SWOT Analysis for Bell Canada

Bell's SWOT Analysis from Company-C

Carolina Dasilva (510077)

Hui Lian Lin (473915)

Qian Yu (512110)

Thao Tran (485521)

Ya Ting Chang (488338)

SWOT analysis is an effective strategic planning tool for the development of a marketing plan. The internal aspects can be classified as strength (S) and weakness (W), while the external factors include opportunities (O) and threat (T). A SWOT analysis can help an organization accomplish its business goal by building on its strengths, correcting its weaknesses, capitalizing on any opportunities and avoiding potential threats. Bell’s strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats are listed in order below.       

Strengths

• Strong Brand Image
• Variety of Products and Services
• Price Competition

Weaknesses

• Serving Quality on the First-line Customer Service
• Commitment customers to the company:
• Customer Service procedure

Opportunities

• Low Penetration Rate Allows for Continued Growth
• Strategic Alliances with Telus
• Constant Technological Upgrades

Threats

• Strong Competition
• Hacking Risks
• Regulating by CRTC

Are we addicted to technology? (Huilian Lin)

Post by Huilian Lin (473915)

Teens and Technology, Are They Addicted?

Is it a luxury or necessity?

The article from my researched website called “Humpage”.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Teens-and-Technology-Are-They-Addicted

Nowadays, technologies become more and more indispensability for people. They are using every corner of lives. It can be class, can be MySpace and Facebook,even when they are driving. This article is talking about one of the technologies: internet.

Teens, they don’t need to hand out with friend because they can talk with them behind the “screen”. Teens, are absolutely no stimulation to the outside world because their worlds are “digital." This article also is talking about the parents of teens are worries about their kids spending too much time on technologies. “Technology is as much of a problem as alcohol or drugs”.

As parents, they are responsibility to make sure what and how dangers of internet when their children got to. The parents should tell them with internet doesn’t mean it can be impact their lives. Predators are always looking for vulnerable kids, it does not matter what age.

In my opinion, I think that as teens, they need to approach the nature life and to feel the world. Do always hiding behind the screen, stay-in. As parents, they should give the limits time to the kids if they are using of computer and cell phones, and to be more active communicate with them about what they did from internet to keep be safe. “Do not let the technology take over teen’s life; it should be a luxury not a necessity.”

Post by Huilian Lin (473915)

Are we addicted to technology? (Huilian Lin)

Top 10 Signs of Cell Phone Addiction

Article from http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/top-10-signs-of-cell-phone-addiction/

The article “Top 10 Signs of Cell Phone Addiction” by Nick Mokey, appeared in Digital Trends. The article points out the top 10 signs of cell phone addiction on people. The points of views made by Nick are summarized below.

Although cell phones were created to make modern life more convenient, they are actually beginning to interfere in the people’s lives that sometimes people just don’t know when to turn their cell phones off. And it can be hard to pinpoint problematic cell phone use. There are 10 signs that show people’s addiction to cell phones.

1.       Spending more on accessories than on cell phones.

2.       Having 30 various applications installed in the cell phones, and use them all.

3.       Having alarms telling the users when to do everything through every step of the day.

4.       Reading latest news about cell phones on phones.

5.       Cutting back on necessities to afford monthly cell phone bill.

6.       A full battery charge lasts the day.

7.       Feeling like last a friend when broking the cell phones.

8.       Only talking about the phone when meeting people with the same phone.

9.       Feeling a panic when lost the cell phones.

10.   Using the cell phone in the bathroom.

Post by Huilian Lin (473915)

Are we addicted to technology? (Ya Ting Chang)

Social Media Addiction Can Ruin Your Health
Article posted by Ya Ting Chang (488338)

http://www.naturalnews.com/029876_social_media_addiction.html

The article "Social Media Addiction Can Ruin Your Health" by Jonathan Benson appeared in Natural News on September 28, 2010. The article asserts that social media addiction like constantly using Facebook or Twitter can damage students’ healthiness and social relationship. The arguments made by Jonathan are summarized below.

In the first part, the author explains that nowadays many people are easily addicted to social media like Facebook. The behaviour of continually sticking in front of computer monitors for checking their friends, relatives, and co-worker’s Facebook status may cause some problems of health and personal social relationships. For example, stress, anxiety, sleeplessness, and interpersonal communication.

Then, the author describes a research by experts to examine the influences of social media addiction. The result shows that the degree of students’ addiction to social media is just like the drug addiction because they have similar symptoms.

Next, the author gives the examples to prove the drawbacks of students’ addiction on social media. Some students cannot stop playing Facebook after class and some keep checking updating things on their phones. They are indulged in it for 21 hours a day, so they only have a few hours for sleep. In addition, they don’t have real time on face-to face interaction with their friends and families. That makes the problem of their interpersonal relationships.

Finally, after the experiment made by researchers, some students start to realize the problems they have got and try to make changes in their bad habits on playing Facebook.

In the end, the author emphasises that students need to be notified and taught that they should use social media properly and pay attention on what and how they do on it, or it can ruin their lives.

Are We Addicted to Technology? (Ya Ting Chang)

Are We Addicted to Technology?
Posted by Ya Ting Chang (488338).
Article from http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/731563/are_we_addicted_to_technology.html

The article “Are We Addicted to Technology?” by Jessica Nicole Johnson appeared in “Associated Content” on April 24, 2008. In this article, Jessica points out that technology is a new addiction to many people now and is affecting their lives in bad sides. The arguments made by Jessica are summarized below.

In the first part, the author explains that some technologies are becoming important things to many people’s daily usages. However, people are getting more and more dependent on those technologies. Then, the author assumes that it becomes a problem.

Next, the author describes that many specialists now start to doubt whether technology is a new addiction to people. She presents some ways to evaluate people’s extent of addiction on technology:
·How long are used on a cell phone plan?
·How many times are emails, Face book, or MySpace checked every day?
·How can people live without any technology used?

To prove the question, she uses a survey from CNN. The result is that 77% people couldn’t live without technology, and only 23% said that they don’t need technology.

Finally, the author demonstrates this problem affected on both of children and adults. (1) Children being addicted to technology may lose their growing live and social skills. (2) To adults, they should notice when the usage of technology is influencing their work performance and interpersonal relationship.

As a conclusion, the author hints that people need to know technology shouldn’t substitute human’s original social development. It is neither safe nor healthy when people indulge in the dependency on any devices of technology.

Posted by Ya Ting Chang (488338)

Opinions on Addiction to Technology (Ya Ting Chang)

I think students are addicted to the social media like Facebook, Twitter, MSN, MySpace, and so on. It gradually becomes a more and more serious problem in the whole world.

Firstly, it hurts students’ health because they spend too much time on social media, especially on Facebook. There are many defects:
(1) It damages their eyes health.
(2) They don’t have enough sleep.
(3) They will get neck and shoulders pain easily.

Secondly, many teenagers and students just don’t have enough maturity to realize the seriousness troubles that they have made on internet. For example, some improper words or pictures shouldn’t be posted. Sometimes, it would influence a youth’s life just because of unsuitable comments or opinions.

Moreover, by playing with social media, students get fewer chances of real communication with other people. It decreases young people’s ability on social personal relationships. It also reduces their time spending on other good activities or sports.

By the degree of addiction on social media, I think students have less power as consumers. They are at a weak side because they don’t have the consciousness and judgements on using social media properly and suitably.

Posted by Ya Ting Chang (488338)

Opinions on Addiction to Technology (Ya Ting Chang)

To survive in a modern society, it seems necessary for people to have some technologies as their own possessions, such as cell phones, laptops, PDAs, and so on. Without those electronic devices, many people may not have enough competitive advantages competing with other people or business. At some points, technology brings advantages of convenience, entertainment, and communication.

However, if people overuse or spend too much time and money on technologies, it would certainly turn those advantages into disadvantages. When people are addicted on technology, it may damage their health, life, and social relationships. Therefore, the key point is to make good usage of technologies and manage time well on them.

In conclusion, I think most people are addicted to technology because people just rely on the benefits of technology. According to Porter’s five forces theory, I think this situation gives consumers less power as “buyers”. On one hand, people need to have technologies to increase their competitiveness in business and social life; on the other hand, people cannot live without the fun that technologies bring to them. When consumers’ demands on technology increase, it just decreases their power as “buyers”.

Posted by Ya Ting Chang (488338)

Are We Addicted to Technology? (Erin Qian Yu)

To begin with the discussion, I want to start with this article called “Technology addicts” written by Dale Allen Pfeiffer.

In this article, Dale wrote about his own story that how different three generation are because of the development of technology. He watches cartoons all the time when he was little, while his father and grandfather didn’t know what a television was when they were little. He thinks that people were more living in the moment back at the time. People without technology “fulfilled not only in what they did, but in what they shared with others”. And his generation is seeking for comfort and convenience, the world right now is more artificial.

In this “artificial” world, the author tried as much as possible to interact directly with the environment. He thinks that the car and the walkman that came out in the late 1970s will cut off the people who are using them from the environment.

In Dale’s opinion, over the past century, people are only receiving all the technology the manufactory provide us without even thinking what we really want. For example, people need to have the TV on even if they are not watching it because they want to feel like they are interacting with something. It is a kind of brainwashing the new technology world gave us.

Dale says that internet gave us the opportunity to communicate with the world outside, but we are still not actually leaving our chairs to do the effort.

Comfort and convenience are the words the author describe 90% of our technology. People become very dependent about what technology can bring them. However, technology makes people forget how to do things themselves. In this society, it is very easy for people to lose their ability to survive without the technology.

Studies show that nearly 50% to 90% of the bee hives failed between September 2006 and March 2007. I was surprised to know that cell phone towers might be the reason of collapses. But even this won’t even make people think about part with their cell phone.

Dale indicated that people are so into technology right now, it is doubtful that they are going to change even if their lives are threatened by it. That’s how powerful the technology is for our generation.

In my opinion, Dale is like all of us. He knows that the technology is harmful in some way somehow. But it doesn’t change the truth that he is a technology addict too. It is very mind refreshing that how deeply we are addicted to the artificial world. Dale is quite right about the reason why we are addicted---comfort and convenience. It reminds me of the strategies of some technology companies. One of Apple’s strategies is to make the high-end technology easy to use, even for a child of 5. Can we say that the technology companies know the human being’s weakness of dependence of comfort and convenience, so that they are just developing technology to match our demand? But if we think that way, it is going to be very threatening if we follow their lead. They are for sure going to develop some new technology to make us feel more comfortable, and if we always follow up, we will loss more capabilities of doing something by ourselves. I don’t want to think this way, but is there going to be one day that the technology is so developed when we don’t have to do anything by ourselves?
Posted by Erin Qian Yu---512110

Are We Addicted to Technology? (Erin Qian Yu)

In Jessica’s article “Are We Addicted to Technology”, she points out that nowadays most people own cell phone, IPod or laptop. Many people’s life is based on these technology gadgets. We are supposed to master the technology and not let it master us. However, we are abusing its power. Based on CNN’s poll recently, more than 70% agree they could not live without either their cell phones, PDA or IPods. This is a huge number, and proves people are heavily relying on technology and if it disappeared tomorrow we’d be more than a little disoriented.

She also mentions teenagers, which is Generation Y are addicted to technology. Texting is taking over actual conversation among teenagers. Additionally, she states that spending hours on computer surfing the web is not necessary considered as Internet addicted. It’s just a new way to get information. By the end of the article, she summarizes for our decade we have been exposed to more technology and innovations than society had ever seen before, which means technology is indeed part of our life, but it shouldn’t take place of the need of the real social development and human touch.

I think whether we are addicted to technology is just like anything out there, which is that there are many degrees and it’s not a simple black and white issue. There is a grey zone.

For one extreme is that I’ve seen people that practically will get a panic attack without their phone/PDA with them or can’t get off the smart phone for 10 seconds while dealing with the waitress or cashier. On the other hand we have people who intentionally avoid mobiles/internet just because they think it doesn’t worth to spend time and money on it. The latter apparently don’t like the rapid technology revolution.

To be honestly, most of us are in the middle, which is the grey zone. We use smart phones for emails; watching 52” plasma tvs; using super thin notebooks and somehow we didn’t even realized how much the technology has changed our daily life. Just think about all those old days: burn mix cds, taking out dics from Sony discman and staring at the heavy and clumsy CRT monitors.

I personally agree with Jessica that technology has made us worse at the thing that it supposed to promote: communication. We are just too busy to play around with the gadgets that missing out all the good time hanging out with close friends and families. Abusing technology apparently will not make use better as human beings. Overall, we are supposed to let technology serve us and not let it master us.

Posted by: Erin Qian Yu---512110

Are We Addicted to Technology? (Carolina Cej)

In the following article from Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/15/cellphone-addict-iphone-tech-wireless08-cx_wt0616addict.html the concept of cell phone addiction is further explored.

The article claims that 51% of us would have a very difficult time giving up our cell phones; a higher percentage than internet access or television.

The article notes that while mobile devices were originally intended as a convenience to be used only when absolutely necessary they have now become more like mini-computers which allow us (require us?) to be in constant access to our workplaces. It creates a sense of being in the office 24/7 as it is now impossible to say that we can't access our e-mail or other data that once was only available at work. Has this improved our quality of life, or made it worse? The article quotes some heavy cell-phone uses who all agree that although they are more efficient they don't believe that their quality of life has increased. The article notes that cell phone use is on a steady increase with almost 84% of the U.S. population having a cell phone while there are over 3 billion people world-wide with mobile service, indicating that cell phone usage and addition is only going to increase.


How does the fact that consumers seem to be addicted to cell-phones affect our buying power? According to Porter's Five Forces, Buyer Power is affected by many factors including the number of buyers versus the number of suppliers, fragmentation of buyers and the switching costs associated between different suppliers. Due to the fact that cell-phone purchases are for the most part individuals, some large companies may choose to equip all of their workers with the same brand of cell phone, but by-and-large most consumers purchase cell phones for themselves the buyers market can be said to be fragmented.

This results in less power for the individual buyers. As far as switching between different suppliers, the costs associated with this have decreased in recent years as the competitive market for cell phones generally allows people to switch from one type of cell phone to another without incurring major costs. Learning the different features of other cell phones can be difficult, so this can have the affect of lessening buyer power as people may be reluctant to try a different supplier due to the problem of learning new features. Finally, if we can conclude that people are addicted to cell phones, the buyer is in a weaker position as they essentially have to purchase a cell phone from someone. Although there are many different supplies, this "forced" demand allows the suppliers to control the market as they know that people need to purchase cell phones.

Posted by Carolina Cej (510077)

Are We Addicted to Technology? (Carolina Cej)

Are we addicted to cell phones?

The following article http://www.helium.com/items/590342-the-facts-about-cell-phone-addiction discusses the subject of addiction.

In the article addiction is defined as "the action is a recurring compulsion by an individual to engage in some specific activity". By this definition, are we addicted to cell phones? The article points out some similarities between cell phone addiction and other more typical addictions such as drugs or alcohol. Some common characteristics include physical and psychological dependence. These symptoms manifest themselves with some of the following behaviors:

1.People feel uncomfortable without their cellphones
2.Cellphones become a need, not a want
3.An insatiable need to talk
4.Stress caused by cell phone bills
5.Interpersonal problems
6.High levels of insecurity
7.Health risks due to exposure to electricalmagnetic waves or use of cellphones while driving.
8.People who are severally addicted may experience hallucinations, i.e. thinking that their cell phones are ringing when they are not

I think we can recognize some of these behaviors in ourselves and in people we know. Certainly, by this definition we can say that some people have become addicted to cell phones.

Posted by Carolina Cej (510077)

Are We Addicted to Technology? (Thao Tran)

Statistics and Cell Phones
http://www.articlesbase.com/computers-articles/statistics-and-cell-phones-538109.html

This article has shown some significant number of cell phones usage:

73% of peole talk on cell phone while driving.

In light traffic, drivers who have cell phones spent 31% more time behind other slower car. It was about 16% in medium traffic and 12% in heavier traffic.

There was about 67% children had cell phones in the U.S. In Japan, this rate was 80% for high school students and 25% for junior high students. In Hungary, this rate is 75% for all kids.

Another study showed that kids did not make friends with others who did not have cell phones in Japan.

These numbers have proved that cell phones more and more important roles in our lives. It could be either a good or a bad thing. According to Porter's Five Forces, we, the consumers, have less power because it is not easy for us now to switch to another product and we do not have a significant influece on the products and price.

Prepared by Thao Tran (485521)

Are We Addicted to Technology? (Thao Tran)

Top 10 Signs of Cell Phone Addiction
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/top-10-signs-of-cell-phone-addiction/

The article brings up the top 10 signs of cell phone addiction to which any of us can be addicted. These ten signs are ranked from 1 to 10 and listed in an increasing level of addiction order.

10. The amount of money spent money on upgrading or on convenient accessories is more than that they have paid for the phone themselves.

9. The number of applications that are installed to the phone. If someone has about 30 different applications which are all useful to the user, they are addicted to phone.

8. All appointments, meetings are set into the phone to remind the owners what and when to do things for the day.

7. How people get deep into understanding and updating the information about their phone right by their phone.

6. People start to give up some of their living necessities or standards to cell phones.

5. How often people charge their phones. The more often they charge the more addicted they get.

4. People feel like they “lost friends” when they lost, broke or damaged their phones.

3. It becomes the number one topic when people have the same concerns about the same phones meet together.

2. People feel totally lost when they find out that their phones have gone.

1. People are so addicted to phones that they cannot leave for even one moment and finally “use in the washroom”.

You can find this article either funny or interesting, but it actually alarm people who have any of the signs listed above. It has been going too far to the very first purposes of cell phone. I personally have a cell phone for emergency purpose because I drive. And I usually shop for the very standard package which includes unlimited incoming calls and free outgoing calls after six on weekend. Finally, I would like to say that I really appreciate people who have made huge changes in technology so that we can have more convenient life. However, I would rather spend my spare time on gardening or reading than stick myself to the things that has annoyed me with it ring tone.
Posted by Thao Tran (485521)