Bushido

BUSHIDO is a Japanese word used to describe the way that a samurai should act. It is very close to the English word "chivalry" but with certain differences. "It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and honor unto death." (Wikipedia) Japan is a small country in size. However, this country is ranked as the second largest business country, right between U.S. and China, both of which has a size ten times bigger than Japan. According to my research and personal analysis, I think Bushido is one of the biggest contributing factors of Japan's tremendous success in the business world.

History and Content

Just as Johanna, Ryftenius, and Randy Z. Shoai pointed out in their article, "Japanese Bushido is the cornerstone of Japanese business culture". However, before analyzing the Bushido in Japanese Business Culture, we firstly need to have a detailed understanding of the original meaning of Bushido. Bushido was developed since the 9^th century. Being viewed as the soul of Japan, Bushido was very widely practiced during several major ancient eras by the samurai class. In Bushido, Bushi (warrior) should always keep certain virtues in their life. There are seven core virtues that are commonly accepted, which are: Gi (Rectitude), Chugi (Loyalty),Yuki (Courage), Meiyo (Honor), Jin (Benevolence), Rei (Respect), and Makoto (Honesty). (S. Peterson). Even though the varied in different eras, these seven core virtues have never been changed.

Bushido comes from Bushi, and Bushi serve the country in war, therefore Bushido is primarily a series of military disciplines. It is quite simple but effective. Nowadays, business is
often as fierce as wars. Compared to the social norms and virtues in western country, Bushido is based on the shame culture in Japan. With more than a thousand years' history, it is no wonder that Bushido concept is so deeply rooted in Japanese people's blood. For Japanese people, Bushido is no doubt the most preferred method to run their business.

The Online Battle Arena Games: Episode 2__LOL

As I mentioned earlier, League of Legends is quite a similar work to DOTA. It is actually inspired by the whole idea of DOTA and was shooting to supeirize dota.

It is interesting that the game was released between the era when DOTA  reached to its mature stage where the number of players comes to a constant or even declining, which actually provided a great opportunity for LOL.

Then what is new about LOL?

First of all, the business model is completely different. Even though it is free to create a Riot account and download and play LOL. The customers can only play the "heros of the week", if the customers wants to use the rest of the heros they like, they have to purchase with game points, which can be earned by playing more games or simply through purchase the Riot Points with their dollars.
If a player like a particular hero, he/she can spend some extra points or money to by a themend skin for their heros. The skins will make the heros look different than the normal model but will not affect the fairness of the game because the skins wont change any property of the gameplay.
I think this is a good model for LOL to be a merchandised game and generate a lot profit for Riot.

Another thing that differs LOL from Dota is that there are 3 different types of game mode, Field of Justic, Dominion and Persistance Meta Mode. The players can team up and play differnet modes to free their mind from the battles of the 5 vs. 5. These different modes also help the players to better define the heros they poccess. For example, there are certain heros who are not so powerful in the Field of Justic mode but are extremely useful in Dominion Mode.

From a personal perpective, the gameplay of LOL is still no better than DOTA. But the business trend and other types of promotions really present the game much more attractive to players who haven't tried either of the games.

The Online Battle Arena Games: Episode 1__DOTA

DOTA (Defense of the Ancients) rose up in my high school era and stormed the entire cyber game world, especially for Asian people, particularly for 
In my sophomore year, my roomate Mark Zhou recommended me another game, League of Lengends (known as LOL).
In fact, before writing this blogpost, I didn't even know how to categorize these two games. I wikied it and found out the two games are categorized as Online Battle Arena Games.

The reason I want to compare these two games is because there are so many similarities between the two and yet so many differences that the developers promote this game to players. Today's post is about DOTA.

"Defense of the Ancients (DotA) is a multiplayer online battle arena mod for the video game Warcraft III. The objective of the scenario is for each team to destroy the opponents' Ancient, heavily guarded structures at opposing corners of the map. Players use powerful units known as heroes, and are assisted by allied heroes and AI-controlled fighters. As in role-playing games, players level up their heroes and use gold to buy equipment during the mission"(Wikipedia)

The game is about balancing the strategy, team work and personal ability when fighting with the opponent team. At the beggining of the game, 5 team members were assigned to 3 different lanes, in order to defend against the opponent team. There could be different strategic arrangement for the players, such as 212, 311, 2111, etc. When it comes to the later era of the game, the players begins to start ganking (teaming up to catch and kill a single player) to gather the first move advantage of the game. At the end of the game, the teams comes to a 5 on 5 group fight and terrant pushing, until one party loses its Ancient.

This game mode is pretty much the same thing to LOL.
What I am really focusing on is the way the developers promote it.

Dota is dveloped by ICEFROG, which were lately purchased by Blizzard.
The map (not the game) is free to download. And since all the potential DOTA players already installed Warcraft III, there is absolutely no cost to play this game. This explain why there are so many people still playing DOTA despite the fact Blizzard released DOTA II already. 

What Would You Do

The ABC showWhat Would You Do is about setting up everyday scenarios that reflect on how people react, why they react, and what they decide to do. Normally, these little cases test the people around us over certain issues, such as racism, discrimination on homosexual people, disordered children, etc.

I like this little show not only because these scenarios reflect real-time social issues, but also because there are also so many kind-hearted people who is caring about others and are brave enough to stand out to speak for those who needs protection.
The following are several YouTube video links of the show.

When Unreal Comes Real

If you like video games, and have a particular interest in first-person RPGs, then you must be familiar with this icon, 

no matter what operating system you are using.
So what is this mysterious Unreal?
The Unreal Engine is a game engine developed by Epic Games (Another familiar name,hah?). There are four versions of this game engine, and UE is currently being through the evolution from UE3 to UE4. UE takes 80% of the market share in the game engine category
UE is famous for its elaborate design for images and scenario creation. It is also good at curving the details of the character's face and facial expression, including hair style, action, muslce, micro-expressions.
In a word, "Unreal really made the games Real."
If you are a fan of ios games, you must be familiar with Inifinite Blade I and II, one of the most popular ios games in 2012. Despite the initial sales price of $6.99 on Apple's App Store, Infinite Blade got a extremely high popularity among ios players. 
There are some other games that was 

If you like to play your game on a PC, then you must have been astonished by the elaborate designs of these games, Mass Effect 1, 2, 3, Devil May Cry 4, D.M.C Devil May Cry, Medal of Honor, etc.

Giants in Game World, Episode 2 ----EA

Electronic Arts, Inc. (EA) is an American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games.
Currently, EA develops and publishes games under several labels including EA Sports titles, Madden NFL, FIFA Soccer, Other EA labels produce established franchises such as Battlefield, Need for Speed, The Sims.
(Part of the following descriptions are from Wikipedia)

"The Sims is a strategic, life simulation video game series  It is one of the most successful video games series of all time. It  is also the best-selling PC franchise in PC history."
The Sims series creates different social and hitorical backgrounds for players to put their virtual citizens (called "Sims") in the created world. Each "Sim" can have their own house, family, job and social activities.
For example, in Sims Medival, you can actually portray the king, the wizard of the kingdom, the blacksmith, the knight commander, the spy, the merchants or the priest.
It is a quite interesting and unique expeirence.


"Mass Effect is a series of science fiction action role-playing third person shooter video games developed by the Canadian company BioWare. "
The whole storyline centered around Commander Shepard, a human command who had been through death and resurrection (in MassEffect 2). After completing a long period of vairies missions, Commander Shepard finally saved all organic creatures from their enemy, the reapers.

Unlike the first two series of games, EA Sports is not a game but a subsidary brand of EA.
EA sports mainly develops real life sports games to players who are sports fans. It released games such as NBA LIVE, FIFA, Madden NFL etc. Among these games, Madden NFL is the best selling one of the EA Sports products.

Giants in Game World, Episode 1 --- Blizzard

I think most guys of my age will be quite familiar with Blizzard company and EA (Electronic Arts).
The products of these two companies has accompanied us with our middle school, high school, and even today.
Just an hour ago, I was surfing in the space world created by Mass Effect from EA. I have to say that both of the two giants in video game world is still important to teenager's world today.They are both so important but distinct so obviously.

Blizzard mostly focused on RTS (Real-Time Strategy) Games, such as Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2. The internet platforms such as Garena (known as GG), Stream and other local platforms really gathered the gamers all over the world, which eventually pushed these games to the peak of success. Even since the year of 1993 when Starcraft was released, the successing step of Blizzard became almost unstoppable. It is unbelievable that Starcraft remained popular for ten years, until the first phase of Starcraft II was released. Asian gamers, especially Korean gamers was obssessed with this game.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Blizzard threw another bomb on the game market, THE Warcraft III, Frozen Throne. This raised another tide of Asian RTS gamers. This time, the Chinese gamers are winners. Many Asian gamers have won the WCG champion for Warcraft III.
Besides RTS games, Blizzard also gained great success on its MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game), World of Warcraft. Up till now, World of Warcraft is still the most successful MMOG in the world.

The Always Interesting Brookstone

My Chinese firend Alex once worked in Brookstone 3 years ago. As he decribed, "Brookstone is a store where rich people and boring people spend there extra bucks for fun." 
 That was the first time I got to know Brookstone since I came to the U.S.Despite the fact that this description is biased, I somehow agree with his point because I also think many of Brookstone products are over priced. As a result, I almost go to Brookstone everytime I shop in the mall but much less frequently make a purchase.

However, I am a strong beliver of "gold for good", especially for ideas. So I think if I got rich someday, I will probably do a lot shopping in this place. The following is the interesting Brookstone products on my list. It is not in a particualr ranking order. The reason I put them here is just because of their smart design and interesting creation: (some of the descriptions are directly from Brookstone's website)

1. Mobile Mini Speaker: It is a portable speaker that can plug into any earphone plugs. Even though it is a new product for Brookstone, it is not necessarily new to the world. However, Brookstone really makes it look cute, modernized and smart.


2. This is called n'ICE Cubes

Because n’ICE Cubes will never melt and dilute your drinks. Simply place in the freezer for a few hours, then slip a handful into a glass and pour on your favorite potent potable, like a top-shelf single malt. In minutes, your drink is nicely chilled—and full strength. Afterwards, just rinse, dry and replace the stones in the freezer for next time.

3.This is called eComfort

Web surf, write and work anywhere.
Keeps you and your laptop cool and comfortable. Use it with your tablet, too! Perfect for on the couch, in bed…wherever you want. Angled work surface has a curved top, slanted cushion for comfortable emailing, Web surfing, reading or writing and more. Once done, grab the handle/cable pass-through and go. Only at Brookstone.

KFC China, Episode 2

Promotion: Focusing on Taste and Health

Just as other fast food companies, KFC puts a lot effort in traditional promotional strategy, such as advertising, price cutting, contesting, etc. However, KFC applies these strategies in its own way. In order to give a good brand image to its potential customers, KFC spends 10% to 15% of its total expenses for advertising every year.^[1] From a personal perspective, I believe KFC keeps doing this mainly to deliver two advantages of KFC foods, the fantastic flavor and health. KFC uses all kinds of sources you can imagine to draw the customers' attention. KFC promotes its newest product in its TV commercials, sometimes it shows how the food is made, and sometimes there is an interesting story about the updated product. About a week after the commercial displayed on TV, people can see the posters of this newest one on the street, bus station and even in an elevator.. With so many vivid pictures (like the one on the left) around, peoples' appetite will definitely be grabbed with an invisible hand.

Another smart promotion strategy KFC uses is its in-store coupon. Like many other fast food companies, KFC also provides coupons on websites or on the newspaper. However, only less than 3% of these coupons were actually redeemed. On the other hand, even with a much lower discount rate, the in-store coupons are the most used ones. It seems that Chinese people usually enjoys this sudden price-off in the restaurant. The in-store coupons are usually in calendar form, which means there are only price-off on certain days for certain foods. This really becomes another incentive to motivate the customer to go to eat and therefore ensures a certain number of traffic in the store.

In addition, even though the coupons are named "in-store coupon", you can actually get them out of the store. Since KFC restaurants are usually opened around malls, supermarkets and city squares, it is very common to see the hired employees handing out the coupons, sometimes wearing a costume with a KFC theme. 

Logistic Network: Building Suitable Supply Chain for China

Even though the logistic networking is not categorized marketing strategy, one can never omit the important role that supply chain management is playing in KFC's widely spreading in China's marketplace. When KFC first entered China in 1987, there was even no fast food supply chain in China. Therefore, KFC decided to build its own logistic system in China. It was an extremely costing and a time consuming project. However, the Yum! Brands is now enjoying the outcome of their former effort on supply chain building.

KFC applies a fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) strategy to ensure material quality, ability to capture market opportunities and the flexibility to suit the changing market structure in China.

On material section, KFC implements a Star System, "a selection of alternative suppliers, which is specifically for a global assessment of supplier management system in China since 1996, full implementation of the supplier"^[2]. This Star System is basically a district level material sourcing system. With Star System, KFC is able to select the most preferable material with a best price discount. Meanwhile, this system also functions as an information center for demand planning. It "consists of five areas: quality, technical, financial, reliability, and communication. Every three to six months of regular assessment and evaluation throughout the year were, from KFC’s technical department and the purchasing department were assessed at the end of the composite score will determine the supplier of the volume of business in the next year in the share."^[3]

On distributing section, KFC China uses rental-based distribution centers instead of building up their own. KFC also outsources third-party carriers from local companies to transport their materials.^[ Both of these two strategies aim to reduce costs. With the information generated from Star System and the inventory record, distribution channels can easily allocate the recourses according to the specific order from each restaurant with supplementary information from the demand planning department. Due to the large number of KFC restaurants and the short distance between each in every district, material allocation can be easily adjusted with extremely low costs.

From the above analysis, we can see several big advantages in KFC's logistic system: First, the tightly connected departments strongly support the expansion of KFC. Second, the Star System ensures the quality and quantity of materials. Third, the abundant information results in accurate demand planning, which significantly reduces the costs through the entire supply chain.

KFC China, Episode 1

According to detailed research, KFC achieved dominance in China over its major competitors for several reasons: well designed localized flavor, a high quality of service, suitable promotion strategy, a well developed logistic network, and its unique local management method. Just as David E. Bell and Mary L. Shelman from Harvard Business School said, "To succeed, the fast food giant had to throw out its U.S. business model. All of KFC's marketing strategies depart from the U.S. model"

Product: Localized Flavor

When it comes to food, especially fast food, flavor is usually the first thing that comes to mind, especially for a Chinese person. This does not necessarily mean that Chinese people totally do not care about the food health. But when faced with the same category, fast food, Chinese people are usually not so concerned on which is healthier.

Currently, KFC China has a menu which includes more than 50 items while the U.S. version only contains about 30. KFC China's menu not only contains more items, but it also includes more types. The 30 items in American KFC are mainly fried chicken, but the 50 items served in China contains a lot Chinese traditional cuisine such as shredded pork soup, Peking chicken rolls, porridge, egg tarts, pot sticker etc. Even the traditional burgers can be substituted by fish and shrimp burger, which attract significant amount of Chinese customers who do not like fried foods.

Because China is a big country with 56 provinces (similar to the states in U.S.), people from different cities have totally different diet habits. For example, people from Sichuan Province and Hunan Province especially like hot, spicy food while people from southeastern area (such as Jiangsu Province) would prefer sweet foods. To cater to different eating habits, KFC makes their food with regional sauce and ingredients. Therefore even though there is only 50 items listed on the menu, there might be more than 100 flavors combined all over China.

Service: Delivering High Quality and Culture

Service quality is also a big factor of KFC's success is its service quality. KFC delivers much superior service quality to its customer with good service attitude, quick serving speed and clean infrastructures. Thanks to the well designed employee training programs, each KFC employee is taught how to interact with customers. Interestingly, KFC does not spend much funding in its employee training. The first line employees' team consists of new employees with experienced ones, so the new comers can learn the most efficient way of delivering the high quality service. Unlike American customer, Chinese people tend to eat at home instead of sitting in the restaurant; therefore delivery becomes a big issue. In China, you can order KFC simply by calling the store and order your food. You can also order everything you want on a shopping website named TaoBao, which is very popular among Chinese people. It will usually take 30 to 45 minutes to get your food and you do not even have to pay extra for the delivery. This really explains why KFC's customer satisfaction rate is so high and why a lot of foreigners from western countries start eating KFC when they come to China. Even though that not all the people in China prefers KFC than other fast food restaurant, almost everyone admits that KFC always has the cleanest restroom compared to any other fast food restaurant.

 

What Makes Starbucks Succeed in China

This morning I read several articles about the strategies Starbucks applies in China.
http://www.Forbes.com/sites/helenwang/2012/08/10/five-things-Starbucks-did-to-get-china-right/
Here is the Chinese version of the same article.
http://www.21cbh.com/HTML/2012-8-24/0NMDQ1XzUwNTI0NA.html

I think it is very inspiring and it really leads me to think about more global brands that did excellent job in China, such as KFC, IKEA, Pizza Hut.
Being a Chinese person, I believe several "ingredients"that these companies have in common in their marketing strategy is adaptation and localization.
 

Chinese people do not really buy the whole idea of pure standadization. That's is why McDonald's China has lost so much market share to KFC China.It is the same story for Starbucks.
In someway, the entrance of Starbucks did indeed change the Chinese people's drinking pattern. The majority of Chinese people, especially the younger generation tends to drink both tea and coffee. The product adaptation nodoubtly contributed greatly to this coffee evolution.

To quote Forbes.com,
"The next thing Starbucks did was to capitalize on the tea-drinking culture of Chinese consumers by introducing beverages using popular local ingredients such as green tea. This strategy has effectively turned potential obstacles into Starbucks’ favor. Chinese consumers quickly developed a taste for Starbucks’ coffee, which was essential to Starbucks’ success in China."

Another thing about Starbucks' great success is localization.
China is not one homogeneous market. There are many Chinas. There are 56 peoples in China. And even within the major people, Hanzu, the culture from northern China is very different from that of the east.So it is actually really important for each Starbucks regional branch to partner with a local business.

OH, WeChat

WeChat is an instant text and voice communication mobile app developed by Tencent in China. WeChat become a phenomenal trend for the smartphone users almost as soon as it was issued since the company Tencent developed the most popular chatting platform, QQ, in China. WeChat became an extension of QQ and acquired almost half of the 700 million QQ users.

WeChat provides multimedia communication flexibility and convenience with text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, photo/video sharing, location sharing, and contact information exchange. WeChat also supports social networking via shared streaming content feeds and location-based social plug-ins ('Shake', 'Look Around', and 'Drift Bottle'). (Wikipedia)

WeChat almost contains all the features that all current U.S social media combined:

You can post pictures and public your status in your "Cycle" with WeChat. When you post a picture, you can use an artistic filter and built-in editing tool to beautify your photo. There are several new features that none of the U.S social media have. For example, the function "look around" helps the user locate all the contact near his/her current location. The function "Shake" and "Drift Bottle" can help new users to find new friends around and communicate without the requirement of "adding friends". To avoid disturbing and spamming, the users are provided with the alternatives to turn on and shut down certain functions at anytime.

Personally, I think WeChat will stay in China since 90% of its users are former QQ users and it will not affect the status of any platform like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. However, there are many things that deserves to be learned and borrowed from WeChat to perfect current U.S. social media.

About Cytus

The App store game Cytus has raised a phenomenal trend in music game playing. I am personally addicted to it for about one year, not only because of its enjoyable game play but also because its smart idea of its marketing and pricing strategy.

Cytus is a music video game developed by Rayark Games, an independent game developing corporation in Taiwan. Cytus is a score-based video game. The game currently have 62 songs and has about 120,000 downloads from all the platforms combined.

I think one can really see the magic power that Cytus have until he/she plays it. I am personally a fan of music games and I downloaded many free or paid music games in this category, such as Beat Hazord Ultra, Beatogether,  Tone Sphere. But in my opinion, none of these games can compared to Cytus.








 

In my opinion, Cytus stands out of the music games for several reasons.

1. The songs are originally created for the game. Therefore the hitting point and actions was closely attached to the game.
2. Unlike the music of many other games, the songs are of high quality and varies from pop music to classic music and symphonic music, which caters to a big segment of players
   
3. The 62 songs was divided into 6 chapters. Each chapter has a theme. Each Songs and Each chapter has an elaborate drawing or poster set as the background of the gameplay; therefore each song is identifiable for palyers. 
4. Even not displayed yet, Cytus was trying to convey an epic story to the players. A question is also raised by all players over the word "What does Cytus mean?" 

Cytus was released in January 2012, when I purchased it on Apple's App Store in September, there was only about 14 songs and there were no chapters. The App charged me $3.99, which was a very expensive for many game players. It was also the most expensive app I bought back in 2012. However, the effect of the game just made me think it's worth the money.

Today, Cytus released the first 4 chapters for free (well of course you should purchase the game first) and charges $1.99 (it was $0.99 earlier this months). Chapter 5 and 6 was locked until you spend another $4.99 for each Chapter.

Now, you might think, "Oh that SUCKKKKS", but The game features a "Million Downloads Plan" announcing that when for every 100,000 downloads (across both iOS and Android) 10 more songs will be added to the game. I think this is just brilliant. Because it actually take a normal player a long time to master all the songs (trust me, if you like this game, you will try to do this) and therefore when a new customer might reach the 200,000 point to unlock Chapter 5 for free.
Also, to cater to the big big fans, they can also spend their money unlock the two chapters.

In this way, Cytus is doing a "double marketing" with different pricing strategy, but without offending either new player or old fans.

iPad or Surface?

Ever since Apple's iPad was invented and came to the marketplace, the iPad series almost dominated the tablet market despite the updating new products from its competitors. Recently, the biggest threaten to iPad 4's market share is Microsoft's Surface.
I bought the new Pad in January and visited Staples for the Surface a couple days ago. I also did a bit research online to compare the two tablet and listed the following features that the two competing products have.


For iPad 4, due to the new ios 6.0 system, it operates faster and has a faster speed to connect to wifi. The reason iPad 4 is called the New Pad is because it has retina display. The retina screen provides a 4 times high resolution and doubles the resistance of scratches than iPad 3. I have to say, the iPad 4 has a much higher improvement from iPad 3 than iPad 3 to iPad 2.

In my opinion, an important reason that Surface might be a great threat to iPad 4's(or even later versions') market share is because the Surface series may suck the business users back to a Windows based operating system. However, I think the current version Surface RT is still not competitive with iPad 4

The Surface that exists on the current market are mainly Surface RT, the size is almost the same as iPad 4. Generally, Surface RT has a better processor than iPad 4.It also has a keyboard attached with it for business users.
However, even though the keyboard is designed for business users to type easily, it does not necessarily feel the same way as typing on a laptop keyboard (from a personal perspective). Therefore, the keyboard really cannot be characterized as an advantage over iPad 4, not to mention that you can actually spend about $100 to buy a blue tooth keyboard for iPads.
Another reason that I think Surface RT might not be competitive is because there is a lot compatibility issue going on. The main motivation for business people to choose Surface is because there are certain software can be accessed easily on Windows system than Apple's ios system. However, for Windows 8 and Surface RT, many of these software are not compatible. This can be a big big discouragement for potential Surface buyers.For example, I am a big PC fan, nevertheless I picked iPad 4 instead of Surface RT.

All of the above is the current picture I drew for people who plans to buy a tablet recently. However, the situation might change significantly when the new Surface Pro came out in 2014.

My First Blog

This is a testing first blog of my BLOGGER~~~