THE GLOBALIZATION OF MARKETS

The Globalization of Markets

The Globalization of Markets

Introduction

It is commonly accepted that marketing strategies play very important roles in most international organizations. Some believe that a company which plans to expand its business and want to be a successful international firm should have very effective marketing strategies. As a number of writers (John, Letto-Gillies, Cox and Grimwade 2009, Ketelhohn 2007, Johnson and Scholes 2008) have pointed out, international marketing strategy is concerned with making important policy decisions affecting the long-time direction of the company. This paper first proposes the importance of international company's marketing strategy, and then considers how to make a competitive marketing strategy and carry out it in a right way. After that, it will look at how to understand 'change' in business environment and what organizations should pay attention to in a changeable market. In the final part, it will focus on a specific international company's global marketing strategy.

PART A

Importance of international marketing strategy

Over the years, many definitions of 'marketing strategy' have been made and developed, a typical definition was made by Quinn (cited in John, Letto-Gillies, Cox and Grimwade, 2009) who describes marketing strategy as:

... the pattern or plan that integrates an organisation's major goals, policies and action sequences into a cohesive whole. A well-formulated marketing strategy helps to marshal and allocate an organisation's resources into a unique and viable posture based on its relative internal competencies and shortcomings, anticipated changes in the environment and contingent moves by intelligent opponents. (Quinn 1980:pp3)

According to John, Letto-Gillies, Cox and Grimwade (2009), although there were many definitions about marketing strategy, most of them emphasize the same direction in which the organization is developing, where the organization is going, where the organization is or where it should be. In fact, problems mentioned by them are the biggest headache and trouble maker for most international enterprises, thus marketing strategies enable companies to find out how and where to develop. As Hill (2009) sees the marketing strategy in international business, nowadays, process of the global economy and liberalization of investment environment result in many global markets becoming extremely competitive, in order to get more profit in such an international environment, a company should have a very clear marketing strategy which cares a lot about its position. In all models of marketing strategies, international marketing strategy is a very large part and it affects other part of strategies to a international company in a certain degree. As Manu (2008) has pointed out, more and more organizations take the whole world as their market with the quickening process of globalization in the past decades, the role and effective marketing strategies in different geographic market-places become a greater need for them to analyse caused by the growth in the globalization of business and markets. All these indicate that marketing strategies do have important influence on international enterprise's performance; therefore an effective marketing strategy cannot be ignored when companies plan to expand their business.

How to make a competitive marketing strategy

From the very start, ...