International Marketing, 5th Edition

Although many developing countries and socialist/communist countries attack advertising as a wasteful and sinful practice, advertising does serve a very useful purpose. Consumers everywhere need useful product information. The fact that both China and the Commonwealth of Independent States now allow and sometimes even encourage advertising in their countries confirms that the need for information is legitimate.

In many countries, TV stations are state controlled and government operated because of military requirements. As such, the stations are managed with the public welfare rather than a commercial objective in mind. The programming and advertising are thus closely controlled. The programs have a tendency to emphasize the educational and cultural values in addition to government activities. European governments particularly abhor the U.S. private-broadcast model with its degenerate mass programming. More recently, however, European restrictions on featuring films being frequently interrupted by advertisements have been reduced.

The market for a world or international newspaper is likely to be a limited one. Newspaper is, by nature, local. It is thus very difficult to have a true national newspaper, let alone a world newspaper. For a newspaper to be international, it cannot be designed for the mass public because the tastes, preferences, and cultures vary widely, making it impossible to have everything for everyone at the same time. An international newspaper is possible only when customers across countries have something in common. The common interest, for example, may be related to financial activities, making such a newspaper as The Asian Wall Street Journal be of interest to businesspeople — but not the mass public in general.

Direct mail is largely undeveloped in many countries. This is especially true where illiteracy is high and where labor is cheap, making it easy to use a salesperson to make sales calls. Still despite the small volume, the use of direct mail is growing rapidly in many countries. It can be expected that list owners may develop more confidence in the rental process of their lists and that government regulations may permit companies to have more flexibility in collecting personal information and developing lists on a more sophisticated basis. In addition, American companies have begun to use direct mail in many countries, while their competitors have begun to learn and master the medium. It is thus not unreasonable to expect growth in the use and popularity of direct mail. Still the growth is unlikely to be immediately explosive, and direct mail will probably be used for industrial products first, with sophisticated consumers later, and the mass public after that.

If standardized advertising were effective and appropriate as claimed by its proponents, there would be no need to study international marketing and international business. Although the logic behind the indiscriminate use of standardized advertising is greatly flawed, not all forms of advertising standardization should be ignored. The technique may be appropriate on a modest scale, though definitely not on a worldwide basis. It is thus a good practice to find out when and where this limited scale of homogeneity exists so that some level of standardization can be considered. Toward this end, market segmentation criteria should be considered. If a foreign country can be considered a distinct segment because of identification, accessibility, differential response, segment size, and cost/profit, the use of standardized advertising is not recommended. But if the criteria mentioned are not met, some kind and limited degree of standardized advertising may be suitable.

For the varying viewpoints, see:

• Theodore Levitt, ‘The Globalization of Markets’ Harvard Business Review 61 (May–June 1983): 92–102
• Anne B. Fisher, ‘The Ad Biz Gloms onto 'Global’ Fortune 12 November 1984, pp. 77–78, 80
• J. J. Boddewyn, Robin Soehl, and Jacques Picard, ‘Standardization in International Marketing: Is Ted Levitt in Fact Right?’ Business Horizons 29 (November/December 1986): 69–75

Harman Kardon began advertising its audio and video products worldwide with the same graphic in 1986 because of the savings of at least $200,000 from the production of basically one advertisement and one brochure. There were production problems which had to be overcome because the advertising materials had to be presented in six languages. Another production problem was that the European size (8 1/4 by 11 5/8 inches) was taller and narrower than the standard U.S. size of 8 1/2 by 11 inches. To accommodate language and size variations, the color separations were done in such a way as to allow for squeezing for the U.S. advertisements and stretching those for overseas. Only a change of the black plate was needed to change type for different languages. In addition to these production problems, Harman Kardon had to adapt its advertisement for cultural reason. The black color used in the U.S. advertisement had to be changed to dark blue because the Spanish, among others, associated black with death.