The Strategic Marketing Planning Process - Assignment Example

1. Explain the process for market research to assess foreign market potential. There is a sequential process associated with researching foreign market potentials and it includes three elemental stages: a groundwork screening for potentially attractive country markets, evaluation of the potential of market industry, and analysis of company sales potential (Czinkota & Ronkainen, 2007, p.248). The first stage deliberately would answer which foreign markets need a prioritized detailed investigation. The second stage aims to understand the potential existence of aggregate demands in a specific market. Finally, the third stage aims to discover how attractive would be the understood potential demand for certain product and service offerings. This process centers on investigating the potential demand of certain product or service offerings for foreign markets. Substantial information related with this demand is a significant component of evaluating whether a certain product or service offering would make its way to the chosen potential foreign market. In other words, just prior to entering into a new foreign market, an organization or international firm must make sure that the market research to assess foreign market potential should investigate detailed information about the level of demand for certain product or service offering. After all, if there will be no demand associated with a new product or service offering, the international firm will not be able to expect a sound return of its investment. In fact, multinational companies before launching a new product would usually initiate market research in order to determine the level of demand or existing needs in the market for certain product or service offering. In knowing this, the international firm would now be confident of initiating its future actions. 2. Explain the considerations for product adaptation in foreign markets and common approaches to adjusting promotional strategy to fit foreign markets. Product adaptation to fit in the foreign markets needs to be aligned with the following considerations or factors: cultural differences or social considerations, economic conditions, legal and technological concerns, environmental issues, and even political matters (Czinkota & Ronkainen, 2007, p.356). For instance, there are products that have important social or cultural association. Such is in the case of those products produced by international food chain companies. We know the fact that foods have important cultural component associated with it. Western foods may have different cultural orientation or background compared to those from the Asia Pacific. However, the reason why McDonald’s successfully penetrated the Asia Pacific market is its ability to adapt its effective style for decentralization allowing the foreign market to select their own version for spaghetti (Asian style for instance), hamburger and other related product offerings. In other words, for the sake of winning the chosen foreign market, McDonald’s has great considerations for social factors. On the other hand, in the case of Monsanto, its penetration in the European nation may be a bit complicated due to legal and environmental safety concerns for its product offerings. Unlike the impoverished countries, European nations’ concern on biotechnology is more about its safety issue. These concerns dominate over its existing legal and environmental interest. For successful penetration into the European market, Monsanto must therefore address European nations’ interests beforehand. On the case of common approaches to adjusting promotional strategy to fit foreign markets, this may be addressed through domestic market orientation, global orientation, multinational orientation, and glocal orientation (Zentes, Morschett, & Klein, 2011, p.155). These are important issues about product standardization and adaptation. The case of product adaptation is most likely to engage adjustment of promotional strategy, that in order to fit foreign markets must undergo specific approaches such as domestic market orientation, global orientation, multinational orientation, and glocal orientation. These orientations ensure that the marketer would have the right promotional strategy that would fit foreign markets. 3. Explain the strategic marketing planning process, strategies for entering foreign markets, and considerations for subsequent market expansion. Strategic marketing planning process consists of logical steps to marketing planning (McDonald, 2008, p.37). Here, a company is faced with rich options in order to formulate specific objectives in line with the overall goal. Scheduling and costing are also integral components in this process just prior to the achievement of objectives. In other words, strategic marketing planning process integrates the need to understand the appropriate strategic action in order to come up with the right measurement of company’s success and to realize how its vision is succeeding in general. These are relevant strategies for entering foreign markets. Overall cost leadership, product differentiation and focus are Porter’s three important generic strategies for reaching competitive advantage which have potential applications in marketing strategy (Schnaars, 1998, p.60; Porter, 1998, p.34). Promotional strategies are important in any marketing-related activities. Overall cost leadership ensures targeting customers who would most likely to go for low-price product and service offerings, which is a common scenario in most of the foreign markets. Product differentiation on the other hand is a relevant marketing strategy which is highly associated with Apple’s brands. This helps Apple achieve its competitive advantage by integrating into its product offerings certain level of touch of innovation which could become a cut-above the other product offerings in its industry and in foreign markets. In doing this, certain products that are highly differentiated could substantially compete into foreign market, which is what is now going on with Apple’s product offerings. Focus on the other hand leads to understanding customer segments. There might be other segments that others may have not focused on with their service or product offerings. This is the goal of firms trying to enter into foreign markets. They would want to focus on certain market niche, where it has not yet been fully explored. Considerations for market expansions could be definitely summarized into two: understanding customers’ needs and measurement of potential market demand for certain product or service offerings. After all, as stated earlier, market expansion has to be in line with market research in which the bottom line is to understand if there is relevant market potential of certain product or service offerings. 4. Address challenges to global product management and branding. Global brands without question receive success in high profile and high-involvement category (Czinkota & Ronkainen, 2007, p.474). However, one of the challenges pertaining to this lies on the actual preferences of local customers who always have the choice to go for local brands. Furthermore, there is always an issue about standardization of brand, which would eliminate local brand, which is a thing simply country managers would term as customer hostility. Thus, they find themselves hesitant to provide a full level of support for brand standardization. Instead, they would adhere to brand adaptation, which at some point would eliminate the level of centrality. For instance, McDonald’s, a renowned global retail food chain, adapts to the taste of every culture. As a result, it consistently holds its internationally acclaimed brand name, but at the micro level, it adheres to local preferences. Thus, one would eventually find out varieties of taste for McDonald’s offering from one country to another. References Czinkota, M. R. & Ronkainen, I. A. (2007). International Marketing (8th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning. McDonald, M. (2008). Malcolm McDonald on Marketing Planning: Understanding Marketing Plans and Strategy. Philadelphia: PA: Kogan Page. Porter, M. E. (1998). Competitive Strategy. New York, NY: Free Press. Schnaars, S. P. (1998). Marketing Strategy. New York, NY: Free Press. Zentes, J., Morschett, D., & Klein, H. S. (2011). Strategic Retail Management: Text and International Cases (2nd ed.). Wiesbaden: Springer. Read More