Lesson correlates with National Business Education Association National Standards for Business Education, 1995, Reston, Virginia.
·· Standard VII. International Marketing... Achievement Standard:  Apply marketing cocepts to international business.
          A.  Foreign Markets and Consumer Behavior
· Level 3 (Secondary) - Performance Expectations: Describe how marketing mix elements need to be adapted for international marketing efforts.
Marketing Mix in a Global Environment

 
TIME REQUIRED:
180 minutes, including field trip
 
RECOMMENDED GRADE:
Grades 9-12


 
MAJOR CONCEPTS:
INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES:
 :  Students will be able to
 Determine how marketing mix is adapted to a market 
 Realize the large number of products which are produced and marketed internationally
 Understand the complexity of multinational corporations
 
MATERIALS:
1. A few successfully marketing products manufactured by multinational corporations (Be sure to determine manufacturing corporation and its location in advance)
2. Source for student reading on Marketing Mix concepts (suggested handout attached)
3. Attached assignment sheet for each student
4. A library or on-line resource that lists multinational corporations, such as 
  •  Standard & Poors Register of Corporations, Standard &       Poors, New York
  •  America's Corporate Family and International Affiliates,  
  •  National Register Publishing Company, New Providence, NJ
  •  U.S. Corporations Doing Business Abroad, Price Waterhouse
  • The Ernst & Young Resource Guide to Global Markets, Valentine, Lew & Poor, John Wiley & Sons
RATIONALE:
 Students may not realize that many of the products that they purchase and use every day are not manufactured in the United States.  They may also be unaware that many of the corporations that produce these products are not based in the United States.

Successful multi-national companies have learned how to effectively use market mix in determining a global marketing program.  If this is not done effectively, the product may not sell.  Profits will be diminished and money lost.

The main purpose of this lesson is to give students an understanding of market mix and how it can be effectively adapted to international markets.  A secondary purpose is to make students aware of how global the marketplace has become, as evidenced by the products that they encounter on a daily basis.
 
PROCEDURE:
 1. Assign advance reading on Marketing Mix concepts.
2. To open the lesson, show students a few successfully marketed products in the United States.  Ask them to guess where the product was manufactured.  Ask them if they know in which country the corporation is based.  These responses could be written.  Give the students the correct answer.  How many were correct?  Did the correct answers surprise anyone?
3. Explain or demonstrate to students how they can locate corporation information to determine where a product is manufactured and where its corporate headquarters is located.
4. Discuss Marketing Mix.  Have the students try to determine why these products have been so successfully marketed in the United States.
5. Have students visit a local department store, discount store, or supermarket.  Each student should select 20 items at random (not the same ones that were brought to class) and determine what manufacturing company produced each item.  List the item, a description of the item, name of manufacturer, and country of manufacture on the assignment sheet provided.  This portion of the lesson could be done as an outside of class assignment or through a group field trip.
6. Using library or on-line research, have students determine the name and home-office location of the multinational corporation that produced each of the 20 products.
7. Class discussion:  Ask students if any of the information that they found surprised them.  Possibilities:  Several different products are produced by the same multinational firm, companies that they thought were U.S.-based are not, companies that manufacture in one country are often located in another.
8. Review market mix.  Discuss:  What countries or companies seemed to have best adapted their marketing mix to the U.S. market?  Why do you think they have been successful?
 
EVALUATION: Have the students select two companies from their lists--one that they view as a successful marketer in the U.S. and one that they view as not as successful.  Have them explain why they feel one company is more successful than the other, using the concepts of marketing mix in their explanation.
 
AUTHOR:
  Dr. Lila Waldman, Murray State University, Murray, KY.
EDITORS:
Les Dlabay, Lake Forrest College, Wildwood, IL.
Robert Ristau, Eastern Michigan University (ret.), Ypsilanti, MI.

 
 
 
 
 

Click here to download Microsoft Word version of the plan including handouts.