Cultural Aspects of marketing strategies

Essay by cheep June 2006

download word file, 26 pages 4.7

1 International Marketing Strategy

Strategy is a firm's theory about how to compete successfully. It represents the

cumulative direction of the organization, given the internal and external factors.

An International Marketing Strategy has to ensure that the firm's overall business

strategy is supported. You can divide three forms of business strategies:

-differentiation

-cost leadership

-focus

The differentiation strategy requires special features to differentiate from competitors from the customer's point of view. These features may affect the product

itself, pricing, promotion, distribution or also services. Good examples for this

strategy are luxury goods like e.g. BMW. The BMW marketing managers perceives

their customers that driving a BMW gives you a feeling of reliability and

having a high-quality product. In addition advertising spots also transport the

message of having fun with the BMW car ("BMW-Freude am Fahren"). These

features make the BMW car special and therefore the company is able to charge

higher prices than other car-selling companies.

An alternative to this strategy is the cost leadership strategy. This strategy only

can be achieved by reducing costs. The reduction of costs may affect production

and manufacturing costs, sales costs, cost for material and components but also

the own profit margin. If marketing managers follow this strategy they concentrate

on advertising the low prices and finding low priced distribution channels,

e. g. discounters instead boutiques at hot spots like the Königsallee in Düsseldorf.

The third business strategy - focus strategy - is adopted by marketing managers

through concentration on a specific segment or on areas or regions within a

consumer market. Some companies may concentrate on target groups like

Swatch did. Their segment of the consumer market can be described as young

and fashion orientated. Others concentrate their efforts on the distribution; e. g.

small companies often sell a specific product via internet.