Global Marketing Management

Global marketing management first involves the same elements as any type of marketing management and then must take into account the different requirements of the global marketplace, the different opportunities, and the pitfalls that must be avoided in this developing arena. Deciding what works and what does not and seeing to it that the company follows what works is the job of the marketing manager. While the purpose of marketing is the same in the global marketplace as in the domestic market, namely to decide what the customer wants and then to provide it, the task can be more complicated in the global market because the manager will not be as familiar with that market, because that market is not one market at all but many markets in many different countries and parts of the world, and even different markets within the same country or region. The process of marketing therefore now involves finding the right message for many different places and taking care not to try to tell a product with the wrong message in a part of the world where that might be offensive. Marketers have to consider the core values of the consumer, and in America, these values are ascertained by various means by marketers. American marketers tend to have a good idea of the values held by American consumers, but when thinking globally, they have to account for different values in other parts of the world. What sells well in America may not sell well in Europe and may have even less traction in the Middle East or Africa. The mass-market strategies used in the past in the U.S. are now considered crude and overly general, and they may also not be applicable in some places. Some core values seem always to have an effect in the U.S., however, among them a sense of personal freedom, quality, value for money spent, individualism, originality, and personal success. Individuality is not a core value at all in many parts of the world, and personal success also may not be given as high a

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