Auditing in China & other news

2 minutes estimated reading time

Auditing Chinese companies

Democracy and auditing | China Accounting Blog – given that auditing big four are under pressure in China, this might have been an effort to curry favour. But the auditing firms have screwed themselves over in Hong Kong and other countries with this move in China. I could imagine that in the years to come, the lack of transparent auditing will hurt Chinese companies listing on other stock exchanges.

Consumer behaviour

The Rising Importance of Single Person Households Globally | Euromonitor International – interesting data points, I am waiting for food packaging to better represent this demographic

Do Screens Make Us Stupider? Time for a Rethink of Reading | Discover Magazine – the challenge is that books might be written for a reason around learning, but are published to make money, unless there can be a special cognitive edition that makes even more money…

[1406.2293] Gossip: Identifying Central Individuals in a Social Network – market research as a network analysis tool

Economics

Banks in China make as much profit as those in the US, Europe, and Japan combined | Quartz – by comparison the European banking system is a minnow and has horrendous losses

FCMG

Confectionery Trends and Innovations at the 2014 Convenience U CARWACS Show in Toronto – Euromonitor International – focus on sharing occasions is a marketing agency opportunity

P&G’s Always celebrates the “Like a Girl” way of doing things | PopSop – interesting bit of culture hacking

Legal

APAC has highest software piracy rate – combination of being gadget driven and piracy is easy. More related content here.

Luxury

WeChat + Vivienne Tam = International Model Search 2014!| WeChat – interesting campaign for mass affluence brand. Tam is also trying to encourage usage of WeChat amongst English language customers, so I suspect that this is partly funded by Tencent.

Marketing

mirador – interesting application for analytics

Study: Social Media is Not a Trusted Media Source for PR Pros | Convince & Convert – interesting-ish piece I guess

Online

Ikea built a website inside Instagram | The Verge – gimmicky idea that would work as a one-off

Facebook tinkered with users’ feeds for a massive psychology experiment · The A.V. Club – and people will be surprised why? Good TV consumer product advertising is all about inducing anxiety with current states and promising some sort of emotional reward on purchase

Software

QuickOffice Will Be Discontinued | Google System – bad news for mobile workers

Technology

An Online Course For FPGA And CPLD Development | Hackaday – Reddit as an old time free university – but without the hippy politics

Xiaomi founder Lin Bin reveals global ambition | Marketing Interactive – no real surprise, but interesting how they will expand the web services side of the Xiaomi experiences

Wireless

Huawei’s Honor 6 cannibalizes sales of its Ascend P7 | WantChinaTimes – poor product management or a larger sign of the smartphone as a commodity?