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McDonald’s Selling Cameras Online In China? They Really Do Deserve A Break Today

Written by Evan Schuman
April 29th, 2009

Retailers often try mild variations of their core strategies overseas, but McDonald’s is trying an experiment in China that is 360 degrees different than its U.S. strategy. It has launched an E-Commerce site to sell mobile phones, digital cameras and MP3 players.

“The McDonald’s Super Value online store was the chain’s first online shop” and “it’s a strategic media tactic to target the right audience, specifically, urban adults in their 20s,” according to this Wall Street Journal story. Beyond the electronics, McDonald’s is also selling their traditional food items, but with an auction twist: “McDonald’s used an auction system to promote its Value Meals. It posted electronic goods on its Taobao site for close to the retail price, but dropped the price when a user clicked on it. The first user to click on it at the price of 16.5 yuan — the price of a Value Meal, or roughly $2.50 — got to buy the item at that price.”


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Why Did Gonzales Hackers Like European Cards So Much Better?

I am still unclear about the core point here-- why higher value of European cards. Supply and demand, yes, makes sense. But the fact that the cards were chip and pin (EMV) should make them less valuable because that demonstrably reduces the ability to use them fraudulently. Did the author mean that the chip and pin cards could be used in a country where EMV is not implemented--the US--and this mis-match make it easier to us them since the issuing banks may not have as robust anti-fraud controls as non-EMV banks because they assumed EMV would do the fraud prevention for them Read more...
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