Students are required to be in teams of three or four (no more than four). Imagine you are a member of a team that has been tasked with finding a new overseas market for an Australian product.
Your team must first select any one of the following products:
* Arnott's Tim Tam
* Bundaberg Rum
* Uncle Toby's Oats
* Ugg Boots
* Vegemite.
Your team then needs to select three to four countries (depending on the size of your team, i.e. three members = three countries, four members = four countries. Note that it cannot be the home country of the product, i.e. Australia) and culturally evaluate these countries to determine the suitability of the relevant product into those markets.
Each member of your team should focus on a separate country.You must draw on Geert Hofstede's cultural dimensions work within your analysis . While completing this assessment, you are required to read the following article: Beugelsdijk, S, Maseland, R & Van Hoorn, A 2015, ‘Are scores on Hofstede's dimensions of national culture stable over time? A cohort analysis', Global Strategy Journal, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 223-240.
Hofstede's framework represents one of the most relevant theories of national culture in international business. However, as countries develop economically, modernisation theory predicts shifts in cultural values, which likely affects countries' score on Hofstede's cultural dimensions, thus raising doubts about the relevance of this framework for IB researchers and practitioners. Your team must read the article and draw on its learnings, and
* Use Hofstede's cultural dimensions to evaluate the cultural fit of your chosen product into a specific foreign market. The most important aspect is to determine whether the Australian product will fit into the culture of the selected country.
* However, you must also evaluate each market in terms of their determinants of culture (i.e. social structure, religion, language and education).
* You must explain (and justify through your research) whether you see a shift in the cultural values of your chosen market or country, or whether they have largely remained the same.
* Some of the issues identified in the article should be incorporated into your assessment.
500 Words