International marketing activities are interlinked with a firm’s corporate goals, objectives and strategy. The overall aims, objectives and strategy of a firm has a great impact on international marketing decisions e.g, whether to enter new uncertain markets and how maximum would be risk that the firm is ready to take or the level of control required over international operations. There is no denying in fact that a person’s self reference criterion (SRC) and an associated ethnocentrism are a two primary obstacles to success in international marketing. Self reference criteria is defined as an unconscious reference to one’s own cultural values, experiences and knowledge as a basis for decisions. Ethnocentrism is closely connected to self reference criterion. Ethnocentrism can be defined as the nations that one’s own culture or company knows best how to do things. Ethnocentrism has been seen particularly a problem in the American managers at the beginning of Continue reading
Marketing Concepts
Social, Societal, and Socially Responsible Marketing
Nowadays companies are required to take care of long term and overall interests of customers. As a number of social issues like the global environmental issues, the exhaustion of natural resources, and the infinitely increasing numbers of population have appeared companies’ effort for long-term interests of customer increases demands for social benefits. A number of health and social issues are concerned with behavior causes that are the result of voluntary behavior. The production and operation should take the long-term benefits of society into account as a whole as well as the interest of consumers which is the common ground of the social marketing concept. The corporations have to find out what target groups want and need and derive maximum satisfaction from customers while they enhance and maintain welfares in the community. The main concept of social marketing is providing a way of dealing with such problems by changing the behavior Continue reading
What Is Price Perception?
Price perception is one of the leading variables when it comes to consumers buying process. Economists, market researchers have already undergone researches and predict that in buying decision price are the driving forces. Several studies explain and determine and explain the same fact thereby concluding the fact with decision making. The determinants of price perception can be both rational and psychological factors. The other factors may become psychological factors and prestige. The key variable to explore and explain consumers’ price perception is the degree of understanding the psychological process of consumers’ price perception. When a firm has seasonal demand, the discrepancies are observed between the supply and demand. Generally the firm has excess supply at the time of low demand and scarcity when there is high demand. If the firm commercializes goods and faces seasonal demands, it can minimize the effect through good management of production and storage. The problem Continue reading
What is the Difference Between Marketing and Sales?
When thinking of marketing and sales and what the difference is, we tend to scratch our heads. Both activities that go into this topic have the same result, generating an income base for the company. What is the definition of marketing? Marketing refers to the events that take place in a company connected with buying and selling a product or service. Depending on the size of the company, typically depends on the approach in reaching its audience. A baker in a small town just starting out may use the newspaper. Whereas a restaurant owner of a major food chain may utilize television, and the internet to reach its clientele. Before we break down marketing in more detail let us look at the definition of sales. Sales can be described as a deal between two parties where the buyer receives goods, services, and/or assets in exchange for money. It can also Continue reading
Porter’s Generic Competitive Strategies
In 1985, in his book Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, Michael Porter, outlined a set of generic strategies that could be applied to all products or services. In coping with the Porters model of five competitive forces, there are three potentially successful generic strategic approaches (also known as Porter’s Generic Competitive Strategies) to outperforming other firms in an industry: Overall cost leadership. Differentiation. Focus. Sometimes the firm can successfully pursue more than one approach as its primary target, though this is rarely possible as will be discussed further. Effectively implementing any of these generic strategies usually requires total commitment and supporting organizational arrangements that are diluted if there is more than one primary target. The generic strategies are approaches to outperforming competitors in the industry; in some industries structure will mean that all firms can earn high returns, whereas in others, success with one of the generic Continue reading
Consumer Decision Making Process
The five stages of the consumer decision making process include; Problem recognition, information search, information evaluation, purchase decision, and evaluation after purchase. This is just a general model of the consumer decision making process and it emphasizes that the buying decision making process starts before the actual purchase and continues even after the purchase. It also encourages the marketer to focus on the complete buying process and not just on the purchase decision. 1. Problem Recognition Consumers recognize a problem as a need or want. Of course, the most frequent problem occurs when consumers realize they are out of the product. For example, when the gas tank gets near empty, or you run out of lunch meat for your sandwiches, or when your car is due for maintenance. Problem recognition also occurs when a consumer receives new information about a good, service, or business. New fashions, for example, can make Continue reading