INSTRUCTION

Country/Product Brief – Your country of choice

Task

Students are expected to research market opportunities, develop a ‘Country/Product Brief’ highlighting the opportunities and challenges that exist for product entry into a given country. – Your country of choice .

The objective of developing a country/product brief is to identify international marketing opportunities in your focus market for an existing Australian organisation and complete the early sections of a comprehensive international marketing plan. The selected company should be considering (a) entering a new country, or (b) considering the entry of a new product/service to an existing international market, or (c) both.

Students will need to conduct research on products/services with which they plan on entering the market, as well as research the most current issues that their company may face in entering a specific country. Issues include, but are not limited to legal/regulatory concerns, political risk, cultural nuances that require adaptation, entry/importation procedures/policies, competitive nature of industry, suppliers/channels of entry, and tariffs/taxes.

They will also need to analyse the skills, resources and capabilities of their chosen organisation with respect to entering this new international market.

It is strongly recommended to use headings/sub-headings to highlight changes in topic.

A suggested structure would include:

– Introduction

Explain the specific market opportunity you have identified – what is it, how did you determine

– Situation Analysis

. Business environment – Information on aspects of the macro and micro environment (PESTLE) relevant to this opportunity

. Market Analysis – Customer segments/profiles relevant to your product in that market, size, growth rates

. Competitive Analysis – who are the major competitors and what is their competitive advantage

. Organisational Analysis – evaluation of the Australian organisation/product you recommend for this opportunity – what is their competitive advantage?

– SWOT Analysis – a summary of key points discovered in the Situation Analysis.

Detail on the suggested content of each section can be found in the Project Guide in the Resources folder. All information within the brief should be managerially oriented and directly applicable to the specific opportunity/product you are recommending. Students who simply download country profile data without analysis will be penalised.

The company may be large or small, local or international, have existing products/services or considering new products/services. Students must NOT contact these companies, instead relying solely on secondary data. Students are expected to utilise numerous data sources in compiling their project, such as government (country) and non-government sources (UN, Worldbank, IMF, etc.), company records, consulting, legal and advertising firms, country-specific internet sites, trade statistics, and embassy resources.

Rationale

The country/product brief is designed to encourage students to engage in independent and reflective learning, as well as develop the skills to locate, evaluate and use relevant information for a specific international marketing problem.

This assessment has been designed in order to:

. assist you to develop and demonstrate your learning about the nature of international marketing and the importance of macro-environmental scanning and research, focusing on Topics 1-7;

. allow you to develop your information searching and critical thinking skills;

. demonstrate you are engaging with the subject content.

Prescribed text Fletcher, R., & Crawford, H. (2013). International marketing: An Asia-Pacific Perspective (6th ed.). Frenchs Forest Australia: Pearson Education.

Minimum 10 preferences.