Universite Laval Study Exchange Report 2020 Mirai Nagai

EMBA student Mirai Nagai successfully attended the Université Laval Summer School:
International Marketing, held online in July 2020.

Study abroad report for International Marketing. Through experience in this program, I could have learned and developed the following skills;

• Throughout this course I was able to develop my English communication skill in English.
•  I have noticed the differences in business culture and environment from other countries.
•  Through my presentation of the Japanese business culture and environment I was able to find out their impression about us.

1) In class, I learned how to co-exist both specificities of local business environments and global marketing plans. Since English is the medium of instruction, in this experience I was able to develop my communication skill in English as well. Since in this course we are fully focused on business topics, I have had the opportunity to learn more about English business terms and phrases compared to my regular English classes. Terminologies which I can use for easier understanding when discussing about business issues with my foreign counterparts.

In this summer school program, I was able to learn a lot of specific concepts like:

• How to localize marketing plans to export to other countries.
• How much we should localize to succeed in the exportations.

2) In our class discussion, we talked about what kind of things should we pay attention to if we are to launch new cosmetic products in, for example, South Korea. I have learned the importance of taking into consideration the differences in business culture and environment through these discussions;

What information is required?

• PESTEL analysis
• SWOT
• Consumer habit
• Customer personals e.g. age, gender, upper/lower class

How to collect information?

• Social media – collect information vis Social media and observe their habit.
• Researching observing videos uploaded into SNS like YouTube would help us understand their way of makeup, and how they choose the cosmetics.
• Online survey via outsource research company
• Observation would help us understand how they use their cosmetics in department.

What to do to fulfill mandate?

• The needed mandate would depend on the plan above e.g. Focus group, franchise or license.
• In our idea, at least two kinds of professional are needed to contract like lawyers and accountants who knows local business in detail.
• We should hire a translator to translate from French/English to Korean in logos, document etc.

Also, it was quite interesting for me to find out that in Quebec you always have to prepare for your documents in both English and French because of the Official Languages Act, which aims to promote equality in the use of both languages.

3) Through my presentation of the Japanese business culture and environment I was able to figure out their impression about us.

In the program our team made a marketing plan to export sports video games from our gaming company KONAMI, to Quebec. Thorough discussing our marketing plan and the feed backs I got from the professors, I found out how foreigner businessmen look upon our business culture and environment as follows;

• Expect to be supplied with highly quality products or services.
• Decision takes some time to be made so expect some delays.
• For some traditional companies, innovations are still lacking.

(Although with some global Japanese companies they are competitively innovative.)