Question 1
Clearly there is no doubt that the convergence of communications technologies and Internet networking frameworks have had an intense, societal and worldwide change and effect on how a Global Marketer’s, plans, budgets and implements of international marketing communication campaigns. The Global Marketer can no longer rely on just external proxies such as country specific partner companies, benefactors, or international distributors to properly represent their particular company’s brand, messaging and completely assimilate themselves as a worthy distributor not apt to incorporate into its’ own offerings – a competitive brand.
The Global Marketer must now take into consideration, not just the basics of consistent and regionally focused, marketing communications (messaging, branding, and advertising), but they must also meet the challenges of properly and effectively maximizing the correct usage of social media. As the constantly evolving new social media outlets rapidly come onto the market, a major part of their overall international integrated marketing campaign, the Global Marketer will need to be well versed in the new, up and coming social media, in order to determine how to best reach their international markets and how to define the accuracy, effectiveness and ultimately the ROI of investing marketing funds into various social media vehicles. Very quickly, some companies have experienced that which implementing a portion of their marketing communications plans on social media can provide: social media can either enhance or hinder the company’s overall integrated marketing campaigns. Successful Global Marketers will need to take in all of the metrics associated with traditional marketing communications elements and ensure that their various online campaigns, presence and response to consumers, fit cohesively within the requirements, parameters and metrics utilized for a product or brands’ particular overall marketing goals.
Much like traditional marketing communications and advertising, those responsible for their corporation’s global integrated marketing, need to continuously adjust messaging, verbiage, and language in order to attain market share and establish good will relationships customers, to which they will want to ensure become and stay a loyal consumer base for the duration of the products’ life and/or the brands’ veracity. Further whether selling to B2B or B2B markets, Global Marketers must proactively seek how to more fully integrate their social media presence into their overall corporate marketing goals, in order to attract and keep loyal, repeat customers. Rewarding customers accordingly with innovative rewards programs, product portfolio offerings, easy to uses Web sites, and facilitating ways to contact the company - should an issue or problem arise with the consumer’s particular product or service received. This component is key, it’s great if a company knows how to manipulate the marketplace and social media and effectively incorporates it into their over strategic marketing campaigns, but one bad experience by a customer on a social media can lead to ravaging and devastating consequences for the company, brand and/or product line – such information, all of which is spread throughout the Internet like a lightning rod. Global Marketers today are extremely challenged, like they had never had been before, but careful considerations of overall messaging, cohesive advertising campaigns and properly instituted elements of customer service will ensure that the customer is fully satisfied with the service and/or product they received, all of which is crucial to establishing and maintaining a loyal, repeat consumer base.
Question 4
I chose to focus on the technological capacities within the global marketplace. Technology, per se, encompasses a wide range of products and services not on just on the national, but within the international marketplace. Basic utilitarian segmentation can be defined as follows:
Hardware – these are the manufactures of such items as PCs, laptops, servers, peripherals, printers and networking components, as well as, mobile telephone, tablets and other emerging hardware based products. Hardware, can be further segmented into the minutia of components which support both hardware and software operations. These include the semi-conductor processors manufacturers (Intel, AMD, and Samsung) which give the computer, server, or networking device, the ability to run at certain speeds, on certain platforms and with a set of circumstantial parameters. Circuit board manufacturers – from the small footprint of a mobile phone or tablet, to the more space intensive products such as routers, modems, networking peripherals, servers and mainframe computers also require processor intelligence and capacities. And, finally, memory. Memory consists of two major segments themselves: SIM Cards, other internal memory cards and RAM (Random Access Memory) which run on the larger hardware products, for example laptops, PCs, workstations and servers.
Software – Software is the written code behind that supports the hardware product, it is in a sense, what it dictates to the hardware what instructions to implement, how and when to and when to stop them. Software also includes the code based platforms on which this data is made functional – they are called operating systems. During the early advent of the personal PC, Microsoft and Apple became the dominant players as to which of its software programs were to run on which platforms and what functions they would direct the hardware components to action. Following the digital revolution, quickly came the mobile phone revolution where new software operating systems, such as Android, quickly rose to prominence.
Aside from the hardware / software programs, further segmentation leads to how such products will be sold or distributed. Increasingly, individuals within the international marketplace are choosing to purchase their hardware components (PCs, laptops, mobile phones) online. However, major mobile phone providers such as T-Mobile, Apple, Verizon, AT&T and Sprint have also chosen to establish traditional sales front stores in major markets, which allow the consumers to physically touch, feel and ask questions prior to determining which product and/or service they will use.
Question 10
Standard versus localized national, regional and international marketing advertising campaigns focus and segmentation has long been an oft studied subject within the marketing analyst specialist communities, professorships and experts in the field of global marketing (Keegan & Green, 2014). Clearly, even decades prior to the digital revolution, it had been proven that corporations which applied Marketing’s traditional “4Ps” (product, price, place and promotion) to clearly define the local market’s needs, and segmented their regional focused international marketing campaigns, achieved a much higher range of increased sales, profits and customer loyalty.
Often, companies will choose to localize their offerings and advertisements to attract consumers with more traditional tastes. For example, companies like McDonalds are well known to change their menu depending on regional tastes. From personal experience, I have seen and experienced such localized product offerings and advertising. When I lived in Brazil in the late 1980s, I often ate the traditional Brazilian sandwich, the Bauru - at McDonalds.
However, international marketing communications managers responsible for their company’s regional campaigns that chose not to delve into regional cultural norms, buying habits and product, price or brand perceptions, were often doomed to failure and sometimes ridicule by the same consumers they were attempting to attract. We only have to look at the disastrous “Nova” campaign by General Motors’ in South America. While wildly popular in the United States for its competitive price and capabilities, little thought was instilled by General Motor’s global marketing department, into the actual regional message itself, let alone the over-reaching corresponding regional marketing communications and advertising campaigns. Unfortunately, General Motors chose to just transpose its’ marketing campaign, so successful in the United States, onto various Latin American markets, which resulted in historic dismal effects, not just on the product itself, but on the General Motors as a brand. In explanation, Nova in Spanish means “no va” which translates to “it doesn’t go.” General Motors, by choosing to circumvent international marketing methods, and established global market segmentations and identifications processes, ignored regional marketing needs and perceptions, and in the end advertised an automobile product that was perceived by most Latin American consumers as a car which was named “it doesn’t go.”
Question 11
It may be argued that social media outlets are indeed an extension of traditional marketing elements, where word of mouth was an often way for consumers to inform themselves and others of their particular response to certain marketing communication messages or product and/or services received by certain companies. However, I propose that yes, they prove to be new venues of marketing messaging, communications, and advertising. Social media in particular, must be particularly monitored both in content and by customer interactions. Previous to the digital revolution, newspaper advertisements or articles may have stirred certain emotions, within the general populace with a consumer base among or allies or adversaries. However, because of rapidly emerging technologies, and the worldwide consumer bases’ willingness to harness the information which is readily available puts an added burden on the Global Marketer. Marketing on social media outlets must be scrutinized, planned and implemented as much, if not more, than that of traditional marketing elements and devices. Despite if they were either positive or negative, the rapidity with which consumers, or the even the general public, will respond to certain messaging on social media is sure to quickly and proficiently be communicated by those receiving these social media messages, or if they were actively seeking them out for themselves.
Because of the rapidity of today’s technological communications worldwide infrastructures, Global Marketers must seek more than ever choose certain facets of social media as a part of their overall marketing campaign. Imperative, however, is how international marketing corporate managers ensure that they highly scrutinize corporate content and possible perceptions by its intended segmented market. Basically, on the Internet, once it’s out there, it’s out there, and if negative feedback begins to build within social media against a corporation’s or organization’s product or service message, traditional media like TV, radio and newspapers will surly pick up on it and report the disputed issue at hand – further disrupting, or eroding a company’s product or brand imaging.
Works Cited
Keegan, W. J., & Green, M. C. (2014). Global Marketing. Pearson Higher Ed.
