How Global And Domestic Marketing Differ | Marketing

By LindaP.Morton
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The world is every changing and dynamic, but even with all our technologies at our disposal, people still differ. Those differences can be economic, cultural, demographical, global or domestic and it causes a lot of problems for business owners who want to market their products to people across the globe.

The principles of marketing may be very similar, but the marketing research technique that is commonly used to target a market requires national and cultural specific characteristics.

To market globally well, you must learn characteristics of the people in each nation and culture. The best way is through market segmentation.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Use Different Strategies For Different Nations

USA market segmentation concentrates on demographics, psychographics and buying behavior. But the information provided by these characteristics doesn't cross borders.

Even with USA residents, culture differs by national origin. Yet, most USA residents have been somewhat assimilated into the USA culture. So differences intensify across borders.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Demographic Characteristics Vary By Nation and Culture

In addition, many market segmentation criteria change from nation to nation. For example, generations are influenced by cultural and historical events they experience. Some of those events may be similar across nations, but they are not experienced the same.

The World War II generation in the USA was influenced by the second world war just like most people in the Western world. However, the influence of Pearl Harbor on the USA WWII generation was greater than for those in the rest of the world.

If a business plans one campaign for the world around characteristics for USA markets, the campaign will fail in the rest of the world.

Global and Domestic Marketing: People From Different Nations Think Differently

People's attitudes, morals, values, concerns, and expectations vary by nations. They result from each nation's culture, history, experiences, and social expectations. Different nations vary by what they teach in their schools, what they expect within families, the role of established religion, and the type of government.

Every nation's culture differs so what is valued, expected, desired, and feared vary by nation.

For example, religious freedom is a basic right in the USA. We consider forcing a certain religion on a person to be abhorrent. Yet, in other nations, governments and powerful people force their religious perspective on others even to the point of murdering those who don't accept their religion.

This illustrates that many nationally specific events, beliefs and culture form the personalities of people. So personality characteristics must differ nation to nation.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Buying Habits Are Nationally Specific

What people can afford to buy, how they buy, and what they buy changes from nation to nation.

But spending preferences go beyond people's ability to buy. It is closely tied to culture, social pressure, ideas of success and many other nationally specific characteristics.

Buying differences apply to basic needs as much as they do to discretionary products. In many nations, people buy groceries a day at a time from local markets.

But in the USA, we buy from large chains that freeze, can, dehydrate and process in other ways so that food lasts for a long time. Then we buy at least enough for a week at a time, and some people buy for a month at a time. We think shopping everyday would be a terrible inconvenience and that we are just too busy with our careers and family to spend that much time buying groceries.

I'm sure that many European residents are appalled by our over-processed food and would never consider serving it to their families.

So if we differ so much on something as basic as food, just think how our other buying habits differ.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Summary

Marketing campaigns can not be successfully transferred from one nation to another.

Successful marketing campaigns must be redesigned for each nation. This requires that marketers have to learn as much as possible about people in each nation.

In order for businesses in all nations to improve their business and national economies, the world needs to share specific characteristics that cause people to respond to marketing campaigns differently. When that happens global and domestic marketing opportunities will become more equal.

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You can read more about Marketing In The USA and Marketing Globally at the above links.

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