Blog of Asia - Guide to Asia, Business, & News

Posted on Monday, 21st September 2009 by Lee

The L.A. Times reports on a twisted and burgeoning business practice in the international adoption scene. It appears that more and more babies and young children are being forcibly taken away by corrupt officials who turn around and sell them for adoption, primarily to the U.S. With all the money pouring into Asia through the adoption process, it isn’t surprising to see this cropping up in more and more countries.

The conventional wisdom is that the babies, mostly girls, were abandoned by their parents because of the traditional preference for boys and China’s restrictions on family size. No doubt, that was the case for tens of thousands of the girls.

But some parents are beginning to come forward to tell harrowing stories of babies who were taken away by coercion, fraud or kidnapping — sometimes by government officials who covered their tracks by pretending that the babies had been abandoned.

Parents who say their children were taken complain that officials were motivated by the $3,000 per child that adoptive parents pay orphanages.

Read the rest here.

Tags: adoption, Asia, business, china, chinese
Posted in Culture Guides, Latest News | Comments (0)

Posted on Wednesday, 27th May 2009 by Lee

More than 90% of economists believe that the recession will finally end before the end of 2009, according to this article on Yahoo Fiance.

That assessment came from leading forecasters in a survey by the National Association for Business Economics released Wednesday. It is generally in line with the outlook from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues.

About 74 percent of the forecasters expect the recession — which started in December 2007 and is the longest since World War II — to end in the third quarter. Another 19 percent predict the turning point will come in the final three months of this year, and the remaining 7 percent believe the recession will end in the first quarter of 2010.

Read the rest of the article here.

Tags: 2009, business, economist, forecast, recession
Posted in Culture Guides | Comments (1)

Posted on Wednesday, 27th May 2009 by Lee

Building on last months improvements, consumer confidence shot up this year, though overall is still quite low, cnbc reports. No need to say how nice this little piece of positive news is to business owners everywhere amid the torrent of blows from this recession.

“Consumers are considerably less pessimistic than they were earlier this year,” said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board’s Consumer Research Center.

The data was in line with other evidence suggesting that, while the economy continues to contract in the current quarter, the pace of deterioration has abated somewhat.

Read the article here.

Tags: business, confidence, consumer, recession
Posted in Culture Guides | Comments (1)

Posted on Tuesday, 28th April 2009 by Lee

Good news for retailers, consumers seemto be getting more optimistic as more and more signs of economic recovery appear.

The New York-based Conference Board said Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index rose more than 12 points to 39.2, up from a revised 26.9 in March. The reading marks the highest level since November’s 44.7 and well surpasses economists’ expectations for 29.5.

Read the rest of the article on yahoo here.

Tags: business, consumer index, economic recovery, news
Posted in Culture Guides | Comments (1)

Posted on Wednesday, 8th April 2009 by Lee

Yahoo is reporting that U.S. Wholesalers have slashed inventories to their lowest in 17 years. The good news is that sales rose for wholesalers for the first time since last June, suggesting that retailers are starting to buy again to restore their inventories. Read the rest of the article here.

Tags: business, sales, wholesaler
Posted in Culture Guides | Comments (0)

Posted on Tuesday, 31st March 2009 by Lee

The folks at startupnation.com are looking for interesting startup stories for their PR firm to highlight, which presents a great opportunity for those of you with business to get some free and potentially profitable publicity. Get more info here.

Tags: business, marketing, promotion, startup
Posted in Culture Guides | Comments (1)

Posted on Friday, 27th March 2009 by Lee

Entrepreneur.com has a short piece about the pros and cons of lowering your price to attract more customers in this recession economy. Read the rest here.

Pricing Questions to Ask Now
Mark Loschiavo, senior executive in residence and executive director of the Baiada Center at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business, has pinpointed the following four questions as the most important to consider when thinking about a price change.

1. Are you offering something your customers need? If not, you may need to drop prices to get a percentage of the customer’s wallet. During recessions, must-haves almost always trump nice-to-haves.
2. Are you offering an affordable luxury? During a recession, most consumers may still be willing to indulge a little.
3. Are you offering something that can help your customers weather the recession? If so, does your marketing and sales message drive this point home? Then you may be able to price accordingly. If not, you may need to drop prices.
4. Are you decidedly better than your competition? The more differentiated your products or services, the lower the associated price elasticity. But there are limits to this logic. Regardless of differentiation, at some point, the price or value trade-off will drive the market to the lower-priced alternative.

Read the rest here.

Tags: business, economy, marketing, online, price, recession
Posted in Culture Guides | Comments (0)

Posted on Friday, 27th March 2009 by Lee

This great podcast from Businessweek has Ed Hess, Professor of Business at University of Virginia talking about some critical things new entrepreneurs need to think about as they plan their business. He also touches on the phases that startups must go through as they grow from a new to an established business. Listen it here.

His important points are that new startups must first consider whether they have a compelling products, whether the customer base is large enough and whether the “math” works, other points include pre-planning which wherher you must consider 1) Cost - how much is every aspect of the new business going to cost 2) Competitors - what are they doing and how is your business different 3) Math - how much do you need to sell to survive 4) test the products with customers.

Tags: business, entrepreneur, new business mistakes, startups
Posted in Business Guides | Comments (0)