1. How do marketing techniques differ from country to country? Marketing is the process of identifying the goods and services that consumers need and want, and providing those goods and services at the right price, place, and time. Marketers work a lot to first of all segment their market on the criteria if geography or demographics. Then they select their target market and develop a marketing strategy for that particular target market. Because in different target markets, consumers are different, so their needs are also different. Keeping these different needs in focus, marketers develop specific marketing mix for their specific target market. Now a single product, which is marketed by a company in different target markets (or/and Countries), will have different marketing mix (i.e. customized product, customized price, customized distribution and customized promotion methodology). So, following the above given principal, organization adopt different marketing strategies to sell their product in different countries. Case 1: Toyota- (Product Customization) Toyota is a Japanese automobile company which is a world leader in automobile sector. Toyota is known for many operational innovations like 6-sigma, Kaizen and JIT (Just in Time inventory). They have the honor of producing world’s most efficient cars with minimum utilization of resources. In 1930s, Toyota entered the US market with its “Home developed” vehicle – “TOYOPET”. Toyopet was a car developed by Japanese experts and it was a huge success in Japan. But Toyota faced an unexpected failure of this vehicle in US market. When Toyota analyzed the customer feedback, then they realized that US customers felt that the vehicle was not fuel efficient, it was less powerful and it was built like a tank. Toyota took this failure as a lesson and marketing team of Toyota customized Toyopet according to the needs of US customers and then it was a huge success in US market also. Case 2: Mc Donald’s and KFC- (Product and Promotion Customization) Mc D and KFC when initially began their operations in India; they completely ignored the culture and tradition of Indian customers by keeping the beef and pork products in their eating facilities. Indian customers denied the acceptability of these world popular food chains, as a result both Mc D and KFC closed down their operations in India. They came back in India after revising their menu (i.e. subtracting all the beef and pork products from it) and they used this customization as a “Promotion Campaign” that was again very successful in attracting customers.

2. What is the best marketing campaign you know of?

Businesses operating in highly competitive markets should find some ways to attract attention to their goods and services and to increase sales. Thus, they execute marketing campaigns which can be designed with different aims, including building a brand image, introducing a new product, increasing sales of a product already on the market, or even reducing the impact of negative news.

Marketing Campaign – specific activities designed to promote a product, service or business.

There are a lot of examples of marketing campaigns and I think there are some of them that are the best:

• Marlboro campaign – really successful campaign. Firstly Marlboro were cigarettes for women because they were filtered, and after the doctors had found the bad influence of non-filter cigarettes, Marlboro decided to switch to men’s audience more. The look of “Marlboro man” was created and the main character was the cowboy – embodiment of masculinity. The use of the Marlboro Man campaign had very significant and immediate effects on sales representing a 300% increase within two years.

• Coca-Cola «Holidays are coming» campaign: features a train of red delivery trucks, emblazoned with the Coca-Cola name and decorated with Christmas lights, driving through a snowy landscape and causing everything that they pass to light up and people to watch as they pass through. In my childhood this advertisement always created a holiday mood.

• MasterCard «Priceless» campaign with the slogan «There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard». The accent on diminished importance of money that money is just money and you get emotions from another things.

3. How has the Internet changed marketing?

The Internet has completely changed the way that customers look for and get what they want. It has also changed where they search for and where they buy goods and services. Consequently, those businesses that wish to remain profitable are changing their marketing methods to respond to this transformation in their customer’s buying habits.

Producers can target customers anywhere in the world and anyone with a computer can respond to their advertising/marketing and purchase goods or services with the click of a button. For some people it’s more convenient to buy smth on the Internet because they don’t have a lot of time to go shopping. And they get an email with good offers so they can easily buy it.

The fact that marketers can no longer reach the same wide audience that they used to be able to has made things difficult for the traditional advertisers. But marketers can now focus on a much more targeted audience than they did in the past. This means that they can be sure that they are only spending their marketing dollars advertising to people who are interested in their product.

Smaller companies are now able to compete with big corporations for sales. They can build their brand online fairly easily through services like Facebook or Twitter. The result is that there are a lot more small companies that focus on just small niche markets than there used to be.