Country manager essay

INTRODUCTION

Country Manager is an international marketing simulation which focuses on the issue of international market entry and expansion. We played the role of a country manager for a major consumer products company called Allstar brand who was faced with a matured domestic in Latin America. Our country manager team developed a marketing strategy for the product Allsmile, choosing among six countries in Latin America. We also implemented this marketing strategy which would be profitable for the AllStar brand. Over a period of 10 years, the country manager team had to decide how to target, position and segment AllStar in Latin America.

We entered 4 countries in Latin America within a period of 10 years. The name of our brand is Allstar and the name of our product is All Smile. All Star brands is a US-based consumer products company that produces and sells drugs such as ethical (prescription) pharmaceutical, over the counter and non- prescription and also consumer products. It has a number of leading brands in various categories. The objective of our country manger team was to decide how best to enter this potentially lucrative markets even though we had International, local and regional competitors, where production should take place or where to build a plant.

We also had to decide what segment to target and the distribution channel to use. The simulation allows us to explore Market Entry, Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning, 4Ps which are Price, Product, Place and Promotion. Latin America is a region of great potential. With a population of approximately 450 million, the region represents a population that is 50 percent larger than that of the United States and Canada. The region has a history of having been politically unstable and has had many weak economies characterized by low growth, high inflation, and a reluctance to take tough economic actions to correct these problems.