National Institute of Technology 2009 M.B.A Finance KETING MANAGEMENT - Question Paper

Before making a decision to go abroad, the company must weigh several risks:
The company might not understand foreign customer preferences and fail to offer a competitively attractive product.
The company might not understand the foreign country’s business culture or know how to deal effectively with foreign nationals.
The company might underestimate the foreign regulations and incur unexpected costs.
The company might realize that it lacks managers with International experience.
The foreign country might change its commercial laws, devalue its currency, or undergo a political revolution and expropriate foreign property.
Because of the conflicting advantages and risks, companies often do not act until a few event thrusts them into the International arena. Someone – a domestic exporter, an International importer, a foreign government – solicits the company to sell abroad, or the company is saddled with overcapacity and must obtain additional markets for its goods.

Q.3: B) How to design a competitive intelligence system?
ANS:
Competitive intelligence system;
The internal records system supplies outcomes data, but the marketing intelligence system supplies happenings data. A marketing intelligence system is a set of procedures and sources managers use to find everyday info about developments in the marketing environment. Marketing managers collect marketing intelligence by studying books, newspapers, and trade publications, talking to customers, suppliers, and distributors; and meeting with other company mangers.
A company can take several steps to improve the quality of its marketing intelligence.
A company can train and motivate the sales force to spot and report new developments: Sales representatives are positioned to pick up info missed by other means, yet they often fail to pass on that info. The company must “sell” its sales force on their importances as intelligence gatherers. a few companies in India encourage their field force to give inputs on improvements needed in the company’s current market offers as well as on new product opportunities. The field force finds inputs for useful suggestions by observing competitors activities, by listening to consumers’ comments and suggestions, and by interacting with distributors and retailers.
A company can motivate distributors, retailers and other intermediaries to pass along important intelligence: Many companies hire specialists to gather marketing intelligence. Service providers often send mystery shoppers to their stores to assess how employees treat customers. Retailers also use mystery shoppers. A well known shop in South India that sells saris, readymade garments and fashion accessories hired the services of a professional market research agency to collect data on improvements needed in their shop. The market research agency systematically collected data from various parts of the shop by deploying trained field researchers as mystery shoppers.

Earning:   Approval pending.