Ikea Case Study

IKEA AND Case study

Aim: Identify the best country to enter.

 Objectives: Which country has the best opportunities? Which has the biggest risks? What sourcing opportunities are there?

Questions: What type of transport infrastructure does Country X have? How stable is the economy in Country Y?

 Draft an Executive Summary that includes a description of the research you are carrying out.

 Revise any sections of the report that you have already written e.g. Identification and Explanation/Opportunities/Ambition and try to include research terminology.

Draft the ‘risks’ and ‘positioning’ sections.

Which country are you basing your assignment on?

 Have you drafted an Executive Summary that includes a description of the research you are carrying out? (100-150 words)

Have you completed a revised draft that identifies and briefly describes the country that includes research terminology? (100 – 150 words)

Have you completed a revised draft explaining why you consider it to be an emerging or transitional country? (100 – 150 words)

Have you written up a revised draft description of the ‘opportunities’ the country holds for the case study company? Does it include appropriate research terminology? (Up to 400 words)

Have you written a first draft of the ‘risks’ section? (Up to 400 words)

Have you written up a revised draft of the company’s ‘ambition’? (Up to 200 words and a diagram)

 Have you written a first draft of the ‘positioning’ section? (Up to 200 words and a diagram) Will you be making any recommendations for further research.

A company that has a similar background to IKEA, albeit a smaller organisation, is the case study company that your assignment will be based on. As a final activity for Lecture 1 read the Case Study and the Assignment.

 The case study company in this assignment does not exist, however elements of the case study are drawn from experiences and plans of real companies based in the Irish agribusiness, food and retail sectors. For the purposes of the assignment consider that the company is real and that it is seeking advice from a consultant on a country-market which it should explore in more detail.

You may find it useful to answer the following questions:

  What does ‘international business’ mean to the case study company’s owners/managers?

∙  What would be their ‘viewpoint’ on globalisation e.g. are the globalists, Americanists, etc.?

∙  What is the history of the organisation?

∙  How have events in the development of international business affected the organisation?

∙  Is the company right to pursue a strategy of becoming more international?

∙  What are the advantages?∙  What are the disadvantages?

∙  How does the organisation compare with IKEA i.e. what is the same or similar about the two

organisations?

 How does the case study organisation contrast with IKEA i.e. what is different?