Why and how might advertising and promotional strategies vary among countries?
- Barriers to international communication
Cultural barriers
A firm needs to develop cross-cultural literacy to overcome the cultural differences that may affect the intake of commercials.
Source and country of origin effects
Source effects occur when potential consumers evaluate the message on the basis of status or image of the seller, meaning the firm. Source effects can be damaging for an international business when potential consumers in a target country have a bias against foreign firms. Firms can try to counter negative source effects by deemphasizing their foreign origins. A subset of source effects is country of origin effects (how much the place of manufacturing influences product evaluations).
Noise levels
The amount of other messages competing for a potential consumer's attention, which varies across countries. Highly developed countries such as the U.S have high noise levels, whereas developing countries normally have a lower noise level.
- Push vs Pull strategies
→ Push strategy emphasizes personal selling rather than mass media advertising in the promotional mix. Personal selling requires intensive use of sales force and is quite costly.
→ Pull strategy depends more on mass media advertising to communicate the marketing message to potential consumers.
Product type and consumer sophistication
Firms in consumer goods trying to sell to large segment of market generally favor the pull strategy as mass communications has cost advantages for such firms.
Firms selling industrial products/complex products favor the push strategy since direct selling allows firm to educate people potential consumers about the features of the product. This may not be necessary in advanced nations where complex products are abundant and have been for a long time, but more so in developing nations where consumers have less sophistication toward the product.
Channel length
The longer the distribution channel, the more intermediates there are. This can lead to inertia (inaction) in the channel which can make entry difficult. A solution can be for the firm to try and "pull" its product through the channel by mass advertising, creating consumer demands and intermediates then feel obligated to carry the product.
Media availability
Cable TV and the internet transformed the ability of firms to do targeted advertising. The pull strategy is limited in some countries, such as India, by media availability. In such circumstances, a push strategy is more attractive. Media can also be limited by law, such as selling tobacco and alcohol, or selling products with kids in the commercial.
The Push-Pull mix
Push strategy.
→ For industrial products or complex new products.
→ When distribution channels are short.
→ When few print or electronic media are available.
Pull strategy.
→ For consumer goods.
→ When distribution channels are long.
→ When sufficient print and electronic media are available to carry the marketing message.
- Global Advertising
Standardized global advertising has many benefits such as significant economic advantages.
Standardized advertising lowers the costs of value creation by spreading the fixed costs of developing the advertisements over many countries.
There is a concern that creative talent is scarce, so one large effort to develop a campaign will produce better results.
Many brands are already global and they want to project a single brand image to avoid confusion by local campaigns.
On the other hand can cultural differences create different perceptions of the message and therefore affect customer demand and sales. Media regulation can also massively inhibit certain types of commercials.