Marketing – Home and Abroad-In the Fast Changing Business Environment

 Dr B K Mukhopadhyay

(The author is a Professor of
Management and Economics, formerly at IIBM (RBI) Guwahati. He can be contacted at m.bibhas@gmail.com)

 What a change! From barter systems to digital... selling to marketing... class to mass, then relationship business, and so also the techniques. IMC [Integrated Marketing Communication] is here. What next???? AI on the final team!!

But the basics remain the same: marketing is a business practice that involves identifying, predicting, and meeting customer needs. Effective marketing strategies help businesses isolate how best to serve their client base while maximizing revenue at the same time. In business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, marketing efforts are directed toward consumers. In business-to-business (B2B) marketing, marketing efforts are directed toward other businesses. The main target central point is remaining unchanged: customer, company, and work force!!

Jonathan Gordon nicely noted [New Insights for New]: ‘Developing a better understanding of customers is increasingly a strategic necessity because fast-moving markets, new technologies, and new business models are changing what customers want and how they shop. Yet many companies still spend the bulk of their research budget on traditional techniques (e.g., focus groups, interviews, and surveys) or treat insights as an afterthought, which leaves them with a limited and often incorrect view of what customers want. It is a recipe for obsolescence in today’s economy’.

Side by side, in the emerging era of overcommunication and hyper-competition, people are overwhelmed by choices—choices of information, ideas, products, and services. Information is becoming readily available around the globe at an unprecedented pace. Customers, competitors, and innovators have instant access to each other. The result — technological change, which delivered the Information Age and converted it to the Knowledge Age.

Beyond the National  

Boundary

For both the developed and developing worlds, marketing has not only been considered from the point of view of being an integral component in the context of economic development but as a rich gold mine as well (earning foreign exchange, which is described as claims on a country by another held in the form of a currency of that country). If one knows the technique to explore, then the resource is meant for one, of course, in a transparent way as well. Reaping adequately from modernized, highly fluid, and fast-changing global business and commercial environment does depend on its abundant natural, human, technological, and financial resources, as well as crucially on the very ability to undertake the expanded task of adapting to befitting marketing strategies.

Realistically speaking, at this juncture, complexities galore—business space, technologies, processes, and business models—have turned out to be more complex, while new characteristics are being added frequently (subtracted infrequently). The dimensions of business space keep increasing, adding complexity while at the same time furnishing attractive new opportunities for those who can successfully navigate in the new environment. This complexity, in turn, also inhibits greater size and greater value creation.

Clearly, the heterogeneous environment influencing global trade in this age in a big way is required to be scanned simultaneously with framing and implementing strategies so as to fulfil the basic objective of maximizing the country’s wealth both on the part of domestic and international enterprises. For the latter, this is more crucial because of the existence of far greater complexities—situations being totally different between an industrialized country and a less developing country (they are, in general, different in the EU compared to those in other industrialized countries). Obviously, a lot depends on not only the financial strategies or strategies that an international player adopts or should adopt, but also on the technological and production aspects, marketing aspects, and human resources management aspects.

Information and communication technologies, especially, have affected business organizations in the way they conduct business. While industrial-age business systems were predominantly characterized by bureaucratic procedures and hierarchical and centralized organizational structures, which, in turn, caused delays and inefficiencies, it is e-business-age companies that have virtually flattened organizational structures coupled with flexible and decentralized arrangements. The utmost requirement is to heavily lean on instant information spreading abroad so as to deliver customized products.

As of now, not only domestic marketing but also international marketing has emerged as a targeted area of highest priority among the progressive nations globally. International business has expanded at a jet speed in the current decade, with the reasons mainly being rapid growth in technology, the rise of supportive institutions, the openness of the different economies, and an increase in competition. Even minnows like Myanmar are now making a foray into the energy sector in particular. Not only this, even a latecomer like Bangladesh has emerged as our tough competitor in the field of readymade garments (for which sector even Russia is now interested), making full use of its competitive advantage (a country has a comparative advantage over another if, in producing a commodity, it can do so at a relatively lower opportunity cost in terms of the foregone alternative commodities that could be produced) in the arena of cheap labour. The EU’s internal market is all about removing barriers to the free movement of goods and services, people, and capital. Organizations are also there to encourage the removal of barriers to free global trade.

Jet Speeded Changes

Calling For...

It is high time we agreed that, in the global context, we are now living in a chaotic transition period: getting transformed steadily to a new age defined by global competition, rampant change, a faster flow of information and communication, increasing business complexity, and pervasive globalization. Undoubtedly, the pace of change has become so rapid that it took different types of firms to become dominant, marking an entirely new era of business.

It is actively being noticed that not only is the world trade economy growing at more than five times the rate of the world gross domestic product, but the stern reality is that the ongoing business scenario has been turning out to be more complex than ever before. Competition is now based more on capabilities than assets. New competitive dynamics have led to greater instability in the profitability of companies. One technology is being speedily replaced by another, and new products, services, and competitors are emerging with blinding speed. Competitive pressure has been intensifying.

That is why a substantive understanding of global marketing, giving due regard to the contemporary international marketing environment, applying marketing concepts to several decision areas in the domain of international marketing, and adequate exposure to several sub-areas of global marketing would go a long way towards bolstering trade in the international arena.

So, let us conclude with the target ‘customer’ in India, Australia, or the US following Jonathan Gordon: Observing consumers as they shop or use a product is often deeply revealing about their behaviours and motivations. This kind of research is closely tied to behavioral economics, a school of thought that seeks to understand the way consumers actually make decisions. It’s also a pillar of design thinking, which puts the customer at the centre of a system of interactions with the brand. Today, the mass of data about consumer behaviour allows marketers to get past broad and often deceptive averages to dive into much more granular levels of insight that can unlock new opportunities. Those who invest in big data analytics often achieve up to 10% sales growth, up to a 5% higher return on sales, and a margin uplift of 1-2%. Social media allows companies to listen in on unfiltered conversations about consumer habits.