Chapter 8 International Strategies

     International strategy is how a company approaches business activities outside its borders and how it will do in the future.  So why would a company want to go international, well think the answer is easy, money.  A company is going to reach its peak revenue at some point.  A prime example of this is the NFL.  With revenue in the billions of dollars, but Super Bowl numbers really starting to level off in the United States the only way to expand is international.  That is why you see the NFL starting to play game in London and talking about having a team in Europe. 

     Merck is definitely an already international company as of 2010 the US company has around 55,000 employees in 120 countries with 31 factories worldwide.  Merck produces a lot of its raw materials in foreign countries then ships those plants to factories to turn into pharmaceutical drugs. They do this because of the cost benefit and will profits becoming harder to come by a company is willing to take whatever steps it can to keep those profits high. An international project that Merck works on is fighting counterfeit medicine, an international task force estimates that up to 30% of all medicine are counterfeit.  Many of these drugs can be deadly because the the dosage amounts greatly vary between pills.  A person can easily overdose on these types of drugs.  Merck has developed a machine called the Minilab, which can detect counterfeit medicines quickly, easily, and reliably.


Source
Fighting Counterfeit