Communicating Globally: An Integrated Marketing Approach

by Don E Schultz & Phillip J Kitchen

It is fair to say that we are experiencing another "industrial" revolution, but unlike the previous one which was based upon heavy industry and mass production this is based upon technology and communications. We are all now only too aware of the impact of globalisation and internationalisation on our daily lives. E Bay lets us eliminate the middle trader and get goods at a fraction of the cost from places as far away as America and Hong Kong with guarantees and fast deliveries. Chinese imports have recently hit the headlines with garments of equitable quality swamping EU countries and destroying local businesses engaged in manufacture of similar products. A foot note to this though is that in Italy they are fighting back by developing very high quality cashmere to sell back to the emerging elite in China who prefer imports from Italy as opposed to their own home produced garments! I think that maybe distribution may be the best business to be in here....................but maybe not; hard to manage a business with oil prices fluctuating these days and best not to base your distribution business in the UK with our uncompetitive fuel prices where taxation levies an uncompetitive burden.

So having set the scene the book review this quarter comes from top selling authors Don Schultz and Phillip Kitchen. The essence of this book is how to develop a strategy for your company to trade and communicate using an integrated marketing plan designed for the global market place. The core communication is how to get your "brand" to travel across international boundaries and still maintain a profitable return from trading in new foreign markets.

The theory of this book is backed extensively by real life case studies lest the reader believe that this is a pair of academics with bookish ideas. Indeed they relate well the struggles that can be encountered by organisations failing to understand the market and culture differences in new countries. For example in the Far East relationships must be formed first and trust developed before transactions occur, in the west from an Anglo Saxon perspective we get the contract up front first to ensure that the liabilities are left with the purchaser with all the dissatisfaction that follows, we have learned not to trust?

Having laid out the key strategies for the various methods of entry to new countries they go on to highlight the potential barriers to entry that can be experienced. These barriers are real and cannot be sidestepped or circumvented and need to be met head on i.e. organisational constraints, do you have the personnel in house to do the work or do you employ locally? Do you export or build in country at a lower cost or perceived value? Will your brand and its name travel / translate in new countries, who remember the chocolate bar Marathon, well if you don't it is now known as Snickers; Marathon would not travel international boundaries.

Many of you may think that this is just for larger companies, well from my recent experience of several companies in Perthshire this book has come in for some real use as they developed and formulated their successful strategies to trade and manufacture internationally.

So big or small, if you want to trade outwith the UK spend a bit of time on researching your target markets and grab a copy of this book to help you avoid the labyrinth of pitfalls that awaits the uninformed business.

Available from all good bookshops and the Internet from £10.99