Case: GLOBAL MARKET OPPORTUNITIES

Part I: International Marketing Research at the Mayo Clinic

QUESTION

Assume you are the new marketing vice president at the Mayo Clinic. The CEO and the board have decided to expand their international sales revenues by 100 percent over the next five years. Write a memo to your staff outlining the marketing research that will be needed to support such a strategy. Be specific about sources of secondary data and the best places and media for gathering primary data. Also, be specific about the best methods to use.

Part II: Swifter, Higher, Stronger, Dearer

QUESTIONS

I. The following are the prices paid for the American television broadcasting rights of the summer Olympics since 1980: Moscow-NBC agreed to pay S85 million; 1984 in Los Angeles-ABC paid 5225 million; 1988 in Seoul-NBC paid 5300 million; 1992 in Barcelona-NBC paid 5401 million; 1996 through 2008-NBC will pay S3.6 billion; 2010-NBC paid 5820 million; 2012 in London-NBC will pay $1.18 billion for its American broadcast rights. Assume you have been charged with the responsibility of determining the IOC and local Olympic Committee's asking prices for the Rio de Janeiro 2016 television broadcast rights for five different markets: Japan, China, Australia, the European Union, and Brazil. Determine a price for each, and justify your decisions.

2. Your instructor may assign you to represent either the IOC or any one of the television networks in each of the five countries that have been asked to bid for the broadcast rights for the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Games. Prepare to negotiate prices and other organizational details.

Part III: Marketing to the Bottom of the Pyramid

QUESTIONS

1. As a junior member of your company's committee to explore new markets, you have received a memo from the chairperson telling you to be prepared at the next meeting to discuss key questions that need to be addressed if the company decides to look further into the possibility of marketing to the BOP segment. The ultimate goal of this meeting will be to establish a set of general guidelines to use in developing a market strategy for any one of the company's products to be marketed to the "aspirational poor." These guidelines need not be company or product specific at this time. In fact, think of the final guideline as a checklist-a series of questions that a company could use as a start in evaluating the potential of a specific BOP market segment for one of its products.

2. Marketing to the BOP raises a number of issues revolving around the social responsibility of marketing efforts. Write a position paper either pro or con on one of the following:

a. Is it exploitation for a company to profit from selling soaps, shampoo, personal computers, and ice cream, and SO on, to people with little disposable income?

b. Can making loans to customers whose income is less than 5100 monthly at interest rates of 20 percent to purchase TVs, cell phones, and other consumer durables be justified?

c. One authority argues that squeezing profits from people with little disposable income-and often not enough to eat-is not capitalist exploitation but rather that it stimulates economic growth.

Part IV: Continued Growth for Zara and Inditex

QUESTIONS

1. What are the ways that Inditex ensures that "fast fashion" is truly fast?

2. What are the important attributes of a "fast fashion" retailer to customers? To store managers?

3. Why would a retailer introduce their online store country-by country? Why was Inditex slow to embrace online sales when it Is so tech-savvy in other ways?

4. Briefly describe five opportunities for continued growth during the next five years for Zara's parent, Inditex, SA.

5. Pick one of the five opportunities and outline the advantages and disadvantages of pursuing it.

Part V: A Sea Launch Recovery?

QUESTIONS

1. Go to www.space.conilmtssionlaunches 2010-launch-log.litml and review the history of space launches toward forecasting demand for Sea Launch services for the next five years.

2. Assess its competitors.

3. If you had a spare SI million, would you invest it in Sea Launch? Consider the case of Euro Disney and Iridium.

4. What are the best opportunities for Sea Launch during the next five years?