International Marketing Essay

1. What are the basic goals of marketing? Are these goals relevant to global marketing? Marketing activities represent an organization’s efforts to satisfy customer wants and needs by offering products and services that create value. These goals are relevant in virtually every part of the world; however, when an organization pursues market opportunities outside of its home country (domestic) market, managers need an understanding of additional conceptual tools and guidelines. 2. Identify and briefly describe some of the forces that have resulted in increased global integration and the growing importance of global marketing. The dynamic involving driving and restraining forces is shown diagrammatically in Figure 1-2. Driving forces include regional economic agreements such as NAFTA, converging market needs and wants, technology advances such as the Internet and global TV networks, transportation improvements, the need to recoup high product development costs in global markets, the need to improve quality through R&D investment, world economic trends such as privatization and finally, opportunities to use leverage, corporate culture, and the continuing presence of national controls that create trade barriers. 3. Describe the difference between ethnocentric, polycentric, regiocentric, and geocentric management orientations. The premise of an ethnocentric orientation is that home country products and management processes are superior. An ethnocentric company that neither sources inputs from, nor seeks market opportunities in the world outside the home country may be classified as an international company. A company that does business abroad while still presuming the superiority of the home country may be classified as an international company. Such a company would rely on an extension strategy whereby it would export, without adaptation, products designed for the domestic market. The polycentric orientation that predominates at a multinational company leads to a view of the world in which each country markets is different from the others. Local country managers operating with a high degree of autonomy adapt the marketing mix in a polycentric, multinational company. Managers who are regiocentric or geocentric in their orientations recognize both similarities and differences in world markets. Market opportunities are pursued using both extension and adaptation strategies. The regiocentric and geocentric orientations are characteristic of global transnational companies.