Integrative Term Assignment: FOREIGN MARKET (COUNTRY) SCREENING Weight: 20% Marks: 100 Purpose: The purpose of this term assignment is to enable you to demonstrate your knowledge of important international business concepts and apply research, communication and analytical skills. This assignment supports the critical learning outcomes of the course, including screening of various environmental forces confronting Canadian companies in host countries, risk analysis, and identification of attractive foreign markets.

Guidelines Any firm contemplating foreign expansion must first struggle with the issue of which foreign markets to enter. According to the textbook, there are 196 countries around the world, of which approximately 150 represent business opportunities for Canadian companies.

Ultimately, the choice among them must be based on an assessment of foreign market potential. This potential is a function of several environmental factors, including geography, history, culture, politics, government, law, economy, and competition. The attractiveness of a country as a potential market for an international business depends on balancing the benefits, costs, and risks associated with doing business in that country.

Managers must choose the countries in which Canadians want to invest in, sell their products to, and buy goods and services from. Foreign market screening is a method of market analysis that allows Canadian companies to identify a small number of attractive foreign markets by using the environmental factors to eliminate the less attractive markets (Ball, Geringer, Minor & McNett, 2010). Market screening is a version of environmental scanning familiar to you from the SAIT course of Marketing Essentials.

There are two types of foreign market screening: country and market segment screening. The former takes countries as the relevant unit of analysis, while the latter is based on a subnational analysis of foreign buyers. General Requirements: This group assignment will take up to nine weeks to complete.

Groups will have between three and five members, depending on the total number of students in the class. As a group, consider yourselves top managers of an imaginary company that you have been operating in Canada for some time. You have decided that it is time to internationalize your business. Your company has to choose between two selected countries in which to make a significant investment.

Your instructor will use a random choice to determine which pair of countries from the following list your group will be screening. Both investments promise a similar long-term return, so your choice will be based solely on a foreign market (country) screening. By the end of this assignment, you should be able to determine which country you would select for your investment and why. Your findings and recommendations will form your Paper. The list of foreign markets chosen for this assignment includes Canadas major current and potential partners (in alphabetical order): Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Italy, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the USA. The importance of emerging markets is reflected in the list as well. This assignment will require you to undertake significant research. All information in your project must be supported with reference to specific resources.

Develop answers to each of the following questions about your assigned countries and integrate them into your Paper.

1.Analyze the geography of each country. Is the countrys location convenient for the transportation of goods to and from Canada? Is the climate and landscape beneficial to economic activities? Does the country possess any significant natural resources? Specify the type and their significance.

2.Create a profile of the national population. How large is it? How fast is it growing? Is the population young or old? Urban or rural? How educated is the population? Compare the Human Development Index in Canada to that of the each country in question.

3.What is the primary language of the population? What is the dominant religion in the country? Are there significant religious minorities in the country? If so, are their rights respected by the majority? Using Hofstedes framework, compare the culture of the each country with the Canadian culture.

4.What type of legal system does the country have? Has the government erected any trade barriers in this market? If so, how high are they? Does the government welcome or discourage foreign investment? Will the nations laws permit 100% foreign ownership? Will the government accept minority local ownership? How strong is intellectual property protection? Is the legal system generally viewed as transparent and fair by the local citizens? Apply the Corruption Perception Index.

5.Is the government stable, or is there infighting among major political fractions? How vulnerable to political risk are foreign firms operating in the country? What kind of political risk do they face? Apply the Coface Political Risk Assessment tools.

6.What is the GDP of the country? What is its per capita income? How fast is the economy growing? How important is agriculture? How important is manufacturing? Name other principal industries. Evaluate the countrys e-commerce readiness (mobile/smart phones per 1000 people, number of Internet users). Compare the e-Trade Readiness Index.

7.What is the countrys currency called? What is its current value relative to the Canadian dollar? By how much has the currencys value changed in the past five years relative to the Canadian dollar? Does the country use a fixed or flexible exchange rate policy?

8.How high is inflation, the unemployment rate and public debt? How high are corporate taxes and personal income taxes?

9.Compare the Logistics Performance Index (LPI) measured by the World Bank in Canada to that of the country in question.

10.What are the primary exports and imports of the country? Who are the countrys primary trading partners?

11.What is the level of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the economy? Which countries are the primary suppliers of FDI to the country?

12.Has the country experienced a balance of payments trade deficit or surplus in the past year? How large is this deficit or surplus? Has its official reserves account changed in the past year? By how much? How large is its external debt?

13.Does the country belong to any regional trade blocs? If so, which ones?

14.Evaluate the countrys participation in global value chains measured by the McKinsey Global Institute including the Country Classification, MGI Connectedness Index, Global value chain archetype, Trade Intensity, and Diversification of Exports metrics. 15.Compare the Index of Economic Freedom measured by the Heritage Foundation in Canada to that of the country in question. 16.Based on the answers to the questions listed above, summarize the major challenges, benefits and costs to your imaginary Canadian company considering entering each countrys market. Which market poses the biggest challenge to you from the standpoint of strategic management? In what ways are the challenges similar and in what ways are they different? Finally, which country would you select and why? Important note: Some countries will require more research than others to find the necessary information. Not all information will be available on all countries, but your job is to gather as much relevant information as possible about the assigned markets. You may find information other than what is asked for above, which you may wish to include because it is more relevant to your particular country. You should use primary sources of information, such as the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, etc. instead sources of secondary data, for example, Trading Economics website.