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Marketing
How to sell to foreigners?
Melanie Hildinger Bukvic, Nicole Bock, Nadja Berkowitsch, Christiane Pohl
Abstract Every day you hear it on the news, you read it in the papers or you hear people talking about it – globalization. The meaning is not always the same. On the business level, globalization means that companies decide to take part in the emerging global economy and establish themselves in foreign markets. The goals are to adapt the products or services to the final user’s requirements, which can be linguistic or cultural. But how far should companies adapt the customer’s wishes and how far will standardization make sense?
1 General principles
Standardization means to bring down costs by making one single product for every customer and using the same advertising campaigns. When a company “goes international”, it develops a kind of export strategy, which will quickly develop into a marketing concept. Many firms have tried to be successful in working with standardization, but nearly every company has stumbled.
The first problem could be mistakes in language translation. Company slogans are sometimes translated into foreign languages that could be difficult to understand or even worse, embarrassing. The company “Parker” has a slogan that says, “Prevent embarrassment – use Parker Ink”. This is in reference to stains left on our clothes by a pen that leaks ink. Unfortunately, the translation in Spanish for “embarrassment”–“Embarazo”, means pregnancy in the Spanish language, so the slogan became a joke as a pen that is used as birth control. Another good example is the Braniff Airlines’ advertising campaign, which wanted to promote its plush leather seats with the slogan “Fly on Leather”. Unfortunately, due to bad translation, this meant for Hispanics and Latin Americans that they had to “fly naked”.
Brand names can also be tricky. It is hard to create a worldwide brand name that has the positive meaning or significance that was originally intended. For example, Ford’s “Fiera” (produced 1972-1984 in the Philippines) means “ugly old woman” in Spanish, and “Pinto” (1971-1980) in Portuguese is slang for a small male organ.
These examples show that you need a cultural translator, somebody who translates not only literally but can transpose the meaning accurately. This is such an important topic for every advertising campaign, because the first impression given by slogans is most decisive for the customer in their decision to buy the product or not.
Another important transfer of culture is the adaptation of products to meet the local market’s needs. “Barbie” dolls, which sold very well in Germany, were not accepted or even liked by the Japanese at first. The Barbie had to be assimilated to the Japanese taste – it had to be made to look younger, whereas Europeans like a sophisticated Barbie in haute couture. Italians like their tomato soup creamy whereas others like it spicy. It is no secret that the universally liked Coca-Cola has a different formula for different countries.
The country’s government also plays a big role on how goods are marketed. In de-centralization systems, as in China or Hungary the end-consumers have more to say in product selection. In centralized systems, it is much more important to have a good marketing strategy because fewer people decide about buying your products and they usually buy in quantity.
Globalization may be unstoppable but when it comes to successful marketing, a country’s need to preserve its identity must be recognized. National identity can also be called the “sense” of a given culture to recognize and identify with its unique characteristics. United Technologies developed a campaign for France, Germany and Great Britain where local scientists were portrayed for ads in these three different countries. The campaign was a huge success, as consumers felt national pride and somehow adopted the company as their own.
Adaptation is a key concept in international marketing. This accommodation concept, “different but equal” is more than just tolerance. Flexibility, interest in new things and increase in the level of tolerance and knowledge of the country are essential skills. More importantly, the ability to really “get under the skin” of the consumers you are selling to is the key to international marketing success. Special training must be provided to your marketing team to enable them to develop cultural sensitivity. However, no matter how well a marketer is prepared when entering a foreign culture, there will always be culture shock. Flexibility and tolerance will greatly reduce hardships.
The following sections will look at the four ingredients in the promotion of goods:
1 Personal selling
2 Advertising
3 Promotional campaigns
4 Trade fairs and exhibitions
2 Personal selling
There are millions of salespeople throughout the world. The sale of goods and services contributes not only to the survival of business, but also to the health and survival of the economy as a whole. The stimulation of demand by promotional activities – indeed selling – is an important and proven method of reducing unemployment and improving a nation’s standard of living. Firms are heavily dependent on salespeople to keep orders coming in. Furthermore, the sales force is of primary importance to the success of most organizations and to our economy in general.
The term “personal selling” describes the process of developing customer relationships, discovering customer needs, fitting the appropriate products with these needs and communicating benefits through informing, reminding, and / or persuading. Consequently, it is an important form of customer service. Success in selling depends much on the salesperson’s ability to develop, manage and maintain personal relations with the customer. People seldom buy products or services from someone they dislike or distrust. Most customers are more apt to openly discuss their needs and wants with a salesperson with whom they feel comfortable.
The world is rapidly becoming a one-world economy and market place. Companies that never ventured abroad until recently are now seeking foreign markets. International marketing is the performance of business activities that manage the flow of a company’s good and services to customers or users in more than one nation for a profit. The difference between domestic and international marketing is the uniqueness of foreign marketing. There are unfamiliar problems to solve, a variety of strategies to choose from, different cultural influences and their potential impact in successful international marketing to discover. The difficulty facing the sales personnel in adjusting to the culture lies in recognizing their impact and power. Generally, people are unaware of the various cultural influences that fill their environment and that are simply a part of our history.