The world is constantly changing and evolving, as new technological advancements continue to materialize. With new findings in technology comes improvements and upgrades in different industries. But what could this mean for a traditional industry like container shipping?

From the looks of it, most people would think that the container shipping industry has not experienced much change in their operations for the past several years. However, that is not true.

During the late 1950’s, cargo was loaded into shipping vessels manually by workers at the dock, and then again unloaded by workers once ships arrived. Eventually, the use of containers transformed the industry, allowing more goods to be stacked and be shipped easier. As a result, ports were forced to rebuild themselves to be able to store the containers, implement huge cranes for their operations, and include highway and rail terminals to send ships directly to the ports. This advancement revolutionized trade and sparked a global economic boom.

But what is the only other way to allow even more goods to be transported? Larger ships! Over the years, ships have gotten so massive that it gets you wondering how they still stay afloat. Companies quickly realized that regardless of the ship’s size, approximately the same number of sailors were needed to operate the ship and less fuel per container was needed to move larger ships. This is a trend we will continue to see, which is largely a reaction to containerization and automation which allows faster loading and discharging of vessels.

Larger container ships are not the only trend the shipping industry is experiencing. Shipping companies are reinvesting into specialized ship types. This is mainly seen in areas of heavy lifting or transportation of certain chemicals. There are extremely specialized ships that are being constructed, with capabilities to only transport specific items, such as parts of offshore windmills. This has developed employees that specialize in ships and trade in niche industries.

Along with the worldwide trend of going green, shipping is also focusing on developing a green image. Innovation has allowed a reduction in the negative environmental impact caused by shipping. There is now an increasing amount of engine improvements, propeller performance, and friction-reducing air cushions. However, this is only just the beginning. As more ships and methods of operating are becoming specialized, the maritime industry is moving more towards an environmentally friendly era.

www.morethanshipping.com/evolution-of-container-ships

www.vox.com/2015/1/8/7513317/container-ship-msc-oscar

https://www.marineinsight.com/future-shipping/10-future-ships-that-would-change-the-face-of-the-shipping-industry/

https://www.ajot.com/blogs/full/the-future-of-container-shipping-may-be-smaller-than-we-think

As time goes on, technological advancements are to be expected. For many industries, the growth of technology is a great thing, as it helps innovate new products in electronics, medicine, and more. But for workers at ports across the world, increases in automation, technology and robotics threaten local workers’ jobs.

This debate hits especially close to home, as the ports in California alone handle 40 percent of U.S. container traffic. With the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach being the two biggest ports in America, they are also one of the main employers of the region. Between port operations and commerce, the Port of Los Angeles supplies over 133,000 jobs in the LA area. The Port of Long Beach accounts for over 30,000 jobs in Long Beach alone through its 20 divisions.

If the ports went completely automated, would all these people be out of work?

Of course, the answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no. While not every single employee at each respective port would be out of a job, certain jobs like terminal operators may be at the most risk.

The most recent automation update at ports is in the yard cranes. According to Port Technology, several ports around the world like Singapore, Germany and Holland have already adopted automatic crane use, and local ports have installed a few as well. The technology installed in these cranes allows for precise automatic pick-up of containers, drop-off, and perfect stacking.

Naturally, there are both advantages and disadvantages to adopting automation in the ports. One advantage is the efficiency and accuracy by which robots are able to do work. Automation would allow for a greater amount of goods and containers to get through ports and it would make the transaction turnarounds even quicker.

One terminal in the Los Angeles port that has already adopted automation has seen time spent loading and unloading the ship be cut in half since the switch. This not only creates higher profits for the terminal operators, but it gets trucks and drivers back on the road faster. Additionally, the electric- and hybrid-powered automated machines significantly cut down on carbon emissions, which is better for the environment.

However, with the adoption of automation could also come a huge loss of jobs across the country. As history has shown, when the standardized shipping container was first introduced, over 90 percent of dock workers lost their jobs within 15 years. Of course, current port workers are concerned that history will repeat itself and automation will completely eliminate their current jobs.

While the Port of Los Angeles, in particular, has partially adopted automation, their solution seems to be to keep it that way for now in the hopes that no jobs will be lost. Full automation at a port would take a lot of time and money, but it seems to be where the future is headed. Perhaps in 10 or 20 years, ports across the world will all be fully automated.

As of August 2017, the U.S.’s trade deficit with China was just over $239 million[1]. America exported approximately $80.2 million[2] to China while China imported over $319 million[3] to the U.S. There are numerous reasons for this imbalance, but being in deficit may hurt the U.S. economy in the long run.

The reason why the U.S. receives goods from China (mainly consumer electronics and clothing) is because China can produce goods at lower costs than the U.S. can. The benefits are felt in the pockets of Americans every day. China’s competitive pricing is the result of two factors:

1. China has a lower standard of living. Therefore, companies pay lower wages to their employees.
2. The Chinese yuan is partially fixed to the U.S. dollar. Also known as ‘pegging’, it is the act of a country or government’s exchange-rate policy attaching the central bank’s rate of exchange to another country’s currency[4]. It stabilizes the exchange rate between China and the U.S., which is advantageous for large importers like China.

However, in 2016, China began relaxing its “pegging” in an attempt to gain traction from market forces to increase the value of the yuan. As a result of this action, the dollar to yuan conversion has been volatile and China’s influence on the dollar remains high.

How exactly does China hold power over the U.S. dollar? Chinese companies receive dollars as payments for exports to the U.S. These companies deposit the dollars into the banks in exchange for yuan to pay employees. The banks then send the dollars to China’s central bank. It stockpiles them in its reserves. This reduces the supply of dollars available for trade. Therefore, it puts upward pressure on the dollar’s value, thus, lowering the yuan’s value. This cycle could potentially give China leverage over U.S. fiscal policy.

Another major reason why an ongoing trade deficit with China could be detrimental to the U.S. economy is because its financed with debt. What if China decided to call in its loans?

China also helps keep U.S. interest rates low by buying Treasurys. If China stopped buying Treasurys, interests would rise and potentially throw the U.S. and the world into recession.

The deficit puts a heavy burden on the manufacturing industry, as well. For U.S. companies to compete with China, they must either lower their costs (this could potentially put them out of business) or outsource jobs to China, but this option hinders U.S. job creation.

President Trump has promised to lower the trade deficit with China by imposing duties on Chinese imports. However, many Chinese imports are made up of raw materials sent from the U.S. Trump’s tariffs would reduce profits for these American companies who ship material to China, resulting in price raises of the products shipped back to the U.S. China might retaliate and raise its tariffs on imports from U.S. companies. If this is the case, Trump might be the biggest factor to hurt the economy.

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References

[1] https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

[2] https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

[3] https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

[4] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/currency-peg.asp

Observation on Wechat Marketing:

The Next Monopoly of the Chinese Advertising Market

Yutai Han

Midterm Project for JOUR469

Professor Kahn

Oct/08/2017

It’s amazing how much information an app can tell us about Chinese culture. Wechat, a social networking app developed by Tencent and first unveiled in 2011, is arguably, one of the most well known social media products in China. A TV commercial articulates the idea of Wechat as the only app you’ll need over the course of a typical day in your life: wake up and check up on the social feed, use Wechat Pay to buy breakfast, read articles published on Wechat channels (where ads will show up in the form of video commercials, banners, and integrated promotions), work on Wechat while texting friends simultaneously, shop and pay with Wechat, play games with friends on Wechat, etc.

This is the modern Chinese life—a life fully realized online, and integrated seamlessly with the virtual structure of mobile social networking. In this dimension created by Wechat, the user’s attention is attracted by new ways of integrated social advertising. Ads are placed using precise algorithms of user metadata so that the ad fits the needs of the user. Would it be the case that, because WeChat and Facebook are inherently social networking platforms that generate profit from their user data, and Facebook makes as much as six times profit from advertising than Tencent does through WeChat, does Wechat have the potential to outrun Baidu and Alibaba, and become the most powerful unicorn in the Chinese ad market?

One argument for that speculation is that Wechat has an enormous user base. With close to a billion monthly active users spending an average of 66 minutes everyday on the mobile App, Wechat has taken over both the work and social scene, replacing traditional communication methods such as email and messaging service in China. Tencent, its parent company, along with Baidu and Alibaba, together occupy over 60 percent of the total domestic advertising market in China, and are forecast to attract 15.5 percent of the global market in 2017, becoming the world’s second largest market of its kind. Looking at Tencent specifically, its online advertising revenue increased 55 percent to roughly 10 billion yuan for the second quarter of 2017, while social advertising, which derives mainly from WeChat, grew by 61 percent to about 6 billion Yuan. Online advertising accounts for 18 percent of Tencent’s total revenue. In comparison, Facebook has two billion monthly active users, and a profit of $9 billion. About 98 percent of Facebook’s total revenue comes from advertising, according to Facebook’s earnings report in the same quarter. It’s fair to say, then, that Tencent still has potential for market growth in social advertising. Tencent’s main source of revenue now comes from add-on services from video and mobile games, making 65 percent of its total revenue, which is not a surprising fact because one will see that a mobile game in the style of League of Legends, has gained popularity among the youth like a tropical storm. It was so popular that the official newspaper, People’s Daily, criticized it for bewitching the youth and called for formal regulation.

One can think of Tencent as a behemoth of products: Tencent videos is Netflix; WeChat is Facebook plus a prevalent and advanced mobile payment system, and there’s Tencent games; VR/AR firm acquisitions, etc. However, despite numerous branches of organizations, WeChat is arguably the most important for Tencent. According to a behavioral study conducted by a Tencent think tank, 92 percent of the interviewees choose to pay with their phone. Convenience stores, e-commerce websites and restaurants are the primary scenes for mobile payments. Artificial Intelligence comes in to play to dig out the valuable data for more precise targeting. On the other hand, because Wechat is a behemoth of products, user tend to rely heavily on them for their daily activities. The users expect a reliable experience when they are using Wechat, to the extent that even a minor bug of the social feed could cause everyone to panic. To add to that panic is when there are too many ads appearing on the user’s screen. This is perhaps why people think that WeChat has been unusually prudent in its advertising placement: too many ads appearing on a user’s social media feed could degrade a user’s experience. Wechat is only allowing one advertisement per day to appear on a user’s social feed. Facebook’s Instagram, has so many ads that I would lost count on the amount I see when scrolling down the screen. In addition, Instagram is rolling out methods that would me harder to discern whether the post is an advertisement recently. The ads on Instagram appear to be less professionally produced, and resembles the form of a totally innocent product you would see on your friend’s feed. However, on Wechat, one can easily spot the difference between the ad and other posts. But sometimes because it’s professionally tailored to attract attention, the audience might just click on it to see what happens. A friend could comment under the ad, or even talk to the company. This is part of an effort to establish the image of the brand.

(image source: https://blog.tacticrealtime.com/how-to-advertise-to-chinese-tourists)

The next reason is Wechat’s self-claimed efficiency of targeting consumers through use of data generated from Tencent’s other popular lines of internet products, such as Wechat Pay. One illuminative case happened recently when Wechat targets Chinese tourists traveling to foreign countries. According to the U.S. Travel Agency, Chinese residents took three million trips to the U.S. and spend $7,200 per trip, more than those of any other country. Travel exports to China were values at $35 billion, or 1.8 percent of U.S. GDP. $11 billion is related to education spending.

According to the South China Morning Post, Grace Yin, director of WeChat Pay’s international operations, told the Rise technology conference, “We will first make WeChat Pay available for Chinese customers when they travel outside [China],” Yin said. “We want Chinese customers to enjoy the same services when they go abroad, so the surge in outbound travelers will be the first market WeChat Pay targets.”

The National Holiday in China has just ended. According to an official report, the U.S. ranked number sixth in countries that have the most transaction using WeChat Pay. The marketing plan for WeChat looks like something like this: before a tourist even board the plane, WeChat can employ data to recognize that the user has searched for plane tickets inside WeChat and place ads by American brands to develop potential customer relationship. Partnering with Citcon, WeChat has also been promoting and installing mobile payment methods in the U.S. and starting in December, two of the Luxe Hotels in Los Angeles will be accepting payments via WeChat and Alipay, according to the LA Times.

“For the first time, we are making it possible for US brands to directly reach this audience through sophisticated targeting,” Poshu Yeung, the company’s vice-president of international business, said in a statement.

(image source: ChinaTechInsights.com)

What does he mean by “sophisticated targeting”? During its panel Advertising Week 2017, Steven Chang, Vice President of Tencent, introduced the “ONE Tencent” marketing philosophy, in which the key marketing insight is Tencent’s integration of its services through bid data computation, AI, and cashless payment to help clients develop their brand.

“Collectively, Tencent’s products form a ‘connector’ which is not just changing the way people live and think, but redefining the way brand communicates with consumers, ” said Chang.

Here, WeChat functions as the bridge between the virtual experience at the core of advertising and the specific advertising appearing in a user’s social media feed. WeChat is able to target different subgroups of users, using complicated algorithms that take into account a user’s marital status, age group, and even the cellphone model that the user owns. Furthermore, the algorithm computes the influence factor between a possible consumer and their friends on WeChat and places the ad based on the possibility of clicking an ad, which in turn maximizes ROI (Return On Investment, a measurement of the efficiency of advertising budget).

This is very similar to Facebook’s method of mining user data from “likes” on brand pages and posts. However, the fundamental difference is that WeChat was conceived for a consistently user-friendly mobile experience, and therefore has less ad space compared with that of Facebook. The advantage of this mobile-first design is that Tencent can successfully gain tons of users’ data generated by their Wechat payment records. And because Wechat Pay is actually convenient and anyone with a smartphone could learn it in matter of a few seconds, it grows loyal customers that uses Wechat Pay on a daily basis. The data will then be used for ad targeting purposes, of course, which some may consider to be ethically problematic. But what if targeting methods can serve a good purpose to society? Isn’t it the case that technology companies start with the intention to serve to some kind of common need? Then, what might the purpose be?

Adam Smith provides an important vision. “The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects,” wrote Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In this sense, if used properly, sophisticated marketing methods could direct human vanity toward higher ideals in a consumerist culture. One possible way that would make big companies such as Tencent and Facebook look less evil is the understanding that it’s the appetite of the consumer that they’re merely serving. Advertising producers would often borrow elements from popular culture for inspiration, because popular culture is an indication of what most people would turn to after a day’s work. Thus, the cycle of appetite and advertising is reflexive. Advertising is based on appetite, but the appetite is constructed by advertising in the first place and reinforced by unobtrusive and tailored advertisement.

We are seeing clever marketing examples on WeChat, such as Jo Malone London, which resulted in a 35 percent higher click rate and more than five times Return over Investment (ROI). The idea of the influencer is that people want to follow the hip. The fashion trend will be crafted by some carefully crafted identity, perfect in every way on social media. Instagram adopts more or less the same method to promote consumption. Now, through the use of data and influencers, the Jo Malone Valentine campaign did two things. First, it’s able to target loyal customers to buy a more expensive fragrance box sets because it’s Valentine’s Day. Second, people who are likely interested will be directed to a basic unit of fragrance when they click on the link. The ad itself feels romantic and good to look at, especially if one has a date. Thus, the customer will first be lured to click on the link, and then they will check out the product, and read reviews. If an influencer endorses the product and gives it a good review, the customer will more likely to buy the product.

(source: https://ad.weixin.qq.com/case)

To sum up, WeChat has a strong potential to become the next monopoly of digital advertising in China, and further drawing the global advertising spending into China, as more tourists and the Westernized youngsters prove themselves to be the bread and butter of luxury consumption. What’s more, as China’s economy gradually shifts from industrial production and cheap labor, it will need another backbone to rely on, and that backbone will be the domestic consumers. As a result of this shift in national economic direction, more research money will be funded in search of better advertising returns and marketing methods. As a behemoth of products all serving the purpose of social networking, Tencent already has a foot forward in data-gathering and a golden weapon to use.

The newest administration has drawn significant attention to cons of Mexican-American trade, claiming that Mexico is overall hurting rather than helping America’s economy. One drastic impact that our southern neighbor definitely has is on the U.S.’s avocado industry.

The fruit itself has its roots in Mexico, so it comes as no surprise that this country has always been the world’s top producer. Although avocados are endemic to Mexico, the Fuerte variety found new popularity in America in the late 1800s. After the Hass variety, developed by Rudolph Hass at his farm in La Habra, CA in the 1920s, eventually became more favored for its taste and texture, subsequently gaining more notoriety after a marketing push in the 1950s. This was the beginning of the business’s widespread success and marked the start of its major growth.

As this new industry began to grow in the U.S., growers were protected from competition due to a quarantine set in place by the USDA in 1914 to prevent the introduction of seed weevils, stem borers, and other malicious pests that threaten the health of this crop. However, in 1997, this was amended to allow for 19 states to accept Mexican avocado imports from pest-free zones in order to comply with new trade regulations enacted by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Furthermore, in 2001, the Mexican Government won its plea to expand this number to 31 states as well as lengthen the shipping season, and in 2007, all states were allowed to import this produce.

These events significantly increased the amount of direct competition the American avocado industry faces. Though the growing seasons align, Mexico has the advantage of cheaper labor and water costs and is therefore able to offer a better price to consumers. As such, these imported fruits have dominated the American market; currently, 93% of Hass avocados in the U.S. come from Mexico, according to the Hass Avocado Board.

However, the past few years have provided hope for U.S. growers. First, the demand for avocados has risen exponentially. In 1985, Americans only consumed an average of 4 million pounds of avocados per week, but as of 2014, that number rose to a record-breaking 37+ million. The Fresh Fruit Portal projects this to rise to over 50 million by 2019.

Moreover, trade sanctions proposed by President Trump severely threaten the Mexican produce industry at large, as these tariffs, allegedly 20% or higher, will make it nearly impossible for trade to keep up in this $1.62 billion industry.

Sad news for avo toast and guacamole lovers, though: prices of the fruit will likely skyrocket if this trade restriction goes into effect. The high tax combined with the current and projected demand for avocados ultimately means a loss for consumers.

Other sources: California Grown; University of California Cooperative Extension Subtropical Fruit Crops Research & Education; Civil Eats; Statista