Thu. Sept 19 Blogpost

For Weekend Viewing (and extra credit)

I hope our African, Latin American, and South Asian colleagues can identify a film for us to enjoy.  Meanwhile, here is one of my favorites.  There is a trailer on YouTube; the film is called "Getting Home." I can not upload it here, for some reason, but you can check for it if you like. 

I found a link: click here.  (The image at left is not a link). Try to spend an hour with it.  (After it loads, wait a moment or two for the game-advertisment to go away:it should work okay on a high-speed connection—yes, this has clear subtitles).  Look for cultural values  Look at what people consume—food, drink, and funerals in particular.  What about this movie surprises you?

There will be an extra credit question on the quiz about this film!

Forthcoming

Tuesday we'll continue with our quiz, going over the text material as in the post below (from Tuesday).

We'll also walk through expectations for your upcoming presentation.  Note that you should be prepared to have a one-page handout for the class, and it should contain more than what is in your PowerPoint!

To give you a hand in getting the research done for this, 30 to 40 minutes of class-time is allocated to library research time, with an international business research librarian providing you with some useful tools.  Class will meet in Spring Library  NEXT Thursday, 26th Sept. The second half of class will be dedicated to your working in teams, discovering which cities you want to highlight (per the instructions given below, and on the syllabus) and generally working on your presentations.

Quiz Review

To speed things along, here is a preview of what the rest of the quiz contains.

Question one is about competitive advantage. Be able to identify a company and/or product with a product, price, advertising, or POS competitive advantage.

Question two was covered in class: we identified three global trends and set out their implications.  The trends were 1. aging population 2. global resource limitations/climate change and 3. state-controlled markets in the ascendancy.   You identified some implications.  Note that if you were not in class, you should be ready to complete this section on Tuesday.  An implication is NOT a restatement of the trend, and saying "be aware of the trend" is not an implication.  I'm looking for what a marketer should do.  For example, item two might suggest something about sourcing, price fluctuations due to instability, and a need to message about sustainability as consumers may be  more concerned and aware of the carbon-footprint of your business.  

Question three asks you to specify several low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and upper income countries.

Question four asks if income is a good "independent variable" against which to test or measure marketing outcomes.

Question five asks what the etic point of view is, and what the emic point of view is.

With all that in mind, we can finish the quiz quickly and move on to a further discussion of cultural models and tools for comparing cultural patterns, as discussed in chapter 3 of di Mooij.

Reading

Please be ready to discuss Chapter 3 in di Mooij.