Guest Blogger, Tyler Doughty, Nathan M. Bisk College of Business student

Our X-Culture group has decided to do our project on taking Starbucks into Latin American countries that it has not ventured into yet, such as Columbia. We felt Columbia would be a logical place for Starbucks to go into because of it having such a high demand for coffee, along with it being a hotspot for harvesting java beans. Our team is very diverse and we expect to work well together. Our team consists of myself, a student from the USA studying in Ghana,  Columbia, Thailand,United Kingdom, and a student  studying in Barbados.

Our group has made contact through email, we have made a Facebook group to communicate through, and also have coordinated weekly hangouts by means of Google+. International Business is not necessarily my area of interest as far as what I am interested in doing in my life, however, being involved in a project like this is extremely unique and likely a one in a lifetime opportunity. Working with students of different cultures around the world really provides an in-depth perspective of how different parts of the world work. It shows you the similarities along with the differences that different students have from us here in the United States. I expect this project to be an interesting experiment and strongly believe that our group is capable of coming through with a quality analysis.