International marketing practices may be influenced by the cultural environment of the countries and therefore it is important to apply the proper marketing mix which will allow the company to act successfully in the foreign market. Monica Cojocaru in her article “Impact of Culture on Global Marketing” proves this idea. The purpose of her article is to analyze in more detail the majority of the traditional marketing policies taking into account the multicultural element that sometimes may have a very large impact on the business outcomes. The author thinks that the overall importance of the culture in marketing should be given much more attention.
Cojocaru states that culture is resistant to change and when looking at the dimensions of business and marketing one will see that culture may be resistant to the new ideas, approaches and products. Therefore, in order to succeed in the foreign market, a company should strive for the balance between the corporate culture and the typical practices in the various markets (Cojocaru, n.d., p.53). There are several ways how the cultural issue may be addressed. Cojocaru provides four most common alternatives that the firms may choose from. They are as follows: selling the product without changes, modifying a product for the specific country or region, developing an absolutely new product in the foreign markets, and developing a global product that will incorporate all differences (Cojocaru, n.d., p.53).
Cojocaru also provides a useful table in which one may see when a company chooses between product standardization and adaptation. For example, different terms of use, local business customs, consumption patterns, and local competition may make the company adapt its products. Otherwise the company will fail. The author supports her ideas by the real life facts. For instance, Coca Cola and Levi’s sell standardized products, and business-to-business products are also not very affected by the cultural differences. At the same time, consumer goods often require adaptation. McDonalds, IBM, Kit Kat, General Motors, Nestle are the companies that had to adapt their products in the foreign markets mainly due to the cultural factors and geographical peculiarities of the foreign markets.
In the second part of the paper Cojocaru focuses on the factors that influence the distribution channels and the communication in international business. The author does not provide very much detail about the challenges of the marketing communication in the overseas markets and she mainly writes about the integrated marketing communication that includes advertising, sales promotion, commercial fairs, direct sales and public relations (Cojocaru, n.d., p.57). However, these components are routine elements of marketing in the domestic market. Therefore, the main conclusion that one may come to is that the company should be flexible enough in order to react to the local peculiarities and criticism. For instance, Nike had very negative publicity due to the news that many people work in the very poor conditions in the overseas factories. The company had to improve the image by means of the increased paid advertising. What the companies may also do is application of PR in order to encourage the local media to write positive stories that would outweigh the gossips and adverse events. In such a way there will be more positive news and evidence that the company is not indifferent. In general, the article has not provided any novel ideas concerning the marketing communication in the international business.
At the end of the article the author concludes that the companies must be aware of the various cultural backgrounds of the countries in which they would like to operate. It is of great importance to learn the culture and harmonize the company’s business activities in accordance with the local needs if a company would like to prevent the entry failure.
In general, the article is very simple to read and quite straightforward. The reader quickly understands the main point the author is trying to present. Moreover, the author uses several dimensions – standardizing/adapting a product, distribution channels and communication techniques – in order to show the importance of cultural differences and diversity in the international business from different perspectives. Moreover, various examples help to understand the author’s ideas better. The paper as a whole is very relevant and convincing in theory, because it raises the issues that the majority of the international companies are likely to face in the multicultural environment. Therefore, when reading this paper, one will find some useful information that concerns the international business.
At the same time, there are a number of negative points about the article. First of all, it is a poorly researched article. The author does not refer to the other academic papers that were written in large numbers before. Secondly, it is not clear what kind of methodology the author used in order to research the problem. The article looks like a chapter from the book about the peculiarities of the business practices of some companies that work in the international environment. Therefore, to make the article more credible in academic terms, the author should have referred more to the other sources and focused only on one of the dimensions. In general, the article may be useful in the early stage of research and some of the findings presented in the article require further in-depth research supported by statistical, quantitative and qualitative data.
References
Cojocaru, M. Impact of Culture On Global Marketing. (n.d.). Young Economists Journal /
Revista Tinerilor Economisti. Print.
