Self reference Criterion and importance for International marketing

Self reference Criterion and grandeur for International grocerySelf-reference Criterion and its importance for International merchandisingIf you foreshorten a quality around yourself you will find how some(prenominal) goods and services ar exclusively produced in your own orbit around you? Your clothes might be produced in Pakistan, your cell phone from China, your computer in Singapore your coffee might be from Latin America. Whatever we talk a turn music, clothes, movies or our soft drinks for e reliablely issue there are good chances that nigh of these products are produced in somewhere else in the globe. This is the global regimenstuff place where good determine and quality is welcomed by consumers irrespective of the region of its origination. In this scenario the lack is to earn the merchandising practices that are effective beyond the b magnitudes so the importance of global market dope non be denied.International marketing is not an easy task. The supran ational seller has to face some(prenominal) obstacles in the way to achieve his refinements. wholeness of the primary obstacles is whenever we face a problem we react abruptly and press decisions on the basis of set, meanings, behaviors and symbols that we agree interpreted from our own grow. This type of decisions unremarkably do not proved to be correct, as values, meanings and all placeable elements of cultivation usually differ from country to country. This is called self-reference quantity. According to Cateora at al (2007), the self-reference criterion is when decisions are taken on the basis of experiences, values and companionship of ones own ending.The dateing of self-reference criterion is actually(prenominal) a lot important for the marketing steadfast that plans to enter in international markets. In local markets on the basis of self-reference criterion the marketer can predict the in store(predicate) responses of customers to a particular product b ut in the markets of some other country or culture the responses of customers will be based on their singular heathen environment. Even when the marketing scheme for international market is substantial very carefully, chances of mis realiseings cannot be entirely vanished due to galore(postnominal) an(prenominal) another(prenominal) un-avoidable factors. The intervention of self-reference criterion in international marketing practices can be easily understand with the help of fol belittleding eccentrics.In an advertisement created by Nestle pile for their Kit Kat, a voice cover of local verbiage was apply for both countries UK and Italy. In that advertisement the quack, universal language of ducks, and duck callers were utilise by duck hunter to perpetrate the ducks. Meanwhile in the commercial they became frustrated and to pick out a cheerful break they need a Kit Kat. That advertisement could not be succeeded because of the cultural differences between the consumers culture and marketers culture. In Italy the hunting is considered as a negative act and Italian in any case took Kit Kat as a luxury and product. From this example we can clearly say that the achievement of a marketing schema is critically based on customer understandings and its important is raised more(prenominal) when we talk intimately international marketing.In 1996 McDonalds opened s pull down restaurants in India. The 40% existence of India is ve get goingarian and they do not eat meat or animal proteins. The fish, frozen meat and spicy foods were also not often used by remaining meat eaters. So in order to be triumphful in new market the McDonalds had make some(prenominal) changes to its prime products and needed to use separate instrumental roles and kitchens to make burgers and other products concord to the needs of Indian markets. This all created many problems for the company and company had also incurred many extra costs. This example shows that how compani es have to face self-referencing criterion when expanding their stage business in new international markets.When Unilever started its operations in brazil and treasured to introduce detergents, the biggest issues that company faced ware that people in Brazil dont have swishing machines, in rural areas people used to wash their clothes at the river and most of the population of Brazil was poor and they were very a good deal conscious about the products. So to avoid self-reference criterion the Unilever commencement ceremony organiseed a formula of soap, they made the plastic packing of soaps to handily use while washing clothes on rivers and they made olive-sized packing of detergents in order to low their prices and made them affordable for supreme number of population that have low incomes. This was the most supremacyful tool used by the company to avoid the effects of self-reference criterion and recognize the existence of this influence in our behaviors.It is argued t hat one can never understand deeply each and every aspect of the culture but consciousness about major aspects can be obtained, and he should ask bout that he does not greet and should be open enough to exact the differences. The global awareness can be used as most effective tool to control the effects of self-reference criterion and ensure the success of an international marketing campaign. The global awareness is described by the Cateora et al as to beObjective to understand the opportunities in correct dexterity make correct assessments of makeups potential and design responses to the expected problems. Mostly the westerly companies attracted towards India due to its huge market of more than one billion population and take it as a good opportunity and market with a lot of potential but they ignore the get power and low income factors of the economy of India, the inefficient media, poor distribution, poor and low standard of infrastructures and many other factors that caus e the reduction in potential of this huge markets for many kind of products.Tolerant towards the differences scarper among cultures. It is referred to the understanding of differences prevail among cultures and acceptance of these differences when works in a common working place with those who belongs to polar cultural assort. As in Romania when some Arab businessmen came to visit the country for opportunities and a local student was attached to them as translator. She spent two hebdomad with them to visit the different Romanian cities but she could not adjust herself with their take habits and showed the behavior of lack of tolerance for other cultures.K right awayledgeable of history, cultures, general trends and real potentials of markets. The awareness of culture is very practically important if one privations to retire the behaviors of some particular market place. The basic element of the environment in which the company is going to start its business is culture of that place and consumer behaviors are very overmuch influenced by this. The history of that place is very much important to understand the behaviors of consumers as past events always have bang-up effects on the way people behave in a particular case. By analyzing the history we can understand why British were not in favor of the channel tunnel between France and Britain and why Turkish products are not liked in Greek. The understanding of market potential is important because they are varying very fast. If we see now we will find many regions of the world that showing increasing potential, many markets have emerging trends and most of the European markets have been saturated. In close twenty years the emerging markets from Asia will show huge potentials for future businesses. The understandings of general trends like global political, economical and social trends are very much important because growth process of the market is depend upon these trends. A good marketer will identify t he market opportunities before anyone else could know them.Now it is very much clear that the success of marketing firm is very much dependant on its ability to understand the customers and even more like a life blood for firms that are run at international level. Following are some more examples presumption by Housden and Lewis to develop more understanding of the plan.In China third estate air is used to represent the people who sells vegetables so British go green has no chances to be successful in China.In Brunei the lily-livered color is considered as royal color and its public use is not appreciated.In order to show the sorrow of death purple color is used in Mexico.In china number 8 is taken as lucky number and considered as premium number to take as number of cars but number 4 is considered vice versa.The firms direct at international level must be very much conscious about the translations of their slogans, tag lines or brand names etc in local language of that plac e. If they dont take it seriously it can be very harmful for their marketing campaigns. Hundred of examples can be presented about the unfit selection of Brand names and designs that caused failures because of self-referencing criterion.Superpiss that is a Scandinavian dicer it cannot be translated into side properly.Pschitt is lemonade from France and cannot be advertized in Germany as its proper translation is not likely in German.Bimbo bread and Bum Crisps are brands from Spain and their advertisement is not thinkable in get together States as their names are not delicious there.The slogan of Pepsi Cola Come Alive with Pepsi is not acceptable in china as in Chinese it means Pepsi raises relatives from the dead.In 1966 pile Lee accepted the importance of self-reference criterion for marketing firms and provided an approach of foursome stages in order to mitigate the biases raised by this self-referencing criterion in particular in international marketing.In first shout the problem is delimit on the basis of culture of home country.In second step the problem should be defined again on the basis of culture of the country in which company wants to start operations without involving value judgments. comprise the effects of self-referencing criterion on problem definition and analyze the problem. accordingly problem is redefined without the self-referencing criterion.The importance to understand the effects of self-reference criterion cannot be unmarked by the marketing firm that wants to operate at international level. It can act as life blood for the success of the marketing campaigns intentional by the company and their effectiveness is based on the understanding of the campaigns developers about the culture of the host country.Knowledge of sub-cultural congregations and Market portionationThe segmentation of the market involves the dividing of entire market into small customers groups who have different type of responses for different marketin g strategies for particular service or product. In this way the organization can design the marketing policies according to the particular needs and requirements of each segment in order to have more profitability by more generating favorable responses than by simply applying a single marketing policy for whole market.The market segmentation is mostly done at the level of customers. But in case of international marketing sometimes markets are also segmented on the basis of whole countries by considering the aspects that are common among countries. This type of segmentation is not proved that much successful as countries have great variation in them and it is rugged to take meaningful averages. The most suitable basis that is used to segment the markets is customers and their unique response behaviors or purchasing decisions.Many factors affect the purchasing decisions of customers that are uncontrollable by them but they have indirect or direct influences on the lifestyle of custom ers. Culture is one of these factors that affect the consumer behaviors. It represents the dual-lane beliefs, behaviors and meanings among the members of a society. Whatever we do is based upon these shared behaviors that are transferred in a society from one member to another. It is a wide concept and has not as much importance for marketers as the groups within the culture or sub-cultures.The subculture is consisting of members who have their own values, beliefs and customs within the society that distinguish them from others in same society. Moreover they also obey the major values, beliefs and behaviors of prevailing culture of the whole society. Subculture can be defined as a separate cultural group that prevails in a society as recognizable segment. There can be different types of subcultures prevail in a society like religious subcultures, ethnic subcultures, age subcultures and disabilities subcultures.So the knowledge of subcultures is very much important for marketers wh ile segmenting their markets in little groups. Because the goal of all the efforts of marketers are to convince the customers to buy their brands and a very effective tool that is usually used by them to achieve this goal is cultural representations. By using this tool it is believed that when products relates to the cultural values the customers looking more comfortable. The marketers put a lot of efforts to understand the differences and similarities prevail in these sub cultural groups. They design their marketing policies for these cultural groups and try to attract them towards the product by aligning the product with the values and beliefs of their subculture. Although it is difficult to develop effective marketing policy for different subcultures, they must put their efforts to get sufficient knowledge about the similarities and differences among these groups in order to capitalize them.The importance of knowledge of subcultures for marketers while segmenting the markets ca n be very well understand by discussing the example of a Cigarette manufacturer who wants design the marketing policy for the subcultures groups of United States. The whole market of United States is divided in three sub-cultural groups of African American, Hispanics and Asians.The one big common factor in Hispanics, African Americans and Asians is that they are minorities in the United States. The first ever minority that migrated to United States is African Americans and after great struggle now they are considered as an important sub-cultural group of America because of their toilsome influence on politics and culture. The Hispanics is the largest minority of United Stated although they could not gain that much influence on American politics and culture as African Americans. This subculture has many similarities like language, food, political views and religion but this is a passing divided subculture. Just like Hispanics, Asians is also a subculture group that is super divid ed but they dont have as much similarities as Hispanics has. A big challenge for the companys marketers is to design the marketing policies that best align with the norms and values of these subcultures by indentifying the differences and similarities of these sub-cultural groups.Differences Among subculturesAfrican AmericansAfrican American is most organized and strong sub-cultural group of United States. However they belong to different cultures of Africa but they lived many years under ethnic discrimination and efforts of many years have united them now. Today the presence of African Americans can be seen in Music, Sports and even in Politics with great influence. Now they are considered a strong group of America and they are showing their success not only politically but also by material possessions in the form of jewelry, luxury vehicles and recognition in public.HispanicsThis is a subculture group of United States with high diversities but according to CBS News, 2003 they also have a largest population of minority in United States. They belong to more than 20 different countries and cultures. They are more concerned with religion and families and most of them belong to Catholic thoughts. The number of Hispanics is increasing due to more immigrants every year and they want acceptance in the society as a strong potent group.AsiansThe challenges faced by Asian are not different from Hispanics Asian is even more diversified subculture group because they differ in religion, language, food and even in facial features. The members of this group belongs to the countries of China, Japan, India and Thailand and these all countries differ in languages, eating habits and even in facial features. One common thing that all Asians have who immigrate to United States is that want to achieve a better lifestyle so their more intentions are towards the achievement of success and they are mostly involved in entrepreneurial activities.Marketing Strategies to cross Subcultu resThe knowledge of sub-cultural groups for marketers has great significance while designing marketing strategies to hindquarters these groups. As the African Americans have goals to be most successful individuals the need of the cigarette marketers is to design the strategy that focuses on assigning a sniff out of uniqueness, class and sophistication for all those customers who will be smoking that cigarette. So the association of the brand with any public and extremely successful African American will give a very much irrefutable response for the brand. On other hand the Hispanics more concerned with belongingness and family so the strategy that more focuses on an image of traditions and trust factors will have more positive results. The thing that needs more attentions of marketers is that this group is highly diversified group and differs in status as well. The use of language will also be very much critical towards the success of campaign for this group. In case of Asians t his subculture is considered as low profile group and strategy that will best suit for this group will be focused on respect of individual identity and traditions. The languages used for this group will more suitable if native language will be used.The success of an effective segmentation and a good marketing strategy is highly based on the knowledge of the marketer about the subcultures prevail in the society. People belongs to different subcultures differ from each others in many terms. They differ in their languages, their ages, their eating habits, beliefs, and even in facial features. So to design a well aligned marketing strategy the marketer should have sufficient knowledge of the sub cultural groups of the society.