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. Countries will be allocated to each student in Week 1. 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.
The brief should be a maximum of 2500 words. 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. Students are expected to identify a company within the first three (3) weeks of class. 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.
By the fourth week of class students are expected to submit a project proposal that includes: overview of the company partner, product/services involved, country into which company is considering entering, sources of information expecting to be used, and schedule of tasks to complete your project. This proposal should be no more than three (3) pages in length. While this proposal is not assigned
project assessment marks, the lecturer uses this proposal to determine the feasibility of the student project, and reserves the right to ask students to revise their proposal and/or clarify certain aspects of the proposal prior to commencing data collection.
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 1-5; allow you to develop your information searching and critical thinking skills; demonstrate you are engaging with the subject content.