Global
Procurement
Group

Training supply management professionals for the global economy

Check your international procurement skills.

Send in your answers and we will instantly return a page with the correct answers.  You will be anonymous unless you chose to fill in the contact information at the bottom of the quiz. If you find this quiz difficult, please consider a seminar.


Cultural skills

  1. . In which country are decisions most likely to be made in a top-down fashion?

USA

Japan

Sweden

Mexico

  1.  In which country are people least likely to give bad news directly?

Germany

Japan

Britain

Mexico

Legal Skills

  1. There is a UN-sponsored contract pertaining to goods sales that will often apply automatically to an international purchase of goods unless you take specific measures to exclude it. What is the name (or what are the initials) of that contract and the treaty that created it?

  1. What is your best defense against your developing-country supplier pirating your intellectual property?

Currency Skills

  1. What is the financial instrument usually used  in an effort to keep the cost of goods purchased in another currency stable against the buyer's currency? 

Example: You (who are not in Japan) agree to buy parts from a Japanese supplier for ¥120 each. You make this agreement on a day when the exchange rate is 120 yen per dollar. The goods arrive five months later and you pay a month after that. How can you be sure that you pay very close to $1.00 each and the supplier still receives ¥120 for each unit?

  1.  If you hedge purchases with the above instrument and buy less product than you forecasted, will your unit cost be higher or lower than you expected?

Higher

Lower

It depends

Logistics skills

  1. You are in the US and you buy goods from a supplier in Korea with the terms of purchase being "CIF Oakland, California. according to Incoterms 2000" Freight moves by ship from Korea to Oakland. Who bears the risk of loss of the goods during the ocean transit?

Buyer

Seller

  1. How long does it take a typical container vessel to go from Japan to Los Angeles?

Sourcing skills

  1. How can you most easily determine the countries that export a given product to the United States?

  1. What is the typical markup charged by the US subsidiary of a foreign company on an annual purchase volume of ten million dollars?

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