“The study of international business is fine if you are going to work in a large multinational enterprise, but it has no relevance for individuals who are going to work in small firms. ” Evaluate this statement. The study of global business is relevant to any person who is in the business world, no matter the size of their organization. The first reason is that so many things are imported from other countries. Closing a deal in China will be a very different process than would be in France than it is here at home in Bangladesh. Customs of other countries need to be followed if a businessperson is to be successful worldwide.
Also important to consider are the difference in shipping costs from different ports, as it will change the “landed cost” of the item, and the retail price and profit margin, especially when one is handling 40-foot long containers of merchandise. Customs and customs brokers’ roles will need to be known–as well as items that can cause an entire container turned away by Bangladeshi Customs at the port–a potential loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on its contents and shipping, with perhaps a retail value of millions of dollars.
Once that container clears customs, if its destination is not nearby, it will be loaded onto a train or a truck. So one needs to be familiar with the workings of the logistics necessary to get the container to its final destination . For example, in USA some retailers were left hanging, waiting for their shipments in the early 2000s when there was a massive port lockout on the West Coast–literally dozens of container ships sat offshore near Portland and Los Angeles because the labor union couldn‘t come to an agreement the operators of the ports on terms of their employment packages.
That left the ports with no dockworkers. So even if a ship made it into the port, as many did during the few hours the freeze was suspended during negotiations, there’s no telling when the container would be offloaded. Retailers around the country, preparing for the busy holiday season, suffered, and one must know how to react–and know the risks and benefits of making a decision such as to keep the container to actually contract to get it trucked to a store in The Midwest, rather than wait for the train to arrive–in a situation like this if one is to be able to do business globally.
The second reason is that any business can be a global business, and a smart businessperson will pay attention to how to market their product or service to the consumer. For example, American mega-retailer Wal-Mart opened a wildly successful store in what has become the booming metropolis of Shenzhen, China, but its American management team on-site soon found that they had to have the packaging and quantities changed on many items. Most of the people in Shenzhen live in apartments and not detached, single family homes. Consumers just didn’t have space for bulk purchases like American customers do.
As a reasonable comparison, in Hong Kong, whose population is similar in size to Shenzhen’s, there are only a few handful of single-family homes, which are occupied by the very elite and wealthy. Perhaps one of the most classic international business gaffes occurred when Chevrolet attempted to introduce a new car, The Chevy Nova, in Spanish speaking countries in e 1970s. Somehow, to Chevrolet’s embarrassment, a major piece of research was overlooked: “No se va,” or simply “No va,” when translated from Spanish to English means “It doesn’t go. ”
