Question

You are writing a complex report on successful international marketing strategies. You are having a hard time understanding the complexity of the problem and identifying the issues. What technique can you use to help anticipate the issues

Answer 1

Prepare an outline showing the initial problem, and break it down into subproblems.

Step-by-step explanation:

Preparing an outline that breaks the initial problem down into subproblems will help you organize complex problems within a report. Writing a purpose statement about your work plan or creating a scratch list to include in the work plan will not help you anticipate the issues you will encounter with a complex problem and investigation.

Answer 2

There are a number of problem solving techniques. However the one that speaks most to the scenario in the question is the SWOT Analysis technique.

Step-by-step explanation:

SWOT which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats is a key component to marketing strategic planning. It is an effective tool for developing overall marketing strategy, or for planning individual campaigns.

While Strengths and Weaknesses are internal, Opportunities and Threats are external to the business.

Below is an example of a SWOT analysis:

• Strengths: Talented and qualified staff with innovative ideas and strong problem solving abilities, long history in the business, great product;
• Weaknesses: Small advertising budget; limited resources.
• Opportunities: Fall and holidays coming soon; availability of third-party funds for expansion, growing population with high numbers of youth
• Threats: barriers to entry is gradually reducing due to technology, unstable political environment, stiff and inflexible government policies

Two strategies that can be developed from the exemplified SWOT above are:

1. Use of talented qualified staff with innovative ideas and strong problem solving capabilities to explore and take advantage of available third-party funds for expansion thus eliminating the weakness of limited resources
2. Maximise the sale of products by making them more adaptable to youth

The result

Using a SWOT analysis to develop marketing strategy assists in making educated decisions and developing more targeted and realistic strategies or courses of actions that are relative to the capabilities of the organisation with a full understanding of the challenges ahead.

Cheers!