Раскрытые топики к ГОСу по Английскому / 3 eng

3. What different marketing approaches can be used when a company breaks into new market? What can you say about different launch strategies for different categories of product?

This is a spectrum of new products’ development strategies when a company breaks into new market. Sometimes companies customize a product to every new market, at other time they offer one standardized product everywhere and sometimes they compromise in the settle in the middle. Causes of such positions are in fact that customers’ tastes are very different in America, the UK, Germany, Japan. And company produces, for example, ‘global’ car that does not have country-specific features will fail. But designing separate car for each market can be exorbitantly costly and some companies, however, do develop the same product for all markets regardless of existing preferences. Kellogg has succeeded in changing consumption patterns: for example they spread breakfast cereal in France. In contrast Coca-cola changes the flavour of its soft drink to conform the local tastes. Coke in the US tastes different from Coke in the UK, which in turn tastes different from Coke in Australia.

Furthermore, we can talk about different ways of international marketing in Japan, US and German. So Japanese companies tend to believe much more in getting new product in market and then gauging the reaction to them. Parallel to this US’ companies tend to use more formal market research methods. Uniliver has four global research laboratories that develop the products for their different national markets while providing inputs of global products. The laboratories co-ordinate their efforts by looking at the possibilities of melding product ideas arising from different countries. And the advent of Internet and Intranet has a potential to accelerate the process of developing features that can be including in new product. On the other hand for German companies, product development schedules tend to be more important.

After that company should decide what launch strategy it will use. Product can be launched at the same time or at different time depended on product categories and national specific. Toshiba launched the Digital Video Disk (DVD) in Japan in November 1996, in the US in spring of next year and only in autumn in Europe. The launch decisions also can include marketing mix decisions. When Citibank introduced its credit card in Asia-Pacific region, it launched it sequentially and tailored the product features for each country while maintaining its premium position. As a contrast Rolex strategy is the same watches anywhere in the world and the same positioning in all countries. Also Uniliver’s soap has different ingredients in different countries, but Uniliver’s positions the soap in the same way in all markets – as inexpensive everyday soap that protect health. So companies can adapt the product to national tastes but have one global position.