International Marketing Communication – Key Issues and Challenges

When first starting-up an organization, launching a new product or service or simply reminding customers that the organization exists, firms need to educate consumers. This education comes in the form of marketing communication, which is otherwise known as promotion. Promotion is an organization’s articulation of messages it wants to send to target audiences to achieve business objectives. The promotion mix or integrated marketing communications (IMC) consists of advertising, sales promotion, trade shows, personal selling, direct selling and public relations. Without doubt, investment in one or more of these methods of communication will increase the firm’s costs, and for this investment to be a profitable one, the marketer must know the purpose of promotion.… Read the rest

Ethnocentrism in International Marketing

International marketing activities are interlinked with a firm’s corporate goals, objectives and strategy. The overall aims, objectives and strategy of a firm has a great impact on international marketing decisions e.g, whether to enter new uncertain markets and how maximum would be risk that the firm is ready to take or the level of control required over international operations.

There is no denying in fact that a person’s self reference criterion (SRC) and an associated ethnocentrism are a two primary obstacles to success in international marketing. Self reference criteria is defined as an unconscious reference to one’s own cultural values, experiences and knowledge as a basis for decisions.

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The Cultural Framework of International Marketing

Culture defines the people’s “way of life”, meaning the way they do things. Culture could be related to a specific country, a section of community or within an organization. A people’s culture includes their beliefs, rules of behavior, language, rituals, art, technology, styles of clothing, ways of producing and cooking food, religion, and political and economic systems. Culture is not inherited genetically; it must be learned and acquired. Socialization occurs when a person absorbs or learns the culture in which he or she is raised.

Marketing research should take into account the local culture of the country in which you wish to market.… Read the rest

Barriers in Cross-Cultural Communication

Cultural noise refers to barriers and impediments to successful communication among people of different cultures. Sources of cultural noise are numerous and could be consist of:

  • Difference in language for instance the same words have different meanings in two languages which can creates noise in communication.
  • Dissimilarity in non-verbal cues such as interpretation of body language.
  • Differences in values such as importance of being on time in a culture.
  • Self-reference criterion (SRC) which refers to one’s unconscious reference to one’s own cultural values when attempting to understand another culture.

In the process of organizational communication model, fail in communication at any point can happen.… Read the rest

Knowledge of Sub-Cultural Groups and Market Segmentation

The segmentation of the market involves the dividing of entire market into small customers groups who have different type of responses for different marketing strategies for particular service or product. In this way the organization can design the marketing policies according to the particular needs and requirements of each segment in order to have more profitability by more generating favorable responses than by simply applying a single marketing policy for whole market.

The market segmentation is mostly done at the level of customers. But in case of international marketing sometimes markets are also segmented on the basis of whole countries by considering the aspects that are common among countries.… Read the rest

Market Research – Definition, Classification and Process

World is changing very rapidly with every passing day. The things which people only dreamed about a few years back are appealing reality today. Companies, their functions and their operations have improved tens of times and this advancement is increasing with every passing day. Same happened with people. Their level of awareness towards products and behavior is now quite thoughtful and demanding. Today’s buyers have forced all the business to make necessary changes. They are very cautious and take a lot of time to make decisions and want everything to be quick and easy. Understanding customer satisfaction, product launches, effectiveness of pricing, product, distribution and promotion activities, countering competitors techniques, assessing market potential, and predicting consumer behavior etc.… Read the rest