Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: B (67%), University of Sunderland, course: Marketing (Master), language: English, abstract: The world today is changing faster than ever. Technological developments, financial constraints, expanding markets, restructuring and mergers, new philosophies and government legislation are all putting pressure on organisations to change and stay dynamic (Davenport and Short, 1990; Aijo, 1996). This paper defines the external environment the private healthcare sector is facing in the USA, the world largest economy, and China, one of the biggest emerging markets and third largest trading nation in the world (bpb, 2005). According to Farnham (1999) the PEST-Analysis and Porter's (1980) five forces model provide a useful start for analysing the external environment. Building up on the information gathered it will be discussed what key challenges the private healthcare sector is facing, the significance of these challenges and how they might be overcome. Finally, it will be examined whether strategies of localisation or standardisation should be chosen in the USA and China, respectively.