Global Marketing Mix: Product and Promotion

Product and promotion in global marketing can work together effectively with proper market research and communication techniques.

The Relationship Between Product and Promotion

With the rapidly emerging force of globalization, the distinction between marketing within an organization’s home country and marketing within external markets is disappearing very quickly. With this in mind, organizations are modifying their marketing strategies to meet the challenges of the global marketplace in addition to sustaining their competitiveness within home markets. These changes also have prompted brands to customize their global marketing mix for different markets, based on local languages, needs, wants, and values.

Product for Chinese Market
An effective global marketing plan enables brands to tweak products for local markets while using the most effective promotional channels to reach consumers.

The Marketing Mix in Global Marketing

The “Four P’s” of marketing—product, price, placement, and promotion—are all affected as a company moves through the different phases to become and maintain dominance as a global company. Promotion becomes particularly important for positioning the company in such a way that a single product can be tweaked instead of revamped for different markets. Coca-Cola is one strong example of global marketing. The drink brand uses two formulas (one with sugar and one with corn syrup) for all markets. The product packaging in every country incorporates Coca-Cola’s contour bottle design and signature ribbon in some shape or form. However, the bottle can also include the country’s native language and appear in identical sizes as other beverage bottles or cans in that country’s market.

Promotion and Product

Before launching promotional programs, global companies must first define their target markets and determine the products that will resonate most with those consumers and businesses. In addition to pinpointing which price point and distribution channels would best serve those country markets, global marketers must decide how to introduce their products. Promotional tactics for global audiences can range from television commercials to social media marketing on Facebook or YouTube. It is the job of global marketers to create and place product advertisements in settings where local consumers will be most receptive to receiving and acting on those messages.

After product research, development, and creation, promotion is generally the largest line item in a global company’s marketing budget. Integrated marketing communications can significantly increase efficiency and reduce promotional costs. Moreover, promotion is one crucial component of the mix that enables a global company to send the same message worldwide using relevant, engaging, and cost-effective techniques.

While global promotion enables global brands to engage in uniform marketing practices and promote a consistent brand and image, marketers also face the challenge of responding to differences in consumer response to marketing mix elements. Promotional and product marketing challenges also come into play when dealing with differences in brand and product development and fending off local or global competition.

Local languages, colors, and religious beliefs all impact how global marketers promote their products and services in different countries.

Changes in Promotion

Before a company decides to become global, it must consider a multitude of factors unique to the international marketing environment. These factors are social, cultural, political, legal, competitive, economic, and even technological in nature. Ultimately, at the global marketing level, a company trying to speak with one voice is faced with many challenges when creating a worldwide marketing plan. Unless a company holds the same position against its competition in all markets (market leader, low cost, etc.), it is impossible to launch identical marketing plans worldwide. Thus, global companies must be nimble enough to adapt to changing local market trends, tastes, and needs .

Global Promotion
Language is usually one element that is customized in a global promotional mix.

For global advertisers, there are four potentially competing business objectives that must be balanced when developing worldwide advertising: building a brand while speaking with one voice, developing economies of scale in the creative process, maximizing local effectiveness of advertisements, and increasing the company’s speed of implementation. Global marketers can use the following approaches when executing global promotional programs: exporting executions, producing local executions, and importing ideas that travel.

 

Factors in Global Promotion

To successfully implement these approaches, brands must ensure their promotional campaigns take into how consumer behavior is shaped by internal conditions (e.g., demographics, knowledge, attitude, beliefs) and external influences (e.g., culture, ethnicity, family, lifestyle) in local markets.

  • Language – The importance of language differences is extremely crucial in global marketing, as there are almost 3,000 languages in the world. Language differences have caused many problems for marketers in designing advertising campaigns and product labels. Language becomes even more significant if a country’s population speaks several languages.
  • Colors – Colors also have different meanings in different cultures. For example, in Egypt, the country’s national color of green is considered unacceptable for packaging because religious leaders once wore it. In Japan, black and white are colors of mourning and should not be used on a product’s package. Similarly, purple is unacceptable in Hispanic nations because it is associated with death.
  • Values – An individual’s values arise from his or her moral or religious beliefs and are learned through experiences. For example, Americans place a very high value on material well-being and are much more likely to purchase status symbols than people in India. In India, the Hindu religion forbids the consumption of beef.
  • Business norms – The norms of conducting business also vary from one country to the next. In France, wholesalers do not like to promote products. They are mainly interested in supplying retailers with the products they need.
  • Religious beliefs – A person’s religious beliefs can affect shopping patterns and products purchased in addition to his or her values. In the United States and other Christian nations, Christmas time is a major sales period. But for other religions, religious holidays do not serve as popular times for purchasing products.

There are many other factors, including a country’s political or legal environment, monetary circumstances, and technological environment that can impact a brand’s promotional mix. Companies have to be ready to quickly respond and adapt to these challenges as they evolve and fluctuate in the market of each country.

 

Changing the Global Promotional Mix

When launching global advertising, public relations or sales campaigns, global companies test promotional ideas using marketing research systems that provide results comparable across countries. The ability to identify the elements or moments of an advertisement that contribute to the success of a product launch or expansion is how economies of scale are maximized in marketing communications. Market research measures such as flow of attention, flow of emotion, and branding moments provide insight into what is working in an advertisement in one or many countries. These measures can be particularly helpful for marketers since they are based on visual, not verbal, elements of the promotion.

Considering these measures along with conducting extensive market research is essential to determining the success of promotional tactics in any country or region. Once brands discover what works (and what does not) in their promotional mix, those ideas can be imported by any other market. Likewise, companies can use this intelligence to modify various elements in their promotional mix that are receiving minimal or unfavorable response from global audiences.

Key Points

  • The “Four P’s” of marketing—product, price, placement, and promotion—are all affected as a company moves through the different phases to become and maintain dominance as a global company.
  • It is the job of global marketers to create and place product advertisements in settings where local consumers will be most receptive to receiving and acting on those messages.
  • Promotion is one crucial component of the global marketing mix that enables a global company to send the same message worldwide using relevant, engaging, and cost-effective techniques.
  • To successfully implement global marketing strategies, brands must ensure their promotional campaigns take into account how consumer behavior is shaped by internal conditions and external influences.
  • Global companies must be nimble enough to adapt changing local market trends, tastes, and needs to their promotional mix.
  • When launching global advertising, public relations or sales campaigns, global companies test promotion ideas to provide results that are comparable across countries.
  • Using measures can be particularly helpful for marketers since they are based on visual, not verbal, elements of the promotion.

Terms

demographics

The observable characteristics of a population, such as physical traits, economic traits, occupational traits, and more.

measure

To ascertain the quantity of a unit of material via calculated comparison with respect to a standard.

integrated marketing communications

an approach to brand communications where the different modes work together to create a seamless experience for the customer and are presented with a similar tone and style that reinforces the brand’s core message.