Assume that you are the director of international marketing and your company is
ID: 360133 • Letter: A
Question
Assume that you are the director of international marketing and your company is producing refrigerators in Ecuador and Germany. Develop screening criteria to use in evaluating the two countries. Make any additional assumptions about your company that are necessary. Whatever the details of the screening criteria, the major points that should be considered are: (1) company objectives and goals, (2) product-use characteristics, (3) country environmental characteristics. Outline it. Explain your answer in details.
Explanation / Answer
The following would be my screening criteria:-
Company Objectives and Goals- The objective is to produce and sell refrigerators that are good in engineering quality and not very expensive. The goal is to capture 35% marketshare in the global market.
Product-use characteristics- The customers would require a sturdy refrigerator which is reasonable priced. Most of the demand is coming from the emerging markets so it is essential to make the refrigerator affordable. The country where the company manufactures the refrigerators should be do it at a lower price. The manpower costs shoudl be low. The engineering quality should be good so that it is durable. Customers don't want to replace their refrigerators time and again.The avilability of components is also important from the screening perspective.
Country environmental characteristics- The country where the company manufactures the refrigerators should have the engineering talent pool. The manpower costs should be reasonable. The tax environment should be business friendly. Between Ecuador and Germany, Germany would win hands down as far as the engineering talent is concerned whereas Ecuador will have low cost manpower. Germany would have business friendly tax structure present. The availability of components would be more in Germany.
I would suggest going for Germany as the country to produce refrigerators as it is better in all aspects apart from low manpower costs.