ASSIGNMENT ANSWER SHEET

Semester II - Academic year 2020-2021

Subject name: English for Specific Purposes 2, INS1017

Student’s name: ………………Nguyễn Thùy Linh……………………………….

Date of birth: ………………03/07/1999………………………….

Student ID Number: ………………17071108……………………………….

Class: ………………IB2017C……………………………….

Marker’s name: ……………………………………………….

Question 1: According to the extract, what are the difficulties that Starbuck has faced during
its international expansion? Are there any more challenges that Starbuck faces
during Covid-19 pandemic, in your opinion?
Use your knowledge, experience, and convincing examples from the business world
to justify your arguments. (5 marks, 400 - 500 words)

International expansion has never been effortless to Starbucks. To get on well with the local
citizens whose countries are the places Starbucks would like to invest in, not only does it have to
keep the quality unchanged but it also needs to turn the original tastes to be suitable for the local
citizens. Appearing in other countries for the first time, Starbucks is totally not familiar to many
people there, which means it needs to change in some ways that it has never been before to
achieve success in a new environment. For example, to expand the business scale into the United
Kingdom, Starbucks initially had to renovate its stores with a different appearance to match the
surrounding cultures. In addition, when choosing China as another market, such were sociocultural
barriers that Starbucks had to deal with. Its store was even closed after having received criticism
made by Chinese media(Oldenburg, Ray (1989)) . Suffering lots of pressure from Chinese society,
Starbucks made changes in their products again. In particular, it added new product lines of both
food and beverages which tasted and smelled suitably with the Chinese, which also indicates that
its managers completely made a variety of research on behaviors of the locals to understand their
hobbies and routines and then drove their products to attract more customers. In addition to
those problems, recent years witnessed one of the worst pandemics ever in the world, Covid-19.
At first, this pandemic mostly shut down the worldwide economy because almost all industries
and sectors must have been stopped to avoid the spread of this respiratory disease, and obviously,
the services industry, as well as Starbucks, was not an exception. When the pandemic became too
serious to manage, every city was obliged to be in lockdown and no one was allowed to go out of
their accommodations. Moreover, gathering and crowds were also forbidden, which means
Starbucks could not welcome their customers as usual. Its operation was stagnated, so no profit
was made. As a result, it had to close some stores to reduce the costs. Instead, they exchanged
their normal sales way into the new ones, drive-thru or pick-up services, which enabled staff to
sell products without interacting with customers. However, sales figures in that hard period were
a small number to offset the loss made by the pandemic. Starbucks’ earnings were recorded to
decrease by about 2 billion dollars in quarter 3 of 2020(Smith, Craig S. (2000). Globalization puts a
Starbucks into the Forbidden City in Beijing. New York Times, 25 November, B1–2. Sorkin, Michael
(1992) (ed.). Variations on a theme park: The new American city and the end of public space. New
York: Hill & Wang. Starbucks Coffee Company (2000). In China, the place which Covid-19 was
derived from, total sales witnessed a decline of 14% at the end of May in 2020.

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Question 2: To what extent do you agree with the above quote?
Use your knowledge, experience, and convincing examples from the business world
to justify your arguments. (5 marks, 400 - 500 words)

I totally agree with this statement that a good manager requires both knowledge and skills in
numerous fields to effectively manage a business. To control a group of staff and operate a retailer,
there are many top characteristics of being a successful manager. First of all, employees are the
backbone of the whole team. A good manager should not be scared to speak out to support their
team's ideas and efforts in front of their supervisors. However, a good manager will also not always
stand on their team’s side regardless of right or wrong. For example, when it comes to executive
feedback, they have to be open and honest with their team. Secondly, another important feature to
be a good manager is to get trust from a team. To be more detailed, a manager frequently says one
thing to satisfy their employees and then does another, leading to manipulation and mistrust from a
team. For that reason, a good manager needs to keep promises and provide explanations if plans
change. If developing trust is a form of respect, respect is fundamental to leadership. Thirdly, the
main difference between a boss and a leader is that a leader always becomes involved with their
team on critical tasks. However, many inadequate managers assume that busy work should be
delegated to their workers. Since failure reflects both on the team and a manager, they should dive
in to help out in any way possible. As a team part, fourthly, what makes a successful manager is to
remember that your team is made up of individuals seeking to achieve personal goals as well as the
team's objectives. To develop strengths and improve weaknesses, a manager should make it a
priority to meet with each individual within their team. Fifthly, a manager should keep their team
informed when it comes to important decisions, big project updates, and crucial changes within the
organization. They should be open to answering concerns or addressing issues of employees about
business problems. For the seventh requirement, although meeting a goal is not always easy,
playing it safe might be a simple option. Since risk-taking and experimentation need to be
encouraged, managers should jump in first to test the waters. Last but not least, a good manager is
not afraid to say no despite the fact that it might not make everyone happy. Even if failures may
occur, being flexible and willing to make mistakes is an important part of learning and growing as a
team. Finally, when their team works hard, a good manager should give bonuses, promotions, a
simple email or even a party to show appreciation for their hard work and acknowledges their
excellent performance. In conclusion, these above-listed requirements have stated the same ideas as
the above quote of how to be a good manager.( 6. Knight, D. and Tiller, M. (2012), “Managing
masculinity, mismanaging the corporation”, Organization, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 385-404.)

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 ASSIGNMENT SCORE SHEET

QUESTION 1
Appropriate referencing of relevant literature/Number of references (/5)
Clearly elaborated content with sufficient explanations (/15)
Good organisation with proper introduction, supporting body/details & conclusion (/10)
Accurate grammar, spelling and punctuation (/10)
Proper word choice and varied structures (/10)
TOTAL SCORE/50

FINAL SCORE FOR QUESTION 1 = TOTAL SCORE = ………./5

QUESTION 2
Appropriate referencing of relevant literature/Number of references (/5)
Clearly elaborated content with sufficient explanations (/15)
Good organisation with proper introduction, supporting body/details & conclusion (/10)
Accurate grammar, spelling and punctuation (/10)
Proper word choice and varied structures (/10)
TOTAL SCORE/50

FINAL SCORE FOR QUESTION 2 = TOTAL SCORE = ………./5

FORMAT: (Please put a tick in the corresponding column. Each tick is equal to ½ point minus)

ALIGNMENT FONT PAGE SETUP LINE LENGTH/

Font Font Margin & Header & SPACING WORD
type size Indentation footer COUNT

OVERALL SCORE = ………../10