Tag: general motors

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, Green Business Tagged with , , , , , , ,

According to the New York Times, it seems the Chinese want to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to electric cars. With only a minuscule budget for R&D, the Chinese want to coerce their way into access to expensively developed technologies for electric cars by making that access a precondition for foreign manufacturers who want to sell electric vehicles in China, if they want the same subsidies that Chinese-made electric cars enjoy. (This happens to be a violation of the World Trade Organization’s rules, and China is a WTO member)

Here’s how I think that would play out:

  • At least some foreign automakers, wanting access to the vast and rapidly growing Chinese market, make the devil’s bargain and share their technology secrets
  • China begins a crash program in its state-owned car companies to bring cars to market using this technology
  • After one to three years, the foreign automakers find themselves closed out—and sitting on a big useless pile of expensive infrastructure—as the Chinese rush cheap and shoddily built EVs to market using American, European, or Japanese technology

General Motors is actively resisting and protesting; Nissan doesn’t even want to go into the market under these conditions; yet Ford apparently plans to cave.

This is one time I find myself agreeing with General Motors. This is a bad idea!

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Marketing Trends/News, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , ,

I just read a “sleeper” article that may be one of the most important trend pieces of the year. If you have any interest in future trends in marketing, demographics, consumer culture, advertising, or where our society might be headed in a few years, go and read “Is Starbucks the Most Dangerous Competitor to Facebook?” by Jay Baer and Clinton Bonner. Appropriately enough, I found this article via a Tweet, from Olivier Blanchard, a/k/a @TheBrandBuilder.

The article posits that Starbucks is working to reposition itself as an in-store information portal, with all sorts of goodies available to those who go to the stores and log on to its network—and that ads on this network could become the premier place to reach certain consumers, as well as the favored online community that could displace Facebook in our affections…

I’m not sure it’s going to unfold exactly as they see it, but I suspect pieces of it will play out that way. That’s a future that leaves me with more than a little discomfort. It’s like a vertical and horizontal integration of the mind similar to, say, General Motors’ vertical and horizontal integration of the car market starting at least in the 1930s. I don’t like to see so much energy concentrated in one company, whether it’s GM, Google, or Starbucks.

Of course, competitors can arise. But it won’t be easy.

What do you think?

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