Page 224 - DMGT545_INTERNATIONAL_BUSINESS

Unit 11: Basics of International Marketing

aspects of its marketing strategy. Although various types of strategies may apply, the most notes
important ones are global product strategies, global advertising strategies and global branding
strategies. Typically companies globalize those marketing mix elements that are subject to
particularly strong global logic forces. A company facing strong global purchasing logic may
globalize its account management practices or its pricing strategy. Another firm facing strong
global information logic will find it important to globalize its communications strategy.

Global Product Strategy: Pursuing a global product strategy implies that a company has largely
globalized its product offering. Although the product may not need to be completely standardized
worldwide, key aspects or modules may in fact be globalized. Global product strategies require
that product use conditions, expected features and required product functions be largely identical
so that few variations or changes are needed. Companies pursuing a global product strategy
are interested in leveraging the fact that all investments for producing and developing a given
product have already been made. Global strategies will yield more volume, which will make the
original investment easier to justify.
Global Branding Strategies: Global branding strategies consist of using the same brand name
or logo worldwide. Companies want to leverage the creation of such brand names across many
markets, because the launching of new brands requires a considerable marketing investment.
Global branding strategies tend to be advisable if the target customers travel across country
borders and will be exposed to products elsewhere.
Global branding strategies also become important if target customers are exposed to advertising
worldwide. This is often the case for industrial marketing customers who may read industry and
trade journals from other countries. Increasingly, global branding has become important also
for consumer products where cross-border advertising through international TV channels has
become common. Even in some markets such as Eastern Europe, many consumers had become
aware of brands offered in Western Europe before the liberalization of the economies in the
early 1990s. Global branding allows a company to take advantage of such existing goodwill.
Companies pursuing global branding strategies may include luxury product marketers who
typically face a large fixed investment for the worldwide promotion of a product.
Global Advertising Strategy: Globalized advertising is generally associated with the use of
the same brand name across the world. However, a company may want to use different brand
names partly for historic purposes. Many global firms have made acquisitions in other countries
resulting in a number of local brands. These local brands have their own distinctive market and a
company may find it counterproductive to change those names. Instead, the company may want
to leverage a certain theme or advertising approach that may have been developed as a result of
some global customer research. Global advertising themes are most advisable when a firm may
market to customers seeking similar benefits across the world. Once the purchasing reason has
been determined as similar, a common theme may be created to address it.
Composite Global Marketing Strategy: The above descriptions of the various global marketing
models give the distinct impression that companies might be using one or the other generic
strategy exclusively. Reality shows, however, that few companies consistently adhere to only one
single strategy. More often companies adopt several generic global strategies and run them in
parallel. A company might for one part of its business follow a global brand strategy while at the
same time running local brands in other parts. Many firms are a mixture of different approaches,
thus the term composite.
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Caution Globalisation doesn’t include product only, it is an holistic feature including
pricing, communication, distribution etc.

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