1. The Economic Environment: According to the CIA World Factbook online, Jordan is a small Arab country with inadequate supplies of water and low levels of natural resources such as oil and gas. Debt, poverty, and unemployment are fundamental economic problems in Jordan. Jordan's ruler, King Abdallah, has undertaken some broad economic reforms in an effort to improve living standards. The main economic and political challenges facing Jordan include the need to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign grants, reducing the nation's budget deficit, and creating incentives for foreign direct investment as a way to promote job creation. According to the Central Intelligence Agency, the following economic factors exist in Jordan:
Gross Domestic Product per capita was estimated to be $4,500 (USD) in 2004
30 percent of Jordan's population lives below the official poverty line
Jordan has a population of approximately 5.75 million people in 2005
There are approximately 1.4 million people in Jordan's labor force
Jordan's official unemployment rate is 15 percent, but according to the CIA website the unofficial but more accurate estimate of the unemployment in 2004 was 30 percent or more.
The lowest 10 percent of Jordan's population earn just over 3 percent of the total household income
The highest 10 percent of Jordanians earn approximately 30 percent of the total household income
Jordan's consumer price inflation rate is a modest 3.2 percent
Public debt in Jordan was equal to approximately 86 percent of gross domestic product in 2004 (Jordan, 2005).
It is likely that many of these facts would have significant influence on the number of personal computers that a company such as Dell could expect to sell to Jordan's domestic market including the consumer market for PCs and the commercial market. Jordan's low per capita income would be a factor that that would tend to reduce the number of PCs sold. Also, the unequ...