bbrryus/en_CA/

As a super fan of Apple, I always keep my eyes on what’s new about apps and iPhone. Recently, I found that Apple is working on a person-to-person payments service in order to attract more people to use the Apple Wallet. Honestly, I never use my Apple Wallet before because I am concern about the safety issue of it. What if my card information is leaked? Can hackers break into my account and use my credit card?

Generally, this Peer-to-peer payment service is about to let people use their cellphones to send money to one another as easily as they send messages. Apple is now consulting with banks and this service will be ready next year. Apple is aiming for bigger slice of the payment industry and “replacing the wallet” so its biggest competitor is PayPal’s payment app—Venmo.

Apple Pay has just started from 2014 and it still has a long way to go to achieve its aims. Data shows that, as for December, there is less than 17 percent of iPhone 6 and 6s users were using Apple Pay, according to data from the research groups PYMNTS.com and InfoScout. Certainly, Apply wants to foster consumer loyalty by this peer-to-peer service. However, I don’t think it is a good move.

The competition in payment service is quite intense. This year, China’s most popular messaging app Wechat offered a payment service that its users can send payments to their friends so did Facebook Messenger. Google also experiments payments in its messaging service. Furthermore, banks are trying to create peer-to-peer payment products in their own mobile apps called clearXchange. (covers about 80 percent of all of the banks.) There is hardly any market leaves for Apple. Moreover, for now, few of these efforts earn money for the business since consumers are free to use Venmo and are charged only a small fee when using a credit card. For now, I don’t believe Apple Wallet will stand out among a bunch of competitors even with peer-to-peer payment service.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/technology/apple-plans-peer-to-peer-payment-service.html?ref=topics

Recently, I read a piece of news that the grocery chain Whole foods said it would stop selling goods made by prison labor this week due to the protest of using inmate labor in Houston, Texas.

Whole Foods has benefited from inmate labor since 2011 but now it just changed its standpoint completely because some consumers feel uncomfortable. It concerns more about how to keep their consumers’ loyalty than to “help people get back on their feet and eventually become contributing members of society.” It values its profit much more than the community. I totally agree with Michael Allen, a prison reform advocate who planned the Houston protest, once said “Whole Foods is hypocritical because it says it cares about the community, but what it really cares about is profits.” Whole Foods may choose the prison labor program in 2011 in the beginning only because the program would reduce its variable cost.

Companies can get enormous benefits by hiring prison labor. The workers get cheap labor rate even lower than the minimum wage. Also, they are considered easier to control and company can avoid to provide them with health insurance or sick day. Companies could even receive a tax credit for hiring ‘ high target groups’.

In my opinion, to start a business in a community, one should not only concern about the business profit but also concerns about the community as a whole, try to make some contributions to the community. Whole Foods is such a success business and hiring some inmate labor won’t hurt but the inmate workers can learn new skills and start a new life because of this. I can only say that is the different business ethics between people. Hope those inmate labor can find new chance and do well in the future.

http://magazine.good.is/articles/whole-foods-prison-labor

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34408636

https://www.facebook.com/endmassincarceration.houston

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/company-info

Volkswagen is a famous automaker with 78-year history in Germany. However, it is facing a scandal for cheating on emission tests recently. Hard to believe right? It has admitted cheating in diesel emissions tests in the United States and Europe, where Volkswagen sells about 40 per cent of its vehicles. Volkswagen wants to lower the engine costs in a “clean diesel” strategy that was popular in Europe by manipulating emissions results.

This scandal not only harmed the reputation of Volkswagen but also is an embarrassment for Germany, which held up Volkswagen as a model of its engineering prowess for years. Most importantly, consumers would not trust Volkswagen like they did before. Although Volkswagen decided to recall 11 million vehicles, its consumers still felt being betrayed. Don Pittis, who thought Volkswagen is a part of his life and even his first car is a VW Beetle, said “it makes me despair about corporate morality in general.” A company public has always thought of responsible and dependable appears to have intentionally cheated not only public environmental laws but all the other car companies that thought they were working from a common set of rules.

In my opinion, Volkswagen truly disappointed consumers and with no doubt the scandal will negatively impact Volkswagen’s reputation in the short term. Especially the scandal is related to environment which is important to the whole society and a significant factor for someone to choose a car. The problem for VW right now is to solve this problem by any cost and the quickest reaction.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/volkswagen-eu-martin-schulz-german-econo-1.3256024

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/volkswagen-emissions-1.3248230

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/vw-tdi-diesel-morality-1.3238590

Tiffany, is every girl’s dream and each girl deserves a Tiffany. To be one of the most famous and beloved luxury goods, I believe it must have earned a lot from its sky-high price. However, I saw the news that Tiffany’s earnings dropped sharply in third quarter in 2004. I couldn’t understand what lead Tiffany to this kind of situation. Due to its globally successful advertisement, the demand for Tiffany in China can be said enormous. With the high price combined with large demand, it will make huge profit.

The truth is, the company’s stock fell 5.7% because of the less than expected sales in Japan and higher costs for materials and diamonds. Yes, its net sales did increase by 7% but the higher metal and diamond costs lowered the total profits.

According to the SWOT analysis we learned in class, the strengths of Tiffany are its positive brand image, well-known raputation over the world and its well-designed website. The weaknesses are its high price and it focuses solely on Tiffany & co. Its opportunities can be widening product focus and the increasing number of working women may lead to rising demand. However, it may also face threats since fewer weddings may lead to less demand for wedding rings. Due to the increasing metal price, its profit may even lower if Tiffany couldn’t find a way out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/business/businessspecial3/tiffany-earnings-dropped-sharply-in-third-quarter.html

http://www.tiffany.ca

Everybody may commit serious crimes or unethical behaviours at work if they do not notice the horrible Slippery-Slope effect. Does this sound terrified? Unfortunately, this is the truth proved by many facts and studies. Basically, this theory is about how people tend to rationalize and find excuses for their slight unethical behaviours and before they could notice, things just snowball into something huge. Good examples are Madoff and Jayson Blair. Both of them used to be successful but after crossed the guideline once, they couldn’t help themselves to do more cheating in order to achieve bigger goals.

Although these two are extreme examples, Slippery-Slope effect does happen in our daily life. For example, if a business does not have strong ethical guidelines, employees are more likely to perform unethical behaviours and the business won’t be well managed. Even I will hand in my assignment after the due date if the professor did not tell me the consequences of breaking the rules.

Fortunately, this effect can be prevented by setting clear and strong ethical outlines in companies. If people know exactly what they can do and what they should never try and what consequences they may face if they cross the line, people can be stop from making their first steps across the line.

NEVER MAKE THE FIRST STEP CROSS THE GUIDELINE!!!

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140806-the-slippery-slope

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair