Essay On Standardization And Adaptation

Stages of company Internationalization (Uppsala Model) 1. International Marketing – Ethnocentric Orientation 2. Multinational Marketing – Poly centric Orientation 3. Global marketing – Geocentric Orientation 4. Transnational Marketing – Glocal

Every country differs in culture which has been there for centuries. The international market is growing rapidly, with more and more multinational organisations entering new markets each day. In this assignment I will evaluate how the difference in cultures affects the performance of international businesses.

Doing business in such different countries ask you to be flexible and need to be able to adapt quickly to the local demand and cultural differences. Your strategy has to be adapted to the ethical standards, cultural norms, but also the way the business is going locally. In others world, the company has to localize its distribution and marketing strategy to the requirements of the local market.

2. When a company grows in size and makes the decision to expand internationally, it is vital for its image among current and future customers to complete projects effectively and on time. Furthermore, it is also likely that such an expansion would entail the representation of more than one culture among the workforce. Indeed, while many employees will be relocated from the home country, a further proportion will be hired from the host country. To facilitate the relations and

In doing business so many times an organization must think globally. This might be done to increase sales and/or profits or to lower labor costs. In either case problems can occur due to ethical and cultural barriers in global expansion. In this paper I will attempt to show some of what a global organization and a cultural issue that affects their interactions outside the United States by identifying and comparing some of these cultural differences.

Undoubtedly, culture is known to be a wide area depending on the areas it may be referring to, and different studies have provided detailed yet unique definitions for this notion. This paper is revolving around the specific role of culture in international market while considering the fact that it is an important element for successful business operations in international domain. Researchers of different areas have been providing different definitions for this term resulting in sufficient explanations about the ways it is being perceived among different populations. The first known scholar, who stepped into the analysis of culture as per the market sector is Geerte Hofstede. Therefore, the paper is focusing on different approaches towards culture, that is, the ways through which cultural differences are able to influence the marketing operations across the globe.

INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT: CULTURE, STRATEGY, AND BEHAVIOR, EIGHTH EDITION Published by McGraw-Hill, a business unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. Copyright © 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Previous editions © 2009, 2006, and 2003. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., including, but not limited

|In business terms, specifically a global business with offices throughout the world, culture becomes critical to a firm’s success. It is ‘…where balance between consistency and adaptation is essential’2 and must|

Along with the opportunities associated with expanding operations, comes a series of barriers that could directly or indirectly impact the business success. These could be categorized as cultural, location, political climate, economic and social challenges. Studies show that religious and ethical challenges could also strongly influence the behavior of people within a culture (Li, 2008). Aside from the social challenges mentioned above, our focus is to identify and address the core challenges that impact an organization when expanding globally. Now that we briefly addressed reasons for conducting business in foreign market, let’s dig deeper into challenges and differences to better understand global market behavior.

In today’s international market, a business needs to stay competitive in order to succeed. To do this, businesses need to have access to as many markets as possible to sell their products and services. However, just as each nation has their own culture, so do their business markets. Cross-cultural training is important for success in the world of international business. As stated by Diemer (2010): “To act without awareness of differences among norms within a differing culture is to invite cross-cultural blunder.” This means that, if we do not take into account the differences between the two cultures and adjust yourself accordingly, it can lead to an incident that is difficult to recover from. In the business world, such an incident can kill a deal that took months or even years to cultivate.

1a. Firms adopt standardize international marketing strategy use standardized marketing mix(product,price, people, promotion,place, process management)when expand their market across country or region ,the advantage of using this strategy includes economies of scale in production and promotion,economies in products development and research, global uniformity of marketing practices,consistency in brand image and easier control and planning ,lower marketing costs and it also offer the company the ability to leverage.

In internationalization, the most challenging decision faced by the company to choose between standardization and adaptation in its operations, products or services. It has been one of the important and most popular research topics since 1960s to understand whether standardization is better or adaptation for marketing mix in international marketing. The increasing role of international expansion of business across the borders has also increased the focus of companies towards the international marketing strategies. It is also a biggest challenge for companies to better understand the different needs and choice of customers due to the huge differences among the cultures from various nationalities. This leads to the dilemma in

(b) Being able to understand and follow an unfamiliar culture when venturing into foreign market is vital to the financial success of the organisation. Different countries have different practices. What might be acceptable in one country, may not be acceptable in another. The failure to develop cross cultural awareness may lead to miscommunications and misunderstandings, which could further lead to a dip in the team’s morale and productivity. Business Managers (BMs) themselves should develop an understanding of these cultures and learn how to manage the dynamics and interactions between the staff and the public. This shows that an organisation is integrated both internally and externally, boosting internal morale and external trust. Hofstede (1993) has highlighted that the stress is on the managers

Consumer behavior has evolved over the last forty years. This evolution has led to more similarities in consumer spending habits. In nations of similar economic status, individuals have comparable backgrounds, level of education, income levels, and balance between personal and professional time. Through enhancements in technology, developing nations have also been able to increase their knowledge of opportunities for the consumption of various products (Czinkota & Ronkainen, 2010). This has allowed for marketers to provide a single message for the marketing of an international company’s goods or services. One message to a large global audience can provide consistency to the brand or image of an organization versus potential mixed messages if done from multiple profit centers.

The literature on standardization of international marketing strategy has rapidly increased in amount since Levitt (1983) suggested the main concept that business strategies and their influences on firm performance should be universal through national markets which are very much alike culturally, economically and politically, in spite of limited empirical evidence focused directly on this topic. He pointed out that world markets are becoming more and more identical and therefore a standardized approach to company operations, productions, marketing and other functions is feasible and advisable. This review focuses