In this blog post, author talks about the difference between Apple Pay and tap-to-pay payment in Canada. Saying that if Apple Pay wants to achieve its ambition, it has to make the partnership with more credit card companies. It is true that Apple Pay is a more convenient way to pay comparing to the credit cards and debit cards. However, in this article author did not mention anything about the security problems caused by Apple Pay.

From my point of view, if Apple Pay wants to share more markets in Canada, the most urgent thing is not to partner with more different credit card companies but to build a safe impression on its users. Like Visa and Master Cards, lots of their advertisements include the safety of the client’s money. If Apple Pay can talk more about the safety issue on its web and convince people that Apple Pay is not only convenient but also safe, it will attract more consumers to sign up an Apple Pay account. When Apple Pay having a large number of users, other credit card companies will make the partnership with Apple Pay automatically. From most of the reports about Apple pay, we can see that Apple Pay has a big goal which is to change people’s payment habit, but letting people to trust it needs time.

In response to https://hbr.org/2015/11/why-simple-brands-win

Simple brand always wins. The author expresses an innovative idea in this article and analyzes how simplicity attributes to the success of the company.

Recalling how people doing business in the ancient time when the currency was not created yet. People just simply exchanged the product with others and their needs were satisfied immediately. As time goes by, business world becomes more and more complicated and many business strategies have been created in order to attract more customers.

It is wrong to think that complexity and redundancy will make customers will feel more worthy to spend money on that product. Sometimes consumers feel uncomfortable when they are facing too many complex choices. Making a choice is time-consuming and exhausted and will prevent the consumers from purchasing sometimes. Take Zara for example, as a fast fashion company, there are thousands of clothes you can choose to buy from its online shop and recently it creates a must-have list for customers. It is really a simple way for customers to buy the clothes in trend in a few minutes.

Simplicity also acts an essential part of improving the consumer experience. Like google, most of the google products are simpler comparing to its competitors’. Gmail is one of the most successful products of Google. Comparing to other email servicer, Gmail is simple to use and have few unrelated advertisements. The simple Gmail improves people’s efficiency when they are dealing with the emails.

Simplicity adds values to the service but keeping simple when the company is developing is hard. Company which wants to achieve bigger success should focus on the simple service.

In this blog post, author focuses on an important concept in the business world which is how to find the consumer’s unsatisfied need. Before launching any new product, company should have an awareness of which special consumer’s need it is fulfilling and always keeps the consumer’s need in mind.

The article talks about how to recognize the consumer’s need ahead of time by following the trend. I totally agree with this idea and the example given in the article also proves it.

Nowadays, there is a growing need for the healthy food especially organic food. Consumers are willing to pay more money on the product which is labelled as organic. Organic food market is a potential field to start a business but is also a competitive field as the market is becoming more and more compact. Thus an essential question comes out: How to retain the customers when there are hundreds of companies are all selling the organic food. Naked Coconuts the company which mentioned in the blog post comes out with a wise approach to build customer loyalty by offering consumers ‘transparency’. When a company offering their customers trustworthy products, customers will offer their loyalty in return.

Looking for what people need is always a top question when starting a new business and thanks to the Internet and social media finding what customers urgently need by the trend becomes more easily.

Nowadays, more and more companies focus on the shared value between the company itself and the customers. One way for most of the companies to create a shared value is to act positively on the environment issue. However, recently an investigation into Starbucks and Tim Horton’s shows that paper cups in stores are not recycled. Both customers and employees show disappointments about this fact.

Starbucks labels itself as a for-profit public company and a leading company in green retail. Rick Fedrizzi, CEO and Founding Chairman of U.S. Green Building Council once said that “Every time you order a Starbucks, you cast a vote for the powerful impact the retail environment can have on our efforts to mitigate climate change and improve the quality of life for all of us.” When a news report shows that Starbucks fails in the recycling process of its paper cups, the labels Starbucks creating for itself seem ironic. If Starbucks does not treat their “green” impression as a special value adds to its customers, customers will not react so greatly to this report.

It is obvious that people hate to be cheated. Thus when the company decided to label its an environmental friendly company, it is essential for the company to keep consistent with this label. Otherwise, company will suffer a loss of profit because of the inconsistent and it is not wise to do so.

Article:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tim-hortons-starbucks-recycling-garbage-1.3304770

http://www.starbucks.com/responsibility/global-report

When Toms’ one-for-one business model first came to the pubic, most of the people were impressed by this innovative approach to help the poverty. By doing so, the company not only differentiates the shoes selling to the consumers but also labels it as an entrepreneurship that is enthusiastic to solve the poverty problem around the world. Toms adopted one-for-one business model with a good will but the approach Toms implementing it shows a lack of foresight. Due to the large amount of unintended consequences, I oppose this kind of one-for-one business model.

One thing that one-for-one business model does well is creating a relationship with the consumers and the people they are going to assist. People feels good when they buy a new pair of shoes and know that there is a person in the world will get a pair of shoes for free because of it. In fact,  most of the consumers do not care much about what specific thing the company will donate to the poverty. What they care most is the outcome. In other words, consumers will be willing to purchase no matter the company will offer a pair of shoes or donate to the charities once they see the outcome of these actions.

I have to say that one-for-one business model dose a good job to attract customer, but the simple way only to offer a pair shoes is far from helping the poverty. This is reason why I disagree with the one-for-one business model. It needs to carry out a more proper way to help the poverty. Otherwise, consumers will gradually be disappointed with the brand.

Article:

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

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamespoulos/2012/04/11/toms-shoes-a-doomed-vanity-project/

A company’s success can owe to a lot of prospects. One of them is the appropriate human resource management. Take a look at the innovative human resource management method of Netflix, it is an effective way to manage employees especially for a company that is experiencing a high speed of developing and the market that the company targeting likes changing their tastes.

One of the most impressing ways that Netflix manages its employee is “Tell the truth of the performance”. It is a time and money saving way to manage the employees because it gets rid of the formal policies and it is also a better way to hire the right people. Although the company has to pay a huge amount of compensation for the employee who the company no longer needs, from the long term, it is a good way for both of the company and the employees. Because the company eliminates the energy it used to make a performance evaluation for the individual employee. At the meantime staff can stop suffering from working at a wrong position and is paid a large amount of money. They can either use this amount of money to take some courses to make themselves more competitive or to find another job which suits him or her better.

Netflix’s way to manage people is innovative and educative, but not all the companies can just copy it and wish for a success. Because different company needs their own approach to manage people which can be applied to the current situation of the company and the market that the company is targeting.

Article:

https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr?cm_sp=Topics-_-Links-_-Read%20These%20First#

Dine market is a new entrepreneurship that connects restaurants with food suppliers in the cloud, allowing restaurants to compare prices and order food from more than 100 vendors. This idea is innovative and the investors of Dine market see the potential of Dine market as Open table which transforms the reservation system of the restaurant industry.

However, from the article we can see that Dine market is facing great challenges to reach 20,000 restaurants by 2018. From my point of view, the biggest problem faced by Dine Market is how to attract more vendors which the restaurants trust to sign up.

Most of celebrity chefs have worked in the food industry for decades and have confident in buying the ingredients themselves. To let them trust the quality of the chosen vendors from a newly created app is tough. Take a look at Open table, the main idea of Open Table is to gather the feedback from its users and recommend a number of restaurants to them based on the true feedback and the last thing is to make it convenient for the users to reserve tables. So I think in order to make more restaurants to sign up, Dine market needs to expand the scope of suppliers on its list. As most of the upscale restaurants have their own suppliers they trust, if Dine Market can make partnership with these trustworthy suppliers, it can create value to both the restaurants and suppliers. That is restaurants can get access to more trustable suppliers and suppliers can sell their products to more restaurants.

Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/business/smallbusiness/a-software-firm-that-wines-and-dines-the-restaurant-industry.html?ref=business&_r=0