Discussion 1

· Reflect upon the IT strategies that are used to encourage economic development. Select two strategies and discuss how economic factors affect the strategies that a government may use to facilitate economic development.

· Choose the strategies that seem to be complementary to one other and could be implemented simultaneously. Justify your response.

· Using the three-step process for assessing the IT organization, determine the impact of economic factors at the enterprise level for each step.

· Give your opinion as to which critical element of strategy (people, process, or technology) is the most important. Justify your answer.

· Evaluate the elements of a strong marketing channel strategy to determine what element of the strategy might cause the strategy to fail.

· Choose a company of your choice that operates its own logistics and one that likely outsources its logistics functions. Comparing the two, discuss how the two companies approach their marketing channel strategies. 

· Choose a retailer. Then, of the six phases of the channel design process, determine which has the greatest impact on whether or not a channel strategy is successful for that retailer. Provide your rationale.

· Examine how a strong marketing channel design will pay for itself.