'Shark Shield' Shark Deterrent

For our safety, this is a good invention that utilising a technologically advanced three dimensional electrical wave form. It would be really useful for tourists or people who travels to another countries, when they go surfing, body boarding or free diving...etc. We dont really have to worry about being attack by the sharks because this product has such good features.

The shark deterrent gives protection by inducing spasms into the sharks' snouts, it doesnt harm them or anything, though might bruise their ego. The product basically prevents shark attacks which leads to a condition of getting more consumer who loves to go surfing or whatever is doing with the beach activities, they'll all be quite happy to buy it.

How to increase sales revenue in the canteen?

In today's Business lesson, Chris has given us a task that we have to find out how to increase sales revenue in the canteen? We all did some market research in the canteen which we have taken a long time for get knowing what's going on... But finally we came out with some solutions that are actually sounds pretty cogent to me.

First of all, what makes revenue? Price x Volume. We've been asked for 10 ways of how to increase the revenue, but we actually came up with about 15.

• Promotion: BOGOF
• More vending machines (move them to a more obvious place. Eg. near the TV)
• Increase different types of food choices (International)
• Soup of the day (offer different flavours such as sweet, chilly...etc)
• Reduce the price of tea and coffee
• Variety of teas (Green tea)
• More menus being post (constantly showing such as put it into the school newspaper)
• Complements (Lunch+drinks for price combination)
• Happy hour (Off-peak-->Half price)
• Go out of the market
• Sells advertising spaces (Advertisement from the outside)
• More notice boards
• 24-hour BBC news
• Selling SIM cards (International maybe?)
• Top-up service

As you can see there are 2 statements are in bold, those 2 are my favourite ways which I think it's a really good idea to get more and more people's attention to buy things in the canteen, not just sit there and dont consume at all! Then what's the canteen for?

Soup of the day it's really suitable for the weather in the UK now! When people come into the canteen and see a big tank of soup, they would probably want to buy it because it'll keep them feel nice and warm! I think this is pretty profitable.

Also to reduce the price in tea and coffee is a way for encouraging people to buy a cup of tea or coffee when sitting in the canteen while they're studying or just having a chat. Even if the price are only 10p or 15p, but people would buy it for the low price and more and more people would do, so that makes a pretty good profit after all!

There are so many ways that we can improve our market and it is important not to forget to do the market research! In fact, most people would still buy things in the canteen if the price goes up and that makes the market inelastic, which I think the suppliers really should think of more other ways of how to offer better deal for the consumers.

Air-Powered Car

A car without emissions would be great! This air-powered car is a fantastic invention which can saved our natural environment, such as reducing air pollution. The air is filtered by a carbon-filter before it enters the engine, in fact the engine emissions are cleaner than the air which went into the fuel tank!

The car will be driven by compressed air that are stored in carbon-fibre tanks and it only takes about 3 minutes for filling the air from a compresser. As a result, it is actually faster than a normal battery car.

It's worthy for saving our environment and suitable for everyone of us. Plus the light weight and reasonable pricing, surely it added more value on this incredible product.

Sugar Jewellery

Edible jewellery might be popular among the kids because of the creative idea and it also catches people's curiosities.

As it for me, i dont find it interesting or attractive. I wouldnt buy it only for the ideal of jewellery is making by sugar, it's unnecessary for me to buy a jewellery and then eat it when I feel bored. What if i'd like to wear it some other time again?

Meanwhile, in my point of view, if you sweat while wearing some sugar bits around your neck or wrist, it might be really sticky and you wouldnt feel comfortable at all...

Compostable Potato Cutlery

Instead of using plastic cutlery, it's true that SpudWare would be more useful and its features work as strong as plastic cutlery.

cutlery made from 80% potato starch and 20% soy oil. Also it can be washed and reused which makes it worthier than plastic cutlery. I think it's a good idea for people to get to use the potatoe-based cutlery to reduce the wastage and trying to improve the business proposition.

Starbucks Hot Coffee Vending Machine

Since Starbucks has been expanding in the coffee-consuming world, most people are now prefer to buy coffees from them, which customers gave them more and more confidence.

They now even sell their coffee by a vending machine, which can be set at anywhere such as school canteen, cinema...etc. Well, Ive already mentioned about vending machine before that it's a convenient service and also can make a good profit. For instance, Starbucks has already built up their reputation and they're really famous among the coffee sellers. Now a vending machine with their coffee for people can catch the convenience, which provides more oppotunities of getting consumer's attention.

A vending machine is a very good idea for most of the businesses who sells food and drinks, or even stationaries maybe? Especially Starbucks is a well-known coffee shop and have lots of stable customers, so that I think this might be a reason for them to set up a hot coffee vending machine everywhere that's possible!

£50 for a cup of Cat-poo coffee

50 pounds for a cup of coffee? I dont think so. Imagine you can buy a cup of coffee in Starbucks only for about 3 pounds, then why should you buy a cup of coffee that costs you 50 pounds?

As it says, "The bean is eaten, partly digested and then expelled by the Indonesian civet cat, before being roasted." If this is the only special contents that makes the coffee expensive, as a consumer, I wouldnt buy it even just for a try. Think about the market competition over the world, does it make a good profits out of it? Basically, it depends on how the customers think and would they spend money on the unnecessaties.

Edible Tableware

Imagine after you have finished your dinner, what you can do next is to finish up your bowl, plate and forks as well! What is it mean by finish them up? Well, you can simply eat your plate and forks which is amazing!

The edible tableware is created by a Japanese designer Nobuhiko Arikawa. It's really convenient for people cant be bothered to wash their dishes after they've finshed the meal. But what is it made from? The pieces are made from hardtack, biscuit made from flour, water and salt which is useful when you need it as a dry emergency rations at sea. Also it lasts for a month if you keep it dry and look after it carefully.

I'd really like to try eat my meal with edible tableware, it would be really interesting and I think this idea is pretty fascinating! However, perhaps I'll have some problems in using it properly, like I would eat the forks during the meal without considering...

For my opinion, edible tableware has been affecting slowly in our daily life, if people get used to it and buy it frequently. On the other hand, it's disposable that some people might think they have to spend more money on unnecessary stuff.

Massaging Backpack

What a brilliant invention! When people go travelling or camping, they always carry a backpack with them. Well, most of the people. It's really useful and the most important structure of this special backpack, it provides you a comfortable trip whenever you have it on your shoulder.

It says on the advertisement, "The Rotoflexion backpack has strong mechanical hands that grip and manipulate those knotted trapezius muscles." It's really affective that if I only see this at the very first time, I'll go and buy it straight away!

This product really do make a business gets more profit, hence people are usually getting tired of heavy backpacks on their shoulders!

SMS shortcuts

As people get more used to sending SMS messages, especially young teenagers, they used SMS shortcuts to make the message shorter and more interesting. Although it's not as popular among the adults.

Here are some examples of the SMS shortcuts:
http://cellphones.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cellular.co.za%2Fsms_shortcuts.htm

And this would be my example of a SMS message with some shortcuts------>to Rob.

r u ok ? i'll c u wheneva i'll c u next time !
ttyl, thx 4 ur help 2day.

How many SMS messages are sent every day?

Most people used their mobile phones to send SMS messages because it's more convenient for us to commucicate without seeing each others.
Here's some information about how many SMS messages are sent every day.

Short Message Service (SMS), or text messaging, has proved extremelypopular among GSM users, with an estimated 1 billion SMS messagesbeing sent every day globally1. With SMS the user can send short textmessages directly from one mobile phone to another.

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=316685 (Google Answer)

How many emails are sent each day?

Researching for the information of how many emails are sent each day as most of the people get to send lots and lots of emails nowadays.

Statistics, extrapolations and counting by Radicati Group from August 2008 estimate the number of emails sent per day (in 2008) to be around 210 billion.

183 billion messages per day means more than 2 million emails are sent every second. About 70% to 72% of them might be spam and viruses. The genuine emails are sent by around 1.3 billion email users.

http://email.about.com/od/emailtrivia/f/emails_per_day.htm (About.com)

Fair Trade Vending Machines.

Fair trade is to ensure that supplies bought from poorer countries have been produced fairly, which means that producers can get more money for an Ethical reason.

To offer Fair Trade products through vending machines is a really good idea, especially in colleges and university, which these places provide a socially conscious enviroment so that people would always has the conveniency to have a cup of coffee, for example.

I think we should all get into this, how to improve and make it more developed in Fair Trade vending. Also it needs promotion to attract people who arent used to this and their feedbacks are important.

After all, Fair Trade products would make profits selling through a vending machine as it's neat and the service wont be as vague.

Normative or Positive ?

What is the differences between nomative statement and positive statement?

If someone says, "The inflation should be decreasing by the next couple of years." Do we have any proof or facts that we can verify it with? This is only people's opinion, which is a value judgement. Therefore we called it a Normative statement.

Here's another one, "Pensions are lower than fuel bills." In this statement, we can actually verify it with facts, which we can prove the statement by some particular available information. As it we called it a Positive statement.

These 2 words are very important for analysing some economic questions in which we should be clearly understood by what it acually means.

Mind map - what is Business?

Business Cost Reduction.

Why try to reduce costs in a business?

If we want to make a good amount of money, the best way is by saving it and reducing the costs. No matter what, do no waste money on things you thought is necessary. Do keep an eye on competition of the business market to work out how to reduce the costs in a business.

There are some factors have been discussed during Business lesson yesterday.

• Increase productivity, so you can make employees REDUNDANT

If fewer the employees, then fewer wage a business have to pay!

• Change supplier and/or the material
• Reduce wastage
• Replace some workers with machines ----> [Mechanisation]

It's the same meaning with redundancy, but this is more like a profitable service by replacing employees by machines.

• Reduce expenditure on advertising

If it costs lots just for an advertisement, why not save all these money for further investments or some other purposes? Such as qualities improving, quantities increasing...etc.

We always need a good financial plan that can help us with a whole Business management. Therefore, I think reduction in costs is a crucial event to prevent unnecessary money loss.

Scarcity and Choices.

According to The Independent Newspaper in 2000, there was a shock at the growing number of Foreign nurses in the UK. Why was that? Maybe there werent enough nurses, so that they need more nurses from Foreign countries ?

Economics is always about Scarcity and Choices. Scarce also called Finite, which it has limited resourse if we call it. People's needs and wants are vast, but there's something really different between NEEDS and WANTS.

We need our clothes to keep us nice and warm, food for daily supplies, also water for our basic health...etc. But what about WANTS? To say the truth, things that what we want are only what we've been desired, which is unlimited or as we call it infinite.

Economics is a Sceince studying the relationship between scarce resources and unlimited wants. Yes, and this is what make things interesting!

Get starting with a Business Idea.

During last week, Chris has given all the students who are taking Business Studies an Business idea, which at first i havent got a clue what was about. I went to Chris and asked him what should I do about this idea, he told me to watch Dragon's Den.

Well, Business isnt an easy subject for me because I've never taken it before, and I dont really know what does it contains except some of the basic stuff, such as marketing and finance. This would be a brand new start for me as now I take Business Studies.

Back to my business idea, I got this idea "Create a pillow with an in-built alarm that would sound and vibrate, and would NOT have a snooze option. Users would never be late for work again! "

Firstly, I picked out some crucial words for the whole idea, such as in-built, sound, vibrate and snooze, to make a clearer demonstration, which emphasised WHAT is in this idea.
Secondly, I've watched Dragon's Den, it was pretty helpful for getting understand how am I going to present my Business Idea.

Actually, I think all these stuff are pretty creative and that's what Business is about. There are still lots of stuff I've got to learn and try to do it on my own. :)