Discussion - The International Marketing Manager

International marketing may seem an overwhelming task. It involves so many critical aspects of a company's international success. Just to list a few:

Creating the international strategy
Leveraging a company's core competencies
Foreign market selection
Selection of the best foreign partners
Finding the best way to enter a market
Deciding between standardizing marketing activities to save money or adapt them for local effectiveness
Branding
Pricing
Advertising
Distribution
Promotion and public relations
Getting anyone of these wrong would impact a company's international expansion.

In this very early stage of the course, I'd like you to begin thinking about what are the most critical aspects of the international marketing manager's challenge? What should be the priorities? Try and pick two or three aspects that right now stand out as being particularly important. There is no right or wrong answer. What I want you to discuss is that given there is no 'right' answer, how should the priorities be set? As you read the selections of other students, support their choices or defend your own.

I am particularly eager for you to begin to appreciate the interdependency of all of these aspects - which makes the task of setting the priorities all the more difficult. Yet without focus and prioritization, the manager may risk trying to do too much and succeeding at nothing.

MICROSOFT WORD, APA FORMAT.