Ethics in Consumer Marketing

Today while driving home from work, I heard a radio advertisement by P1 about their broadband offerings. What caught my attention was the scenario used by P1 to highlight their bandwidth and data allowed.

In the advertisement, there was a lady mentioning that she cannot watch a full episode of a Hong Kong drama because she ran our of data credits with her broadband provider. She sounded so frustrated while claiming that the download was incomplete. The advertisement tries to relate the scenario (problem) to the target audiences and attract their attention towards the offerings. The scenario will generate the tense and later motivate the target audience to seek for more information about P1 broadband packages.

However, there is this ethical issue that I want to 'choesay'. Why the lady need to download the Hong Kong drama? Does this mean she is trying to use the broadband for illegal download? Or is there any legal website that allows (free) download of drama? No doubt P1 tries to associate their offerings to the norm of Internet users in Malaysia (culture), but is it ethical to do so?

I really don't know the answer but at least it caught my attention today :)

5 Awesome Things About The Malaysia Budget 2014

Last Friday, the Malaysia Budget for 2014 was unveiled by the government and the focus of the budget is to address shrinking account surplus and large fiscal deficit of the country. We all can find the details of the budget in major local newspapers and on the Malaysia Ministry of Finance - Treasury website.

Normally, the budget announcement is a routine activity by the government. However, this year budget tends to get more attention; just because there are 5 awesome things about the 2014 budget:

#1: Goods & Sales Tax (GST) - effective 1 Apr 2015
I am not trying to say that paying taxes as a consumer is awesome but the introduction of GST can now educate the public about supply chain management. We can now understand how a product is being made available to the end-users through its distribution channels. Not only that, there is a RM100 million training grant allocated for businesses that send their staffs for training on the GST, that's awersome!

#2: Real Property Gain Tax (RPGT) - effective 1 Jan 2014
Changes often result in either favourable or unfavourable. Many may see the changes as creating more opportunities, some may see it as threats. For young middle & lower-class working people, the RPGT might be something favourable as this will reduce speculation of properties for short-term profits. The 30% RPGT imposed to any property disposal within 3 years of purchase looks fine for long-term investor and residential purchaser. However, the a seller may transfer the 30% RPGT to the buyer by inflating the property selling price or they may hold the properties for longer period of time. Now, higher selling price will result in more RPGT and higher stamp duty; longer holding of properties will result in more interest payable to banks and owner may charge higher rental to cover the interest; properties developer will still run their business as usual. So, who will benefits? It depend...Awesome right?

#3: Foreign Property Buyers
In the past, foreigners can only purchase a property in Malaysia that cost RM500,000 and above. Hence, we can see so many residencies and condominiums are priced accordingly to target certain social class of customers, including foreign buyers. The new budget has raised the minimum price of RM500,000 to RM1 million, double the earlier minimum price of properties. This is a drastic move that will create a strong impact especially on the foreign investment but it must have been rationalised by the government earlier to make such decision. Come to think about it, what are the average price of properties that these foreign buyers have been purchasing for the past years that justify the 100% increase of minimum price...!?

#4: Cash Handouts
With all the various cash handouts and schemes for qualified households and selected individual groups which was estimated to involve 7.9 million recipients, the government in total will allocate RM4.6 billion as cash handouts. Awesome, if you are one of the 7.9 million who will get a 'few hundreds' of ringgit! (please note that this cash handouts is a ONE TIME thing and NOT on a monthly basis...wake up please!)

#5: Sugar Subsidy - effective 26 Oct 2013
The most talk about thing about the 2014 budget, sugar subsidy. The government has announced that the sugar subsidy of RM0.34 per kilogram will be abolished with immediate effect on 26 October 2013. It shows how urgent is this matter that it has to take immediate effect, especially when 2.6 million Malaysian aged 30 and above were suffering from diabetes. The government is expecting the price of sugar to go up after abolishing the subsidy and this would result in lesser consumption of sugar. Here, we can learn about the law of demand. When price of sugar increases, assuming other fact does not change, quantity demanded of sugar will decrease. So, overall population in Malaysia will consume less sugar and live with a healthy lifestyle. Is that awesome?! (Hmmm, I think I have never purchase sugar directly before...must check the food and beverages that I consume then...)

There you go, the 5 awesome things about the Malaysia budget 2014, based on my own personal opinion. You may not have to agree with my view as we are have our own way of perceiving things around us but thank you for reading :)

Strategic Alliance

Iron Man from Marvel is a successful multibillionaire who owns Stark Industries and Batman from DC is the successor of Wayne Enterprises in Gotham City. What if we caught Iron Man having a chat with Batman, does that mean there could be a possibility of strategic alliance? The two companies may not have any intention or to do so, but with their licensing agreement with Lego, indirectly DC Comics and Marvel are now able to appear together in the same world, the Lego world.

Anyhow, before this could really happen, we shall watch out for the upcoming blockbuster movie of Batman vs Superman in 2015, the two most famous superheroes in DC Comics.

Urban Transformation Centre (UTC) for Passport Renewal

We can now apply for new passport or renewal at the Urban Transformation Centre (UTC) Bandar Baru Sentul. This UTC open for 7 days and from 8.30AM until 10.00PM. Yes, they operate until night time. I am glad that I don't have to apply leave anymore for this purpose and don't have to queue from 6.00AM in the morning (you know what I mean if you have such experience before in the past).

After work today, I went there to renew my passport. The UTC provide free parking for the visitors.

The waiting area is spacious and air-conditioned.

I reached there at 7.05PM and got a waiting number from an Immigration officer. Waited for only about 10 minutes, another friendly officer called to process my renewal. It was so fast and simple; updating my details, scan my thumbs and pass the passport photo to the officer (less than 5 minutes), done! Then, I was told to wait for the cashier to call me for payment. After the payment, the cashier informed me to wait for collection without an hour. So, I waited and around 20 minutes later, my number was called and my new passport ready for collection! I am so impressed that the whole renewal process was completed in less than 1 hour! Well done UTC!

The location map for UTC Bandar Baru Sentul, Kuala Lumpur:

Personality Traits: Materialism

Some people are so motivated to achieve their goals or desire on certain things or purposes. I belief the individual personality plays an important role to determine the level of motivation.

Gucci at Old Bond Street, Mayfair, London

I was aspired by the dedication of these people when in London few years back.  The personality trait like materialism tend to motivates these people to be so dedicated, despite of cold weather and many hours of standing. Their need to own something from Gucci was so overwhelming that they are willing to sacrifice their opportunity cost and compliance to the queuing. How good if these people can make use of this personality trait to achieve greater goals in life, work or study. If these people can spend hours to queue on a boxing day just to get into Gucci because of 'Sales', why many of us always complaint about not enough time, no patient to wait and queue why driving or getting into the train?

In front of The Claridges, Brook St, London.

Well, its easy to say than done. Perhaps, everyone of us have more than one personality traits and in different situation, desire can change our behaviour. Many other factors could contribute to individual rationality.

Hence, the more we understand our inner self and the social influences, the better we can manage our behaviour to the utmost benefits; not just ourself but to people around us. Again, it is easy to say than done.

The secret to success - intellectual knowledge and rationalisation.

By the way, I didn't joint the queue on boxing day.Check out the date date of the picture, it was before Christmas!  I am not against those in the queue but I am just not that type of personality.

Top 5 Mistakes in Assignment

When you are writing for an academic assignment, you need to comply with the standards and some criteria set by the examiner. Many students knows about these but somehow, still allow the mistakes when submitting the final work.

Mistake #1

Never make full use of the subject main readings (textbooks) as the source of reference. With some common sense, one should see the need for using main texts as the fundamental of attempting assignment for a specific subject. Area like definition and concept should be from subject main texts rather than from www.

Mistake #2

Never understand the scope of the question and the requirements but rely on few keywords from the question to determine the direction of assignment. End up, answer given contain a variety of explanations for every keywords from the question, but not serving any purpose as per required by the question.

Mistake #3

Rely on limited source of references and the entire answer skewed towards these few references topic instead of the assignment question. This often resulted either plagiarism, or ambiguous answers that are irrelevant to the assignment requirement.

Mistake #4

Never provide in-text referencing such as citation or quotation in the answer. All justification using statistics, concepts, incidents, models or diagrams in the answer has to be cited based on the references provided at the end of the assignment. Failed to provide proper referencing for assignment will result in poor justification or making claims without supporting facts (fallacy).

Mistake #5

Never check the work before submission. This is the most basic thing to do when submitting an assignment but many take it for granted. Poor grammar, wrong used of punctuation, no paragraphing, inconsistency of font type and size, and incorrect spelling may result in confusion and ambiguity of explanation. Also, it shows that the student failed to show basic attribute of a scholar, mainly on writing skill and respect the subject assignment.

How about you?

Are you one of the student who allow such mistakes like the above to exist in your assignment? Be critical and responsible on your studies and don't give yourself any excuse for such mistakes to happen in your studies. If these become a norm and you think it is acceptable, what will happen at the workplace then? Disasters!!!