Lucas Beaumont
“When in Rome, do as Romans do”, this quotation find its perfect meaning in the world of marketing. Organizations earn profit simply by selling what they produce or what they provide. In shortest words we can say that profits will be there only if sales are there, which establish the “selling” as a field of chief importance. Sales people across the world believe in selling by their “will to sell”. If we ask some successful sales manager to dedicate his/her success to something, then he/she will defiantly raise the figure towards his/her special “selling skills”.
Well let us admit that they are not wrong. Selling is defiantly a skill, where the salesperson needs to strongly dedicate towards the product. But marketers treat this dedication as a problem, according to marketers dedication should not be towards product, it should be towards the customer. In fact all the researchers in the field of marketing believe that “Customer is the central axis”, so if selling is focused towards product, then there should be some field that is completely dedicated towards the customer. This need of a “customer oriented” field give rise to “Marketing”. Marketing is a field that works to kill the need of selling, because marketing believes in developing/producing a product that sells itself. For this purpose, customer need is required to be properly understood before developing the product. Further marketers also try to understand the “consumer behavior” in order to understand the buying pattern, so that the buying decision of customers can be persuaded to some extent.
Strategy to sell
In previous days, producing the enough quantity of products so as to match the demand was a big challenge for all organizations across the globe. But after industrial revolution and globalization, now situation has reversed. In demand and supply equation, the magnitude of supply is very high. Consumers are available with large no. of alternatives even while purchasing a single product. So, the fight of “Making the product available” is now over and game is all about providing the “Best deal” to the consumer. This gives the command in hands of marketing.
Marketers work a lot to first of all segment their market on the criteria if geography or demographics. Then they select their target market and develop a marketing strategy for that particular target market. Because in different target markets, consumers are different, so their needs are also different. Keeping these different needs in focus, marketers develop specific marketing mix for their specific target market. Now a single product, which is marketed by a company in different target markets (or/and Countries), will have different marketing mix (i.e. customized product, customized price, customized distribution and customized promotion methodology).
So, following the above given principal, organization adopt different marketing strategies to sell their product in different countries.
Case 1: Toyota- (Product Customization)
Toyota is a Japanese automobile company which is a world leader in automobile sector. Toyota is known for many operational innovations like 6-sigma, Kaizen and JIT (Just in Time inventory). They have the honor of producing world’s most efficient cars with minimum utilization of resources.
In 1930s, Toyota entered the US market with its “Home developed” vehicle – “TOYOPET”. Toyopet was a car developed by Japanese experts and it was a huge success in Japan. But Toyota faced an unexpected failure of this vehicle in US market. When Toyota analyzed the customer feedback, then they realized that US customers felt that the vehicle was not fuel efficient, it was less powerful and it was built like a tank. Toyota took this failure as a lesson and marketing team of Toyota customized Toyopet according to the needs of US customers and then it was a huge success in US market also.
Case 2: Mc Donald’s and KFC- (Product and Promotion Customization)
Mc D and KFC when initially began their operations in India; they completely ignored the culture and tradition of Indian customers by keeping the beef and pork products in their eating facilities. Indian customers denied the acceptability of these world popular food chains, as a result both Mc D and KFC closed down their operations in India. They came back in India after revising their menu (i.e. subtracting all the beef and pork products from it) and they used this customization as a “Promotion Campaign” that was again very successful in attracting customers.
Case 3: Place Customization (Dell and Apple Inc.)
Both Dell and Apple Inc. use a very confined range of distribution channels across the globe. In majority of countries of the world, customers have only one option to make their purchase from Dell and Apple, it’s their websites. But in countries like India and even US, customers are extremely shopping conscious. They need a visible retailer from whom they can ask all the details regarding product and they feel like buying only after touching the actual product. This enforced Dell and Apple to establish their exclusive outlets in countries like India, US and Australia. This is perfect example of customizing the channels of distribution.
From the above given cases, it could be easily understood that marketing strategies are extremely helpful for organizations to sell their products in alien countries.
