Abstract:

A proposal for the conceptually desirable Global Marketing Strategy is presented. This effective global strategy which has a standardised pattern across nations should be adapted to national cultures in order to be most efficient. First, the basic strategic framework and the method of identifying market size over dozens of countries is presented. The correlation of GNP per capita and product market size per capita, expressed as logarithms, proves most useful. This finds that the elasticity of any product over GNP explains the character of each product. Having identified the markets, the conceptual framework for introducing global marketing strategy is presented. This covers the sales response theory and in particular, the international application of one of the PIMS principles (market share/profitability correlation). A higher market share in a limited number of major markets is recommended. The second part discusses the cultural environment and its influence on aspects of marketing. The cultural factors are split into two groups. Group I is the cultural factors which relate to the attributes of the people as individuals and has a stronger influence on the product and promotion strategies. Group II consists of the cultural factors which discuss the attributes of the people as a group, such as low/high context, individual/group oriented society. Group II relates more closely to the place (distribution channel) strategy and management of the company. As the conclusion, the actual application of conceptual global marketing strategy and the identification of the cultural factors, particularly Group I, are encouraged.