TNC

The Impact Of TNC Global Branding

The Impact Of TNC Global Branding

A ) Transnational advertising and marketing

Advertising's presence is everywhere. It shapes social change and affects people's views of the world. As a major channel between producers and consumers, world advertising is dominated by a few transnational agencies that spend the most money and structure the industry by developing and providing the advertising "package" needed by transnational corporations to sell products.

Transnational corporations are the force behind the advertising industry. Although we do not know who owns the big advertising agencies, the close relationship between them and transnational corporations suggests that advertising agencies often are subsidiaries of larger transnationals. Thus, advertising agencies are used by transnational corporations to promote a homogeneous, global culture through which they can sell their goods. Toward that end, they have often attempted to neutralize different languages, customs, religions, and thus social and cultural identities (Askegaard, 2006, 102).

Ownership of national media by transnational corporations is only one means of intercultural penetration. Through the purchase of advertising space in various media, corporations influence programming content. During the past ten years there has been a marked increase in advertising-backed radio and television. Media services - newspapers, television, and radio - depend upon advertising for financial backing and therefore are subject to strong influence and pressure from advertising agencies. For example, the cancellation of the television show Lou Grant starring Ed Asner was thought by many people to be directly related to his personal and the TV character's outspoken support of various political issues (Douglas, 2001, 77).

Advertising executives argue that advertisements create consumers of lower income groups and new jobs which move them up the socio-economic ladder. However, the situation in most Less Developed Countries (LDCs) is that transnational corporations that can afford large-scale advertising campaigns depend upon capital-intensive methods of production. Investment goes into new machinery which requires small amounts of labor and thus does in jobs for the poor. In addition, profits go to stockholders as dividends, maintaining or increasing the concentration of wealth.

B) TNC's branding and marketing efforts

In many ways, marketing products globally is the same as marketing them at home. Regardless of which part of the world the firm sells in, the marketing program must be centered on a sound product or service that is properly priced, promoted, and distributed to a carefully selected target market. In other words, the marketing manager has the same controllable decision variables in both domestic and nondomestic markets. Although the development of a transnational marketing program may be the same in either domestic or nondomestic markets, special problems are encountered during the implementation of marketing programs in nondomestic markets. These problems often arise because of the environmental differences that exist among various countries that marketing managers may be unfamiliar with.

In examining the differences between countries, the marketer must focus on how the consumer buying behavior is affected by the environmental forces. Many of these factors create distance between how the firm currently markets versus what can be done in the ...