MKT 7995/MKT 4990 (WSU)
IS 499/IS 699 (EMU)
Spring/Summer 2000
Computer-Aided Systems for Foreign Market Entry Planning
Professor Attila Yaprak (WSU) and Professor Mike Mitri (EMU)
This course is a project-oriented class that incorporates topics from decision support systems with topics from international marketing. The course involves the use of decision support frameworks called CEVAL (Candidate Evaluation) and CEVED (Candidate Evaluation Editor) which assist in decisions involving international market entry. Teams of students will use the CEVED and CEVAL software tools during the term to create, test, and ultimately disseminate a decision support system on some aspect of international marketing, i.e. product adaptation.
The course will begin with a presentation of the content area of international marketing by Dr. A Yaprak. This will be followed by an introduction to decision support systems and a tutorial on how to use the CEVAL and CEVED software tools for developing and testing decision support systems. After this, student teams will be working on projects on their own. They will communicate with Drs. Yaprak and Mitri through e-mail. Drs. Yaprak and Mitri will provide international marketing expertise and direction for the students' research. Dr. Mitri will provide software support and design guidelines for student teams to develop the system.
Project Work and Grading:(20%) Assignment #1: Using CEVAL and MAPS.
Students will download and run the MAPS system against two sample cases: Apache Container Corporation and Goodwill Industries. Through use of CEVAL and MAPS, students will gain experience with the software and get an idea of how to develop their own decision support systems for future projects.
(20%) Assignment #2: Target Market Research using NTDB and other online research tools.
Students will use the National Trade Database and other online resources to perform market research on assigned countries and/or geographical regions, perhaps focusing on a particular set of industries. Students will perform a market analysis for assigned countries and/or industries international marketing criteria as defined in the class and in the MAPS module.
(60%) Assignment #3: Research and DSS Development.
Students will perform in-depth research on a particular area of international marketing, write a paper regarding the theory of that area (50% of the project grade), and develop a CEVAL- based expert system (50% of the project grade). The paper will include documentation on how to use the system. Students will test the system on sample cases, analyze the results, and include this analysis in their papers.
At the end of the semester, students will present the subject matter, demonstrate their system, and present an analysis of the results.
Class Schedule (Milestone Dates):
| 5/13/00 | Meet at Farmington Campus Introduction and Overview (Yaprak) Introduction to MAPS and CEVAL (Mitri) Multi-Attribute Decision Models and the Candidate Evaluation Architecture CEVAL and CEVED (Mitri) Break into teams Assignment #1 out |
| 5/20/00 | Meet at Farmington Campus Marketing Research and Modes of Entry (Yaprak) |
| 5/31/00 | Assignment #1 Due (emailed to Yaprak and Mitri) |
| 6/7/00 | Assignment #3 Team Proposals Due (emailed to Yaprak and Mitri) |
| 6/15/00 | Assignment #2 Due (emailed to Yaprak and Mitri) |
| 7/1/00 | Meet at Farmington Campus Progress review of each groups projects Each group gives INFORMAL presentation of their CEVAL models, and receives guidance from Mitri/Yaprak for improvement on models |
| 8/26/00 | Meet at Farmington Campus Teams Project Presentations Assignment #3 Due |