Introduction to international business management expanded my knowledge about what it is required to successfully manage a business that operates internationally. In the last 11 weeks I have learnt many concepts concerning international business management from the classroom lectures, the textbook and the course contents online but I will summarize my most significant lessons from the course. Based on the overview of international business I learnt about the basic forms of international business activities which are exportation and importation, international investments, international licensing, international franchising, and international management contracts. Exporting deals with selling goods and services from a particular country to another country for utilization or resale while importation on the other hand deals with purchasing goods or services from another country for utilization or resale in one’s country. International investments are divided into two categories and they are foreign direct investment and portfolio investments. In foreign direct investments there is the control of property, assets, or companies which are located abroad while in portfolio investment there is no direct control even after investing in financial assets like bonds, stocks and certificates of deposit. With an International licensing it grants a business enterprise within a country the permission in using the intellectual property of another business enterprise from another country, but a royalty payment must be made. International franchising on the other hands enables a business enterprise within a country to use the logos, brand names and operating styles of another business enterprise from another country in which a royalty payment will also be made. While with International Management contracts depicts an agreement whereby a business enterprise within a country uses facilities or render other management services to another business enterprise from another country for a particular fee. In addition, I also learnt that globalization is the integration of markets that enables a business enterprise to operate internationally in a faster and cheaper way. There are also some reasons which causes it to arise such as obtaining factors of production at a cheaper price, expanding into the new markets after maturity in other to raise a greater revenue, maintaining a strong competition with other firms and many other factors.
Moving on I also learnt about the marketplaces of the world in which some of them were north America, western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, Middle East and South America. I learnt the role of the America to the global marketplaces as they serve as the prime market for lower and higher income countries to improve export and business respectively. Also, they have the U.S. dollar that serves as the invoicing currency for half of all international businesses and through this they con tribute to the foreign-currency reserve global...
