International Marketing

An introductionDr. D. W. Nicoll

• The management guru Peter Drucker once said: “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”

• Central to understanding international marketing is learning about the complex relationships between the culture, the customer and the organisation, the consumer or user and the product or service, and the many ideas, actors and institutions engaged in between.

• The object of this introduction is set some context to the subject of international marketing.

• My aim is to introduce:– A brief perspective of international trade, giving

some simple food examples of produce that changes as it travels

– How extraneous forces to product or service – language, political, regulatory, military, fashion, changing tastes, influences what can be bought and sold.

– Introduce people, cultures and markets as open systems which can be influenced by marketing

• The roots of international marketing lie in the idea of trade – i.e. the bringing or taking of something to sell for profit or exchange in a different geographical location.

• Why would anybody make this effort?• Because those who seek to trade have

realised value in what they are taking elsewhere.

• They also realise value in what they find there for their own domestic market.

• ‘Value’ is a difficult term. With respect to products and services it must be built by both customers and marketers.

• ‘One’s mans junk is another man’s treasure’

• Value in marketing can be defined by both qualitative and quantitative measures – i.e. cost vs. utility, the unique experience, qualities or social benefits something provides.

• Example…

Fish and chips is a popular take-away food that

originated in the United Kingdom 150 years ago as

a street food

For 140 years it has been the UK’s most loved dish

It travelled with colonization and migration: This is fish and chips in Canada

And in Australia…

Here is a fish and chip shop in Hong Kong

Here is another dish

This is ‘Chicken Tiika Masala’.

All UK based Indian restaurants serve it.

Why? Because it’s been the UK’s No.1 Dish for the last 10 years - superseding

the popularity of fish and chips!

The UK’s next popular dish is the noodle dish ‘Chow Mien’ served in UK Chinese restaurants

Chinese and Indian food supersedes the domestic UK product – but these dishes have changed,

adapted, as they travelled, some were

even invented in the UK

• The origins of Chicken Tikka Masala is disputed, until recently most restaurants in India wouldn’t know what you were talking about if you asked for one.

• Some say the dish originated in Punjab during the last 50 years. Another view is that it originated in the first Indian restaurants in Soho, London, during the 1970s. Nevertheless its popularity has grown through its diffusion in the UK.

Chicken Tikka Masala is even made in India now…

Here is a Chinese restaurant in the UK

There is almost sure to be an Indian and Chinese Restaurant in every British small town or large village – in one year Brits ate 109.7million Chinese meals and 70.3million curries.

In the larger cities which boast larger Chinese populations they will often run two menus. One written in Mandarin and serving ‘authentic’ regional delicacies, and another in English for the homogenized British Chinese food

• The dream of international marketing:

• A standardized product which can be sold to all people, everywhere, easily, on a highly regular basis.

• But like people and customers: not all products are created equal, some can only be sold in certain places, under certain conditions, infrequently, and need to be modified, adapted at site…like food?

• As humans have evolved to cope with their environments, and exploited animal, mineral and vegetable resources, they have done so through particular social interactions and distinctions, they developed particular ways of looking and experiencing the world – often called cultures.

• Clearly, some products designed to suit one geographical location or culture will not suit another, will appeal to certain tastes and not others. i.e. snowmobiles in Cambodia, certain foodstuffs, etc.

• As humans have evolved to cope with their environments, and exploited animal, mineral and vegetable resources, they have done so through their particular social interactions and distinctions, they developed particular ways of looking and experiencing the world – often called cultures.

• Clearly, some products designed to suit one geographical location or culture will not suit another, will appeal to certain tastes and not others. i.e. snowmobiles in Cambodia, certain foodstuffs, etc.

• Human beings – individually and organized in to societies, nations and cultures are not closed systems – they are always open to pressures and influence and able to shift desires, beliefs, cravings, attitudes and prejudices.

• Good marketing seeks to exploit this ability for humans and societies to be flexible in their accommodations of products and services.

• There are compelling arguments that all major cultures have evolved through hybridization with external influences throughout history. To influence, however, you must adequately communicate…

• Language – a major component of culture and the core of human communication –– can act as a huge barrier leading sometimes to significant marketing issues…

• And especially as language organises thoughts and spawns feelings and images about products and services.

• When Coca-Cola first shipped to China, they named the product something that when pronounced sounded like "Coca-Cola." The only problem was that the characters used meant "Bite the wax tadpole." They later changed to a set of characters that mean "Happiness in the mouth."

• When Coke’s competitor Pepsi started marketing its products in China a few years back, they translated their slogan, "Come alive, you're in the Pepsi generation" pretty literally. The slogan in Chinese really meant, "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave."

Lessons from history• History has also shown

the rise and fall of trade according to changing tastes, wants, needs and desires at the local level.

• Tastes, wants and needs and desires can be engendered and developed through proper marketing.

Lessons from history• Products and services, even ideas,

developed and valued in one particular location, can find markets in other locations, other societies and cultures, which may prove more lucrative and open larger markets.

• As with people, not all products and services are the same – they have distinguishing features and functions, as well as varying levels of sophistication and complexity, which can narrow or focus their potential market i.e. Silk for Turbans.

TodayIn Beijing, a German businessperson is driving a

Lexus; he’s wearing shoes, Irish cashmere socks, Calvin Klein underwear, an Armani suit, with a Gucci belt. He smokes Marlboro has a Mont Blanc pen, in his Italian shirt. He has a Sony-Ericsson phone and he’s going to meet an American investor at a restaurant selling smoked salmon fish from Scotland. He has a Coke. After lunch, they stop for a Baskins-Robbins for an ice cream sundae. When he gets home, sitting on an ottoman, he has an Japanese Whiskey nightcap, while listening to American country western music.

Today

How many of these things, even the things around you now, were made in China, but marketed by foreign companies and pushed by foreign brands?

Thank you