Linchi Kwok, Ph.D.

--> Amazon Restaurants, a food delivery app like UberEats, will officially close on June 24 . Amazon entered the restaurant delivery business in Seattle in 2015, but it has been struggling to compete with UberEats, Grubhub, Postmates, and DoorDash --- the four dominant players in the market that control 93 percent of the share.   The closure of Amazon Restaurants will allow the company to focus on grocery delivery. Since Amazon purchased Whole Foods in 2017, several changes have already been observed in the high-end grocery store chain. For example, Amazon has begun tacking the challenge of fresh food delivery in Whole Foods, another area in which almost every grocery or retail store is trying to compete, including Walmart that is getting ready to deliver groceries from a local store directly to customers’ refrigerators at home .   While it may seem a smart decision for Amazon to end its restaurant delivery service at this point, I do not believe ...

“Sex sells” --- that’s a common sense in the marketing and advertising field, meaning the use of “sex appeal” can help promote sales of a product or service. Last month, when a Canadian hotel chain tried to run a sex-appeal campaign, however, the trick helped the hotel draw more negative attention from the online community than expected. Sex does not appeal to all travelers Clique Hotels & Resorts is a Canadian luxury hotel chain, with properties in Calgary and Canmore. According to the CityNews , a media firm in Canada, the hotel’s website featured some “suggestive” and “sexist” photos, bringing in some backlashes from the online community, with people tweeting: “And super suggestive. That one in the dress is killing me …” “These are mega creepy. Who would approve these?” “Right? Hahah I couldn’t even bring myself to book that hotel because of it lol” “They might wanna fire whoever is in charge of marketing [laughing – emoticon]” To so...