MARKETING IN GLOBAL BUSINESS STRATEGY

International marketing strategy is significant in formulating global business strategy in three different ways.  First, what should be the global configuration of marketing activities?  That is, where should such activities as new product development advertising, sales promotion, channel selection, marketing research, etc., be performed? Second, how should global marketing activities performed in different countries be coordinated? Third, how should marketing activities be linked with other activities of the firm?  Each of these aspects is examined below.

Configuration of  Marketing Activities,  unlike those in other functional area of a business, must be dispersed in each host country to make an adequate response to local environment.  Although this configuration is valuable in begin customer oriented, not all marketing activities need to be performed on a dispersed basis.  In many cases, competitive adventage is gained in the form of lower cost or enhanced  difeferentiation if selected activities are performed centrally as a result of technological changes, buyers shifts, and evolution of marketing media.  These activities comprise production of promotional materials, sales force, service support organization, training and advertising.

Sales force, at least for some businesses, can be centralized in one location.  Alternatively, highly skilled sales specialists can be stationed at the headquaters or in a regional office to provide sales in defferent countries.  Centralization of the sales force is most efective when the complexity of the selling task is very high, and the products being sold are high-ticket itms purchased infrequently.

Like sales force, high- skilled service specialists can be stationed at the headquarters.  They can visit different subsidiaries to provide nonroutine service.  Along  the same lines, service facilities  (service center, repair shop) can be regionalized at a few locations, especially for complex jobs.  Such centralization should permit the use of state- of-the-art facilities and qualified service people, resulting in better service at lower cost.

Training of marketing personnel can be effectively centralized and lead to economies of scale in production and delivery of training programs, faster acumulated learning (which people with varied experiences assembled in one place bring), and increased uniformity around the word in implementing marketing programs.  Training centralization, however , must be weghed against travel time and cost.

Although cultural differences between nations require advertising to be tailored to each country, in many ways global advertising is gaining acceptance.

First.  a company may select one ad agency to handle its global companign, economizing in compaign development, seeking better coordination between the parent and subsidiaries,  and facilitating a consistent advertising approach world wide.  For example  British Airways uses one agency,  Saatchi and Saatchi, 

Worldwide.  Second, many companies advertise in the global media, for example, in The  Economist,  in certain trade magazines, or at international sports events seen by viewers around the world, such as at U.S. Open tennis matches.  Finally, many media ( e.g. airport billboards, airline and hotel magazines)  have a decidedly internacional reach.  For these reasons, centralization of advertising makes sense.  Yet government rules and regulations relative to advertising distinct national habits, lenguage differences, and lack of media outles may require dispersion of advertising to diferent countries.

International Marketing Coordination.  International marketing activities dispersed in different countries should be propertly coordinated to gain competitive advantage.  Such coordination can be achieved in the following ways:

1. Performing marketing activitiesusing similar methods across countries.  This form of coordination implies standardizing activities across nations.  Some strategies, including brand name, product positioning, service standards, warranties, and advertising theme, are easier to coordinate than are other marketing strategies.  On the other hand, distribution, personal selling, sales training, pricing and media selection are difficult to coordinate across nations.
2. Transfering marketing know-how and skills from country to country - For example, a market entry strategy successfuly tried in one country can be transferred and a pplied in another country.  Like wise, customer and market information can be transferred for use by other subsidiaries.  Such information may relate to shifts in buyer purchasing patterns, recent trends in technology, lifestyle changes, successful new product or feature introductions, new promotion ideas, and early market signals by competitors.
3. Secuencing of marketing programs across countries.  For example, new products or new marketing practices may be introduced in various countries in a planned sequence.  In this way, programs developed by one subsidiary can be shared by others to their mutual advantage and, thus, should result in substantial cost saving.  To reap the benefits of sequencing a company must create organizational mechanisms to manage the product line from a worldwide perspective and to overcome manager resistance to change in all participating countries.
4. Integrating the efforts of various marketing groups in different countries.  Perhaps the most common form of such integration is managing relationships with important multinational customers, often called international account management.  International account management systems are commonly used in service firms.  For example, Citibank handles some accounts on a worldwide basis.  It has account officers responsible for coordinating services to its large corporate customers anywhere in the world.

Competitive adventage can result from international account management systems in a variety of way.  They can lead to economies in the utilizatión of the sales force if duplication of salling effort is avoided.  They can allow a company to differentiate itself from its competitors by offering a single contact for international buyers.  They can also leverage the skills of top salespersons by giving them more influence over the entire relationship with major customers.  Some of the potencial impedimients to using international account management include increased traveltime, language barriers, and cultural diferences in how business is conducted.  Dealing  with a major customer through a single coordinator may also heighten the costomer´s awareness of its bargaining power.

Integration of effort across countries can lead to competitive advantage in other areas as well; for example, after-sale service.  Some international companies have como to realize that tha availability of after-sale service is often as important as the product itself, especially when a multinational customer has operations in remote areas of the world or when the customer moves from country to country.

Marketing´s Linkage to Nonmarketing Activities.  A global viw of international marketing permits linking marketing functions to upstream and support activities of the firm, which can lead to advantage in various way.  For example, marketing can unlock economies of scale and learning in production and/or research and development by (a) supporting the development of universal products by providing the information necessarry to develop a physical product design that can be sold worldwide; (b) creating demand for more universal products even if historical demand has been for more varied products in different countries;  (c) identifying and penetrating segments in many countries to allow the sale of universal products;  and (d) providing services  and/or  local accessories that efectively tailor the standard physical product.

MARKETING  STRATEGIES.     PART  SIX.

Claudia  Tatiana  Palacio  Vasco

Administradora de Empresas

Especialista en Mercadeo Internacional

TP.  07362  de  ministerio de Desarrollo  Económico.