The history of the McDonald’s Corporation dates back to 1954 when a man by the name of Ray Kroc heard about Mac and Dick McDonald, two brothers who were running a burger and shakes joint in San Bernardino, California. Kroc paid the two brothers a visit and this visit culminated in a franchising agreement to use the McDonald’s name limitlessly. Seven years later and with more than one hundred and thirty McDonald’s restaurants across the United States, Ray Kroc bought the chain from the McDonald’s brothers for 2.7 million dollars. The growth of McDonald’s Corporation continued in the United States and soon Kroc set his eyes on markets away from home. Today, the McDonald’s Corporation is the leading fast-food chain globally, and owns the restaurants in different continents: South America, Europe, Asia, Middle East, and even Africa. McDonald’s Entry into the Chinese Market Due to the diverse cultural beliefs and practices Continue reading
International Marketing
International Marketing Communication – Key Issues and Challenges
When first starting-up an organization, launching a new product or service or simply reminding customers that the organization exists, firms need to educate consumers. This education comes in the form of marketing communication, which is otherwise known as promotion. Promotion is an organization’s articulation of messages it wants to send to target audiences to achieve business objectives. The promotion mix or integrated marketing communications (IMC) consists of advertising, sales promotion, trade shows, personal selling, direct selling and public relations. Without doubt, investment in one or more of these methods of communication will increase the firm’s costs, and for this investment to be a profitable one, the marketer must know the purpose of promotion. The Chartered Institute of Marketing claims that “the purpose of any form of marketing communication is to provide a set of information to your target audience in a way that encourages a positive, or buying, response. The Continue reading
Why Marketing Strategies of Global Companies Sometimes Fail
‘The world today is a global village’ it’s a fact. But the global village still has some tribes and it is very important to keep all the tribes happy if we need to have good relationship with all of them. Since the globe is accessible to everyone, it is also vital to design the marketing strategy and develop it in the perspective of variations in the culture, traditions, taste, weather and norms of a country. One of the most striking trends in business has been growing internationalization of the business. Companies are going global but they have to keep their customers satisfied domestically and internationally. The internationalization affected the business strategies and the companies are in the rethinking process to counter the problems in the global marketing strategies. Marketing is no exception to this. Attitude of the customers in this regard is very important for designing the marketing strategy, especially Continue reading
Effects of Self Reference Criterion in International Marketing
If you take a look around yourself you will find how many goods and services are solely produced in your own country around you? Your clothes might be produced in India, your cell phone from China, your computer in Taiwan; your Coffee might be from Latin America. Whatever we talk about music, clothes, movies or our soft drinks for everything there are good chances that most of these products are produced in somewhere else in the globe. This is the global market place where good price and quality is welcomed by consumers irrespective of the region of its origination. In this scenario the need is to adopt the marketing practices that are effective beyond the borders so the importance of international marketing cannot be denied. International marketing is not an easy task. The international marketer has to face many obstacles in the way to achieve his goals. One of the Continue reading
Price Component of the Global Marketing Mix
In any country, three basic factors determine the boundaries within which market prices should be set. The first is product cost, which establishes a price floor, or minimum price. While it is certainly possible to price a product below the cost boundary, few firms can afford to do this for extended periods of time. Second, competitive prices for comparable products create a price ceiling or upper boundary. International competition almost always puts pressure on the prices of domestic companies. A widespread effect of international trade is to lower prices. Indeed, one of the major arguments favoring international business is the favorable impact of international competition upon national price levels and, in turn, upon a country’s rate of inflation. Between the lower and upper boundaries for every product there is an optimum price, which is a function of the demand for the product as determined by the willingness and ability of Continue reading
Global Marketing Strategies
Marketing strategy is one of the most interesting, challenging and important elements in international business. Compared with art and science, marketing strategy is more about people finding ways to deliver exceptional value by fulfilling the needs and wants of customers, shareholders, business partners and society. It is inherently driven by people and is always changeable which explains why making marketing strategy is difficult and significant. Moreover, a perfect marketing strategy that is executed without any flaws can still fail. Additionally, sometimes businesses get success despite having a general strategy or execution because marketing is complicated and flexible and the nature or characteristics of marketing can make planning strategy very difficult and frustrating. Marketing strategy has been a great challenge for each enterprise. To some degree, the difficulty of making marketing strategy highlights the extraordinary success of those famous business, for instance, Coca-cola, Starbucks, Best buy, Apple, etc. A global marketing Continue reading