Question

There are many factors that impact the marketing approach a company will take when branding a product across global markets. One of the most significant decisions facing an international organization is whether to standardize marketing across all countries or devise individual national marketing campaigns for each country.

Based on the reading in Chapter 16:

Describe at least three strategic factors a business owner must take into consideration when deciding whether to standardize or specialize their marketing approach.

Analyze which of these factors you feel poses the most significant risk for an organization.

Answer 1

The strategic factors that the business owner must take into account before deciding whether to standardize or specialize are:

Costs incurred,

Socio-Cultural factors

Political factors

Legal factors etc

The most important one among these is the socio-cultural factor. It possesses the maximum risk for an international organization. It is the basic concept that when a company expands its business to other countries then they will have to understand the culture of that country properly. The culture is the key to success in the country. Thus, if a company does something which does not match with the culture of that country then they will have the risk of losing their customers in that country. For example: when McDonald's started its operations in India then they had to remove beef from their menu as beef is not consumed in India. It was replaced by chicken and mutton.