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INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

INTERNATIONAL MARKETING and PRODUCTION

04 December 2023

04 December 2023 / INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS 1


INTRODUCTION

International marketing practices have a significant role


in the formation of global markets and consumer
cultures. Globalization establishes interaction and
integration in the transnational production networks in
which products and brands are created and exchanged
through marketing practices

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INTRODUCTION

Actors—such as designers, advertising agencies,


suppliers, retailers, and consultants—operating within
a global commodity chain co-create market value for
the global markets. Consumers are also active in co-
creating the meanings of market offerings through a
variety of global and local interactions. Examples of
such interactions are modes of human mobility and
multiple types of media. Immigration, student
exchange programs, or the global tourism sector
demonstrate human mobility.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING and
PRODUCTION
In line with technological advancements, a variety of
media became accessible to many. Moreover, social
media created social links among people at the global
level. In addition, the neo- liberal worldview,
environmentalism, health, and equality are some of
the discourses that shape new consumer values and
form the essence of people’s lifestyles. While all these
changes occur, consumer goods and their meanings,
variety of lifestyles, tastes, and ideologies which these
commodities represent have also changed for the
people living in different parts of the world.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING and
PRODUCTION

Consumers create their understanding out of


these commodities, develop their hybrid glocal
tastes, lifestyles, and ideologies. That is, both the
production and the consumption side of the
global exchange co-constitute each other, and
international marketing activities such as
innovation, distribution, or marketing
communications have a significant role in this
formation.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING and
PRODUCTION

International marketing is not very


different from domestic marketing in terms
of its function for a business and its
approach in conducting marketing
activities. Both domestic and international
marketers aim to make profits and satisfy
the needs and wants of the customer, but
international marketers operate in more
than one nation or country.
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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING and
PRODUCTION

The basic definition of international marketing is:


‘the marketing of goods, services, and information
across political boundaries by using marketing
elements like planning, promoting, pricing, and
distributing, and supporting the products in order
to satisfy the needs of the foreign markets better
than the competitors’

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING and
PRODUCTION

In conducting marketing planning and implementation,


international marketers need to consider the uncontrollable
elements of the marketing environment both in their home
countries and foreign countries that they operate Examples
of these uncontrollable elements for the international
markets include the political and legal forces, economic
forces, cultural forces, competitive structures, geography
and infrastructure, the structure of distribution, and the
level of technology. The increase in uncontrollable elements
complicates the decision- making processes and the
implementation of marketing strategies for international
marketers.

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Mc CARTY’s MARKETING MIX

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Mc CARTY’s MARKETING MIX (Cont’d)

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Modified and expanded marketing mix: "Seven P's

In 1981, Booms and Bitner proposed a model of 7 Ps,


comprising the original 4 Ps plus

5.process,
6.people
7.physical evidence,

as being more applicable for services marketing.

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Modified and expanded marketing mix: "Seven P's

People are essential in the marketing of any product or service.


Personnel stand for the service. In the professional, financial, or
hospitality service industry, people are not producers, but rather the
products themselves. People impacts public perception of an
organization as much as any tangible consumer goods. From a
marketing management perspective, it is important to ensure that
employees represent the company in alignment with broader
messaging strategies. This is easier to ensure when people feel as
though they have been treated fairly and earn wages sufficient to
support their daily lives.
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Modified and expanded marketing mix: "Seven P's

Process refers to a "set of activities that results in delivery of the


product benefits". A process could be a sequential order of tasks that
an employee undertakes as a part of their job. It can represent
sequential steps taken by a number of various employees while
attempting to complete a task. Some people are responsible for
managing multiple processes at once. For example, a restaurant
manager should monitor the performance of employees, ensuring
that processes are followed. They are also expected to supervise
while customers are promptly greeted, seated, fed, and led out so
that the next customer can begin this process.
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Modified and expanded marketing mix: "Seven P's

Physical evidence refers to the non-human elements of the service


encounter, including equipment, furniture and facilities. It may also refer to
the more abstract components of the environment in which the service
encounter occurs including interior design, colour schemes and layout.
Some aspects of physical evidence provide lasting proof that the service has
occurred, such as souvenirs, mementos, invoices and other livery of
artifacts.

According to Booms and Bitner's framework, the physical evidence is "the


service delivered and any tangible goods that facilitate the performance
and communication of the service".
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Modified and expanded marketing mix: "Seven P's

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Modified and expanded marketing mix: "Seven P's

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Modified and expanded marketing mix: "Seven P's

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Lauterborn's 4 Cs

Robert F. Lauterborn proposed a 4 Cs


classification in 1990.
His classification is a more consumer-
orientated version of the 4 Ps that attempts
to better fit the movement from
mass marketing to niche marketing:

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Lauterborn's 4 Cs

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Lauterborn's 4 Cs

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

There are two main tendencies in international


marketing strategy identified by similar terms:
•standardization versus adaptation, or
•globalization versus localization, or
•global integration versus global responsiveness

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

Companies prefer to standardize their market offerings


across different international markets in order to
achieve economies of scale. This perspective assumes
that societies and markets converge in terms of their
characteristics, such as similar values, tastes, lifestyles,
and behavior as a result of globally operating
multinational firms and the media. However, well-
known global brands tailor their marketing activities to
satisfy the local markets, which are shaped better by
their local cultures than by those of the competitors’.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

The convergence perspective assumes the center-


periphery model for the global economy. The Developed
countries constitute the center, and they produce and
market goods to the developing markets. Traditionally,
it was assumed that in the future, markets would
converge to unity; and a modern and developed market
would emerge at the global level. However, this
assumption has been challenged by the global level
developments after the 2000s. The Millennium
witnessed that the center of the global economy has
been shifting, and multiple centers have been
developing throughout the globe.
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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

For example, although Coca-Cola markets the same


product range across the global markets, its advertising
campaigns are tailored according to the food culture
and rituals of the local markets. The Ramadan and
Christmas ad campaigns tailored explicitly for Islamic
and Western countries respectively exemplify this
adaptation process. Recently, the Coca-Cola Company
has even started marketing the brand Thums Up in
India, where it has a 40 percent market share. That is,
marketers mostly prefer adapting different elements of
the marketing mix.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

The transfer of products, values, tastes, and lifestyles is not


unidirectional. Although the developed economies continue to
dominate the global economy, the East Asian, Russian, and
Eastern European economies have been growing in their
importance. The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and
China) were identified as the future major players in the world
economy in the early 2000s. Today the convergence
perspective seems very limited and reductionist in grasping the
global complexity formed through global level interactions. Its
repercussions to international and global marketing include
the rising importance of globally dispersed market segments
which are fragmented.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

There is a framework consisting of five conditions under


which global flows occur, and explains the complex nature
of the global cultural economy, which develops amidst the
disjunctures between economy, culture, and politics. These
five conditions are;
•ethnoscapes,
•technoscapes,
•financescapes,
•mediascapes,
•ideoscapes.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

Ethnoscapes are the people mobile throughout the globe,


such as immigrants, tourists, guest workers. So, these
mobile people always get in contact with the stable ones.
Their mobility influences the politics of and between
nations.
Technoscapes are the sorts of technology (high or low,
mechanical or informational) spread amidst “complex
relationships between money flows, political possibilities,
and the availability of both low and highly-skilled labor”

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

Financescapes are the intricate movements of


global capital in the form of currency markets,
national stock exchanges, and speculations.
Interactions of ethnoscapes, technoscapes, and
financescapes are unpredictable because each of
these scapes is subject to different incentives or
constraints that are political, informational, and
technoenvironmental.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

Mediascapes and Ideoscapes have an image and


narrative-based nature. Mediascapes are about the
production and dissemination of information through
different types of media where the boundaries between
the real and the fictional blur. Mediascapes create and
introduce imagined lives, places, and lifestyles.
Ideoscapes are political, and they indicate mainly the
spread of the Enlightenment worldview, which consists of
notions like democracy, welfare, freedom, rights, and
sovereignty. The complexity introduced through global
interactions eliminates the formation of a single global
market.
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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

The Sociocultural Environment


The principles of marketing that have been generated for
developed nations and that have mainly adopted the
American worldview are utilized in many local contexts as if
they were universal. However, the institutional formations
and the cultural foundations of local contexts are influential
in constituting the local marketing activities. International
marketing and consumer researchers have pointed out that
a contextually grounded work to advance the
understanding of local contexts and markets is necessary to
understand the international environments better and to
develop locally informed strategies.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

The Sociocultural Environment


Culture is a significant factor for marketers in
understanding international markets. It subsumes
the whole society, including its economy,
education, institutions, government, families,
production, ideology, and consumption. It has
been reproducing all these elements of the social
life historically throughout the years, and is itself
continuously developing as well.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

The Sociocultural Environment

Culture can be defined as;


“various aspects of social life from religion to
everyday practices, from mundane to profound,
from institutions to ideologies, from ideas to
activities, and from social formations to meaning
systems”

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

The Sociocultural Environment


Four significant elements of culture:

I.language,
II.institutions,
III.material productions,
IV.symbolic productions

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

The Sociocultural Environment

Language helps the members of a culture to share and


transmit information. It also shapes our thought
patterns, our worldviews, and our behavior. A cognitive
scientist, argues that Australian Aboriginals do not have
the words for left or right in their language, and
therefore their understanding of space is different from
ours.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

The Sociocultural Environment

Institutions group people and ask them to conform to the


rules in return for some rewards. Family, political institutions,
and gender are examples of social institutions defining social
norms and roles.
Material productions can be in various forms, e.g., artwork,
intellectual productions, physical productions like tools,
machines, or service productions like hospitals or media.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

The Sociocultural Environment

Symbolic productions determine the relationship


between the physical and the metaphysical. For
example, some religions ban certain food items.
While the Hindu do not eat cow meat since the
animal is considered sacred, Muslims have halal
rules to obey.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT

The Sociocultural Environment


Methodologies to Understand Cultures:
In this presentation, two different perspectives used
in understanding cultures are discussed.
•Hofstede’s national culture framework, and
•Meamber and Venkatesh’s ethnoconsumerist
methodology.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
The Sociocultural Environment
Methodologies to Understand Cultures:
Hofstede (2001) is a social psychologist who introduced
cultural dimensions that are extensively used by international
marketers to compare consumer behavior in different nations.
Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are;
•individualism/collectivism,
•power distance,
•masculinity/femininity,
•uncertainty avoidance,
•long/short-term orientation, and
•indulgence/restraint.
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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
The Sociocultural Environment
Methodologies to Understand Cultures:

The individualism and collectivism dimension is related to


the boundaries between people and groups that they
belong to. In individualistic cultures, the independence of
the individual is essential. In collectivist cultures group
coherence and cultural harmony are more important
than individual freedom. For example, in individualistic
cultures, people prefer living in detached houses.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
The Sociocultural Environment
Methodologies to Understand Cultures:

The individualism and collectivism dimension is related to


the boundaries between people and groups that they
belong to. In individualistic cultures, the independence of
the individual is essential. In collectivist cultures group
coherence and cultural harmony are more important
than individual freedom. For example, in individualistic
cultures, people prefer living in detached houses.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
The Sociocultural Environment
Methodologies to Understand Cultures:
Power distance demonstrates the degree of tolerance
toward the unequal distribution of power in a society .
A society is identified as masculine when assertiveness,
earning money, showing off, and lower levels of care for
others are the dominant values. A feminine society is
supposed to value nurturing roles, interdependence, and
caring for others. For example, people in collectivist
cultures share buying decisions rather than making
individual decisions.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
The Sociocultural Environment
Methodologies to Understand Cultures:
The notion of uncertainty avoidance measures how
threatened people feel in certain situations.
If uncertainty is high in a society, the level of anxiety
and aggressiveness is high, and procedures and rules are
encouraged. For example, consumers of low uncertainty
avoidance prefer short payment for bills.
People of the countries with long-term orientation
are more pragmatic, modest, and thrifty. Unlike these,
people with short-term orientation put emphasis on
consistency, and truth, religious and, nationalistic ideals
are prioritized.
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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
The Sociocultural Environment
Methodologies to Understand Cultures:
indulgence society values the gratification of
human desires, pleasures, and joy unlike a high
restraint society that controls the gratification of
needs through social norms.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
The Sociocultural Environment
Methodologies to Understand Cultures:
Meamber and Venkatesh (2000) introduce the
“ethnoconsumerist methodology to understand
international consumer behavior or markets from a
cultural standpoint by using the principles of
anthropological approach. In this methodology, a
marketer who aims to understand a new culture needs to
first collect information by using two approaches:
•text view and
•field view.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
The Sociocultural Environment
Methodologies to Understand Cultures:
The text view utilizes secondary or archival data on the
cultural background, such as traditions, values, and
histories. The Field view is generated by collecting
primary data such as ethnographic observational or
interview data. After assembling data from textual and
field views, an analysis of the data is conducted to
identify information on cultural artifacts or objects,
cultural practices (including consumption practices),
cultural conceptual structures, and the relevant social
histories or memories.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
Economic Environment

International marketers need to recognize what type of


economic system dominates the potential market to
enter. Market capitalism, centrally-planned socialism,
centrally-planned capitalism, and market socialism are
the four traditionally defined economic systems.
It is hard to identify and categorize any economic system
in one of these ideals because economies transformed
into hybrid forms as a result of globalization.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
Economic Environment
International marketers can utilize market development as a
criterion in order to segment international markets. Levels of
market development are measured according to per capita
gross national income (GNI). Low-Income Countries (LIC) have
GNI per capita of $ 1,045 or less. The level of industrialization
is low, and most of the population deals with agriculture or
subsistence farming. Birth rates are higher than the others, but
life expectancy levels are short. Literacy rates are low.
Instability and unrest dominate the political environment. LICs
generally have social, economic, and political problems, and
international marketers generally regard them as having
minimal opportunities to invest to enter and operate.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
Economic Environment
Lower Middle-Income Countries (LMIC) are the ones
with per capita GNI is between $ 1,046 – $ 4,125. They
have growing consumer markets, which make these
countries attractive for international marketers.
Upper Middle-Income Countries (UMIC) or developing
countries have per capita GNI between $ 4,126 – 12,745.
Since urbanization is increasing in these countries, the
number of people working in the industrial sector is also
increasing, while that of those involved in agriculture is
decreasing.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING ENVIRONMENT
Political and Legal Environment
Basic aspects of the political and legal environment should
also be familiar to the reader. An international marketer
has to consider political and legal environments both in
the home and the foreign countries. A political
environment consists of governmental institutions,
political parties, pressure groups, and organizations
through which power is exercised over various
organizations and people in a society.
In assessing global markets, a marketer needs to check
political matters such as the sovereignty of nations,
stability of government policies, and political risks to
business.
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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGIES
Segmentation Strategy
International market selection depends on the size
of the company. Since small-and-medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs) have limited financial and
human resources, collecting and analyzing
information about international markets in order to
decide which market to operate is complex.
Therefore, selecting the markets with low psychic,
cultural, and geographic distance is recommended
for SMEs.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGIES
Segmentation Strategy
A low psychic distance country is a country that is less
different from its counterpart in terms of language, culture,
political system, level of education, and level of industrial
development. Low cultural distance means perceptions of the
home, and the host countries are similar. For example,
Romania and Turkey might be different in many aspects, but
marketers might perceive them as two very similar countries.
Low geographic distance refers to the closer spatial proximity
between the two countries. SMEs can prefer using such a
simple guide in selecting which markets to operate in.
However, Large-Scale Enterprises (LSE) conduct a systematic
analysis in order to identify and assess the segments and
decide which ones to target.
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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGIES
Segmentation Strategy
It is suggested a framework for the market selection process of
Large-Scale Enterprises (LSE). In order to identify which market to
target, the first step is to segment the international markets.
International market segmentation is informed from an analysis
of two groups of knowledge: the firm and the environment.
The marketer checks:
1) if the firm’s resources are available for sustaining marketing
activities abroad,
2) if the firm has experience in internationalization,
3) if the firm has experience on the type of industry,
4) if the aim of the firm is internationalization, and
5) if there are any existing networks that constitute a strength for
the company.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGIES

Targeting Strategy
In order to choose the target market(s), the
manager needs to check the current segment size
and its growth potential. The size of the segment
may be significant, but it may have reached the
saturation level and may not have any growth
potential. Then, there is no need to choose this
segment as a target market because the possibility
to sustain profitability will be a problem.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGIES

Targeting Strategy
Differential advantage refers to the ability to
provide better market offerings than the
competitor’s offerings. Product and service quality
and brand reputation variables are combined to
calculate the differential advantage.
Cost advantage means providing the same
products at a better cost than the competitors.
Marketing advantage refers to providing
a better market offering than competitors due to
extensive distribution and effective promotion.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGIES

Targeting Strategy
Targeting strategies can be grouped into three at
the global level:
1.standardization,
2.differentiation, and
3.niche marketing.
Standardization is a process of marketing the same
marketing mix throughout the globe.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGIES

Targeting Strategy
Differentiated marketing, which refers to serving
multiple market segments with different marketing
mix offerings, seems to be a better alternative when
serving in contemporary global market. For
example, L’Oréal is a global cosmetics company that
uses a differentiation strategy very effectively. It has
the L’Oréal Luxe brand line, which carries various
luxury skincare, makeup, and perfume brands for
millennials, whose desires and aspirations are
shaped in contemporary social networks.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGIES

Targeting Strategy
Niche marketers serve a narrowly defined market
within an international market or at the global
level. For example, due to the advancement of
digital photography, people lost interest in analog
film photography. Recently, a niche market of
young consumers who prefer alternative
photography techniques, tools, processes, and
nostalgic aesthetics and experiences has emerged.
Lomography, a brand of analog photo camera,
serves for this particular and narrowly defined
global market.
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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGIES

Positioning Strategy
Positioning is a strategy which aims to differentiate the
brand in the consumer’s mind from the competitor’s
brand in terms of the attributes and benefits offered by
that brand. Having this in mind, another important
consideration for marketers is the scale of the market
that they need to operate in the global cultural
economy. There can be three alternative scales:
a.global consumer culture,
b.foreign consumer culture, and
c.local consumer culture

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGIES

Positioning Strategy
Global consumer culture positioning means that the
brand identifies a specific segment of the global
consumer culture. For example, in the early 2000s,
UGG boots became popular among the upper-
middle-class global youth female subculture. Rather
than adapting the products according to the
geography or across countries, UGG identifies
female consumers that belong to the global youth
subculture with similar tastes and lifestyles.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGIES

Positioning Strategy
An alternative positioning strategy is foreign
consumer culture positioning, where the company
associates the brand with a specific foreign country
or culture. For example, Levi’s Jeans symbolically
associates itself with America or the Wild West,
Volkswagen associates itself with German
Engineering by Das Auto slogan. Foreign consumer
culture positioning is less common than global and
local consumer culture positioning strategies.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRATEGIES

Positioning Strategy

The final positioning strategy aims to associate


the brand with the local consumer culture.
McTurko in Turkey or McFalafel in Egypt are
examples of local consumer culture positioning.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MIX DECISIONS

Developing an international marketing strategy


consists of the identification of the segments,
making a selection among these segments to
determine the target market(s) to operate, defining
the positioning of the product or the brand in the
consumers’ mind. Marketing mix elements, namely
product, price, distribution, and communication,
are the tools used to implement the strategies to
create value for the global or international markets
and capture value from them in return.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MIX DECISIONS

Product Decisions
Product is defined as “anything that can be offered
to a market for attention, acquisition, use or
consumption that might satisfy a want or need.
Products have tangible and intangible components
and can be conceptualized at three levels: core
customer value, actual product, and the augmented
product. While the core customer value refers to
the benefit of the product to the customers, the
actual product consists of quality level, features,
design, packaging, and brand name.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MIX DECISIONS

Product Decisions
Marketers can extend or adapt current products or
create novel products for international or global
markets. To choose one of these options, an
international marketer needs to look at two
essential elements of the marketing mix together:
product and communication. Communication and
product decisions are considered together since
marketing communications create the position of
the product and the intangible elements of the
product, such as its symbolic value and the brand
name.
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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MIX DECISIONS

Product Decisions

The four alternative strategies that a company can choose when planning its product for the global markets.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MIX DECISIONS

Product Decisions
Strategy1: suggests using the same message in all promotion mix elements and
offering the same product in different international markets. It is a risky strategy
since most of the time, the product needs to be adapted according to the
constraints of the environment and the needs of the market. Additionally, the
new market can be able to interpret the message designed for the domestic
market.
For example, Chanel perfumes and Benetton utilize this strategy. They market the
same products with the same communication tools across the global consumer
culture.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MIX DECISIONS

Product Decisions
Strategy2: suggests that while extending the product to different
international markets, communication about the product can be adapted.
This strategy suggests managers tailor the intangible aspects of the product
or the message given about the product to fit it to the culture of the new
customer base. While
launching Burberry’s Taipei flagship store, Burberry used Asian celebrities in
the opening event which they organized. Coca-cola also tailors ads specific
to the cultural rituals of the market.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MIX DECISIONS

Product Decisions
Strategy 3 considers adapting the product to the needs of the
foreign markets while keeping the communication common all
around these different markets.
BP sells various types of gas in different
international markets but prefers to use the same message on
the brand across these markets.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MIX DECISIONS

Product Decisions
The fourth strategy (Strategy 4) is the adaption of both the product and
the communication. Environmental conditions and the characteristics of
the target market may necessitate companies to tailor both their
products and communication practices to the new foreign markets.
Most of the car
brands utilize this strategy. Regulations, climate, needs, and wants of
the consumers lead car manufacturers to offer different car models to
various international markets.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MIX DECISIONS

Pricing Decisions
Price is the only element of the marketing mix that creates revenues.
International pricing is more complicated than pricing in domestic markets
due to a variety of external factors such as changes in exchange rates,
increasing inflation levels, use of alternative payment methods such as
barter or leasing, and government influences such as tariffs or quotas or
regulations on pricing. Besides, the particular market factors such as
customers’ perceptions of the value of a product, their economic means,
and competition may influence the pricing decision

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MIX DECISIONS

Pricing Decisions

When the distribution channel gets longer, costs


increase, and the prices will go up. The price
difference resulting from this is called ‘price
escalation’.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MIX DECISIONS

Distribution Channel Decisions


Distribution is a process which involves the physical
handling and transfer of goods; change in the ownership
of goods among the producers; the middleman, the buyer,
and negotiations and agreements among these actors.
This process takes place in both the home and the foreign
country. For the operations in a foreign country, the company
may choose to directly sell to its customers or work with an import
management company, an agent merchant middlemen, or foreign
retailers.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MIX DECISIONS

Marketing Communications Decisions


In international marketing, product or brand- related messages
are communicated to buyers in order to provide information for
purchasing decisions. In the domestic marketing context, the
sender starts by encoding the message and then transfers it to the
receiver through a channel, and lastly, the message is interpreted
by the receiver. This basic model of communication process
explains any communication mix element such as advertising,
public relations, sales promotions, direct or internet marketing,
personal selling, and packaging.

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INTERNATIONAL MARKETING MIX DECISIONS

Marketing Communications Decisions


The dimensions of culture, such as religion, attitudes, social conditions,
education, shape individuals’ perceptions, and interpretations. For
example, when famous telecommunications company Orange entered
into Northern Ireland, its slogan was “The future’s bright…the future’s
Orange”. The responses of the Irish market to the message were low. It
was due to a sociocultural factor; the color orange represents the
Orange Order, the Protestant fraternal organization in Ireland. Catholic
Irish decoded the message as “the future is Protestant loyalists” and
developed a negative attitude towards the message and the brand

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