MARKETING AND STRATEGY

Assignment Overview

For this assignment you will looking at two completely different companies that sell completely different types of products. However, both companies have strong international potential. As you read about in the background materials, different types of products lead to different types of strategies regarding standardization or adaptation and whether you decide to become a global, multi-domestic, or transnational corporation.

The first business you will look at is Roy Choi’s restaurant empire. Choi started out with a single food truck in Los Angeles, but soon gained celebrity status as one of the country’s most famous chefs and the inspiration for the recent movie Chef. Food trucks soon became huge craze in Los Angeles, and Choi has since gone on to open up multiple additional restaurants and even has plans for a fast food chain. His fame and multi-ethnic cuisine gives him large potential if he ever decides to take his business overseas.

The second business to look at is Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone company that is starting to expand internationally. The smartphone business is a notoriously tough market with dominant competitors such as Apple and Samsung. Xiaomi has gained market share in China and is starting to expand into some neighboring countries. Given the high price of smartphones from Apple and Samsung, there may be room for a lower priced competitor in the global smartphone market.

Do a careful review of the concept of standardization and adaption in Herbig (1998) and the concepts of multi-domestic, global, and transnational strategies in Jeyarathmm, M. (2008) and Steers and Nardon (2005). Then do some research on Roy Choi and Xiaomi in the Trident library or other sources. Here are some articles to get you started:

Walker, T. (2013, Dec 14). Keep on trucking. The Independent[Proquest]

Frausto, M. (2014, Sep 10). Choi’s eyes bigger than his stomach? Orange County Register[Proquest]

Larson, C. (2014, Dec). Xiaomi’s resolution: Double its smartphone sales volume in 2014.Business Week[Proquest and Businessweek.com]

Mozur, P. (2013, Oct 08). How upstart Xiaomi rattled China’s smartphone race. Wall Street Journal[Proquest]

Once you have finished your research, write a four to five page paper answering the following questions:

1. What kind of strategy would you recommend if Roy Choi decided to expand his food truck or restaurant business internationally? Would you recommend product standardization or localization? Which overall strategy would you recommend – transnational, multi-domestic, or global? Explain your reasoning and apply the concepts from Jeyarathmm, M. (2008), Steers and Nardon (2005), and Herbig (1998).
2. What kind of strategy would you recommend for Xiaomi’s international expansion? Would you recommend product standardization or localization? Which overall strategy would you recommend – transnational, multi-domestic, or global? Explain your reasoning and apply the concepts from Jeyarathmm, M. (2008), Steers and Nardon (2005), and Herbig (1998).

Assignment Expectations

• Answer the assignment questions directly.
• Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; don’t go off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing background materials.
• Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your references. Articles published in established newspapers or business journals/magazines are preferred. If you find articles on the Internet, make sure they are from a credible source.
• Reference your sources of information with both a bibliography and in-text citations. See theStudent Guide to Writing a High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations. Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under “My Resources” in the TLC Portal.

Module 3 – SLP

MARKETING AND STRATEGY

In the previous two modules you looked at the cultural and financial situation of your reference country. Now will be looking at the legal and political environment of your country and how these factors impact doing business.

As part of your research, keep in mind that several organizations publish various rankings and indices of political and legal factors in the major countries in the world. One example of rankings is the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators page (http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#home). This webpage includes rankings on factors relating the legal and political system such as rule of law, regulatory quality, and political stability. Rankings are given from 0 to 100 on each of these aspects.

The World Bank also does some rankings of the ease of doing business in countries across the world. Their doingbusiness.org has detailed reports on most countries on different aspects of doing business. While they look at many different factors, some of these relate to the legal system such as ease of enforcing contracts or getting a business license. It is worth looking up your country on this webpage to get an idea of how friendly your country’s legal system is to doing business. In addition to the Doing Business report, Transparency International does an annual report on corruption around the world and their rankings can be found at transparency.org.

But don’t just look at quantitative rankings of your country, do additional research to get an overall picture of the legal and political system beyond just a numerical score. Once you are finished doing your research on this country of your choice, write a two to three page paper covering the following issues:

1. The type of government and level of political stability in your country, and whether or not the political system is conducive to doing business
2. The legal/regulatory system in this country and whether or not it is conducive to doing business
3. The level of corruption in your country, and the impact of corruption on doing business in this country

SLP Assignment Expectations

• Answer the assignment questions directly.
• Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; don’t go off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing background materials.
• Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your references. Articles published in established newspapers or business journals/magazines are preferred. If you find articles on the Internet, make sure they are from a credible source

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