Culture is a word frequently used but insufficiently defined and delineated, especially in the marketing context. This paper offers some definitions of culture and its component dimensions, which are intended to be of use to marketing decision-makers. The importance of exploring and cataloguing the new cultural dimensions of the consumer society is stressed, and some candidates for inclusion are proposed.
With the rapidly changing economic and political events, corporate executives will have to run their businesses on a global basis. Clearly, the unification of Europe in 1992 the changing economies of Eastern Europe, the collapse of communism and the unforeseen political events are creating a ânew world order.â In order to cope with these changes, marketing executives are faced with the challenge of developing global competitive intelligence systems.
In this paper an international research project dealing with the country-of-origin effect is presented. Using individualized conjoint analysis with dollar-metric paired comparisons the market values of middle-class cars from different countries of ori- gin have been determined. The countries where data have been collected are Great Britain, France, Spain and Germany. In total, nearly 900 interviews have been conducted. Country of origin is supposed to be an important product attribute especially for complex or for high fashion products. Product evaluations based on "made in" are considered as consequences of quality assessments, but also of patriotism etc. In the last 25 years about 60 relevant studies have been published, most of them in the U.S.A. The findings have been inconsistent and different research paradigms have been used. Most of these studies suffer from the heavy use of convenience samples, the problem of demand effects, and the missing confirmation of the effect in managerially relevant metrics. Conjoint analysis has proved to be a valuable marketing research instrument for many strategic decisions. Conjoint analysis with individualized sets of attributes improves the predictive power of this approach. EDP-assisted interviewing is necessary and useful in this context. The paper is divided into six parts. In the first section the relevance of country-of- origin research is shown and our research goal is presented. Then the state of relevant country-of-origin literature is summarized and open questions are shown. In the third part individualized conjoint analysis is proposed as a means to analyze the relative importance of country of origin in the buying process of consumers. In section four we present our research methodology. Part five deals with the main results for the analyzed product. Finally we show some implications for companies and research.
The increasing internationalisation of business activities, both in Europe and elsewhere, has led to a growth in demand for management development services with an international focus. Ashridge Management College and the Center for Creative Leadership, two organisations already active in this field, wished to develop a new concept whereby the services offered concentrated on helping businesses to plan and implement strategic change in the new international environment. In light of the competitiveness in the market and the investment risk involved, research was used as an aid to deciding; whether to go ahead with the project; and what modifications, if any, were needed to the concept proposed. The paper describes the design and implementation of the study which took place. It explains the difficulties encountered in terms of sampling, recruitment and interviewing, and discusses the steps and solutions taken to overcome these problems. It describes some of the findings, and explains how these findings were used: to gain greater understanding of the needs of potential user organisations; to amend the focus of the concept so that the services offered became more interesting, appealing and distinctive for the target market; to give an assessment of whether the opportunity was sufficiently 'real' to justify the investment of Ashridge and C.C.L.'s funds and resources, and their commitment to its implementation.
We note in this case-study that the support of pan-European marketing information is decisive to understand the complexicity of the challenging European market which needs a lot of preparation for the total opening of the frontiers. It is indispensable to integrate all information sources to get the right picture of the market. To get a well harmonized information picture across the different countries is an important step but not enough to understand it. To analyse international figures we need a proper knowledge of the various local particularities. The durables good industry should be prepared to the geographical extension of the large retailer organisations with purchasing departments for the European market and set up pan-European key account marketing function as well as capabilities to face this new dimension which is becoming more and more important in the near future. To get the parallel-import phenomena under control, the industry should be supported in the marketing information by a pan-European pricing monitor. Setting up an international marketing strategy either based on consumer research or on retailer panel information without integration of both of them in the analysis of the market situation is very risky and can lead to wrong strategic issues. To be successful on our challenging European market in the durables field we need for the international marketing strategy the support of global pan-European marketing information with the integration of the knowledge of the local environment and the different source of information like the qualitative and the quantitative ones.
The prevailing belief is that Japanâs markets are protected from the entry of foreign competition by a host of complex barriers. These range from conventional trade barriers such as tariffs and quotas on the import of certain items and complex product regulation to more subtle barriers such as Japanâs unique culture and traditions and its labyrinthian distribution channels. Nonetheless, despite these barriers, a number of Western firms have been successful in penetrating Japanese consumer markets. Although no single formula for success is apparent, all appear to have developed an understanding of the unique characteristics of the Japanese market, and adapted their products and marketing strategies accordingly. A number of examples of successful Western products in Japan are discussed here. These show the importance of creating a strong brand or corporate image, attention to product quality and packaging, and establishment of an effective distribution and service network by fostering strong personal relations and trust with distributors.
The recent events in Eastern Europe draw a renewed attention to the impact of the environmental and cultural factors in marketing and management. Our marketing and organisational thinking are still dominated by the "country approach" while important restructuring towards a more fully integrated economic space is underway. The evolution towards an economic space also creates the necessity of an evolution towards a psychological space and simultaneously stimulates the creation of that space. The challenge to management is important and marketing research can be a powerful contributor provided their research and researchers understand the full implications of what is happening and what is at stake.
The increasing pace of change in international business environment has led to growing competitive pressure, changing critical success factors, threats and risks. As these changes affect the marketing programme, marketing process and overall marketing management process, the basic problem of international industrial company is related with timely and effective response to changes in international markets. For effective problem solving marketing manager requires a continuous flow of reliable and decision-oriented information from various sources inside and outside the company. The problem is often not lack of data, but the lack of proper information. In international marketing literature one would mostly find a general description of the marketing information system without necessary detailed explanation how this system should be integrated with marketing management process. It is the purpose of this paper to explore this rather neglected field more in detail and to present a comprehensive model of decision support system, based on the analysis of strategic marketing decisions and information needs of decision-makers at various levels of international industrial marketing management. Therefore, my emphasis in the paper is concerned with the logical information structure (conceptual databank) rather than with the physical structure (formal databank design). To manage information resources on a rational basis, the databank model should be flexible, enabling necessary adaptation of a system to changing nature of information needs of marketing decision-makers due to alternative modes of companyâs international market entry (internationalisation strategies) and differences regarding the commitment of resources to foreign markets and information gathering process. A multilevel approach to databank development is discussed and the International Marketing Information Centre (I M I C) proposed as extension of/replacement for the traditional Marketing Research Department. The major advantage of this approach is a rational and flexible integration of data from various sources with effective marketing management process.
In the introductory paragraph, the new business climate in Eastern European countries is seen against the background of the different viewpoints that have characterised the evolution of the East/West relationships. The implications of the dramatic changes which have transformed the centrally planned economies and their relationships between the State and society are briefly discussed. The main part of the paper is concerned with the different ways in which Western companies can enter the Eastern European markets and develop their business relations there. The positive and negative aspects of export/import, collaborative agreements (with special reference to joint-ventures) and wholly owned subsidiaries are analyzed. While the old regulations no longer apply to the economic structures, the new mechanisms are not yet fully in place. This causes a series of problems, and creates a series of opportunities. The last section deals with the conduct of Italian firms. The continuity in responding to local needs, the experience gained in dealing with local environments, and the flexibility of business approaches have been instrumental for the increasing share gained by the Italians in the Eastern markets.
The East German population is characterised by five main patterns : 1. Unique situation in Europe : A German-latin cocktail 2. A modem social society in transition towards a consumer society 3. Heritage of socialism : social commitment 4. Socialist hangover : command-obey system 5. A split society : women vs men young vs old vital pole vs autonomous pole They show opportunities as well as threats for a relatively harmonious unification of the two Germanics. In 1990 the positive vital forces prevailed over the sceptical and negative ones. The coming years will determine in a more precise way, which type of transformation will be adopted by East Germany: 1. Step by step integration 2. Conflicts around social values 3. Frustrated vitality and anomy.
The market researchers must be part-time communicators, to fully convey the message contained in each of the studies they have designed, supervised, or bought. Regardless of the quality and depth of the collected data, whatever had been the attention to all details, it will always be a waste of time and money, if, in the end, the substantifique model is not grasped by the marketing decision-makers. Sometimes, this communicating task is particularly tough, because the data is complex. International research projects tend to yield difficult-to-present results: - either because the sheer accumulation of originally simple elements produce an undigestible quantity of repetitive materials (e.g. awareness / trial / usage / buying intent scores recorded for the major brands of 3 sectors of the same market, in 5 countries...), - or because the approach used cannot be simplified without loosing its accuracy (e.g. a cluster analysis done with an International comparison in view...). This paper shows, with two real case-examples of the above types, that there are solutions, to be found in carefully designed graphs. Most of the graphic tools shown below use circles, hence the title. Part one present the 'Brand Penetration Meter', a new and better way of synthesising lots of standard brand scores. Part two illustrates how the headache of explaining how cluster-groups are defined, can be helped with effective graphs.
Two of the many themes that have dominated ESOMAR's thinking in recent years provide the text of this paper. The first is the necessity of absorbing the lessons of marketing and developing research products and brands to add value to the analysis and interpretation of expensively collected data in order to raise both the status and profits of a largely undervalued industry. The second theme stems from the first and that is that research must increasingly be directly useful in the conduct of commercial activities. The European Single Market and the consequent emergence of the need for European (if not global) brands provides a perfect opportunity for research professionals to demonstrate both innovation and utility. Although I am deeply suspicious of the over zealous pursuit of branding to research 'products' - a subject I would like to develop in more detail in another paper - I am obviously wholeheartedly in favour of research that meets users' needs and is developed from the user's perspective rather than the producer's perspective. We are entering a period when for the first time European brands will be systematically planned, drawing on the same sorts of disciplines with which we have planned national brands. J. Walter Thompson pioneered an advertising planning philosophy, the basic concepts of which are now, in one form or another, a part of most multinational agencies' thinking, whether they acknowledge the origins or not. Therefore it is appropriate to begin a dialogue with research suppliers looking at the kinds of research products being produced in terms of their utility in the development of European brands. This paper - or, more accurately, 'think piece' - opens this dialogue by looking at consumer segmentations