MeghanK's Profile

I also found your first question interesting in this sense: if we move our manufacturing out of these other countries and back into the US, will that negatively affect those countries? Will another company just move in their manufacturing or will Target’s suppliers train these people to move to other jobs? While Trump’s administration is not necessarily as concerned about the affects these moves will have on the rest of the world, many consumers probably will be.

Thanks, Kamau! Similar to what jgrchild mentioned, my concern would be how we tackle these issues in the short term. While Congress typically moves at a snail’s pace, it seems likely that something like a 20% tax would come before Target had time to react. I imagine that many companies are starting to plan infrastructure now in order to take a proactive instead of reactive stance.

I also found your first question interesting in this sense: if we move our manufacturing out of these other countries and back into the US, will that negatively affect those countries? Will another company just move in their manufacturing or will Target’s suppliers train this people to move to other jobs?

One push-back I had when reading the part about direct-to-customer is when we think of things like WebMD, where people can now look up their symptoms and they’re given a list of potential diseases. While this is useful in terms of both patient and doctor awareness-building, I do think that this will need to be used with doctor supervision to prevent potential issues (or clinical trials being overwhelmed by people who think they’re sick).

Great job, Karen! I also thought your question about growth was interesting – if we’re talking from a marketing perspective, I wonder if they will use price at all to regulate their supply and demand in the future. Will they raise their prices as it becomes increasingly difficult to regulate their supply chain? One other thing I was thinking about was their affect on other companies – if they encourage others to follow suit, do you think they will lose their competitive advantage in the industry at all (though it will be benefiting causes that they champion)?

I found this article really interesting – especially the discussion questions as I’ve come from a unionized, highly manual organization before. The pessimistic side of me believe that at a certain point, AI will essentially be able to perform every job, which is why many are talking about a future universal wage if enough workers get displaced. In the short term, companies will need to start making the AI decision on a case-by-case basis (as their entire workforce won’t necessarily be replaced at once). In that case, I think the best defense will be skills-retraining for jobs that have not yet been replaced. It’s unlikely that unions will like any of the options that mean losing jobs, I believe that’s the best solution (helping them find new ones).

Interesting post! I always find the timelines of this extremely interesting, which you’ve touched on in your essay. While Foxcon is potentially building this new facility, how long will it take to build? How long will it take to employ enough people with the skills to do the job or train them? It’s likely not within the timeframe of Trump’s first term, so it would be interesting to see what would happen with Apple and these other companies if they were able to pass isolationist legislation by 2020. Let’s hope Congress continues to be slow or we’ll end up with extremely expensive future iPhones…

I certainly have seen my consumer preferences change over time as Amazon Prime and free, fast shipping have become more the norm. As one of the previous commenters mentioned, this has primarily been in the form of increased consumption. “Free shipping if you spend $50” is a pretty easy mark to hit, but has probably increased a large percentage of ticket sizes that would’ve otherwise been smaller for non-Prime users such as myself.

To answer your second question, I’d also like to know how behavior will shift. So much has changed in the last couple of years alone that it’ll be interesting to see if the next changes will be large or only incremental. I think there will be some rebellion against the shipping methods meant to provide further convenience (but also infringing on personal space), such as physically leaving goods in your house.

This was a really interesting read. What I wondered while reading it is that, given the short time between infection and possible death, how does a company like ICG plan for areas that may not have a history of disease? For instance, do they proactively go into areas that may later be affected by cholera – or how would they respond to a proliferation of the disease in a region they’re not currently serving?

Additionally, it would be interesting to to see what type of research is ongoing to track the re-emergence of these diseases for forecasting purposes through ecological indicators.