Global Marketing Place

Several factors have forced countries to extend their economic views to events outside their own national borders. First, international agreements are being negotiated in attempt to increase trade among nations. Second, the growth of electronic commerce and related computer technologies brings previously isolated countries into their marketplace for buyers and sellers around the globe. Third, the interdependence of the world’s economies is a reality since no nation produces all of the raw material and finished goods purchased by its citizens or consumers of all its output without some exporting to other countries. Evidence of this interdependence is illustrated by the introduction of the Euro as a common currency to facilitate trade among the nations of the European Union and the creation of trade alliances.

Service firms also play a major role in today’s global marketplace. In many cases, global marketing strategies are almost identical to those used in domestic markets. Rather than creating a different promotional campaign for each country, marketers use the same ad with spectacular results.

Domestic marketing strategies may need significant changes to adapt to unique tastes or different cultural and legal requirements abroad. It is often difficult to standardize a brand name on a global basis.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Marketing Eras

• Production Era:  Prior to 1925, most firms operating in highly developed economies focused narrowly on production. Manufacturers stressed production of quality products and then looked for people to purchase them.  The production era did not reach its peak until the early part of 20^th century.
• Sales Era: Manufacturers began to increase their emphasis on effective sales forces to find customers for their output. Firms attempted to match their output to the potential number of customers who would want it. Companies with a sales orientation assume that customers will resist purchasing products and services not deemed essential and that the task of personal selling and advertising is to convince them to buy. Although marketing departments began to emerge from shadows of production, finance, and engineering during the sales era, marketing dominated sales and other areas. Selling is thus a component of marketing.
• Marketing: Personal incomes and consumer demand for products and services dropped rapidly thrusting marketing into a more important role. Organizational survival dictated that managers pay close attention to the markets for their goods and services. The trend ended with the outbreak of World War 11, when rationing and shortages of consumer goods became commonplace. The war years created only a pause in an emerging trend in business: a shift in the focus from products and sales to satisfying customer needs.
• Relationship: It emerged during the 90s. Organizations carried the marketing era’s customer orientation one step further by focusing on establishing and maintaining relationships. This effort represented a major shift from the traditional concept of marketing as a simple exchange between buyer and seller. Relationship marketing by contrast, involves long-term, value-added relationships developed over time, strategic alliances and partnerships retailers play major roles in relationship marketing.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Generic and Grand Strategies

Many businesses explicitly and all implicitly adopt one or more generic strategies characterizing their competitive orientation in the marketplace. Low cost, differentiation, or focus strategies define the three fundamental options. Enlightened managers seek to create ways their firm possesses both low cost and differentiation competitive advantages as part of their overall generic strategy. They usually combine these capabilities with a comprehensive, general plan of major actions through which their firm intends to achieve its long-term objectives in a dynamic environment. Called the grand strategy, this statement of means indicates how the objectives are to be achieved. Although every grand strategy is, in fact, a unique package of long-term strategies, some basic approaches can be identified: concentration, market development, product development, innovation, horizontal integration, vertical integration, joint venture, strategic alliances, consortia, concentric diversification, conglomerate diversification, turnaround, divesture, and liquidation.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Mergers and Acquisitions

Regardless of what form a business takes—be it a sole proprietorship, partnership, or a corporation—the chances are reasonably good that its form will evolve over time. Companies of all sizes and types achieve a variety of objectives by merging, dividing, and restructuring. The terms most often used to describe all of this activity are mergers, acquisitions, and leveraged buyouts. The difference between a merger and an acquisition is fairly technical, having to do with how the financial transaction is structured. Basically, in a merger, two or more companies combine to create a new company by pooling their interests. In an acquisition, one company buys another company (or parts of another company) and emerges as the controlling corporation. The flip side of an acquisition is a divestiture, in which one company sells a portion of its business to another company. In leveraged buyouts one or more individuals purchase the company (or a division of the company) with borrowed funds, using the assets of the company they’re buying to secure (or guarantee repayment of) the loan. The loans are then repaid out of the company’s earnings, through the sale of assets, or with stock. Leveraged buyouts do not always work.

Mergers and acquisitions represent relatively radical ways in which companies are combined. On a more modest scale, businesses often join forces in alliances to accomplish specific purpose. In a joint venture, two or more companies combine forces to work on a project. The joint venture may be dissolved fairly quickly if the project is limited in scope, or it may endure for many years.

A consortium is similar to a joint venture, but it involves the combined efforts of several companies. Cooperatives also serve as a vehicle for joint activities. In a cooperative, a group of people or small companies with common goals work collectively to obtain greater bargaining power and to benefit from economies of scale. Like large companies, these cooperatives can buy and sell things in quantity; but instead of distributing a share of the profits to stockholders, cooperatives divide all profits among their members.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Market-driven Manager

1. Creates customer focus throughout the business.
2. Listens to the customer.
3. Defines and nurtures his distinctive competence.
4. Defines marketing as market intelligence.
5. Targets customers precisely.
6. Manages for profitability, not sales volume.
7. Makes customer value the guiding star.
8. Lets the customer define quality.
9. Measures and manages customer expectations.
10. Builds customer relationships and loyalty.
11. Defines the business as a service business.
12. Commits to continuous improvement.
13. Manages culture along with strategy.
14. Grows with partners and alliances.
15. Destroys marketing bureaucracy.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

The Dynamics of Social Responsibility

The various stakeholders of a firm can be divided into inside stakeholders and outside stakeholders. The insiders are the individuals or groups that are stakeholders or employees of the firm. The outsiders are all the other individuals or groups that the firm’s actions affect. The extremely large and often amorphous set of outsiders makes the general claim that the firm be socially responsible.

Perhaps the thorniest issues faced in defining a company mission are those that pertain to responsibility. The stakeholder approach offers the clearest perspective on such issues. Broadly stated, outsiders often demand that insider’s claims be subordinated to the greater good of the society; that is, to the greater good of the outrsiders. They believe that such issues as pollution, the disposal of solid and liquid wastes, and the conservation of natural resources should be principal consideration in strategic decision making. Also broadly stated, insiders tend to believe that the competing claims of outsiders should be balanced against one another in a way that protects the company mission. For example, they tend to believe that the need of consumers for a product should be balanced against the water pollution resulting from its production if the firm cannot eliminate that pollution entirely and still remain profitable. Some insiders also argue that the claims of society, as expressed in government regulation, provide tax money that can be used to eliminate water pollution and the like if the general public wants this to be done.

The issues are numerous, complex, and contingent on specific situations. Thus, rigid rules of business conduct cannot deal with them. Each firm regardless of size must decide how to meet its perceived social responsibility. While large, well-capitalized companies may have easy access to environmental consultants, this is not an affordable strategy for smaller companies. However, the experience of many small businesses demonstrates that it is feasible to accomplish significant pollution prevention and waste reduction without big expenditures and without hiring consultants. Once a problem area has been identified, a company’s line employees frequently can develop a solution. Other important pollution prevention strategies include changing the materials used or redesigning how operations are bid out. Making pollution prevention a social responsibility can be beneficial to smaller companies. Publicly traded firms also can benefit directly from socially responsible strategies.

Different approaches adopted by different firms reflect differences in competitive position, industry, country, environmental and ecological pressures, and a host of other factors. In other words, they will reflect both situational factors and differing priorities in the acknowledgement of claims. Obviously, winning the loyalty of the growing legions of consumers will require new marketing strategies and new alliances in the 21^st Century. Many marketers already have discovered these new marketing realities by adopting strategies called the “4 Es.” 1) make it easy for the consumer to be green, 2) empower consumers with solutions, 3) enlist the support of the consumer, and 4) establish credibility with all publics and help to avoid a backlash.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

Implementing the Alliance

Implementing begins the process of bringing companies closer in order to work together in more detail and depth than they have in the past. Yet to be able to work together in a beneficial manner companies need to decide not only on a set of common objectives, but also on the type of relationship they are trying to build and the extent to which this relationship is to be taken. In effect, the partners must determine the levels of commitment they expect from each other and the organizational structure that will allow them to work together more effectively.

 This brings up one of the toughest issues in industry today: internal organizational harmony. A company may have many “centers of excellence”—a great purchasing department, sales staff, marketing function, manufacturing facility and accounting group. Each of these areas have their own budgets, objectives, and criteria on which they are evaluated. Often these issues differ, creating conflicting interests. As such, getting these various departments working together as a team is difficult.

 Alliances compound this problem by adding another dimension. Alliances bring two or more companies together, each with its own centers of excellence and conflicting interests, with the hope of improving both companies. Now these companies must create communication systems, team work, and objectives that not only bring together the companies, but also the multiple functions of each company. While this is often difficult to accomplish, it is not an impossible task. However, in order to accomplish this, companies must plan well. It is around this planning that the implementation stage revolves.

 My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

A Retailer’s Value Chain

The value a retailer adds lies in providing more choices, greater convenience, better quality, availability, and lower prices. To do so, it must perform several activities. The first stage of this chain is store operations, in which the retailer must perform four kinds of activities. First, it must make the right choices about the mix of goods that its stores must carry (merchandising). Once the mix of goods has been determined, purchasing must seek suppliers who are dependable, that is, would deliver on time and at good prices. The retailer, on the one hand, must also make sure that it does not run out of items that customers want but, on the other hand, cannot afford to be stuck which inventory that customers do not want. It cannot hold the goods too long either, because doing so also costs money. Moreover, the prices of products such as semiconductors or computers drop so fast that a retailer can loose a lot of money by holding inventory. Thus, inventory management is critical.

 

The second stage of the chain is logistic. The retailer must get the goods from suppliers to the right stores, at the right time, at the right cost. The last stage is marketing. The firm must market itself and its products through its advertising, promotion, and pricing, which is often done with the help of or in alliance with suppliers. In some cases the retailer may also have a service network to repair or maintain products.

 

In performing the activities of its value chain, a firm must interact with suppliers, customers, and firms in related industries. These other firms also have value chains of their own. What we really have, then, is a system of value chains called the value chain system.

 

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight