Telmarkets Training Programs - Essay Example

?ISM Table of Contents ISM Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Cross Cultural Issues 3 Some more frequent issues 5 Market Segmentation and MarketingMix 6 Conclusion 9 Reference 10 Bibliography 13 Introduction This report looks into Telmarket’s plan to develop new training programmes to introduce its services in the new market. The process would be discussed in the light of several theoretical concepts and the cultural and tradition of China. Effort has been taken to analyse the issues in accordance with the theory and practices. Cross Cultural Issues It cannot be denied that globalisation has provided enough opportunities for the companies to reach at the foreign markets. “There are many ways to define Globalisation. Ruud Lubbets in his article “Globalisation and Sustainable Development” describes globalisation as “the phenomenon that the degree of global human interaction increases to such an extent that both its primary effects and the reactions it provokes, give rise to numerous new developments” ( Ali, Winter & May, 2007, p.1). Globalisation is the interaction between economies, technologies and politic A number of companies, increasingly, are looking forward towards breaking the cultural barriers to extend the businesses further in a global environment. This has increased the requirement of the employees to get accustomed to the foreign cultural settings. Apart from that International Marketing training demands a detailed program to make the employees aware of the various theories and practices in the arena of international marketing. The globalisation dreams have presented a new challenge for the firms including the challenge to develop competent managers, able to work in the new environments with more efficiency. With increasing numbers of mergers and acquisitions, the firms are also expected to bring in new employees with different origins, languages and national culture adding more complexities to the different organizational cultures. “The firms thus need to develop systems and processes not only to train managers for expatriate assignments but also to handle cultural diversity. This task can be achieved by well designed cross-cultural training programs which will help employees in coping up with the stress and cultural shock while dealing with a new culture” (Pande & Krishnan, n.d., p.2). In China, Telmarket would require a culture specific training to make its employees competent enough to deal with the customers with enough respect to Chinese culture and their business environments. After having a review on the respective reviews the following issues have been identified for the cross cultural training. The time factor in the training would require considering two factors including punctuality and relationship dimensions. Some cultures may take more comparatively more time for relationship building while this may not be at all acceptable in others. So, it is of utmost importance to consider Chinese business culture barriers related to time required to be taken care of. In China, there exists a linguistic barrier as Chinese people prefer their language in business contexts (METP, 2008). Adding to it, even the pronunciation is quite different in China, which is required to be taken care of. There are a number of evidences that failing to align the brand name in accordance to the Chinese language made the brands to fail in the Chinese market. So, Telmarket must consider this point with high significance and must train its employees on the linguistic factor. The training program would also include a detailed training regarding the business practices. The business practices may differ in China as they encourage open discussion; although that is required to be done with enough respect to the seniority and old traditions. The training would also require introducing methods and programs to counter stress and to interpret the situations in a positive way. The employees would have to understand the situations on both from their own and from other perspectives. The way to express the emotions is quite important, specifically in a business environment. It can affect adversely if enough respect is not shown to the culture and tradition of the country. The employees are expected to be aware of the present social, economic and political aspects of China, specifically the current local market conditions. However, the training should avoid any kind of stereotyping where the employees would believe certain specific things about the culture. The Chinese culture is able to explain value system of the country; however, every individual is quite different from each other. So, individuality must be taken into account along with the cross cultural differences between the countries. Some more frequent issues Apart from the cross cultural training, the people are also expected to be trained on different marketing concepts, significant for doing business in international marketing arena (Bennett & Blythe, 2002). There are some frequent issues in international marketing which are required to be considered when entering into China market. In the Chinese market, the research data can be expected to be in foreign languages and the required data may be extremely difficult to acquire and understand. So, Telmarket must employ the Chinese people into pre-market research as they are expected to have a better communication and interpretation abilities in the Chinese market. Adding to it, as mentioned earlier, numerous cultural differences must be taken into account. A proper training is required to be given to deal with the cultural differences; however, this would demand an involving contribution from the local employees. A detailed training would be given to set up an international communication and control process across the companies in different countries. The employees in the corporate office may only possess outline knowledge of the foreign market strategies; it is more important that the involvement of the local employees must be there. The operation would also involve dealing with many currencies. The company may have to face wide exchange rate fluctuations in the revenue and profit amount. Telmarket must be ready to place the process to reduce the financial and operational risk, as emerged. In a different country, it is very important to keep up to date about the foreign laws and regulations. Telmarket must encourage its employees to have multilingual proficiency. In a country like China, communication can be a significant barrier for the foreign companies. This can be dealt with having more and more local people on board. The intricacy of international trade often demands the adoption of complex and sophisticated planning, monitoring and control system. Undoubtedly, the distribution and credit control may be particularly complicated in the business expansion in the foreign markets. Due to a number of different regulations, documentation in China may often emerge as varied and complex in nature (Wang, n.d.). A good deal of research must be done on the local as well global competitors with intensive local presence. Distribution is mostly carried out by the intermediaries. As a consequence, monitoring and controlling the same would be harder. Market Segmentation and Marketing Mix Characteristics of service marketing add a number of challenges in the market over the product marketing. The traditional marketing, introduced earlier, may surely be adapted to the service marketing. However, it would demand some more additional factors to be considered (Rao, 2004). Adding to the discussion, carried out above, the marketing managers in Telmarket are required to possess wide range of marketing skills. The new product development of Telmarket must consider all the markets the product is expected to be sold in. “The purpose of segmentation is the concentration of marketing energy and force on the subdivision (or the market segment) to gain a competitive advantage within the segment. It’s analogous to the military principle of ‘concentration of force’ to overwhelm an enemy. Concentration of marketing energy (or force) is the essence of all marketing strategy, and market segmentation is the conceptual tool to help achieve this focus” (Thomas, 2007, p.1). Telmarket offers training and consultancy in the arena of different marketing verticals. So, the customers are expected to be the institutional entities. In the service industry, making contacts is of utmost importance. The same is true about the Chinese culture as they give enough importance to the referrals. There are many segmentation techniques including geographic segmentation, distribution segmentation, media segmentation, demographic segmentation, price segmentation and lifecycle segmentation. Chinese people are price concerned and they would like to have a better quality service at a low price. So, Telmarket can make the market segmentation on the basis of price. Telmarket can keep a price slab for various institutional clients. The service products can be developed considering the size of the company and its employee strength. The price slabs would vary in accordance with the services of the company. The marketing mix can be assumed as the blend of techniques used to market any product or service brand. These techniques are often called as P’s. For product marketing there are four such P’s; however, in service the techniques are extended further to 7 P’s. The first ‘P’ is product or service to be sold (Farrall & Lindsley, n.d.). The service is required to be of enhanced quality, enriched branding and well built reputation. Telmarket is required to build reputation in the Chinese market and this can only be attained by offering quality products with a good brand name. Telmarket can offer service offering consultancy in each of these components. The second ‘P’ is price. Cost cutting is another significant factor while doing business in China (Wiley, n.d.). The consumers in most of the Asian countries are very much concerned about the prices they are paying off to avail the services. So, Telmarket must keep its prices at a reasonable level to attract the clients in the Chinese market. Place is another significant factor in the marketing mix. “Some of the recent major changes in business have come about by changing Place. Think of the Internet and mobile telephones. (How) are the chosen target groups informed or educated about the organization and its products? This includes all the weapons in the marketing armory - advertising, selling, sales” (Prosperous Artists, n.d., p.4). In the consultancy business, referral may work as wonders. So it is of utmost importance that Telmarket must come with better service to accelerate more referrals. “Regarding promotion, the company can use digital media in an intensive way. Advertising is another common promotion tactic. Advertising focuses on brand recognition and identity; not on the product alone” (Bovay, n.d.). In today’s advanced technological era, the company can use television, radio and internet to promote their services. However, the advertisements must be in line with the Chinese culture and tradition which is supposed to get more attention from the people in there. Adding to it, advertising on the business magazines, newspapers and arranging corporate events are expected to result in successful promotion of the services (ODI, n.d; Delaney, 2007; Rao, 2004). In the service companies, four more factors demand importance including people, physical presence, process and physical evidence. People including the clients as well as the employees are considerably significant for the company. The company must nurture them to have the best result out of them. Telmarket should also focus on the physical presence of its office and specifically the website. It must not display any message which can be misunderstood as negative to the Chinese culture and tradition. The service processes must be efficient enough to offer the best possible service to the Chinese people. Physical evidences must be there with brochures, which may contain the details of their training processes and service ranges. All the above factors must be considered to successfully build the brand name with proper coordination among the significant resources of Telmarket. Conclusion In this competitive environment, the companies are looking forward to entering into the foreign market as a growth strategy. China represents a place of opportunities and is one of the leading foreign direct investment recipients across the globe (Emerging Market, n.d.). However, merely following the marketing concepts may not result in good for the company; rather, it demands consideration of a number of factors in the arena of finance, operation, marketing and human resource management. 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The Effects of Cross-Cultural Training on the Acculturation Process of the Global Workforce. International Journal of Manpower, 21 (6): 492-511. Read More