Page 12 - DMGT547_INTERNATIONAL_MARKETING

Unit 1: Basics of International Marketing

1.3.3 Focus Notes

The third international marketing principle is focus, or the concentration of attention. Focus is
required to succeed in the task of creating customer value at a competitive advantage. All great
enterprises whether large or small, are successful because they have understood and applied
this great principle. IBM succeeded and became a great company because it was more clearly
focused on customer’s needs and wants than any other company in the emerging data-processing
industry.
One of the reasons IBM found itself in crisis in the early 1990s was that its competitors had
become much more clearly focused on customer needs and wants.

Example: Dell and Compaq, focused on giving customers computing power at low
prices. IBM was offering the same computing power at higher prices.

A clear focus on customer needs and wants and on the competitive offer is required to mobilize
the effort needed to maintain a differential advantage. This can be accomplished only by focusing
or concentrating resources and efforts on customer needs and wants and on how to deliver a
product that will meet those needs and wants.

Notes One way to understand the concept of international marketing is to examine how
international marketing differs from such similar concepts as domestic marketing, foreign
marketing, comparative marketing, international trade and multinational marketing.
Domestic Marketing is concerned with marketing practices within researchers or marketers’
home country.
Foreign Marketing encompasses the domestic operations within the foreign country. A US
company considers marketing in United States as domestic marketing and marketing in Great
Britain as foreign marketing.
Comparative Marketing is the one when its purpose is to contrast two or more marketing
systems rather than examine a particular country’s marketing system for its own sake.
International Trade is concerned with the flow of goods and services across national borders.
The focus of the analysis is on commercial and monetary conditions that affect balance of
payment and resource transfer.
International Marketing on the other hand, is more concerned with micro level of market and
uses the company as a unit of analysis.
Box 1.1: Indian Examples of Global Marketing
Indian corporations are going global. The recent acquisition of Corus by Tata has signalled
that some of them are looking beyond the national market and seeing their future as
multi-nationals, competing for space in the global economy with the present occupants.
The Tata-Corus deal is the biggest one so far. But a lot has been happening since the
finance minister loosened controls on overseas investments by Indian companies in 2003.
The volume of overseas acquisitions by Indian companies has grown from around
$2 billion in 2004 to $4.5 billion in 2005 and may reach over $10 billion in 2006. Videocon,
Bharat Forge, Ranbaxy and other pharma companies, the IT majors and, of course, ONGC
are some of the others who have been active.
Source: Business Standard.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 7