Assessing International Operations Of Nintendo: Procurement, Production, Distribution, And Cultural Dimensions

Overview of Nintendo’s international operations

The company that is chosen for this particular project is Nintendo that can be held as one of the largest multinational consumer electronics and gaming company. The headquarter of the company is situated in Kyoto. The company is considered to be one of the largest video game companies and it is famous for creating some of the most popular and top selling franchises for the video games, like Mario, The Legend of Zelda and Pokemon. The following project would assess the various questions that is related to the multinational video gaming company in relation to the countries that includes United States, United Kingdom and Japan. This includes the overview of the process of the way the countries do the trade and the way the products are outsourced.

1. The United States of America, the United Kingdom and Japan advocate the concept of globalization. Nevertheless, apart from the United States and the United Kingdom, Japan follows a conservative perspective towards its community and are usually conscious about the hierarchical position the prevails within such society. The political institutions signify transparency and are generally driven by the factors like achievement, success and competition. On the other hand, the United States and the United Kingdom are of the opinion that the prevalence of inequality amongst people is something that should be eliminated for the better progress of the society altogether.

One striking common features between the three nations that is, the United States, United Kingdom and Japan  is that the judiciary sys tem of these nations are effective in carrying out it responsibilities. The High Court, District Court, Family Court, the Supreme Court and the Summary Court are the five forms of courts that operate in Japan. It is believed that the judiciary system of Japan is similar to the judiciary system of the United States of America. However, the judicial system of the United Kingdom is more wide and include varieties compared to that of the judicial systems of the United States and Japan. This is evident from the variety of additional courts that operates within the United Kingdom. Such courts include the Magistrate Court, the Coroners Court, the Crown Court and the Ecclesiastical Court.

2. The company would get better with a liberalization of the trade like WTO as they would help the trade throughout the flow of the world smoothly. This provided the members with the fair methods in order to settle the disputes related to the trade, so that they do not have to resort to the harmful measures like the war (Dutt, Mihov & Van Zandt, 2013). On the contrary this is not necessary that the trade blocs are not helpful. They are helpful as they remain within a geographical location that usually reduces any kind of barriers that is related to the tariffs that are exported and therefore considered to be better (Khandelwal, Schott & Wei, 2013).

Political and economic risks in countries of operation

3. The culture of the foreign country is the most important thing in this context. For a video gaming company like Nintendo, the international market has a huge preference towards the quality. Apart from this the language is an important factor. It is important in the field of negotiation. The ethics and the value makes an impact towards the international business. The factors like region, ethnicity, race and region should be taken into consideration in this situation (Tang, Snowden, & Höök, 2013).

4. The term globalization is become a serious issue now days and there are three countries who are promoting the commencement of the issue. The names of the countries have been mentioned in early context. However, governance plays an important role in this case regarding the foreign policy challenges. When talking about the factor of bloodthirsty markets, all the three countries mentioned are in top of the most ready for exploit markets list in the world. Property rights are recognized and imposed in all the mentioned countries (Scaglioni-Solano & Aragón-Vargas, 2014). Property can be rented or leashed sub-lease is not justifiable with the consent of the owner. It is debatable whether globalization has actually made corruption even inferior. As research shows that, some businesses in developing economics have furthered.

5. It has been proved from the case study that Nintendo is the producer of goods. They have ripen off their hands in the businesses like cab or hotel sectors. According to the case, it has been observed that the company has started up one gaming plan and change the idea of gaming all over. The company has started their own playing card business and developed their own business and system hardware. After then, they have developed various consoles based on their games and after that; they have started to manufacture for arcades (Condry, 2013). The success that followed gave Nintendo a huge boost, which in turn led to create iconic franchises like Mario and Donkey Kong. The company saw the major success that their games created, from the 1980s, they started outsourcing their products internationally, and they are widely acclaimed right through the world.

6. The term tariff has been mentioned in this case. Tariff is a kind of tax, which is generally imposed on a product. There are certain goods exported in various countries and sell in a higher rate from where the seller has earned much profit. In Nintendo’s case, certain tariff has been imposed on the cost of the consoles, as major parts of the instruments are made of Japan. Further, certain ground rules have been implemented by the government on the ground that demand of the products are international in nature and is rare in certain countries (Egger at al., 2015).

Impact of cultural dimensions on international business

7. All the countries that have been discussed in the previously mentioned paragraphs are engaging them to pay for the importing process and exporting certain kinds of goods in various countries. Japan is also not an exception to this rule. Many of its products are exported in USA, UK or other states. Due to the trade bloc system, the process of trading becomes simple. 

8. It has been observed that Nintendo operates in more than 30 countries across Europe, Asia Pacific regions and in America. Each of the nations has a score in Hofstede’s cultural dimension scale depending on the 6 major aspects which are individualism, masculinity, power distance, uncertainty advantage, indulgence and long term orientation. The table exhibits the scores which were derived from hofstede-insights.com (hofstede-insights.com, 2018):

Country	Power Distance	Individualism	Masculinity	Uncertainty Advantage	Long term Orientation	Indulgence
USA	40	91	62	46	26	68
Canada	39	80	52	48	36	68
Mexico	81	30	69	82	24	97
Brazil	69	38	49	76	44	59
Japan	54	46	95	92	88	42
South Korea	60	18	39	85	100	29
Taiwan	58	17	45	69	93	49
Hong Kong	68	25	57	29	61	17
Australia	36	90	61	51	21	71
New Zealand	22	79	58	49	33	75
Austria	11	55	79	70	60	63
Belgium	65	75	54	94	82	57
Czech Republic	57	58	57	74	70	29
Denmark	18	74	16	23	35	70
Germany	35	67	66	65	83	40
Spain	57	51	42	86	48	44
Finland	33	63	26	59	38	57
France	68	71	43	86	63	48
Greece	60	35	57	100	45	50
Hungary	46	80	88	82	58	31
Italy	50	76	70	75	61	30
Netherlands	38	80	14	53	67	68
Norway	31	69	8	50	35	55
Poland	68	60	64	93	38	29
Portugal	63	27	31	99	28	33
Russia	93	39	36	95	81	20
South Africa	49	65	63	49	34	63
Sweden	31	71	5	29	53	78
Switzerland	34	68	70	58	74	66
UK	35	89	66	35	51	69
Ireland	28	70	68	35	24	65

Examples of how managers of US would be modifying her or his behavior while communicating with the executives hailing from different countries

In order to communicate with executives who come from numerous other nations, a manager who hails from United States should be able to understand the culture of the countries from which those people hail. And the manager should have the ability to develop a cultural competency in order to interact with those individuals.

9. Nintendo is a producer of goods. However, initially they tried to do many business for example, the business of cabs and hotels. It was after the 1980’s that the organization turned out to be one of the giants in the industry of video games. This changed the industry of gaming all over the world. They6 initially started this with a playing card company and it was from the mid-70s that they started producing their own hardware and their own console games. They then started to develop various consoles that are based on their games and after that they started to produce for the arcades (Condry, 2013). The success followed gave the company a huge boost that turned out in the creation of the iconic Franchises like Mario and Donkey Kong. 

10. The practice of bribery and corruption can result as the disadvantages for the companies those are willing to practice the ethics of their business and those who can give the undue advantages to the companies with the unethical and the illegal practices. These have a diverse effect.

11. The entry into the foreign markets can be determined by the ratio of the risks in order to return from the operating from the country. This ratio gets affected by the factors like the corruption index, the trade laws and the Hofstede Cultural Dimensions. The organization gives license of the products in the foreign countries in order to capture the market.

Procurement and production practices

12. I believe that the approach that has been taken by Nintendo in order to capture the foreign markets through Licensing is justified and effective.

13. Nintendo uses an exit strategy in order to maximize the benefits and minimize the losses. The aim behind it is to sell the copyrights to the products.

14. Nintendo have promised to maintain the ethical standards in the operations of the manufacturing unit (gamesindustry.biz, 2018). It follows the American Code of Conduct that determines the way the organization manages the Conflict of Interest, Insider Trade, Antitrust, Forign Corrupt Practices Act, Act of Bribery and the similar acts (.nintendo.com, 2018).

15. The organization is strongly aiming towards producing and marketing the best products and supporting the services that can be availed. The organization also concentrates on the satisfaction of the customers by treating them with respect. They aim at developing a positive environment.

16. The company is renowned for their quality that has dedicated a base of customers. This clears the fact that the company is able to adhere to its mission.

17. It can be stated that the company can be categorised as a stakeholder oriented organization. The fact behind this is that they can involve the customers who have an interest in high performance of the company.

18. It is a multi-national company that operates in more than 30 countries.

19. It uses the system of corporate governance in order to monitor and inform the business practice (nintendo.com, 2018).

20. I think that the company can benefit more form a matrix structure as it would initiate two different chains of command, one is horizontal and the other is vertical.

21. There is a great range of Nintendo products that includes the likes of 3Ds and the Amiibo toys. These are being manufactured in China. The products finally reach in America through the by cargoes via the West Coast. One of the big labour union that is being operated in the area of China is formed by the Dock workers of Nitendo. According to Aloupis et al. (2015), there is a popular forum that is linked with the Nitendo Corporation and that is the NeoGAF. This is known to be a gamer’s forum. This gamers are passionate about the Nitendo games. There are different members who forms a basic part of the program. This include the members of the progressive nations of America, Asia and Europe. They strictly begrudged the dropping out of Alison Rapp on the ground of Corporate Ethics. There are other forum of members that comprises of the people who belong to the political as well as apolitical backgrounds. They are a part of USA and they are within the regime of the USA.

Distribution channels and supply chain membership

22. The process of expatriating the employees is a common factor for the Nitendo in America. The game designing centres that is being operated in Japan prefer posting the Japanese expatriates there itself. Japan and China were considered to be the most overseas expatriates, needed the resources such as the communication training. The organization takes the effort to maintain a stable congregation of the managers who have the capacity of acquainting with the work that is prevalent in foreign cultures. The organization recruits people as HR form the home country itself. It enables the HR department to reflect the skills of the, employees in a better way. It is during the repatriation phase that the employees are provided with a technical training to the other employees majorly so that they are able to update to the standards of the work of the company.

23. The company uses the new platform of Nintendo in order to train the employees. They have the belief that since most of the people are acquainted with the facility of the DS, the training time can be put to half by using this. The employees learn the games and other developmental course during the seasoning period in the organization. In such cases they seek help for the internet. According to Bower et al. (2014), the monitoring of the learning of the employees is done over the internet itself. There is a chart forum that is followed by the employees all over the world.

24. The gaming consoles of Nintendo, have concentrated more on the needs of the gaming for the kids, those were aged under 12 years old. It was noticed that the elders were accustomed of enjoying the gaming in their PCs, tablets and in their mobile phones. On the contrary, the Wii U facility of gaming was not made that popular in China. The Super Mario gaming series have turned out to be a giant launch in the western counties. It was greatly accepted by the European countries. It was observed that the company recently made a strategic effort in order to occupy the South Asian market with the single product strategy. They launched Pokemon Go. The game turned out to be hugely successful. It was loved by all the group of people. Apart from this it did not make a scratch in the American market. This is the reason the organization in the history of its production, willingly have not focused on the products and the facilities that have been accepted in a larger scale in the product zones of the world.

Protection of intellectual property rights

25. In the countries that have huge population like India, China and the other South Asian countries, the company has adopted then strategy of making a promotion of their products (the gaming consoles mainly) as a tool of entertainment for the women, the adults and the entire family rather. According to the ideas of Chao, Scherer and Montgomery (2015), the promotion of the consoles of gaming of the company in these markets, presents these as popular home hubs of entertainment. The popular gaming culture of these countries can exaggerate the sales of Nintendo. However in America, it is popular among the small kids. The customers who are elder usually prefer X Box from the Microsoft. The marketing head of the company, Dan Coyner, who is basically of USA, holds the opinion that the market demographics of the Company after the entry of Reggie after the COO was replaced. Nintendo concentrated on promoting the corporate image of the corporation rather than concentrating on the promotion of the products. They decided to adopt the marketing policy in order to promote the company as a corporate brand with their Play Out Loud campaign. This was under which the ad campaigns have been started featuring the Butthole Surfers. The organization adopted the strategy of ironic promotion in Canada with the help of an ad. In that there were 5 doctors who prescribed the N drug where N stands for Nintendo and it would directly lead to “too much fun”. The doctor also advised to consult the ministry of fun that might offer a possible remedy to the problem.

26. Nintendo procures the Switch consoles from other countries like Japan or China and imports them to America where. The companies that owns the franchise manufactures each of them. The reason for selecting these two particular countries is that the operational cost pertaining to the cost of the labour and the price of the raw materials is less. The other site of procuring for the company is Congo that is specialized in supplying the Gold, Tantalum, tungsten and Tin for the products of the company (Nicholson et al. 2015). The company also supports with DENA that is a Japanese agency that creates the system of artificial intelligence that includes a capable circuits for the gaming products of Nintendo. The company is intending towards the globalisation and this is the reason it is procuring the Chinese technological experience. They have a separate research team in China.

Corruption perceptions and financial scandals

 27. The gaming consoles, like Nintendo DS that has touch design has been designed in Japan. There are games like Super Mario Bros or the Game Boy and the other new versions of Tertris were invented in Japan. However, it is known that China is a massive technology partner for the organization. In America the 8 bit processor was invented. This did not turn out to be adequate in case of supporting the facility of Silicon graphics. Therefore, later the company decided to purchase the 16 bit processor from Japan for their devices.

28. It has been seen that no nations where Nintendo operates can be looked at as countries which are economically and politically threatened apart from Greece.

29. The business organization majorly operates in the countries that have civil law. The system uses various abstractions and develops wide-ranging principles and makes a distinction between procedural laws and substantive laws and apart from that looks at case law as secondary to statutory laws.  It may also be paired with inquisitive laws.  This may be implied that the legal frameworks of these nations are dependent on some specific codes and the legislative enactment can be looked at as binding for everyone and can have major influence on courts and has lesser freedom of contracts (worldbank.org, 2018).

30. Nintendo never bought any insurance from OPIC, as OPIC only provides services to the American business organizations to get foothold in the market that are emerging.

31. Nintendo safeguards the intellectual properties by several copyright policies and under intellectual property rights, trademarks, patents, counterfit policy, counterfeit policy, Mod Chip Policy and many more.

32. The copyrights of the organization will expire in 75 years from the date of the first ever publicatiob of the intellectual property according to US copyright laws.

33. The management of Nintendo wants to recoup the losses from Intellectual property expiration by filing many other patents and also by renewing copyrights for properties that can generate revenues.

34. It has been seen that out of all the countries where Nintendo operates, Canada has the lowest corruption and their score is 82/100 and rank 8/80. On the other hand, Mexico has the highest corruption rate and their score is 29/100 and their rank is 135/180 (transparency.org, 2018).

35. The Canadian Foundation for Advancement of Investor Rights (FAIR) report on financial scandals between 1998 to 2009, includes the following financial scandals in Canada: 1. Brost, Sorenson et al. Fraud (1999-2005), Earl Jones (1986-2009), Essex (1994-1999), Farm Mutual (2003-2007), Fulcrum (2004-2005), iForum (2005), Andrew Lech (1999-2003), Manna (2005-2007), Norbourg (2000-2005), Norsheild (2004-2005), Portus (2003-2005), Weizhen Tang (2006-2009), Ian Thow (2003-2005), Triglobal (1997-2007), Vantage (1998) (faircanada.ca, 2011) and Valeant (2015).

Currency exchange rates and economic risks

In Mexico, the scandals comprise the Bribery Scandal (2017), Toallagate (2001), and Pemexgate (2000).

36. In accordance with National observer, Valeant scandal should be seen as sleaziest scandal that took place in Canada. Valeant is a major pharmaceutical business corporation that operates in Canada. The management of the business organization has scrapped off their R&D Wing in the year of 2008 as it was not generating revenues and focused on acquiring business organizations that has already launched products in the markets and then they reduced the costs and the inflating prices to maximize the profitability when the rate of expenditure got lowered down to 3% of the sales (fortune.com, 2018; newyorker.com, 2018).

37. The organization has a diversified and complicated chain of supply. It is particular in the distribution channel of the company. This include the Asian countries that is maintained by various other partners like, Jesnet and Ajioka. These are considered to be the largest distributors of hardware arrangements in the South Asia with the cross-national links.

38. The company exports the products to the other countries of South America, Europe, Asia and America. The two largest bases are China and Japan. The other important market is Europe. The native markets of China manufactures a great range of gaming consoles for the company. The point that needs consideration is that the Super Mario series of games have been extremely popular in Europe therefore, they have collected a larger portion of revenue from the developed nations of Europe.

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