Marketing Article Review - Book Report/Review Example

Section/# Article The article grapples with the economic issues surrounding Southern European economies and sets out to provide comprehensive suggestions for how many of these issues could be ameliorated by attracting high level of DFI (Direct Foreign Investment) and/or JVs (Joint Ventures). In this way, the article makes a running list of recommendations and outlines a rubric in which the nations in question can work to employ. Although both DFI and JVs can work to inject much needed investment into the local economies of the countries in question, providing an attractive environment in which foreign firms will be interested in investing is the primary hurdle to achieving the benefits that DFI and JVs can have to offer.

In order to maximize the amount of foreign investment that a given economy may enjoy, the authors put forward a list of key areas that policy makers should focus upon in order to reap the most benefits from the increasing need and desire that MNC (Multi-National Corporations) have to continue to expand their presence. Many of the changes that have been proposed by this research are concentric upon changing the perceptions map that MNCs often view a given nation or geographic. Such perceptions mapping are oftentimes difficult to reverse due to longstanding biases that may exist on the systemic level; however, implementing policies which effectively reduce or negate such a subset of biases is a powerful step in reigniting the interest of MNCs with relation to serving the needs of a given market and providing low cost alternatives that many of the competing nations cannot offer.

As such, the authors list a 14 point rubric that they claim is a deciding metric for how MNCs determine overall attractiveness of a given nation with regards to an expansion effort or influx of investment into the system. These 14 points are as follows: 1) macroeconomic environment 2) government involvement and regulations 3) legal issues/environment, 4) presence of similar multinational corporations, 5) availability of skilled labor force, 6) overall taxation rate, 7) proximity to target markets, 8) complexity of reporting, 9) country infrastructure, 10) government support for MNCs, 11) ease of establishing business, 12) auditing requirements, 13) ease of daily life, 14) political risk.

Similarly, 12 of these 14 points are intrinsically linked to items that policy makers and government action can directly affect. In this way, national mapping helps policy makers involved determine what specific shortcoming exist within their given system that they might work to remedy as a way to attract a higher level of DFI as well as minimize many cultural and other forms of biases that poorly portray the system. Reference Lowengart, O, & Menipaz, E 2001, 'On the marketing of nations and multinational corporations: A competitive positioning mapping', Management Decision, 39, 4, pp.

302-314, PsycINFO, EBSCOhost, viewed 21 October 2012. Article 2: This particular article deals with many of the shortcomings that businesses face with regards to setting up and utilizing an effective supply chain management. Furthermore, the article puts forward that in order to overcome such shortcomings, it is necessary for firms to understand and utilize collaborative supply chain management. In order to do this, the authors recommend that firms should create effective and detailed positioning maps that help to define and clearly denote who the individual actors in their supply chain are at every single step of the process.

Likewise, by implementing a clear strategy with the actors denoted prior to adaptation of such a strategy, business leaders can more effectively make informed decisions as to which particular path they might be interested in pursuing. Without such abilities, supply chain positioning and mapping can take many highly costly detours that waste valuable time and resources that a firm operating on the very cusp of technology can ill afford. Resultantly, the author of the piece in question lays out a carefully designed rubric through which firms can measure the strength and resiliency of their particular supply chain as a function of its ability to map the key factors involved as well as take into account regional/national anomalies.

The implications of the research reveal that investment into collaborative systems as a means to forecast future needs and actions of the firms developments is highly desirable. Although such predictions cannot be made with certainty, the key facets of information they provide as well as the actual process of mapping out the given process provides an invaluable experience in which key shareholders invariably learn a great deal more about their firm than they might have been aware at the beginning of the process.

Reference McNichols, T, & Brennan, ‘Evaluating eCollaboration: Toward A Positioning Map For Supply Chain Integration’, 17th Bled eCommerce Conference eGlobal, June 21-24 2004.