You are a commodity trader and receive an order for 40,000MT rice to be shipped to Indonesia. You charter a bulk carrier and ship the rice. The ship arrives in Indonesia but there is a strike by harbor workers, so the ship has demurrage and waits at the port for two weeks until the strike is settled. During this time the rice in the ship’s hold expands bursting the hold covers. You have steamed rice. What happened to the rice and why? The rice that was stored in the ship’s hold was steamed because it was exposed to moist air rising from the sea. Since the ship took longer than the expected time, the safety of the dry rice could no longer be guaranteed. The measures that might have been taken probably allowed the rice to remain dry and in good condition for the allocated time. However, the rice had to remain packed in the hold for an extra two weeks. The conditions of the sea could not allow for the rice to remain dry and in good condition. The moist sea currents and the warm environment must have cooked the rice. The rice had probably not been stored in airtight containers since the moisture was able to enter into the bags of rice. When moist rice is heated, it expands as it takes in the water. This explains why the ship’s hold expanded and burst. Since the rice was already steamed, the only thing that could be done is to take precautions the next time shipping is done to ensure that the rice remains cool and dry throughout (Jolly, Tso, & Wong, 2000). However, if the rice could be used immediately before spoiling, it could help save the company from incurring huge losses. Your company is a premier pork processing and convenience foods manufacturer in the USA. To take advantage of the large population and plentiful raw material (pigs) availability, you decide to establish an operation in China. Since Chinese food and US food are quite different you must establish new products that appeal to the Chinese customers. How do you go about creating new products? What factors must you consider? For the premier pork processing and convenience foods manufacturing company to come up with new products that would be appealing to the Chinese customers, the company must go through certain steps towards new product development. The first stage would be to generate ideas for new products (Khurana & Rosenthal, 1998). This could be obtained using SWOT analysis and looking at the market and consumer trends. Corporate spies could also spy around for ideas. After the ideas have been generated, they would have to be screened. This involves making several considerations to determine whether the idea would be worth allocating resources. This would need the firm to consider whether the target market would benefit from the new product and to also consider the size and growth of the target market. The third stage would be the concept development and testing stage. This involves making several considerations such as the expected reaction of the consumers. The cost of producing it would also need to be considered. The other step would be business analysis. This includes the estimation of the likely selling price and estimating the sales volume expected. The other step would be to do market testing and beta testing. This involves producing it and selling it in a test market. The other thing is to make technical implementation and finally, to commercialize the new product. What are three examples of internal influences on consumer behavior? How do these influences affect marketing strategies? How might marke