978-0077606121 Chapter 12 Answers to Questions

Type

Quiz

Book Title

International Business: The Challenge of Global Competition 13th Edition

ISBN 13

978-0077606121

April 7, 2019

Answers to Questions

1. Select a country and a product that you believe your firm can market there. Make a list of the sources

of information you will use for each screening.

Sources are found in the Global path Ahead, Chapters 12 and 14.

2. What is the basis for the order of screenings presented in the text?

3. A firm’s export manager finds, by examining the UN’s International Trade Statistics Yearbook, that the

company’s competitors are exporting. Is there a way the manager can learn to which countries the U.S.

competitors are exporting?

4. Do a country’s imports completely measure the market potential for a product? Why or why not?

A country’s imports don’t completely measure market potential for many reasons: lack of foreign

5. What are some barriers related to the political and legal forces that may eliminate a country from

further consideration?

6. Why should a firm’s management consider going on a trade mission or exhibiting in a trade fair?

The company representative will learn firsthand about the market, meet important customers face to face,

7. What are the two principal kinds of complications that researchers face when they collect primary data

in a foreign market? Give examples.

Cultural problems (foreign language, interviewing wrong people, receiving wrong answers from

8. Consider the market segment screening method. Take a lifestyle segment—say, people who like

do-it-yourself home decorating. How would the segment screening method suggest that you go about

identifying potential foreign markets?

These consumers may reside in different countries and speak different languages but they have similar

9. You are a consultant to the developers of the Spiderman computer game. You will tell the CEO where

the likely overseas markets are. What do you do?

The first thing one might do is look into the demographics of the countries, as the main target will be the

younger generation. In this situation we will be interested in estimating the market based on age, income

10. Assume that your academic unit (probably a college of business) wants to open a campus in a foreign

country and that the dean has asked you to prepare a list of possible countries. How would you go about

fulfilling the dean’s requirement?

The analysis will begin with studying the number of business colleges/number of business students that

Minicase:

Questions from the case:

1. Is chocolate being exported?

Yes, chocolate is exported and based on the analysis of total exports between 1998 and 2001 it

2. What are the six largest importing nations?

3. Which of these are growing markets?

globalEDGE

Exercise One

The Market Potential Index (MPI) is an indexing study conducted by the Michigan State

University Center for International Business Education and Research (MSU-CIBER) to compare

emerging markets on a variety of dimensions. Provide a description of the indicators used for this

index. Which of the indicators would have greater importance for a company that markets MP3

players? Considering the MPI rankings, which developing countries would you advise this

company to enter first with such a product?

Answer

http://globaledge.msu.edu

Exercise Two

You are working at a firm that operates discount department stores across the U.S. and Canada.

Top management has decided to expand to one of the following markets: France, Germany,

Japan, Mexico or the U.K. As part of the market analysis, you are asked to identify potential

competitors in each market. Locate the National Retail Federation’s Stores magazine’s ranking of

the Top 250 Global Retailers by annual sales and provide a list of the top 10 companies for the

latest year available. From this list, which companies (with a discount department store format)

have operations in each of the markets you are assessing? Which countries are these companies

from?

Answer

http://globaledge.msu.edu