Media Matters – SFU Business in the News – April 23

How SFU Business fared in the news for the week ending April 23, 2010.

BC News

• Two SFU profs were quoted in a story on the news-and-commentary website of TheTyee.ca. It wondered why BC Hydro had paid for a Vancouver hotel room for Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom during the 2010 Winter Olympics—then billed his ministry after TheTyee asked about it.
  “The general rule would be that if the minister was performing business on behalf of the Crown corporation, then it would be legitimate for the Crown corporation to pay for the expenses,'” said public policy prof Doug McArthur. “It’s pretty obviously a case where they’ve decided he was not performing legitimate business for the Crown corporation. Otherwise they would have left it as it was.”
  Mark Wexler, ethics prof in SFU Business, was also quoted: “If this is the minister not on official business using a Crown corporation to cover his bills, this is clearly a problem.”

National and World News

• The Hamilton Spectator reported on the case of a disoriented 87-year-old driver who went missing for 16 hours. The paper quoted an SFU gerontology researcher on the issue of restrictions on elderly drivers:
  “Glenyth Caragata, a researcher on senior driving issues at B.C.’s Simon Fraser University, says a driver’s age is the last criteria that should be considered. Ability, including physical and cognitive, is more important. But people with mental issues should be monitored by transportation officials, she said.” SFU Business profs Leyland Pitt and Michael Parent wrote a guest column for the Financial Post section of National Post on how ambush marketing “leaves Olympic sponsors and those of other major sporting events particularly vulnerable—costing them not only their financial investment, but also ultimately their customers.” A study they co-wrote on the subject appeared in the March issue of Business Horizons.
• Marketing prof Lindsay Meredith was in the Globe and Mail, in a story on Canadians’ propensity to use loyalty cards to collect such benefits as Air Miles. “There is a certain Canadian mania. I think it’s the same genes that drive our British Columbian response to search out a litre of gas for exactly .2 of a cent less than the guy down the street.”
  He also noted the benefits to retailers as they gather information about you, your preferences, and your buying triggers. “That information becomes very powerful weaponry.”
• Meredith was also in a story in Conducive Chronicle (an online offshoot of Conducive Magazine) that looked at “Girl Power and the Consumer”. Conducive wrote: “With the introduction of name brand clothing into young girls’ lives, the meaning of girl power saw a dramatic shift. The repercussions Dr. Lindsay Meredith, a marketing professor at Simon Fraser University pointed out were dramatic, ‘kids have their icons and if they identify with their icons, you’re bound to get some emulation.’ Emulation was exactly what marketers wanted.”
• The website of FreeSkier.com reported: “Contrary to popular belief, skiing in Africa is not impossible. Vancouver resident Justin Long (an SFU Business student) will be skiing Africa’s third largest peak (Mt. Stanley) in an expedition named Snow4Innocents to raise awareness of Uganda’s serious child mortality rate and raise funds for the only children’s hospital in the region.”