Thesis Topics for Global/International Marketing
1. How globalization may influence the standardization of international marketing strategies.
2. How changes and developments in communication and information technology may influence the coordination of firms’ worldwide operations.
3. The role of regional trading blocs in strengthening an organization’s competitiveness at a global level.
4. How country-based environmental diversity influences the development of a global marketing strategy and process.
5. The roles and challenges of global market research (qualitative and quantitative, and the Internet as a tool in this research task) for developing effective global marketing strategies.
6. The role of the Internet in assisting global firms in the development of a global distribution and market entry strategy.
7. The universal and/or culturally bound ethical and moral conduct that may impact an organization’s globalization efforts.

Managing Global Software and High-tech Firms
Possible research topics include:
• Software product development approaches for global markets
• Global value chain activities of different categories of software and high-tech firms
• Global business strategies of various types of software and high-tech firms
• Global organizational structures of various types of software and high-tech firms
• Worldwide coordination, collaboration, and control in global software and high-tech firms
• Commercialization approaches of software in global marketplace by different types of software firms.

International Strategic Alliance of Software and High-tech Enterprises
Currently, leading software companies are establishing strategic alliances (SAs). Some functional alliances that are commonly used by software companies both domestically and internationally include R&D alliance, production alliance, marketing alliance, and financial alliance. By establishing SAs, companies can become financially stronger through the accumulation of money from all partners, develop complex technology or product by joint efforts, obtain access to new markets with the help of knowledgeable partners, etc. However, companies encounter several problems in establishing and maintaining strategic alliance relationships. Research question includes:

• How could software companies participate in international alliance and obtain benefits, and avoid the aforementioned problems?

ITs can help in searching partners, establishing strategic alliance relationships, managing these relationships, and resolving some of the difficulties associated with these business arrangements. Research questions include:

• How are suitable partners for strategic alliance (licensing or JV) found out and evaluated from around the world by using ITs?
• How the relationships are structured in these business arrangements?
• How they are managed through IT support?
• What leadership skills are required from the responsible executives?
• How the problems in these arrangements are avoided?

Globalization Processes of Software and High-tech Firms
Liberalization of trade regulations, improvement of communication technologies, and other factors are turning national markets into a global market and creating more competition. It is also making easier for companies to tap opportunities in various foreign markets. Companies should try to increase commitments to important foreign markets. Possible research questions include:

• How could software and high-tech companies globalize effectively through the support of ITs?
• Which factors contribute to the success of IT-supported globalization?
• Which factors create barriers and how could these barriers be avoided?
• How could companies execute IT-supported global marketing?
• How could companies execute a multi-channel-based distribution (i.e. integrating Internet-based type of software distribution with other traditional distribution channels)?
• How could domestic software companies transform themselves from domestic production firms into global service firms?
• What are the key global trends in software industry, which opportunities and threats are created for software industry, and which strategies software companies should adopt to tap the opportunities and avoid the threats?

Product-led strategy
Those software companies who are having niche oriented product-led strategy, they can grow well avoiding intense competition and make profit. Commodity product like word processing cannot survive against the established giant. Service providers cannot grow worldwide rapidly. Selling of nice products also opens doors for selling value-added services, such as modifications, training, implementation, and support. Research question:

• How can a company become successful in product-led strategy?

Growth strategies and management
Growth can be measured by: a) sales growth and b) profit growth, because these are important for small ventures. Growth can also be measured by employment growth. However, growth can be achieved by outsourcing without a large increasement of employees. Furthermore, companies need to keep their number of employees lower in the intense competitive environment, due to uncertainty in the marketplace, uncertainty in the global economy, etc. There are other items that are commonly included in growth such as market share growth, asset growth, cash flow on assets, return on asset, gross profit margin, etc. One can include these elements according to ones need. Research questions:

• What are the strategies that small ventures adopt in order to achieve growth?
• Which resources and capabilities are required in order to deploy these strategies?
• How to determine which of the options are suitable for a specific firm's operation in a specific environment?
• How can a suitable option (may be in combination with other options as well) be implemented successfully?

 

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