ASSIGNMENT

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Your organization, Sustainable Goods, is U.S. based and privately owned. Sustainable Goods is a big box retailer that specializes in products which are sustainable.

Your organization has been cited by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) as the leading organization for the sales and distribution of sustainable products. You are the newly appointed Chief Operating Officer of the international branch of the organization.

Sustainable Goods is considering which countries to expand into first. The President of the organization has tasked you with selecting one developed and one developing country to expand into as a pilot project.

PROMPT

Before completing this assignment, review the Final Project Document. Background information found in the Final Project Document applies to Milestones One through Three.

As you analyze the two countries where Sustainable Goods is considering opening stores, you should understand the internal and external factors which could influence the success of the new stores. A typical way for an organization to analyze these factors is using a Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis. Feel free to use the Research Guide in the library to help you with your project.

TASKS

For this milestone, you will complete the following: After reviewing the video SWOT Analysis (Video file, 6 min 16 sec), use the template provided (MS Excel file) to conduct a SWOT analysis for EACH of your two countries (developed and developing).

Your SWOT analysis should be thorough, incorporate scholarly research, and potentially some quantitative analysis (i.e. - a projection of foreign currency exchange rates). Your deliverables include:

SWOT analysis matrix for EACH of your two countries using the template provided.

Written justification for each factor you included in your matrix. Justification should be supported by scholarly evidence (i.e. - peer-reviewed journal articles).

For criteria that could include data as evidence, calculations should be incorporated into your analysis write-up (i.e. - you did a Monte Carlo simulation to determine the likelihood that gas prices would rise in the future, and you used this value as a potential threat - results of Monte Carlo simulation should be included in your write-up).

You will provide a SWOT analysis for both countries. (MS Word document, 3-5 pages total APA formatted). Submit only one document for both SWOTs.