International Business Final

Front 1

Strategy

Back 1

The actions that managers take to attain company goals

Front 2

Profitability

Back 2

The rate of return concept

Front 3

Profit Creation

Back 3

percentage increase in net profits over time

Front 4

Value Creation

Back 4

performing activities that increase the value of goods or services

Front 5

Operations

Back 5

various value-creation activities a firm undertakes

Front 6

Strategic Choice

Back 6

area not viable in international hotel industry. Low end of graph

Front 7

Organizational Architecture

Back 7

totality of a firm’s organization, including formal organizational structure, control systems and incentives, processes and people.

Front 8

Organizational Structure

Back 8

three-part structure of an organization, including formal division into subunits such as products, location of decision making, and establishment of integrating mechanisms.

Front 9

Controls

Back 9

metrics used to measure the performance of subunits and make judgments about how well managers are running their sub units.

Front 10

Incentives

Back 10

devices used to reward appropriate managerial behavior.

Front 11

Processes

Back 11

manner in which decisions are made and work is performed within any organizations.

Front 12

Organizational Culture

Back 12

Norms and value systems that are shared among the employees of an organization.

Front 13

Core Competence

Back 13

skills within a firm that competitors cannot easily match or imitate.

Front 14

Location Economics

Back 14

economies that arise from performing a value creation activity in the optimal location for that activity, wherever in the world that may be found, at a cost advantage to the firm.

Front 15

Global Web

Back 15

when different stages of a value chain are dispersed to those locations around the globe where value added is maximized or where costs of value creation are minimized.

Front 16

Experience Curve

Back 16

systematic reduction in production costs that have been observed to occur over the life of a product.

Front 17

Learning Effects

Back 17

cost savings that come from learning by doing.

Front 18

Economies of Scale

Back 18

reductions in unit cost achieved by producing a large volume of a product.

Front 19

Universal Needs

Back 19

arise when the tastes and preferences of consumers in different nations are similar, if not identical.

Front 20

Global Standardization Strategy

Back 20

pursuing a low-cost strategy on a global scale and increasing profitability and profit growth by reaping the cost reductions that come from economies of scale, learning effects, and location economies.

Front 21

Localization Strategy

Back 21

increasing profitability by customizing the firm’s goods and services so that they provide a good match to tastes and preferences in different national markets.

Front 22

Transnational Strategy

Back 22

attempting to simultaneously achieve low costs through location economies, economies of scale, and learning effects while differentiation product offerings across geographic markets to account for local differences and fostering multidirectional flows of skills between different subsidiaries in the firm’s global network of operations.

Front 23

International Strategy

Back 23

when a firm takes products first produced for its domestic market and sells them internationally with only minimal local customization.

Front 24

Strategic Alliances

Back 24

cooperative agreements between potential or actual competitors for the benefit of all companies concerned.

Front 25

Timing of Entry

Back 25

when a business enters a foreign market; said to be early when it does so before other firms, and late when other firms are established.

Front 26

First Mover advantage

Back 26

advantages accruing to firms that enter early (mrkt share).

Front 27

First Mover Disadvantage

Back 27

disadvantages affecting early entrants to a foreign market

Front 28

Pioneering costs

Back 28

costs an early entrant has to bear that a later entrant can avoid.

Front 29

Exporting

Back 29

Selling goods and service to entities in another country.

Front 30

Turnkey Project

Back 30

a project in which a firm agrees to set up an operating plant for a foreign client and hand over the “key” when the plant is fully operational.

Front 31

Licensing

Back 31

arrangement in which a licensor grants the rights to intangible property to the licensee for a period of time for a royalty fee in return.

Front 32

Franchising

Back 32

specialized form of licensing in which the franchiser give information but makes them follow strict rules.

Front 33

Joint Venture

Back 33

Establishing a firm that is jointly owned by two or more otherwise independent firms.

Front 34

Wholly owned subsidiary

Back 34

a subsidiary in which the firm owns 100% of the stock.

Front 35

Sogo Shosha

Back 35

Japanese trading houses that seek to make export sales for their affiliated companies.

Front 36

Export management company

Back 36

export specialists that act as an export marketing or international department for their client firms.

Front 37

Letter of credit

Back 37

document issued by a bank indicating that it will make payments to a beneficiary upon presentation of particular documents.

Front 38

Bill of exchange

Back 38

instrument normally used in international commerce to effect payment

Front 39

Draft

Back 39

order written by an exporter instructing an importer to pay a specified amount of money at a certain time.

Front 40

Sight Draft

Back 40

payable upon presentation to the drawee.

Front 41

Time Draft

Back 41

allows for a delay in payment to set future day.

Front 42

Export import bank

Back 42

independent agency o the US government whose mission is to provide financial aid that will facilitate exports, imports, and commodities exchanges between the US and other countries.

Front 43

Countertrade

Back 43

trade of goods and services for other goods via a range of barter like agreements.

Front 44

Barter

Back 44

direct exchange of goods or services without cash exchanged

Front 45

Counterpurchase

Back 45

firm agrees to purchase a certain amount of materials back from a country to which it made a sale.

Front 46

Offset

Back 46

when a firm agrees to purchase goods or services from any firm within the country to which it made a sale.

Front 47

Switch Trading

Back 47

Using a specialized third-party trading house in a countertrade agreement.

Front 48

Buyback

Back 48

when a firm builds a plant in a country and agrees to take a certain percentage of the plant’s output as a partial payment of the contract.

Front 49

Production

Back 49

the activities involved in creating a product

Front 50

Logistics

Back 50

The procurement and transmission of material through the supply chain, from suppliers to customers.

Front 51

TQM

Back 51

philosophy of management that focuses on improving the quality of a company’s products and services.

Front 52

Six Sigma

Back 52

modern successor to TQM, a statistically based management philosopher that aims to reduce defects, boost productivity, eliminate waste, and cut costs.

Front 53

ISO 9000

Back 53

certification process that requires certain quality standards to be met.

Front 54

Minimum Efficient Scale

Back 54

level of output at which most plant-level scale economies are exhausted.

Front 55

Lean Production

Back 55

manufacturing technology designed to reduce setup time, improve job scheduling, and improve quality control.

Front 56

Mass customization

Back 56

ability of companies to use flexible manufacturing to achieve product customization at low cost.

Front 57

Flexible machine cells

Back 57

group of various types of machinery, a common materials handler, and a centralized cell controller computer that produces a family of products.

Front 58

Global learning

Back 58

idea that valuable knowledge resides not only in a firm’s domestic operations but in its foreign subsidiaries as well.

Front 59

make or buy decision

Back 59

whether a firm should make or outsource the making of component parts.

Front 60

specialized asset

Back 60

asset whose value is contingent upon a particular persisting relationship.

Front 61

JIT Inventory

Back 61

logistics systems designed to deliver parts to a production process as they are needed and not before.

Front 62

Marketing Mix

Back 62

choices about product attributes, distribution strategies, communication strategies, and pricing strategies that a firm offers its targeted markets.

Front 63

Market segment

Back 63

identifying distinct groups of consumers whose purchasing behavior differs from others in important ways, based on criteria such as geography, demographics, socioculture factors, and psychological factors.

Front 64

Concentrated retail system

Back 64

one in which a few retailers supply most of the market.

Front 65

Fragmented retail system

Back 65

many retailers supply a market, with no one having a major share.

Front 66

Channel Length

Back 66

number of intermediaries between the producer and the consumer.

Front 67

Exclusive distribution channel

Back 67

a channel that outsiders find difficult to access.

Front 68

Channel Quality

Back 68

expertise and skills of established retailers in a nation and their ability to sell and support the products of international business.

Front 69

Source Effects

Back 69

when the receiver of the message evaluates the message on the basis of status or image of the sender.

Front 70

Country of origin effect

Back 70

extent to which the place of a product’s manufacturing influences its evaluations in the market.

Front 71

Noise

Back 71

amount of other messages competing for a potential consumer’s attention.

Front 72

Push strategy

Back 72

emphasizing personal selling to potential customers rather than media advertising.

Front 73

Pull strategy

Back 73

depends more on mass media advertising to communicate the marketing message to potential customers.

Front 74

Elastic

Back 74

small change in price produces a large change in demand.

Front 75

Inelastic

Back 75

when a large change in price produces only a small change in demand.

Front 76

Strategic Pricing

Back 76

pricing aimed at giving a company a competitive advantage over its rivals.

Front 77

Predatory Pricing

Back 77

pricing products below fair market values as a competitive weapon to drive weaker competitors out of the market.

Front 78

Human resource management

Back 78

activities an organization carries out to use its human resources effectively.

Front 79

Expatriate manager

Back 79

a citizen of one country appointed to a management position in another country.

Front 80

Staffing Policies

Back 80

an organization’s strategy concerning the selection of employees for a particular job.

Front 81

Corporate culture

Back 81

an organization’s norms and value systems.

Front 82

Ethnocentric staffing policy

Back 82

staffing approach in which all key management positions are filled by parent country nationals.

Front 83

Polycentric staffing policy

Back 83

staffing approach in which all key management positions are filled by parent country nationals.

Front 84

Geocentric staffing policy

Back 84

staffing policy under a firm seeks the best personnel, regardless of nationality.

Front 85

Expatriate failure

Back 85

premature return of an expatriate manager to his or her home country.