International Marketing - Essay Example

? International marketing Table of Contents Introduction 3 7B: Foreign Branding 3 8A: Difference between COO and CE 4 Advantage of CE: Industry example 5 Conclusion 6 References 7 Introduction Branding is an important marketing tool that helps an organization to develop potential customer base around the globe. There are several types of branding that are used by several organizations. The study will try to answer to the question of Week 7B and Week 8A. 7B: Foreign Branding Foreign branding is marketing and an advertising term which describes the implied superiority or cachet of several products and services with attractive foreign-sounding names. Several manufacturing or service providing organizations use foreign branding strategies in order to attract significant number of target customers towards the brand. For example, in several non-English speaking countries, several fashion and cosmetic brands use English or French or Italian styled brand name in order to penetrate the target market (Bilkey and Nes, 1982, p.11). It is important for the organization is to implement unique strategies in order to achieve effective competitive advantage in order to survive in the global competitive market place. Branding is an important marketing strategy of a product or service. Successful branding strategy can help an organization to attain huge customer loyalty due to its attractiveness. Global business environment has become highly competitive due to the presence of several leading organizations within a similar industry. Therefore, the marketing managers of several leading organizations are focusing on effective branding and product development strategy in order to create huge brand awareness in the minds of target customers. Branding of an organization is considered as an effective promotional strategy. A strong brand can be referred as the strongest asset of an organization rather then the quality of products and services. There are several significant differences between country of origin and foreign branding. Development and image of a brand highly depends upon the country of origin of a product. It is true that all the countries around the globe do not follow similar manufacturing and distribution process. In addition to this, similar types of products of various countries s cannot be similar in terms of quality and service (Han, 1989, p.9). It depends upon the quality of manufacturing and distribution of the products and services. In several cases, sales and acceptance of products depends on country of origin of those products. However, if a product’s country of Origin is UK then the product should avail high marker preference and customer demand as each and every person around the globe perceives that products of these regions are good in quality comparing to other global areas. On the other hand, foreign branding has an effective impact on the sales and acceptance of products. It is true that several organizations use foreign branding strategy in order to achieve significant market growth within the local market place. If an US based perfume manufacturing and distributing organizations develops its brand name in French style then the organization can develop potential customer base around the globe due to that specific foreign brand name. There are specific types of organizations that do not use local brand name for the home manufactured products. They use foreign brand name in order to attract the attention of target customers towards the product. 8A: Difference between COO and CE The Country of Origin (COO) is explained as the country where the product is manufactured in the process of production. The country of origin could be treated as the place of origin of the product or where the growth of the product has occurred before expansion. The country of origin is linked with the issues of product quality, customer service, credibility and loyalty. In case the product information is missing, COO could serve as an important clue for the information on product characteristic and the product performance. The COO is an important parameter for the brand image and acceptability of the product. The Customer Ethnocentrism (CE) is explained as the phenomenon in which the home country of the product and business is considered to be favourable and superior as compared to the other countries. The aspect of customer ethnocentrism varies according the outlook of the country and its culture. CE is determined the importance given by the business to the social identity factor. CE promotes the business and products of the domestic market and condemns access to overseas market and its products (Thomas and Hill, 1999, p.384). Due to CE, the purchase of foreign products may be viewed as anti-national sentiments as it could hurt the domestic employment level and the domestic production of goods and services. Advantage of CE: Industry example The manufacturing industry in UK could be cited as an example that could take advantage of the aspect of customer ethnocentrism. The manufacturing industry in UK has slowed down after the global financial recession and is trailing in the list of developed countries across the world like USA, Japan, Germany, France and Italy. This is due to the weakness of major infrastructural facilities like the availability of labour, finance, etc. The high cost of labour, tightened parameter for lending would create shortage of source of finance. The higher cost and lesser volume of products would also urge the customers to look for alternative options. The customer ethnocentrism would lead the people of UK not to buy products of oversees market investors. The purchase of domestically manufactured products would lead to the circulation of money in the economy of UK and thus the productivity level would enhance due to increasing demand (Erdogan and Uzkurt, 2010, p.400). The increase in the production level would also create more job opportunities in UK manufacturing industry. Thus the manufacturing industry could take advantage of CE to recover from the slowdown. Conclusion The topics that have been considered for the purpose of presentation have been studied and analyzed as given above. The various questions related to the topic on foreign branding, country of origin and customer ethnocentrism have explored in order to be fully prepared for the presentation of the topic. In both the presentations of week 7B and 8A, the arguments related to the topic have used to expand the topic under the theoretical framework. The examples related to the industry of the domestic market have been used to support the theoretical framework. References Bilkey, W., and Nes, E., 1982. Country of Origin effects on Product Evaluations. Journal of International Business Studies, 12(3), p.11. Erdogan, B. and Uzkurt, C. 2010. Effects of ethnocentric tendency on consumers' perception of product attitudes for foreign and domestic products. Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal. 17(4). pp.393 – 406. Han, C., 1989. Country Image. Journal of Marketing Research, 21(2), p.9. Thomas, M. and Hill, H. 1999. The impact of ethnocentrism on devising and implementing a corporate identity strategy for new international markets. International Marketing Review. 16(4). pp.376-390. Read More