International Marketing Critical Essay
In this assignment, I will response to the ten discussion question regarding with the prescribed short cases studies from text book. In the first case studies is the cat that conquered the world: Hello Kitty and the spread of Nippon culture and the question is to explain the appeal of characters like Hello Kitty to younger consumers in both Asia and the western economies, taking note of cultural and group influences. The appeal of characters like Hello Kitty and other characters in the Asia and western are much broader as witnessed by the merchandise for sales.
For example, the product of Hello Kitty merchandise for sale throughout Asia even western like Hello Kitty watches, notebook, clothing, stationery, house wares, toilet paper, phone cards and video games with licenses approximately five hundred companies to make Sanrio approved them. It is provide extremely lucrative prepubescent market between across countries due to the character have no discernible cultural features, it reflect they can cross country and cultural boundaries with limited cultural baggage.
The image of these characters such as Hello Kitty, Pokemon and kickboxing Power Puff Girls which make younger girls and boys in different countries would like to protect and affection them because these characters look like helpless. Therefore, it is easily to entry younger consumer market. These characters can derived another Japan cultural that influences other countries. Kawaii is a term in Japan that mean cute and figuratively means things that are desire to fulfill one’s life.
The core values of Kawaii which have spread far beyond its original members and extended beyond Japan throughout Asia. Also, Asian consumers are increasingly becoming more comfortable with Japan’s values and lifestyle with its focus on family ties, respect for elders and the emotion of personal relationship. The question in case two is discuss the challenges facing a low fares airline. Although low fares airline use the pricing advantage by low and flexible cost structure to win market share.
Almost passengers expected poor and very poor service quality in their responses who were interviewed from a low-fare airline. Moreover, full-service passengers expected worse service quality if they were flying with low fare airlines as they think the price as the key indicator form quality expectation or their previous experience of the airline. It may not attract require full-service passengers and other challenges may outflow the segment of exist passengers in low fare airline if failure to meet their minimum service level will cause substantial dissatisfaction regardless the price to them.
In addition, labour is cheaper than in traditional airlines and cabin crew undertake non-core duties that will increase employees’ work burden that lead to knock the employees’ morel and employee turnover will increased. So it is necessary to have good management team and staff to reduce the impact of these challenges. Also the low fare may need to face no deregulation in US that can not expand their route network on that place. The high cost of fuel is perhaps the most obvious issue facing low fares airlines today, with many imposing fuel surcharges on customers. Fuel is an especially critical component for low fares carriers.
The third case question is analysis the competitive position facing HP/Compaq. According to the case that there are several places relate competitive position of HP/Compaq. In the structural position, HP and Compaq merged in May 2002. This decision cause increase HP’s exposure to the PC market and improve economies of scale of PC business. Also, the market share structure is IBM which is the leader in enterprise system that mean possess wide spread market share even middle and small companies’ demand is growing as the performance of low-end products gets better and better.
Therefore the server market which has become very competitive. In addition, a number of structural developments are affecting the PC industry specifically. For example, World Cup soccer fever made consumers focus more on games and TV than PCs; consumer attention is shifting to devices such as internet-capable mobile phones and software applications are constrained by the speed of internet connections and not by the capacity of the PC. In the strategic position, Hp/Compaq is losing around to Dell in the PC market as Dell has managed to increase its share of worldwide vendor shipment.
Also, Dell holds only four days of finished goods at hand and establish build-to-order model that avoid prone to obsolescence and reduce additional cost to manage inventories. Moreover, Dell decided to move into the lucrative printer market which to develop inkjet and laser printers along with peripherals, the market is expected to become more competitive and challenges for HP/Compaq. Nevertheless, HP emphasis will focus on a broader portfolio of product than PCs that mean gradually shift to other product to include mobile devices moving from laptop and handset in PC market.
HP also is a leader in printer market and posses large printer market share. These reflect HP’s play in the international target market has challenging and leading. After the merger HP gave up the production of HP’s sever and turned the resources to Compaq sever product in order to resources leverage that purpose to extend the firm capability to reach growth of sever market. The discussion question of four case studies is compare and contrasts the international expansion of the “Bid Four”: Oridando-Wyndham, Mildara Blass, Southcorp and BRL Hardy.
Similarly, Southcorp and BRL Hardy which is also used joint venture with other wine companies in foreign countries to extend international market. Also, Beringer Blass, BRL Hardly and Orlando Wyndham was acquisition foreign wine countries such as BRL Hardy was acquisition winery in one of the region of France and Orlando Wyndham was acquisitioned a French wine company as well as Beringer Blass through acquisition to assist the distribution of Mildara Blass brands in US market.
Compare with different other wine company, Orlando Wyndham has merged company early than rest of three companies began a major export in 1980s and aggressively to intensified its distribution efforts in Asia like heavily promoted in Japan and focused on development of a single brand. The rest of three wine companies are focus on its distribution network in the western countries and focus on two or more global brands to extend distribution network. The discussion question of five case studies is how did Kylemore Abbey manager their growth.
Since November of 1996, the abbey receives over 190000 visitors annually, and eight five percent of its visitors come from abroad, it is recognized internationally. Kylemore Abbey understand technology is an important part in ensuring Kylemore Abbey’s continued growth and favorable positioning within a competitive industry. Therefore, the management team at Kylemore Abbey commissioned an information system to rack and record all visitor statistics and held on additional of e-mail in order to received electronic bookings from tour operators and to address general visitor enquires.
Also, Kylemore Abbey established a website to promote the estate to a wider international audience. Brand and corporate image for a diverse product portfolio for an international tourism market need to be managed in order to satisfy the consumer are increasingly sophisticated and want to know more about a product before they make a purchase or visit a tourism destination. The discussion question of six case studies is outline the marketing strategy of MCC for the SMART car. Customers were demanding stylish mini-cars with a performance similar to large cars in term of safety, quality and environment friendly.
And many European countries have tax systems which rise according to the size of the vehicle so a mini-car cans easily meet these requirements. Therefore, SMART cars should segmenting the car is directed for younger even small families who are living in big cities and urban areas. In addition, the price of SMART cars are substantially cheaper than the owning a larger car and SMART cars are one of the environment friendly designs which provide good solution for the less air pollution and lower fuel consumption to capture these specific requirement customers.
Apart form that, SMART cars are also focus on driving comfort, safety for customers to choice this one. The SMART car’s marketing positioning is innovative and young positioning. The characteristics that differentiate this car from the rest are because it is small, easy to park; manoeuvre in confined city centre and environmental concern offers to you the possibility to use in big cities as motorbikes. The discussion question of seven case studies is what should Cereal Farm have done more extensively before entering the UK market.
Before enter the UK market, company should assess and research what level consumption of cereal in UK, what is the UK market to bring advantage to the company. Also, the Cereol Farm should first define its strategic objective depend on which competitors it chooses to attack. The company should setting competitive position model to assessing the relative dominance of a business in a defined international market. Different international competitor position has it opportunities or threats.
For example, Cereol Farm has discover an opportunities to set up a manufacturing facility in the UK and to enter the UK breakfast Cerel Farm to satisfy the overall international objective of serving culturally similar markets while increasing revenue. The discussion question of eight case studies is what are the key issues involved in the re-branding of Accenture. As the company is the world’s leading management consulting and technology services. It’s operation network across Europe, the Americans, and Asia-Pacific in forty seven countries.
Since the company would like to re-branding that may face re-branding effort of this magnitude is far more than a name change. For example, a new identity must be launched in order to gain brand awareness, a company redefines itself and strives to make the re-branding initiative analogous to the repositioning and transferring equity from the old brand and positioning to the newly re-branded and repositioned company. The discussion question of nine case studies is that what the key innovation at Zara. The innovation of Zara on it market mix strategy.
Zara does not follow the traditional intensive advertising approach adopted by many companies in the fashion industries instead of rely on the stores themselves with state-of-the-art-location as the key builder of the company’s image. Zara use a target pricing approach eased on market needs assessment instead of using a production focus in establishing price. Also, Zara through getting information daily from every store all over the world and from the reports of the international team responsible for capturing the fashion trends in universities, coffee shop and pubs etc.
Apart from that, Zara has aggressively to extend it business network such as it decided on the French market even through it was known as a difficult one to enter. The discussion question of ten case studies which is outline Bulmer’s new positioning strategy. In the late 1980s, the image of cider was appallingly bad, cheap and strong in alcohol as well as was associated with binge drinking and unruly behavior.
The poor image affect the licensed trade and many publicans so Bulmers decided to held on their marketing campaign to improve the image and increase sales. Bulmers had identified their drinkers and separated them into categories such as regular repertoire core drinker, regular repertoire drinkers and occasional repertoire drinker. It is because too big challenge to try to convert all larger drinkers to cider drinkers so Bulmers focus on three varieties of Bulmers drinkers.
