Kylie Lucas's Profile

This issue exemplifies why isolationist policies are counterproductive. US isolationism aims to protect domestic industries by keeping out foreign competitors. However, Cayuga is suffering as a result of such policies from Canada. That being said, Cayuga’s value add to local dairy farmers in upstate New York is to act as a voice for its members. Therefore, Cayuga taking an active stance with regard to trade policies in dairy farming is necessary. If Cayuga fails to act given current events in the industry, members could begin to exit the co-op, undermining the organization and fueling further exits from the group, as dairy farmers seek elsewhere support and bargaining power of a larger entity.

Twitter’s core competency is not filtering content and certifying its legitimacy. Rather, Twitter’s customer promise is to facilitate communication easily among its users. As such, Twitter should not attempt to restrict the comments on its site, and they should leave verification of news to groups that specialize in this such as journalists and news outlets. Moreover, adding in a layer of content verification will increase the lead time to publishing tweets. Many are choosing to announce news through Twitter for precisely the fact that it is a very quick way to get news out to the public. Twitter could, however, educate its users on the fact that it does not support the views on expressed on its platform nor verify any message accuracy.

While re-negotiations of NAFTA could spell trouble for LEGO’s production in Mexico, the potential cost gains to LEGO of producing in China are greater than the revenue gains to be had from claiming that LEGO has a higher quality product because it is not produced in China. There are alternative ways to signal high quality to consumers through testimonials from child educators, parent groups, and consumer reports.

As for LEGO’s US operations, I think LEGO should cautiously prepare for the case in which they can no longer import products manufactured in Mexico to the US. LEGO should start conversations with US based vendors and research the their potential move into US based manufacturing, but it would be premature to close up shop in Mexico or to put forward the large capital investment needed to set up a US based production of LEGOs when it is still very unclear as to what legislation will actually take affect regarding the US’s isolationist policies.

While Netflix was on campus several weeks ago, representatives from their content planning team said that, despite the fact that the media often pits Netflix against traditional content creators, Netflix will never move away from its partnerships with those content creators. Netflix benefits from increased supply for its content library since consumers are won over by the diversity of titles available through Netflix. It is unlikely that Netflix can sustain the same volume within its content library purely from its own, original productions. Netflix relies on its relationships with content producers.

As Dong alluded to above, Netflix does have much to worry about from its downstream supply chain partners. Net neutrality regulates ISPs control over end customers access to various websites. Prior to net neutrality laws, ISPs could slow down a websites speed to a consumer unless the website paid the ISP, effectively holding the websites ransom. For websites like Netflix, ISPs hoped to push back the additional costs related with the infrastructure investments and maintenance required to stream large amounts of data at speeds acceptable to end consumers onto media streaming services. Government regulations, however, prohibited this, but there is ongoing conversation about whether net neutrality regulations will be removed.

A very interesting essay on the impact of VW’s cover up of its emissions output, great job Lige!

The irony of this situation is VW’s ultimate dependence on transparency and trust – two qualities VW failed to establish – to remedy its current predicament. The cover up of its actual emissions test results diametrically opposed the tests’ objective of transparency, and, in so doing, VW lost any trust that its customers had in the brand. As we witnessed in the Beer Game, the supply chain overall benefits from transparency by reducing inventory holding costs and costs of back-orders. The F.A.S.T. program is commendable as VW has reversed its stance on transparency following the cover up, however, trust in VW is not so easily won back from supply chain partners and consumers. This lack of trust could very well prevent VW from becoming the industry leader in electric cars since few consumers, suppliers, and car manufacturers will likely want their names associated with VW’s as an unethical company that is more interested in making profits than helping the environment, and, as mentioned in the essay, collaboration among these stakeholders is needed in order to move the market towards electric vehicles.

Häagen-Dazs’s advocacy for the honey bees is mostly a PR move. While the issue is featured prominently on their website and is an issue worth attention, I do not believe that this is a significant concern to Häagen Dazs’s supply chain. By selecting an environmental issue that is tangentially related to their product and that has been picked up by popular culture, Häagen Dazs is able to benefit from the public’s collective conscious as well as its intrigue in what had initially been dubbed a mysterious phenomenon. If Häagen Dazs’s intentions were social good, it should turn its attentions to far more relevant issues facing society today. The obesity epidemic in many developed countries is directly tied to Häagen Dazs’s fattening and high sugar content products, however, suggesting consumers limit the intake of their product is not beneficial to the company. Another significant issue related to the dairy industry is the methane production from dairy cows. A dairy farm with 700 cows produces 10x the amount of methane, a greenhouse gas contributing to global warming, than a fracking well everyday [1]. This issue is far less appealing to the public, though, than the disappearance of the adorable honey bee. Häagen-Dazs’s avoidance of issues at the core of their business indicates that their motivation is mainly related to marketing and not risk to its operations.

One Green Planet. “Milk Life? How About Milk Destruction: The Shocking Truth About the Dairy Industry and the Environment.” http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/the-dairy-industry-and-the-environment/, accessed November 2017.