Strengthening Our Information Strategy for Overseas Expansion and Hoping to Expand the Company Globally

Q.Why did your company decide to take on interns? What did you aim to achieve?

We are a management consulting firm, mainly runs beauty salon group and child nursing service businesses. We have 54 beauty salons in Japan which makes franchise agreement with SIC Holdings. We have been working on a project for penetrating into the Vietnamese market for the last five years and for this we needed to collect local information as well as personnel who could aid in the procedures for the expansion and in exchanges with local companies. We also need a partner in Vietnam that will understand our group concept of overseas expansion, one that can grow with us as a business partner. That is why we hope to deliver our message through social networking sites. We are about to take on foreign personnel.That's one of the reason why we have applied to this program in order to build working environment where is adaptable for foreign personnel. We are hoping to gain fresh and innovative ideas from perspective point of view from Interns.

Active in Everything from Local Market Research to PR Using Social Networking Sites

Q.What kind of internship did you run? What difficulties did you face and how did you resolve them?

In order to make them understand our business strategy, we first gave the interns some chances to visit our shops and preschools around Kyushu area and understand the strengths and features of our businesses. Subsequently, we asked them to analyse local information using a marketing framework and to select candidates which would be the best stores and partner to do business with us. Additionally, we also asked the interns to engage in PR activity by appealing to a large number of individuals in Vietnam using social networking sites. Furthermore, interns provided first hand information on local trends that couldn't be obtained by our conventional way. Surprisingly,they created potential company's list based on the data they collected. we had them the opportunity to participate in several events such as regular inhouse meetings and company outings which deepened their relations with the employees, furthering mutual understanding. At the briefing presentation held in the company ,the interns made speech about the current trend of beauty parlors, popular trends, and labor market in Vietnam.

Advancing to Negotiations Through PR on Social Networking Sites. Contributing to Raised In-Company Awareness.

Q.Comparing before and after the internship, what effects did it have on you, your employees, or your organization?

We asked them several kinds of support for the survey trip to some factories in Vietnam ; making appointments, arranging interpreters and cars.As a result, we could work out smoothly on visiting Vietnam. Interns involved in uploading articles and Videos to our website by interviewing stores and staffs in Fukuoka ,posting on Facebook and Instagram which drew attentions around the world. We received many feedbacks , and we could succeed in negotiation with one of those companies in Vietnam . Through their challenges regarding marketing, the interns gave us some ideas tailored to the Vietnamese market about the customer segment, the business concept, wage, and choice of partner companies. They also conducted SWOT analysis necessary for future overseas development.
The interns brought inter-culture mind to our staffs and contributed greatly to raised-awareness for overseas expansion. They distinguished as thinking theoretically and having great ability to intellectualize. This experience was a good opportunity to look back our norms and reform our ways of working. Through this internship, we were able to understand Vietnamese culture, views, and sensibilities and we could get a sense of confidence that we can make the first step towards overseas expansion.