Technique Masterclasses

Business Paper 4 — Global Business

Flashcard Bank

Compiled 2026-09-29. This is a reformatting exercise, not new research. Every flashcard below reformats content already verified and written in this paper's own CODEX files — codex-definitions-and-application- bank.md (Parts 1 and 2), codex-complete-worked-paper.md, and the seven codex-deep-dive-*.md files in this same folder — into front/back flashcard pairs organised by the spec's own 4.3.1–4.3.4 sub-section structure. No new claim, figure, case or definition appears below that is not already stated in one of those files; where a source flags a definition as "fresh" (not yet in the site-wide glossary) or a fact as "unconfirmed for this paper," that flag is carried into the card rather than dropped silently. Series/ question citations (e.g. "June 2022 Q1a") follow the same sourcing as the CODEX files themselves and are not independently re-verified here — see those files' own Sources sections for the underlying Pearson documents. No grade boundary or likelihood percentage appears anywhere below; none of the source files states one either. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Pearson Edexcel.

WBS14 Flashcard Bank — Unit 4: Global Business

How this bank is organised

Cards are grouped by the spec's own 4.3.1–4.3.4 numbering, matching codex-definitions-and-application- bank.md's own Part 1 structure. Within each spec sub-section: term cards come first (front = the spec term or formula, back = its definition, condensed from Part 1 of the definitions bank), then worked- example cards (front = a real, cited exam case; back = the real figures or mechanism behind it, drawn from Part 2 of the definitions bank and the matching codex-deep-dive-*.md file). Cards are numbered sequentially (1–114) for reference. A worked-example card's series/question citation is carried over exactly as the source states it. This is the content-reference layer only — technique (how marks are earned, command words, band structures) already lives in forge-exam-technique-guide.md and is not duplicated here.

4.3.1 Globalisation

4.3.1.1 Growing economies

1. Q: Developed / developing / emerging economies — three separate labels, or one spectrum? A: One spectrum, not three boxes. Income (GDP per capita), productive structure (how far output/ employment has shifted from primary toward secondary/tertiary activity) and institutional development (functioning credit, legal and regulatory systems) move together as the same growth process advances. "Emerging" names a country actively in that transition, not a fixed fourth category.

2. Q: GDP per capita — definition and formula A: GDP per capita = GDP ÷ population — a rough measure of average income per person, since a country with a large total GDP can still be poor per person. Its percentage change is not simply %ΔGDP minus %Δpopulation — population growth compounds in the denominator, so the two must be combined properly, not subtracted, for an exact figure.

3. Q: Human Development Index (HDI) A: A composite 0–1 measure combining normalised indices for education, health (life expectancy) and income (GNI per capita at PPP, log-transformed), combined via their geometric mean so a very low score on one dimension can't be masked by strength in the other two. Says nothing about within-country distribution, environmental sustainability, or political freedom. Named on this paper's spec but not numerically examined in any series checked — recognise it, don't expect to calculate it.

4. Q: Structural transformation / employment patterns A: The shift of an economy's output and labour away from low-productivity primary-sector activity toward higher-productivity secondary (manufacturing) and tertiary (services) activity as it grows. On this paper, "employment patterns" specifically means which sector people work in — the sectoral mix — not the total number of people in work.

5. Q: Economic growth — implications for individuals and businesses A: A rise in a country's real GDP over time. The spec point tested is not growth itself but its consequences (new trade opportunities, a changing employment/skills mix), tied to a specific named party (an individual, a named business, a named country's businesses) — not answered as a generic, economy-wide description.

6. Q: Worked example — Thailand's GDP per capita (June 2022 Q1a) A: GDP $546bn, population 69,410,000. GDP per capita = $546,000,000,000 ÷ 69,410,000 = $7,866.30. The $ sign and two decimal places are both part of the mark scheme's own correct answer.

7. Q: Real case discipline — GDP-per-capita Calculate openers across series A: Thailand (June 2022 Q1a) is fully worked and confirmed. Senegal (January 2023 Q1a) is confirmed as the same question type, but its own GDP/population figures aren't transcribed anywhere in this course's CODEX files. A separate Thailand mention for October 2021 Q1a exists in some of this course's own sourcing, but is flagged elsewhere as contested against a different tag for that same question — treat that one specifically as unresolved, not confirmed.

8. Q: Worked example — Vietnam's employment patterns (June 2022 Q1c) A: Prior to 2000, Vietnam was an emerging economy with many people employed in the primary sector. Since then, Vietnam's GDP more than doubled between 2010 and 2020, and its exports of goods and services tripled over the same period — real evidence for a shift toward manufacturing and services. But whether growth itself caused the shift is uncertain: FDI-seeking-cheap-labour may have driven the sectoral shift, which then caused the GDP rise, rather than growth causing the shift directly.

9. Q: Worked example — Australia as a developed economy (October 2021 Q1b) A: Services comprise 62.7% of Australia's GDP and employ 78.8% of its labour force — the mark scheme's own model answer for tertiary-sector reliance as a developed-economy characteristic. Other real developed- economy comparators named directly: the US, UK, New Zealand and Germany.

10. Q: Worked example — trade opportunities for European businesses (June 2022 Q1d) A: Developing economies' combined share of global exports of goods and services reached 44.3% by 2019. Real named competitors from developing economies: China's Haier and Lenovo, India's Tata and Infosys — now large, innovative global businesses fully capable of competing with, not just buying from, European firms. A business competing on price alone is more exposed to this competition than one competing on quality, brand or innovation.

4.3.1.2 International trade and business growth

11. Q: Exports / imports A: Exports are goods or services sold by a country's residents to buyers abroad; imports are goods or services bought by a country's residents from sellers abroad.

12. Q: Specialisation A: A country or business concentrating production on the good(s) it can produce relatively most efficiently (comparative advantage), trading for everything else rather than attempting self-sufficiency. Raises output and efficiency, but concentrates risk: a specialised exporter's revenue becomes tied to demand conditions in whichever single market or commodity it has specialised into.

13. Q: Foreign direct investment (FDI) — link to business growth A: Investment by a firm or individual from one country into productive assets (factories, machinery, a controlling stake) in another. Examined as a growth mechanism for the investing business (new markets, new capacity) and, simultaneously, as a growth driver for the recipient economy — the same transaction read from two sides.

14. Q: Worked example — Thailand's rubber specialisation (June 2022 Q1b) A: Thailand is the world's biggest exporter of natural rubber, and 42.4% of that output is sold to China. That scale of demand needs many workers to keep up with supply, creating jobs and income — the mark scheme's own model answer. A separate, equally creditable route: specialising lets Thai rubber-processing businesses spread fixed costs over a much larger export market, lowering average cost per unit.

15. Q: Worked example — Vietnam, South Korea and Apple's FDI (October 2021 Q1c) A: South Korea invested $7.9bn into Vietnam, and Apple moved AirPods production there. Credited chain: this raises productive capacity, lowers unemployment, and — via the resulting exports — improves the balance of payments. Credited counter-risk: FDI-driven growth arriving too quickly can trigger inflation.

4.3.1.3 Factors contributing to increased globalisation

16. Q: Trade liberalisation A: The reduction or removal of barriers to international trade — tariffs, quotas, non-tariff barriers. Narrows the price wedge a foreign producer's price has to clear to undercut a domestic one, so more goods cross the threshold into being traded.

17. Q: World Trade Organization (WTO) A: The multilateral body overseeing global trade rules and settling disputes between members, built on non-discrimination between trading partners. Tested both as a positive liberalisation force (running rounds, resolving disputes, 164 member countries) and, in its own standalone Assess question, with a genuine limit: it cannot force a member to cut a trade barrier, and disputes can take a long time to resolve.

18. Q: Political change (as a globalisation factor) A: A government policy shift — most often the opening-up of a previously closed or heavily restricted economy — that changes what cross-border trade and investment is permitted. Distinct from trade liberalisation: usually a single country's own internal policy shift rather than a negotiated agreement between parties.

19. Q: Reduced cost of transport and communication A: Two distinct real channels: (1) containerisation cutting the cost of moving goods by sea, and cheaper air travel enabling more face-to-face business contact; (2) satellites and other communications technology cutting the cost of communicating across borders — a genuinely separate channel from the transport story, not the same "technology got cheaper" point twice.

20. Q: Multinational corporation (MNC) / transnational corporation (TNC) A: A business that owns or directly controls production or service operations in more than one country, coordinated from a single decision-making structure — different from a firm that simply exports from one home base, because an MNC's own operations sit inside more than one national economy at once.

21. Q: Migration (within and between economies) A: The movement of people to live and work in a different region or country. Net migration raises the labour force directly where positive, and affects a receiving economy's employment, wages and consumer demand depending on whether incoming workers substitute for or complement the existing workforce's skills.

22. Q: Growth of the global labour force A: A rise in the total number of people available to work worldwide, driven by population growth and rising labour-force participation (notably in emerging economies) — expands the pool of workers and consumers a globally-operating MNC can draw on. Distinct from migration, which redistributes an existing labour force rather than growing the global total.

23. Q: Structural change (as a globalisation factor) A: A shift in the sectoral composition of an economy — e.g. agriculture toward manufacturing or services — that changes which skills and sectors are rewarded. Can raise average income economy-wide while genuinely disadvantaging workers whose skills no longer match demand.

24. Q: Agglomeration economies A: The cost advantage a firm gets from locating near other firms in the same or a related industry — a skilled labour pool, a supplier network, and infrastructure or customs procedures already adapted to that trade. Explains why MNC growth tends to compound in specific regions rather than arriving as evenly-spread independent investments.

25. Q: Impact on businesses of increased globalisation A: Not a separate mechanism — the spec's own instruction that every globalisation factor must be landed on a real, named business rather than an abstract economy.

26. Q: Worked example — the EU–Vietnam trade agreement (October 2021 Q1e) A: The real, named example of trade liberalisation directly contributing to globalisation — a single bilateral agreement, not a multilateral round.

27. Q: Worked example — the WTO's Doha round and dispute resolution (Jan 2023 Q1e; Jan 2026 Q1d) A: 164 member countries currently join for the trade-liberalisation access it brings; it has resolved real disputes (Australia vs. Canada, over wine restrictions; a harmful-fishing-subsidies dispute). But the Doha round collapsed after 14 years without full agreement, and the WTO cannot force any member to cut a barrier — the mark scheme's own closing line: the WTO is "just one of several factors" for trade liberalisation, but "an important contributor."

28. Q: Worked example — containerisation and communications costs (Jan 2023 Q1e) A: Containerisation cut the cost of moving goods by sea to just over 20% of its former cost by the end of the 20th century. Satellites and other communications technology separately cut the cost of communicating across borders to a small fraction of what it previously was — two separate channels, both real.

29. Q: Worked example — migration's two channels (Jan 2023 Q1e) A: Migration is credited through two genuinely separate channels: labour mobility as a supply-side input (more workers available to a globalising business), and — the channel most answers miss — "migration of people spread ideas and culture leading to further globalisation," a cultural-diffusion mechanism distinct from the labour-supply one.

4.3.1.4 Protectionism

30. Q: Protectionism A: Government action to shield domestic producers from foreign competition — tariffs, quotas, non- tariff barriers (e.g. safety/quality standards) and subsidies are the spec-named types. Raises prices for domestic consumers and invites retaliation, even when a specific justification is genuine.

31. Q: Tariff A: A tax on imported goods, raising their domestic price and generating government revenue on every unit still imported after the tax.

32. Q: Import quota A: A direct limit on the physical quantity of a good that may be imported, letting the domestic price rise to whatever clears the market at that fixed quantity.

33. Q: Subsidy (as protectionism) A: A government payment to domestic producers that lowers their cost of production, letting some producers who would otherwise exit the market survive, compete internationally on price, and expand.

34. Q: Other trade barriers (government legislation, domestic subsidies) — flagged gap A: The spec's own catch-all for non-tariff, non-quota protectionist tools — technical/safety/quality standards, licensing requirements, and domestic-subsidy schemes not aimed at a specific import. Not confirmed as standalone mark-scheme content in any series this course's research has checked.

35. Q: Voluntary export restraint (VER) — flagged unconfirmed for this paper A: A quota a country agrees to apply to its own exports, at another country's request, instead of the importing country imposing an import quota unilaterally. Real, spec-adjacent content — not confirmed as WBS14 mark-scheme content in the series sampled.

36. Q: Infant industry argument — flagged unconfirmed for this paper A: The case for temporarily protecting a genuinely new domestic industry — with tariffs, quotas or subsidies — until it grows large enough to compete unprotected. Only holds up if the protection is genuinely temporary. Not confirmed as WBS14 mark-scheme content in the series sampled.

37. Q: Dumping — flagged unconfirmed for this paper A: Selling a good in a foreign market below its own cost of production, usually enabled by a state subsidy, specifically to undercut and drive out established rivals — distinct from ordinary low-cost competition because it targets price below cost. Not confirmed as WBS14 mark-scheme content in the series sampled.

38. Q: Worked example — Turkey's wheat tariff (October 2024 Q1a–b) A: A 130% tariff on wheat imported into Turkey raises the domestic price of wheat, which raises production costs for businesses using wheat as an input — bread and other foodstuffs are the mark scheme's own named example — which may in turn raise prices for consumers. A cost that passes further down the supply chain than the first business it hits.

39. Q: Worked example — Indonesia's import quotas on corn, sugar and salt (June 2026 Q1c) A: Designed to reduce reliance on imports and encourage domestic substitutes. Three separate groups affected: domestic producers of the protected goods see rising demand, price and profit; businesses using the same goods as a raw material (processed-food producers, named directly) face a cost rise whose effect on their own sales depends on their own product's price elasticity of demand; and Indonesia's own exporters face a real risk that affected trading partners retaliate with their own tariffs or quotas.

40. Q: Worked example — the EU fishing industry's subsidy (October 2022 Q1c) A: Subsidies paid to the global fishing industry total around $35bn a year; the EU itself provided $2bn in 2018 (ranking third behind China and Japan). Benefit: lets EU producers lower prices, compete internationally and secure employment. Balanced against: reduced competitive pressure, retaliation risk from other nations, and a sustainability cost — the same source states eliminating all fishing subsidies globally could grow fish stocks by 12.5% by 2050.

41. Q: Worked example — BMW and Jaguar in the US (Jan 2022 Q3; June 2023 Q3) A: BMW and Jaguar cars sell well in the US despite trade barriers — real, twice-independently-credited evidence that inelastic export demand can blunt a tariff's impact on a specific business. Also credited: trade barriers hit smaller businesses disproportionately harder than larger ones with economies of scale or lobbying power, and retaliation can raise import-side costs (raw materials, components) for businesses that aren't even the ones being targeted.

4.3.1.5 Trading blocs

42. Q: Trading bloc A: A group of countries granting each other preferential trade terms not extended to outsiders — in increasing order of integration: a free-trade area, a customs union, a common market, then an economic and monetary union.

43. Q: Free-trade area A: The least integrated bloc type: members trade freely with each other, but each still sets its own external tariff against non-members. Needs rules of origin to stop goods entering through the lowest-tariff member and being re-exported tariff-free into the rest of the bloc.

44. Q: Customs union A: A trading bloc combining free trade between members with a common external tariff applied to non- members — more integrated than a free-trade area, less integrated than a single market.

45. Q: Single market A: A level of integration beyond a customs union: free movement of goods, services, capital and people (labour) between members, not just tariff-free goods. The EU is the spec-named example.

46. Q: Rules of origin A: The test a bloc applies to decide whether a good genuinely originates within the bloc — typically a minimum share of a finished good's value that must come from bloc members — before it qualifies for preferential treatment. Matters most for a free-trade area, which has no common external tariff to close the re-routing loophole automatically.

47. Q: Worked example — ASEAN, Thailand and Vietnam (June 2022 Q1e) A: Benefits credited: easier access to fellow members' markets; cheaper imported inputs from fellow members; freer trade supporting rising disposable income and demand region-wide. Costs credited: domestic industries lose prior protection and face bloc-partner competition; and — the mechanism most answers miss — a customs union's own common external tariff can raise the cost of inputs a member's business still sources from outside the bloc.

4.3.2 Global markets and business expansion

4.3.2.1 Conditions that prompt trade

48. Q: Push factor A: A condition inside a firm's current market that reduces the value of staying there — a saturated market with little unclaimed demand left, or intensifying competition compressing margins. Defined entirely by conditions at home.

49. Q: Pull factor A: An attractive feature of a market a firm doesn't yet serve — higher sales or profitability, risk spreading across markets whose economic cycles don't move together, or economies of scale from a larger combined output.

50. Q: Cost competitiveness by off-shoring and outsourcing A: Two distinct routes to a lower unit cost than rivals: off-shoring (moving a firm's own production abroad, typically via FDI, keeping ownership and control) and outsourcing (paying an independently-owned external firm, often overseas, to manufacture to spec instead). The two trade off control for capital commitment in opposite directions.

51. Q: Product life cycle (PLC) extension, in a global-expansion context A: Entering a new geographic market lets a firm restart the sales trajectory of a product that is maturing or declining in its original market, without the cost of developing an entirely new product.

52. Q: Worked example — US/China tariffs and Vietnam/India/Mexico (June 2022 Q3) A: Rising US/China tariff costs are a real push factor for a business manufacturing in China to serve the US market; Vietnam, India and Mexico are presented as lower-cost pull destinations. Whether push or pull matters more depends on the business: a resource-dependent business has little real locational choice regardless of how attractive a pull factor looks.

4.3.2.2 Assessment of a country as a market

53. Q: Disposable income (level and growth) A: The income a population has left after direct tax and benefits, available to spend or save — its level indicates current purchasing power; its growth rate indicates how fast that purchasing power, and a market's potential size, is expanding.

54. Q: Ease of doing business A: A country-level measure of how straightforward it is to start and run a business there — registering property, obtaining permits, enforcing contracts. A favourable ranking doesn't by itself confirm other location-specific strengths such as workforce skill or supply-chain quality.

55. Q: Infrastructure (as a market-assessment factor) A: The physical and institutional systems (transport networks, utilities, digital connectivity, ports) a country provides that a business depends on to move goods, people and information — poor infrastructure raises the real operating cost of a market regardless of what other factors look favourable.

56. Q: Political stability A: A country's freedom from civil unrest, conflict or sudden government change. Protects a market assessment's expected revenue stream and, more severely, a production-location assessment's large, physically fixed capital investment, which cannot be relocated the way a marketing budget can be scaled back.

57. Q: Exchange rate (as a market-assessment factor) A: The price of one currency expressed in terms of another. As a market-assessment factor, a currency's expected direction of movement affects the real value, in the investing business's own currency, of any profit repatriated from that market.

58. Q: Porter's five forces (applied to market assessment) A: Michael Porter's model of five competitive pressures — bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, and competitive rivalry — used to judge how attractive a potential market looks before entry. Real, confirmed limitation: it assesses only the current state of a market, with no mechanism for forecast growth, consumer income, political stability, infrastructure quality or ease of doing business.

59. Q: Worked example — Porter's five forces, the pet-food industry (October 2025 Q2) A: Named rivalry: Nestlé, Mars, Hill's Pet Nutrition, Blue Buffalo, Colgate-Palmolive. Named expansion regions for new entrants: Latin America, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe. Real market-growth figure: the pet-food market expanding to $145.3bn by 2028 — used by the mark scheme itself to illustrate that five forces has no mechanism for factoring in that same forecast growth.

60. Q: Worked example — Porter's five forces, Glovo in Africa (October 2022 Q3) A: Low rivalry as a claimed market leader; likely new entry given Africa's relative under-development; named substitutes Gokada and Jumia Food; low supplier power given roughly 8,000 partner restaurants; fragmented buyer power given 300,000-plus customers. Real blind spots for this case: consumer income levels, political instability, an unpredictable regulatory environment, poor infrastructure, and high start-up costs.

4.3.2.3 Assessment of a country as a production location

61. Q: Costs of production A: The combined cost of labour, materials, energy and capital needed to manufacture in a given location — the most direct driver of where cost-sensitive production locates.

62. Q: Skills / availability of labour force (location factor) A: Whether a location has enough workers with the specific skills a business's production process requires, at a wage the business is willing to pay.

63. Q: Location in a trade bloc (as a production-location factor) A: Producing inside a trading bloc's tariff wall secures tariff-free (or preferential) access to sell into every other member market from that one production site — a different, larger benefit than simply exporting into the bloc from outside it.

64. Q: Government incentives (location factor) A: Grants, tax breaks, subsidised land or infrastructure a government offers to attract a specific investment — can outweigh a location's underlying cost disadvantage, but is typically time-limited or conditional, unlike a location's structural advantages.

65. Q: Natural resources (location factor) A: Raw materials or resource deposits (minerals, oil and gas, agricultural land) physically present at a location. For a resource-extraction business, this factor is close to decisive regardless of how a location scores on every other criterion.

66. Q: Likely return on investment (as a location factor) A: A qualitative judgement about whether a specific location is expected to generate a worthwhile return on the capital committed there — genuinely distinct from investment-appraisal technique (payback period, ARR, NPV), which is a calculation method applied once cash-flow figures exist, not the location judgement itself.

67. Q: Worked example — Senegal's political stability (January 2023 Q1d) A: Senegal's gas and oil reserves are named as the real driver of recent FDI growth, held up against neighbouring Guinea and Mali (coups, terrorist attacks named directly). Real balancing evidence: JLR's real decision to expand production in Slovakia, and Nissan's real need for a deep-water port specifically at Sunderland, are both named as cases where a different location factor outweighed political stability.

68. Q: Worked example — Vietnam's Ease of Doing Business ranking (October 2021 Q1d) A: Vietnam ranked 70th, against neighbouring Cambodia (144th) and Laos (154th). Balanced against Vietnam's own flagged weaknesses in supply-chain quality and workforce skills, and the point that a resource-extraction business must locate near the resource regardless of any ranking.

4.3.2.4 Reasons for global mergers, takeovers or joint ventures

69. Q: Merger A: A mutual combination of two firms, agreed by both boards after negotiation, typically producing one new (or one surviving) entity with shareholders from both original firms holding shares in it.

70. Q: Takeover A: One firm acquiring a controlling stake in another, bought directly from the target firm's shareholders — friendly if the target's board recommends accepting, hostile if the target's board opposes the deal.

71. Q: Joint venture A: Two or more otherwise-independent firms agreeing to jointly own, fund and share the risk of one specific project, while remaining completely separate businesses everywhere else.

72. Q: Synergy A: The gain from combining two firms that neither could achieve alone — usually from eliminating duplicated functions, combining complementary strengths, or sharing overheads across a larger combined output.

73. Q: Economies of scale (in a global mergers/expansion context) A: The fall in average unit cost a combined, larger business achieves from spreading fixed costs, buying inputs in bulk, or negotiating more favourable supplier/financing terms than either firm could alone.

74. Q: Culture clash A: The friction that arises when two firms with genuinely different organisational cultures, management styles or national business norms are combined — the most consistently-cited real risk balanced against a merger or takeover's economies-of-scale/synergy benefits, because it can prevent the expected benefits from being realised even where the deal's commercial logic is sound.

75. Q: Worked example — a streaming-platform merger (October 2023 Q1c) A: Two competing subscription-video platforms combining in a saturated market: credited indicative content includes the combined business achieving economies of scale, and the merger directly reducing competition by removing a rival from the market at a stroke.

4.3.2.5 Global expansion and uncertainty

76. Q: Currency appreciation / depreciation — exposure direction A: A net exporter (or a business entering a market to sell) is hurt by a domestic-currency appreciation, since its output becomes less price-competitive abroad. A net importer (or a business relying on imported inputs to produce) is helped by the same appreciation, since foreign inputs become cheaper — opposite directions depending on the business's position.

77. Q: Skill shortage A: A labour-market condition where there are not enough sufficiently-skilled workers available in a given occupation or location to meet employer demand at the prevailing wage.

78. Q: Relative unit labour costs A: Labour cost per unit of output, compared with trading partners — wage cost divided by output per worker, not the wage level alone. A country with lower wages can still have higher unit labour costs than a rival if its productivity is low enough.

79. Q: International competitiveness A: How effectively a country's (or a business's) output can compete in global markets against foreign rivals — driven by both cost factors (relative unit labour costs, exchange rates) and non-price factors (quality, branding, reliability, innovation).

80. Q: Worked example — Kenya and exchange-rate exposure (January 2024 Q1d) A: A business entering a market and a business producing in it face opposite exposures to the same currency movement. Stronger answers link the exchange-rate movement to consumers' disposable income after paying more for imported necessities, bring in price/income elasticity as the assessment lever, and weigh the exchange-rate channel against other country-assessment factors that "may be more important" depending on the specific business (Apple is the mark scheme's own named example of a price-inelastic product).

81. Q: Worked example — Ireland's technology-sector skill shortage (October 2025 Q1e) A: A forecast 15% rise in tech wages and 76% of technology-sector businesses reporting the shortage as a problem in 2023 are the real cost-side figures. Balanced against government responses (education/training, immigration) that can make a shortage temporary, and Ireland's continued FDI strength — nine of the world's top ten MedTech companies, and all ten of the top ten biopharma and technology companies, are named as still being based there.

4.3.3 Global marketing

4.3.3.1 Marketing

82. Q: Global marketing strategy / glocalisation A: The geocentric/mixed approach applied specifically to the marketing mix (4Ps): standardising elements where the cost saved by global uniformity is large, and adapting elements where local culture, taste or regulation makes standardising too costly — decided element by element, not as one uniform "blend" across the whole mix.

83. Q: Ethnocentric approach A: Exports the home-country product, price, promotion and place unchanged into every new market, with no local adaptation. Zero adaptation cost, but captures only whatever fraction of local demand the home approach happens to fit.

84. Q: Geocentric approach (mixed) A: Standardises elements of the marketing mix where doing so saves real cost, and adapts elements where local culture or taste genuinely demands it — a deliberate, element-by-element synthesis. Called glocalisation when applied specifically to the 4Ps.

85. Q: Polycentric approach A: Treats every market as a fully separate operation, adapting product, price, promotion and place independently in each one with no cross-market standardisation. Captures the closest possible local fit, at the highest cost of the three approaches.

86. Q: Marketing mix (4Ps), applied globally A: The four controllable decisions — product, price, place, promotion — each independently assessed for whether standardising or adapting it across borders is worth the cost. Examined at 4P-by-4P granularity, not as one single standardise-or-adapt verdict for the whole mix.

87. Q: Ansoff's matrix, applied to global marketing A: Crosses whether a product is new or existing against whether a market is new or existing, generating market penetration, market development, product development and diversification. Entering a new country with an existing product is market development; launching a genuinely new product in a new country simultaneously is diversification — the riskiest quadrant, since none of the firm's existing product or market knowledge carries over. No standalone past-paper anchor found for this application on WBS14 — spec- certain, not past-paper-confirmed.

88. Q: Porter's generic strategies (Porter's matrix) A: Crosses a firm's source of competitive advantage (lower cost vs. differentiation) against its competitive scope (whole market vs. one narrow segment), generating cost leadership, differentiation, cost focus and differentiation focus. The paper's single highest-value disambiguation: a different tool from Porter's five forces — Pearson's own examiner report records candidates confusing the two.

89. Q: Worked example — Nike vs. Aldi (June 2022 Q2) A: Nike's local sports-culture targeting is credited specifically because it builds brand loyalty and encourages repeat purchases, not merely "captures more revenue." Aldi's unchanged, standardised US store format realises economies of scale across every market at once instead. McDonald's and Apple were the most common candidate-supplied outside examples; the strongest answers concluded the right approach "depended on the product or service in question and its intended market."

90. Q: Worked example — Porter's matrix and the Vietnamese cosmetics market (October 2023 Q3) A: A 20-mark Evaluate testing both correct application (cost leadership/differentiation/focus mapped to real market segments) and the model's own real limitations: it does not account for future changes in competition (five forces is better suited there) or the wider external environment (PESTLE/SWOT territory). The examiner report is explicit that a significant number of candidates confused this matrix with five forces.

4.3.3.2 Niche markets

91. Q: Niche market A: A small, specific group of customers with a particular need a mass-market product doesn't meet — or a strategy targeting one with a differentiated product, competing on distinctiveness or premium value. A global niche typically commands a premium price (low PED), sees less competition, and allows closer customer relationships — but is limited in size, can be fad-driven, and risks being taken over by a larger company or growing into a mass market.

92. Q: Mass market A: A market — or a strategy targeting one — serving a very large customer base with a broadly standardised product, competing chiefly on price and availability, relying on the low unit costs that come from very high volume.

93. Q: Cultural diversity (as it relates to niche markets) A: Groups of people across the globe hold genuinely different interests, values and needs — the reason a global niche can exist at all: a segment too small to interest a mass-market producer in one country can still be large enough, aggregated globally, to support a dedicated niche business.

94. Q: Worked example — gender-neutral skincare and halal cosmetics (October 2024 Q2) A: Real named cases for a global niche's core benefits: high added value, low PED allowing a premium price, and a market growing faster than the mass market — the wider halal-products category is stated to more than triple by 2032. Real named takeover-risk case: Green & Black's, acquired by Cadbury.

95. Q: Worked example — Halo Top ice cream and 4Ps adaptation (October 2022 Q2) A: Its initially high, inelastic price came under pressure once Ben & Jerry's, Häagen-Dazs and Magnum launched competing low-calorie lines. Its digital-first promotion (Facebook/Instagram, the #FitFam community) reached its core niche but couldn't alone make it a household name across older age groups. Its specialist/direct distribution needed to expand into supermarkets and chain stores — outlets the mark scheme notes are "often reluctant to stock an untried new line."

4.3.3.3 Cultural/social factors

96. Q: Cultural differences, tastes and preferences A: Systematic variation between markets in what consumers want, value or find acceptable — the reason a marketing approach that works in one country may need adaptation, or fail outright, in another. The benefit side of adapting (sales, loyalty, competitive advantage) is generally well understood; the cost side (extra research, higher adaptation cost) is less consistently developed.

97. Q: Language and unintended meanings; inappropriate branding and promotion A: The risk that a brand name, slogan or promotional campaign translates poorly, carries an unintended connotation, or causes genuine offence in a market it wasn't originally designed for — a specific sub-case of cultural-adaptation cost distinct from a simple taste mismatch, because the failure is in communication itself.

98. Q: Worked example — real named cultural-adaptation cases (January 2024 Q1e) A: McDonald's beef-free India menu, Dunkin' Donuts kimchi-flavoured doughnuts, and Samsung marketing red televisions specifically in China are the real named cases inside this mark scheme. Described by the examiner report as "the more straightforward of the two 12-mark questions" that series; the benefit side was well handled, the cost side less so.

4.3.4 Global industries and companies (multinational corporations)

4.3.4.1 The impact of MNCs

99. Q: Impact on the local economy A: The spec's own named channels: local labour, wages and working conditions; job creation; the effect on existing local businesses; and impact on the local community and environment. A question naming the local economy specifically must be answered at the local level — wider-economy material has to be tied back down to the local level to gain credit.

100. Q: Impact on the national economy A: The spec's own named channels: economic growth; FDI flows; the balance of payments; technology and skills transfer; effects on consumers; effects on business culture; and tax revenue. Balance of payments is a record of every transaction between a country's residents and the rest of the world, split into current, capital and financial accounts.

101. Q: Footloose MNC A: An MNC whose production can be relocated to another country relatively easily once the cost/return calculus that attracted it there changes — limits how permanent any local benefit from hosting an MNC really is, since the same decision logic that brought the investment can just as readily remove it.

102. Q: Worked example — TotalEnergies and local economic impact (January 2024 Q3) A: Benefit side credited: a local income multiplier (wages spent at local shops raise local incomes a second time); local tax revenue; local-scale skills transfer; and CSR policies as their own source of local benefit. Cost side credited: the company displaced "more than 500 families," destroying their existing livelihoods, with pollution predicted to damage wildlife on the Mozambique coast.

4.3.4.2 International business ethics

103. Q: Stakeholder A: Any individual or group affected by, or able to affect, a firm's decisions — employees, customers, suppliers, the local community, government and pressure groups, as well as shareholders.

104. Q: Stakeholder conflict (in an MNC ethics context) A: A situation where satisfying one stakeholder group's interests genuinely comes at another's expense — not automatic in every MNC decision: where stakeholders broadly share a firm's stated vision, conflict can be genuinely minimal rather than assumed.

105. Q: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) A: A firm voluntarily going beyond its legal minimum obligations to consider the impact of its decisions on stakeholders, society and the environment.

106. Q: Business ethics A: The trade-off a firm faces between maximising profit and acting in line with moral or social values — e.g. paying more for an ethically-audited supply chain, or accepting a lower margin to pay above a legal minimum wage.

107. Q: Environmental considerations (emissions, waste disposal, sustainability) A: A firm's direct environmental footprint (emissions, waste) and its longer-run sustainability practices — resource sourcing that can continue indefinitely without depleting the resource or the ecosystem it depends on.

108. Q: Supply-chain considerations (pay and working conditions, exploitation, child labour) A: The spec-named labour dimension of MNC ethics covering the workers of an MNC's suppliers (often in a different, lower-regulation country) rather than the MNC's own directly-employed staff — an MNC's direct legal liability for a supplier's labour practices is typically much weaker than for its own workforce.

109. Q: Worked example — IKEA's sustainability record (October 2021 Q3) A: IKEA's own cotton and timber sourcing climbed from the high 70s into the mid-80s (as a percentage) across 2017–18, while emissions moved up one year and down the next. Credited stakeholder split: owners/ investors want profit maximised; employees might prefer a wage rise instead; consumers may dislike price rises needed to restore profitability. The mark scheme's own closing line: "little or no conflict if all stakeholders share the vision" — naming then-CEO Torbjörn Lööf as the figure that line is built around.

4.3.4.3 Controlling MNCs

110. Q: Pressure group A: An organised group that campaigns to influence a business's or government's decisions without seeking to run the business or government itself.

111. Q: Self-regulation A: An industry or firm voluntarily setting and enforcing its own standards of conduct, without a government imposing and enforcing them by law — the least externally-binding control mechanism, since there is no independent enforcer if the firm's own standards slip.

112. Q: Greenwashing A: An MNC using its own marketing or media campaigns to present itself as more environmentally or socially responsible than its actual practices justify — a reputational tactic that doesn't necessarily change the underlying practice that caused it.

113. Q: Consumer pressure / consumer boycott A: Consumers collectively withholding purchases from a business in response to a specific practice they object to. Typically more effective in wealthier, better-informed societies, and close to powerless against a business with no direct consumer-facing brand to damage (a B2B commodity producer, for example).

114. Q: Worked example — the named-company control roster (January 2023 Q2) A: Shell (a Dutch court case, the real legal/government-control example); Break Free From Plastics (a real pressure-group example, with social media credited as the amplifying channel); Canada Goose (a real, successful consumer boycott over its use of fur); IKEA (named again, this time as a self-regulation example); Glencore (a mining MNC largely insulated from consumer-pressure tactics because it doesn't sell directly to consumers). Real closing balance: government control is only as effective as a country's willingness to confront an MNC it depends on for investment and jobs, and success against an MNC is often "a combination of these factors" rather than any single one acting alone — though a government's own reluctance to act can just as easily cancel out what pressure-group campaigning would otherwise achieve.

Flagged gaps (genuine, not filled with invented content)

Sources

codex-definitions-and-application-bank.md (Parts 1 and 2 — the primary source for every term definition and the majority of worked-example figures above); codex-complete-worked-paper.md (Question 1(a)'s full GDP-per-capita working, card 6); codex-deep-dive-globalisation-and-growing-economies.md, codex-deep-dive-factors-driving-globalisation.md, codex-deep-dive-protectionism-and-trading-blocs.md, codex-deep-dive-assessing-global-markets-and-locations.md, codex-deep-dive-global-expansion-mergers-and-uncertainty.md, codex-deep-dive-global-marketing.md, and codex-deep-dive-mncs-impact-ethics-and-control.md (supplementary real figures and citation confidence flags not already stated in the definitions bank — Australia's 62.7%/78.8%, the Doha-round/164-member WTO detail, Ireland's 15%/76% skill-shortage figures, the IKEA/Shell/Glencore/Canada Goose control roster, and the GDP-per-capita Oct 2021 Q1a contested-citation flag, among others). All seven deep-dive files' own Sources sections carry the underlying Pearson mark-scheme and examiner-report documents this content ultimately traces to; none of that primary-source fetching was repeated for this document.