Comparison of Economic and Political Environments

INT 220 Module Three Assignment TemplateEconomic and Political Environments Comparison
Complete this template by replacing the bracketed text with the relevant information.
Section One
In the space below, describe your initial thoughts on how insights from the required data to be collected could help to inform business decisions. For example, consider what information each data point provides, whether you think some data points should be weighted more or less heavily than others in making a business decision, what ideal data points might look like for expansion into a new market for your product, the ways that different political systems may impact a decision, and so forth.
The product: Neck Massager
The data points help to paint a clearer picture of how a country will respond to the product being introduced to the market. For example, the economic classification of a country should help inform the business decision by making it clear to the management the sort of market they could be dealing with. A highly developed economy could indicate a much safer but highly competitive business environment. However, even though this may be the case, the economic blocs a country belongs to could also impact the expansion efforts of an organization. For example, there could be certain regulations imposed by the trading bloc that offers or gives priority to the expansion activities of organizations within the same trading bloc. If, for example, the GDP per capita is high, this could be a sign that the market is capable of purchasing the product being introduced in the market. On the other hand, a country’s GDP denotes the value of goods and services produced and sold within a market. The higher the GDP of a country, the higher the likelihood that organizations in such a market are doing well. However, such a market could also indicate greater competition and increased difficulty in entering such a market. So, it could make sense for a country to consider investing in a country with low GDP where there could be less competition.
Other factors that could impact the sales of a product include the human development index, gender development index, gender empowerment measure, and human poverty index. The higher HDI value, the better. This value includes key dimensions such as life expectancy, schooling years, income per capita, and years of schooling. On the other hand, the gender development index and the gender empowerment measure help indicate how well a country has allowed its female counterparts to excel and contribute to enhancing the economy.
Another crucial data point is the political atmosphere in a country. Political stability is a crucial point that starts with the political system that is present in a country. A parliamentary system, as well as a federal presidential constitutional system, means that democracy is present and that to a great extent, the citizens’ rights are not easily infringed. Sun (2014) reports that in a democracy, foreign direct investment (FDI) tends to have a positive effect. Further, FDI levels also tend to be higher in countries where democracy happens to be greatly favored. Therefore, a democracy could offer an ideal market for the product at hand to excel and have a bigger percentage in sa...