International Marketing

Defining International Marketing:
• “Marketing is defined as a process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need & want by
creating and exchanging products and value with others.
• The term “International Marketing” refers to exchanges across national boundaries for the satisfaction
of human needs and wants.
• The extent of a firm’s involvement abroad is a function of its commitment to the pursuit of foreign
markets.
• Global industries are defined as those where a firm’s competitive position in one country is affected by its
position in other countries, and vice versa.
Q. Global marketing passed through different evolutionary changes, describe all steps in detail.
Evolution of Global Marketing:
Firms, depending on their level involvement in foreign markets, pass through following five evolutionary
phases.
1. Domestic marketing:
• Domestic marketers tend to be ethnocentric (focus is solely on domestic market) & pay little attention to
changes taking place in the global market place.
• Such firms produce and sell products and services only in their home country.
• Firms that keep focus only on their domestic markets may be vulnerable to the sudden changes forced on
them from foreign competition, when foreign firms enter the markets or even when foreign firms develop
better or cheaper products.
2. Export marketing:
• Exporting firms fulfill unsolicited / solicited orders from foreign countries.
• For growth in export marketing, however, a company requires physical, financial and managerial resources.
• When a firm attempts to export it faces many issues that include difficulties in import/export restrictions,
cost and availability of shipping, exchange rate fluctuations, collection of money, development of
distribution channels etc.
• Export marketers still tend to take ethnocentric (a belief in or assumption of the superiority of the social or
cultural group that a person belongs to) approach, since they mostly make products in their home
countries and have no direct involvement in the foreign markets.
3. International marketing:
• An international marketing firm has polycentric orientation with emphasis on product and promotional
adaptation in foreign markets whenever necessary.
• They make strategic decisions that are tailored to suit the cultures of the foreign countries.
• The company may establish an independent foreign subsidiary in each and every foreign market it services
– such efforts are also called multi-domestic marketing.
4. Multinational marketing:
• More involvement than international marketing many international marketing in multinational marketing
• Multinational firms are those that sell products or services in many countries.
• Economies of scale in product development, manufacturing, and marketing are achieved by multinational
firms by consolidation of some of their activities on regional basis.
• In this regiocentric approach product planning may be standardized within a region (e.g. a group of
contiguous and similar countries).