Global organization concepts and structures

Global Organization

Given an example of a strategic business plan, evaluate the plan and provide recommendations on how the plan could be improved to include more effective planning and decision-making.

A strategic business plan defines the business, quantifies and explains the existing market of the business, quantifies the business' current market, products, services, strategic propositions, routes to market, customers, case studies, sales/marketing/advertising plans, competitors, and potential strategic actions in the near and long-term future of the business. For example, when Starbucks was planning to enter Japan it might define its business as a coffee retailer and cafe, its customer target as younger twentysomethings, its products as coffee beverages and ground beans, its services as making coffee and providing side pastries and sandwiches, its strategy as marketing itself between fast food and formal sit-down restraints, its routes to market as usurping the traditional generic coffee market, its customers defined as individuals seeking a 'hang out,' case studies based on former fast food establishments, and Starbucks might say that it marketed itself against fast food competitors with Starbuck's more upscale sales and marketing campaign, but combined the strategic act of franchising into urban and then suburban arenas.

In Japan, however, where tea is more commonly drank, and noodles more popular than pastries, and ground coffee is less popular than beverages bought on the street because of Japan's smaller homes, these factors might result in a need for greater beverage selection of teas, more kitchen space, and less of a stock of beans. Also, there might have to be more of a targeting of urban markets like Tokyo, of such franchised beverage places along the lines of cafes are not as much in demand in more rural areas.

Explain the relationship between organizational size and globalization. Are large firms the only ones that are global?

Even a small firm can be global in its outreach, particularly in the age of the Internet. A small firm, especially one that specializes in a particular but rare product can keep its brick and mortar costs low, its employment limited, yet still ship to and advertise to all over the world, via the web, such as eBay.

What are the advantages and disadvantages for a U.S. based multinational firm entering a mature market economy? What are the advantages and disadvantages for such a firm entering a high-potential/high-growth economy?

A mature market may seem to have little risk because it has a ready-made customer base, but the current mature market may already have saturated its demand, as Wal-Mart's saturation of the market in China may make it difficult for Target or Sears to make an incursion into that economy. Through such pre-saturation a state of perfect competition may have already been achieved in the market, and the new multinational might make a costly move into the market, but have little ability to make a larger profit than it could domestically by luring international customers away from the existing and established firm.