Death Spiral? Chinese Car Obsession

(1/31/2013) China has overtaken U.S. as the largest car market. Owning a car is a symbol of social status in China even though driving in many cities in China is not a exciting experience at all. The traffic congestion in China is pretty well known (Look at this historical gridlock near Beijing in 2010). Recently, Beijing is experiencing severe smog for days. How bad was it? You cannot see the Sun in Beijing when you are in a sunny day (See CNN's report below). People say "The More The Air Is Polluted, The More I Prefer To Drive." Is it another new paradox smilar to Prisoner's dilemma or Paradox of thrift in the Economics?

Unlocking Your Phone? Not Allowed

(1/28/2013) Now, it is illegal to unlock your cell phone. The software coming with your cell phone is not what you bought and owned, it belongs to the wireless service provider.  As the report says "This is about carriers keeping people on their networks and squeezing the after-market for phone sales." They don't want the resale markets encroaching their profit. Let us mourn for the loss of consumers.

Wireless Service Provider and Lobbyists 1: Consumers 0 

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Business Positioning Is Difficult to Change

(1/28/2013) Business positioning is difficult to change, especially for a low-end brand. JC Penney is known for their discounts and sales. However, this company changed that policy one year ago and customers are not buying it. After a disappointing year and a loss of bargain searching shoppers, JC Penney is returning to its aggressive discounts.

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The winner: consumers.
Footnote: The current CEO, Ron Johnson, is ousted today (4/8/2013). It's obvious that it's no-sales strategy costed his job. Not a surprise.

This is another WOW. JC Penney launch an "apology" video to their old customers on youtube.
"It's no secret, recently JCPenney changed. Some changes you liked and some you didn't, but what matters from mistakes is what we learn. We learned a very simple thing, to listen to you. To hear what you need, to make your life more beautiful. Come back to JCPenney, we heard you. Now, we'd love to see you."

Underemployed Generation

(1/28/2013) A recent survey says that many college graduates hold jobs that don't require a college degree at all. Several things we should think about:
(1) What are the jobs generated by this lukewarm economic recovery?
(2) What do we teach in the college?
(3) What skill set do our college graduates hold to do their future jobs?

Chinese Babies Hungry for Foreign Milk

(1/24/2013) Four years ago, China had a huge scandal about adding carcinogens in the baby milk powder. Now the Chinese parents are buying baby milk powder crazily in Hong kong and Australia (through people traveling overseas) because they don't trust their Chines baby milk powder anymore. With such a huge demand (look at so many newborn babies in China), it empties the shelfs in HK & Australia. It also triggers some milk powder smuggling from New Zealand, which is a major milk powder exporting country. When New Zealand government announces that they will block illegal export of baby milk powder, the price of the NZ milk in China jumps immediately (news in Chinese).

(CC) Baby: I want to grow healthy.

Psychology of Waiting

(1/23/2013) Here I summarize some interesting psychological observations of waiting:

1. Skinner’s Law – “The other lines always move faster.” Everybody knows this feeling on the highway or at the toll booth.
2. Jenkin’s Corollary: However, when you are stuck in traffic and decide to switch to another other lane, the lane you left moves faster. 
3. Occupying customers: While entertained or occupied, the customers feel much less  waiting. For example, Disney theme park's waiting line management (see the picture below) or the mirrors in the elevator. However, the music played by the 800 customer service call center is often tolerated only when the waiting is reasonable.
4. Unoccupied time goes slowly
5. Pre-service waits seem longer that in-service waits: For example, at the pharmacy you are less impatient if the pharmacist keeps you waiting when (s)he is doing your prescription than you are waiting in the line. 
6. The Light at the End of the Tunnel: Reduce anxiety with attention, this is extremely important in undesirable waitings. For example, when there are aircraft mechanical problems airlines should give delayed passengers some information about how long they have to wait (but don't go far...).
7. Under promise, Over deliver (not the other way around): restaurant hosts tell you you will be waiting for 25 minutes, but your waiting is only 15 minutes.  

Before a new ride starts, Disney entertains visitors with videos or arrange employees dancing, playing, or telling you a story to make you feel you are not waiting. 

Economics of Gangnam Style

(1/23/2013) How much doe Gangnam Style bring to Youtube and PSY just on the online video along? According to an estimate, that video brings about $8 millions from that 1.2 billion view, in which one half goes to Youtube and the other half goes to PSY. No wonder PSY has such a big smile.

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How to Use This Blog

(1/23/2013) I glean through many news about business (especially in Supply Chain & Logistics, Innovation, Technology) everyday. Usually, I save them into pdf files on my laptop with some notes or highlights on them. Once in a while, when I am preparing teaching materials or writing papers, I know have have read some articles about the topic of interest. But searching through my folders on Mac's Finder is not a easy job (Mac's Finder is not much better than Microsoft Windows' Search). Finally, I found Google's blog is a very useful tool. Google has the best searching engine and the blogger is really well designed. Why don't I just import those inspiring  or amusing articles on the blog? Besides, I can share my collections with people on the Internet (if this blog has any visitor). That is how this blog is born.

Above, I have described my professional interest areas; however, I don't like to be limited.. To use this blog, you can first check the "Major Categories" on the right column to see if any will be your interest. You can also search my blog by keywords. Any articles in this blog matching to your criteria will be shown in your search result. If you have some good news/reports that you want to share, please feel free to leave a comment on the blog. Thank you!

All the labels (Google's term as keywords) that I use on this Blog are sorted below:

3PL, AdTrap, Airlines, Amazon, Apple, auctions, beer game, BizFundamentals, Career, containership, copyright., Costco, crisis management, cross-docking, Culture Difference, currency., Customer Relationship, Daily, Data visualization, Demand management, digital camera, Early-Bird, eBook reader, eCommerce, Economics, Entrepreneur, farmland value, FedEx, Food Supply, Forecasting, Foxconn, Fraud, Fuel supply, gender pay gap, Global Economy, google, Google map, Green manufacturing, Hacking, Imagination, innovation, International Business, iPad, iPhone, iPhone map, Japan, Logistics, MBA, McDonald, Medical, Mississippi River, mobile app, Netflix, Network Effect, network neutrality, OM/SCM, online ads, Operations, overcharge, pipeline, pricing, Process, product improvement, product life cycle, product rollover, Productivity, Project Management, Quality, Queuing, Redbox, Return, revenue management, reverse logistics, RO-RO, security, self service. Operations, Service, service quality, SKED Rescue., Social media, Sony, Southwest, Sprint, Starbucks, startups, Strategic Alliance, Subway, Supplier Relationship, Supply, Supply and Demand,Supply Chain, Sustainability, Tablet,TechGadget, Technology, Transportation, truck load, Twitter, United Airlines, UPS, Utilization, video game, video streaming, Virtual world, Voice of Customer, Walmart, warehouse, Wholefood

What Jobs Are Still Open in the US

(1/23/2013) CBS's 60 Minutes aired this story on 1/13/2013. Today, HuffingtonPost.com continues a followup report. They are saying: robots are taking over many jobs that are used to be done by people. Our technology advances have reached to a level that the robots we make are doing much better job (faster, better quality and no complaints) than human beings. One thing we should think about is what jobs will be left for our future and next generations?


In this news, it shows that technology always kills old jobs and creates new jobs. Joel Mokyr, a historian of technological change at Northwestern University says: "But that is the price we pay for progress."  How can we keep our skills updated and desirable in the job market?

Ignorance of Social Media Costs One CEO's Job

(1/13/2013) Many of us are using various social media everyday. We have seen a lot of social successful media sensations (PSY's Gangnam Style or United Breaks Guitar ), but there also have a lot of failures. One customer of a Montana Wilcoxson's Ice Cream asked on the company's facebook page that whether it contained pork gelatin since he was a Muslim, and the CEO responded like this. 

This ignorance costed this CEO his job. He stepped down two days after this event. 

United Breaks Guitar

(1/23/2013) In 1998, Canadian musician Dave Carroll flew United Airlines for his music tour. Dave checked in his Taylor guitar but his guitar was damaged when he arrived. Dave complained to United Airlines and hoped to get compensation for his guitar repair. After many long calls to the customer service representatives, United refused to compensate Dave for the guitar repair. Dave swore to the United's CS representative that he will make three songs telling people that United Airlines broke his guitar. And he did.



After the launch of this well-made (humorous but not angry) video, it quickly accrued a lot of attention. Rumor says that United Airlines wanted to settle with Dave and hoped he can take down this video from Youtube, but Dave declined. At this moment (Jan. 2013) this video has 12 millions views on youtube. This video significantly changed Dave's life. Going through what he experienced, he became a sort-of celebrity with successful video revenge. He has been invited to give many speeches to business about how to do better customer relationship, published a book about customer relationship, has become a more successful musician, and does an advertisement for a hard-shell guitar case. Besides, the CEO of Taylor, Bob Taylor, gave him a brand-new Taylor guitar.

Lesson learned: David can still defeat Goliath.

Sony's Lesson: Consumer's Data Security

(1/22/2013) If you are a Sony PlatStation player, you probably remember the hacking in the April of 2011. The scale of this hacking is staggering: more than 100 millions user's data are hacked. Sony's problem is not only in their weak internet security, but also in their crisis management. Probably it's because of the Japanese culture that does not like to admit mistakes. Sony's manager did not inform users the potential risk at the moment when they found the security problem. (Well, Sony was not aware of how big that problem was though.)
     There was a class lawsuit against Sony after this hacking. However, this class lawsuit was dismissed because those plaintiffs are not Sony PSN subscribers. Instead, they are Sony PSN's free users. Well, too bad.

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(7/23/2013) Apple's developer website has been hacked for three days, and now Apple just admitted that happened. While Sony was not aware of the scale of its security breaches and did not know that is important to its game users, Apple's is not totally unaware of its security problem. Remaining quiet and secrecy is just the way Apple always is, even when it is about the developer's security issue. (I guess Apple's reasoning was "Well there are way less Apple's developers than Apple's direct consumers, it won't trigger a confidence tsunami for Apple.") 

How Will You Deal with Bad Customers? Learn from Sprint.

(1/22/2013) Are customers always right? Not necessary. Some customers are such headaches to business that business would rather "drop" their customers. You sometimes see dropping customers like taht in the Business-to-Business (B2B) relationship. But it is less common in the Business-to-Customer (B2C) case. Sprint dropped the 'worst' wireless service subscribers (in Taiwan, we call them 奧客) because these customers wasted too much of their resources and are not profitable at all. I wonder if there was any lawsuit against Sprint from those dropped customers.

Happy Returns

(1/22/2013) Do you ever wonder that where do the products go when your return them back to the retailers? Many returned products are not really defective. Sometimes, it might be that the consumers just bought the wrong models and the returned goods do not need to be reworked. You will be surprised that the 'return logistics' is a pretty profitable business. Though the manufacturers wont' be happy to see the returns, but they definitely appreciate these commodity 'recyclers.'

UPS Drivers Never Turn Left

(1/22/2013) Do you know that the UPS drivers in the city never turn left on major roads (of course, in the US)? Look at this video to see why UPS does so and how much cost does it save.

Wholefood's Waiting Line

(1/22/2013) People don't like to wait, however, we wait quite a lot in our whole lifetime. Coffee shop, highway, bus, cross the traffic line, surfing internet.... Supermarket's checkout is often configured as a multi-waiting-line system. Customers often find a line with a shortest queue to load their grocery on the belt; however, it does not guarantee you will be served earlier than other customers who come later than you. Do you see the lady in front of you just takes out her check book? Gee....

Wholefood's shop in New York City changed its multi-queue system into a single-queue system in 2007. Read this article to see how their customers react. Very interesting.

Southwest Let Passengers Fight with Each Other

(1/22/2013) Southwest's no seat assigning policy has been its unique service feature. Since it introduced A/B/C boarding group policy in 2007, passengers have to check-in in the 24-hour window before departure early enough to get an early boarding number in order to get a better seat. Later, after introducing its Early-bird check-in in 2009, it's $10 early-bird check-in earned $23 millions in the second quarter of 2010 (and it's 'other revenue' continued to grow fast in 2011 and 2012.). Now it is introducing again a $40 "cut-in" to let the last-minute B or C group passengers to get a A boarding pass. What a smart strategy, Southwest Airline just let passengers to fight with one another and collect huge revenue. I wonder where is the limit that passengers become upset?

11" 'Footlong' Subway Sandwich

(1/22/2013) Will you quit Subway sandwiches just because it is 1 inch short? Will it trigger customer boycott like "Papa Johns against Obamacare" or "Oreo cookies for supporting Gay?" Even though Subway's official response is not well handled,  I guess not many people will really boycott Subway. 11" 'footlong' sandwich for less than $6 is still a bargain for many people.



(1/27/2013) Days after their ridiculous and not so smart excuse of length short, Subway now says they will make sure their footlong subway sandwich is really 12" long.

How Does Google Revise Their Google Map?

(1/21/2013) You might be surprised that many google map errors have to be changed manually. Next time, when we use google map, let's say thank-you to Google and their engineers.

(7/17/2013) Today Google just releases their new Maps Web App, which is OS independent web application. Try it yourself. It will be years for Apple or other competitors to catch up with Google.

Caterpillar Learned A Good Lesson

(1/21/2013) China's huge market and cheap labor seems to be too good to let go. Many international conglomerates rushed into China to set up their new branches, or to acquire business in order to beef up their competitiveness. Well, Caterpillar learned a good lesson that the Chinese company SiWei they bought was a lemon. This terrible purchase forced Caterpillar to write down a loss of $580 millions in the fourth quarter in 2012. This $580 millions of loss is almost 89% of its original merging cost ($653 millions). Ironically, the two business men who sold Siwei to Caterpillar and made huge profit are American, as this news says " Emory Williams is a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing. The other principal is James Thompson III, the son of billionaire James E. Thompson, chairman of Crown Worldwide
Group, a relocation company in Hong Kong." Forbes has revealed that merge in 2011.

Old School Technology

(1/21/2013) For the millennium generation, they will need to ask the parents what are these for and how did they use them. This is a picture of Sony Walkman.

The walkman was the coolest thing when I was in high school. 

Netflix, Cable Companies and Consumers

(1/18/2013) Every Internet user likes to watch smooth and fast-downloading streaming videos. However, who will pay for 'delivering' the high quality online videos (See "Time Warner Cable Claims Netflix Isn't Playing Fair")? Consumers? They think they have paid the agreed price for unlimited download and they should enjoy the all-you-can-eat buffet. Netflix? The streaming videos online take about 40% of all online traffic now (and it's growing), but Netflix and Youtube don't think the ISP should charge extra or slowdown the video downloading speeds. Cable companies want to charge Netflix for high-quality video streaming that Netflix doesn't want to pay. Now Netflix has its own broadband backbones, and the cable companies say "it's not fair."

Who will win? I guess the Cable companies will cave in.

(5/10/2013) Now Youtube is joining this battleground for pay channels. If they have science channel, then I may subscribe.

Welcome to the Virtual 'Fake' Internet

(1/17/2013) Are you Te'oing recently? There is no shortage of hoaxes on the Internet.

iPhone's tipping point?

(1/14/2013) Is it a tipping point of Apple's iPhone? Rumors say Apple cut its component order due to less than expected demand.

(1/28/2013) Asian consumers don't think iPhone is cool anymore, and the app developers are switching their lane too. iOS may not be app developer's first testing ground soon.

(1/29/2013) Another news shows that Apple is losing its grips on the carriers. T-Mobile will start selling iPhone, however, it will not come with subsidized low price that is normally indicating the carriers pay to Apple. Other wireless carriers are 'intrigued' by T-Mobile's action and may reevaluate their contracts with Apple in the future. Is Apple still the 'Almighty'?

(9/11/2013) I agree with the editor of CNET saying "Marketers will do their best to convince you otherwise, but smartphones now belong to a maturing industry with little sizzle." When a new product becomes more mature, the innovation on the product's new generations become lackluster. However, the new 64-bit A7 processor in iPhone 5S series may bring long term benefits to Apple's future products.

iPhone 5C entering to the low end smartphone market on 9/10/2013. Will it be successful? 

3D is dead

(1/10/2013) When James Cameron's Avartar 3D movie hit the theaters in 2009, people thought 3D video will be the future. Many movies went for 3D production and HDTV makers were all pushing for 3D standards. Well, this dream was pretty short lived. This year, in the Las Vegas 2013 CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 3D has become almost a basic feature and is not the media focus anymore. 

Free App Is Not That Free

(1/8/2013) I bet 99% of smartphone users use free apps. It is free, but the users 'pay' later. This good article talks about the hidden cost of free app, which has become the major business model for many mobile app developers. I have a lot of free app, though I rarely use 70% of them. Afraid of personal identity stolen? I thought my ID have been sold millions times already. Apps are like computer software, you will never know whether it is good until you use it. Apps do not provide limited-time-usage free trail to users (I don't know why). However, I don't even trust the app developers of those apps I really purchases. Won't they sell my data?

So, do consumers have other options to avoid ID being sold? Or it is too late already?

China Devour Rice Around the World

(1/8/2013) If you cannot live without rice, you may notice that the price of rice is at its peak recently. China is importing rice, rigorously. If you were a business man and you can buy low (of rice) from other countries and sell hight to China and make profit, why won't you do that? This is the power of a 1.3 billion country: strong demand.

Starbucks's Plastic Reusable Cup for $1.

(1/3/2013) Starbucks will sell you a reusable plastic cup with Starbucks' logo on it for $1. Bring it or your own tumbler to get Starbucks' drink, you get 10 cents of discount. Good for the environment, consumers, and Starbucks. Win, Win, Win.

Drought Deters Mississippi River Transportation

(1/3/2013) After this historical drought in the midwest hurts the farmers in their crops, the Mississippi River near St. Louis (the famous gateway city by the River) will be shut down soon due to a low level of water. The cost of the river transportation disruption is estimated to be $2.8 billions for January 2013 alone. I know some railroads have received some urgent delivery requests due to this disruption. This can be a bad news for US river barge operators if their shippers eventually hook up with railroad. The barge operators may eventually lose many customers.

You Have To Use Google+

(1/3/2013) Google provides a lot of free applications to users -- free. With some successes (gmail, calendar...) and some failures (like google buzz), google is pretty much just let users to determine each application's future. However, the potential of social network seems to be too good to let go, google is pushing its users to connect through google+ while you want to reach its other free services.

Usage-based pricing for Internet

(1/3/2013) The unlimited broad-band internet may be gone soon. Can we still consume online videos and movies as much as we want?