Marketing in Canada - Essay Example

The proposed research paper will attempt to analyze the predominant themes in American marketing, and determine to what degree those themes continued to be used in the Canadian context. As a tentative thesis, this paper presumes that marketing strategies in Canada will, to a great extent, largely resemble marketing strategies that would be used in similar situations in America, and that firms that have both American and Canadian wings do not significantly alter their marketing strategies when advertising similar products or services on both sides of the border, an indication that such marketing strategies retain much of their effectiveness.

OVERVIEW OF EARLY FINDINGS As a preliminary step to research, the author evaluated several marketing campaigns launched across both the United States and Canada, from companies with similar placements. At this stage apples-to-apples comparisons of marketing campaigns within a company (the way Ford markets a truck in the United States vs. Canada, for instance), to attempt to control for the fact that a single company might choose to use similar marketing strategies simply as a cost-saving measures.

Research was also conducted into marketing theory, looking into publications that de facto target a US audience as well as explicitly Canadian marketing publications. Throughout this process, some major themes in American marketing have become apparent: gender, patriotism, and technology. Most major marketing campaigns include one of these things to some degree or the other. GENDER Gender plays a major role in many marketing campaigns. Marketers try to connect many different products to the proper performance of gender.

This is most clearly demonstrated through explicitly gendered products, such as Dove's normal line versus it's “Dove for Men” line, which promotes cleanliness as a masculine virtue rather than a feminine one, as is normally shown through marketing in their traditional line. This pattern is also apparent in non-gendered products: beer advertisements for men and for women will be very different from each other, despite being the same product and having many of the same benefits. Gender performance in the United States and Canada are very similar to each other, and one would expect marketing campaigns to feature gender in a similar way.

PATRIOTISM Patriotism is rarely expressed explicitly, e.g. “it is the right thing for your country to buy this product,” - more often patriotism is invoked through connecting the product with demonstrated values of the country, such as strength or constancy, or it is made of products originating in the country. TECHNOLOGIES Technology is the area that might feature a stark difference between Canadian and American strategies. Though the United States, like most developed countries, is increasingly technology heavy, Canadians have proven to be more adept at adapting to social media than Americans.

There is a higher percentage of Canadians who have adapted to social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, and they incorporate both of those technologies into their life faster. This might mean that companies need to put greater importance to social media in their