International Marketing, 5th Edition

One good way of covering this assignment is to relate it to ethnocentricity, polycentricity, and geocentricity. It is conceivable that Americans are more likely than others to make a distinction between the international and domestic dimensions. This of course is an indication of ethnocentricity. Citizens and corporations of many countries however do not see any need to make this split. To them, international business is a natural occurrence. International marketing complements domestic marketing, one being the natural extension of the other. As such, smart marketers look at domestic marketing and international marketing as being highly interrelated — both of which they must encounter everyday in conducting business. It is thus dangerous to believe that there is a certain point which domestic marketing ends and international marketing starts.

Marketing is universal and thus can be and should be used in each of the following cases:

1. international agencies such as the United Nations have used international marketing to promote such ideas as breast feeding, birth control, and fight against hunger.
2. national, state, and city governments have long used marketing to lure tourists and investment. To attract foreign investment, American recruiters have exploited the stereotypes that many foreigners have about certain states or regions. To give lasting impressions with foreign executives, the city of Atlanta has used peanuts and peaches while hiring models to impersonate characters from Gone with the Wind. Tennessee officials learned from their trip to Japan in the 1970s that all that Japanese executives knew about Tennessee was Jack Daniel's, the Tennessee Waltz, and country music. As a result, while hosting receptions in Tokyo, state representatives served Jack Daniel's and taught their Japanese guests how to dance to the Tennessee Waltz. Now when the Japanese visit Tennessee, the recruiters take them to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and give dulcimers as gifts.
3. socialist/communist countries such as China and the Commonwealth of Independent States have begun to carefully embrace marketing due to the recognition of the important role which marketing plays in modernizing their economies. Marketing is being adopted in order to increase efficiency and generate innovations.
4. developing countries likewise need marketing in order to improve the standard of living. Marketing is necessary in expanding exports and improving market efficiencies domestically.
5. nonprofit and religious entities, knowingly or not, have used marketing, domestically as well as internationally, long before the highly publicized use of TV by TV evangelists to raise money. While many well-known U.S. religious figures rely on the high-tech way of raising funds, temples and churches in many countries employ traditional marketing techniques to attract donations. Well-known religious persons or those associated with mystic power are likely to be able to attract large sums of donations for their temples or churches. The use of marketing for religious purpose is thus nothing new. As a matter of fact, the exportation and promotion of religions in a foreign land were and are a mission of many religious entities.

This assignment is challenging in two phpects — whether it is desirable to split domestic from international and whether a certain educational approach is geocentric or ethnocentric. The subject matter covered here is highly related to the first assignment.

Several well-known business schools see no need to offer international courses, with the rationale that the basic disciplines and principles of marketing, management, and so on are universal. As such, they argue that marketing is marketing, and there should be nothing which is domestic or international about it. The discipline-based approach may appear to be appropriate on this count.

However, the above assessment is incomplete. Although one probably should not say that certain marketing methods are domestic or international, it still does not mean that the international dimension should be neglected. The shortfall with the discipline-based approach is that the disciplined-based courses as designed and taught in American business schools at the present time are ethnocentric. As a rule, such courses only consider the U.S. perspective. As commented by Thorelli, “to the extent that what we teach is U.S.-oriented, it's literally specious, lacking in external validity.” Apparently, business schools need to take on a greater responsibility in internationalizing the teaching and research carried out in their programs. (See Hans B. Thorelli, ‘Internationalizing the Marketing Curriculum Calls for an Entirely New Philosophy of Teaching Marketing,’ Marketing Educator 2 (Fall 1983): 1-5.)

It is not sound to state that U.S. marketing is marketing and to also hold as true the opposite. In actual truth and practice, they are not one and the same. As explained by Lyman W. Porter and Lawrence E. McKibbin (Management Education and Development: Drift or Thrust into the 21st Century?, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988, 320), “America's future managers need to understand the degree to which U.S. methods are unique rather than universal and the related ethnocentric character of their own attitudes … The question, then, is whether American business school graduates can afford to continue to be as parochial — as culturally and internationally naïve — as they have been in the past. We doubt it.”

MNCs definitely should not be outlawed. They provide social and economic benefits. With scarce resources distributed unevenly around the world, MNCs provide a quick and productive means to effectively utilize such resources to produce goods and services. MNCs thus maintain economic balance and economic order while creating jobs. In addition, MNCs are willing to perform business functions in any locations that offer them the greatest degree of cost effectiveness, and their activities have thus integrated national economies. As such, their strategies have fostered worldwide economic integration even in the absence of formal agreements among governments in the area of economic cooperation.

This minicase should make it clear to students that college education is not immune to the force of globalization. Unlike European universities that have always been active in international education, American universities were once quite passive since they simply let foreign students come to them. More recently, U.S. colleges have begun to be more active in recruiting international students. Education, just like tangible goods, can be exported and perhaps even produced abroad for local consumption.

Like the two-year Rhodes Scholarship program that recruits about 100 high-achieving students from 18 English-speaking countries to study at Oxford, Stanford University wants to become the Oxford of the Pacific Rim. Stanford has designed a highly selective scholarship program to nurture Asia's next generation of leaders. The program has an endowment of $7 million, more than $5 million coming from a Hong Kong multimillionaire. Stanford's goal is to become America's pre-eminent institution in the 21st century for the Pacific Rim.

The case of The University of Chicago is an interesting one. By setting up a facility in Europe, the business school has acted in the manner like an American firm setting up a European subsidiary. In order to pick the best location for its overseas venture, the University employed two consulting firms to do marketing research. The firms interviewed executives at nearly 180 European companies. Barcelona was finally chosen because of its easy airport access and also because it is an attractive city to visit.

Chicago expects to benefit from its European program in more way than one. One benefit is a great deal of cross-fertilization. Professors who teach in Barcelona are expected to research international business problems. Their European experiences should subsequently benefit their home classrooms.