Introduction
The purpose of writing this report is to bring to light crucial aspects which must be considered when doing international marketing. International marketing is a beneficial aspect since it does not limit one to specific boundaries. This is the same to global marketing. Global marketing is happening due to globalization which gives the people a chance of shopping anywhere in the world. It has been made easier by internet which enables people to shop online. Internal marketing involves empowering employees to work effectively and offer satisfactory services to customers. Domestic marketing involves establishing markets in specific boundaries where they are free to control the market and make decisions. Culture is an important aspect as it determines the behavior of customers and therefore decisions made by global marketers are depended on cultures. Culture has many dimensions which are put into consideration depending on the type of marketing. All these aspects are going to be discussed in relation to Hubbard which is a food organization in New Zealand.
Question One
Internal marketing mostly occurs within the organization in which the organization finds a way to align, motivate and empower all employees at all levels (Ahmed, 2002). The main aim of internal marketing is to ensure that services delivered to customers are satisfactory. It mostly involves employer branding and employer brand management which assists in ensuring that customers have a nice experience of the brand. It not only emphasis passing the right massage but also ensuring that the massage passed helps in changing employee behavior and attitude. Mostly it ensures that the employees are in a state which enables them deliver satisfactory services to the customers. There is a continuous process of ensuring that employees get more skills and the purpose of the organization is always in line with the behavior of the employees (Ahmed, 2002). The employees are supposed to know and follow the core values of the organization. For it to be successful, the attitude of the employees have motivated, reframed and empower. The business objectives are set out in a way that they satisfy the customer needs.
Internal marketing can be explained according to what is happening in Hubbard. It is a food organization and believes in doing the best and being different from others. This is done by ensuring that the employees are motivated and encouraged to follow the key values of the organization. The staff is motivated and provides tasty and nutritious breakfasts every day. This produces a very good experience to the consumers (Ahmed, 2002). Consumers are satisfied by what they get from Hubbard. In addition to this, there is a lot of training to the staff to ensure that they get the necessary skills required in making nutritious foods. It empowers its employees in such a way that they work in accordance to the objectives of the organization. For Hubbard, internal marketing is meant to ensure that consumers can identify themselves with this brand and do not even need to be persuaded to purchase from organization.
Global marketing is basically aimed at putting in to consideration global differences, similarities and opportunities in order to market the product globally. It involves the marketing of an organization’s products worldwide (Mooij, 2010). Especially, due to globalization, there is freedom of selling and buying products from anywhere in the world. There is a lot of competition which makes organization to market their products globally. It involves efforts by the organization to ensure that it meets global objectives. It is the extension and expansion of business to capture global markets. Hubbard does not only sell its products in New Zealand but globally. This is to say that there is no limitation of national boundaries but it can sell its products globally. To encourage global marketing, there are free trade areas, common markets, and multinational agreements. Since global marketing involves many cultures, the products are made in a way that they meet the consumption behavior of different cultures.
Since global markets are more focused on people, Hubbard tries to maximize the opportunities and exploit market similarities and differences to ensure that they gain a global competitive advantage. A lot of research on global markets must be done to ensure that the global marketing strategies meet the global marketing standards (Mooij, 2010). In doing global marketing, the world is treated like one large market and all national and regional differences are ignored. All what is necessary is ensuring that marketing activities and products and services meet practices and cultural activities and beliefs of different consumers in different areas of the world (Mooij, 2010). Global marketing can be done through many ways. It is not a must for people to see each other face to face in order to get involved in marketing. Hubbard does it through the internet. All what needs to be done is place the products in the internet and provide the option to order. When people see the products in the internet, they can buy without necessarily travelling from one country to another. Internet has made it all easier as people do not have to travel from one country to another in order to get a product.
Domestic marketing involves marketing which is carried out only in specific national or geographic boundaries (Kumar, 2002). It is done where the organization feels that it is free to plan, implement and control plans relating to marketing. They also operate where it feels free to make decisions about the marketing mix in a familiar business environment and the one which is easily reachable. The organization can enter domestic market without necessarily knowing the needs of that market but with time they are supposed to learn them and how to meet them. In this type of marketing, the organization does not care about the market demands of other markets which are not within its specific regional or geographical boundaries (Kumar, 2002). What they do is concentrate on their specific markets. What may be threats to them are only imports which may be available in these markets. It is a convenient way of marketing because the trends of markets can be easily adaptable. As convenient as it may seem, the organization must try and gain competitive advantage over the other competitors.
Hubbard has also established its domestic markets where it sells its products. These are markets where it feels that it can freely make decision about how the market operates. It has export areas far from New Zealand, where the market is free and feels that they can get involved without any barriers. What Hubbard has done is to identify markets and concentrate on them to ensure that it meets the needs. It does not worry about other markets where it does not operate. What it cares about most is other products which might be imported from elsewhere and cause competition to it. It has learned how to meet the needs of its identified market and although it does not have samples of its products in the internet, it takes time to deliver samples at supermarkets and gatherings where new products are being launched. It sells its products to export distributors who distribute the products to the regional and geographical markets they have identified.
Question Two (a)
Culture is a very crucial aspect when it comes to international and global marketing. It is crucial because different people have different culture and therefore, all the products to be marketed must be culturally acceptable. Self reference criterion (SRC) is the means which is used to operationalize cultural analysis and business decisions (Anonymous, 2011). Especially it is very important when it comes to international and global marketing since it deals with foreign cultures. It is used to make decisions about how a product is going to be designed to meet all foreign cultures. This is because it is not good to generalize about a particular culture. Foreign cultures are different and must be approached separately and individually. Self reference criterion is the technique which is used to isolate our unknown perceptions, preconceived judgments pertaining foreign cultures and to ensure that they do not affect the decisions made by organizations (Anonymous, 2011).
Culture is used as the basis of making decisions when making products in Hubbard. They are manufactured in such a way that they fit and can be consumed by all the people in the places where they are marketed. For instance, a product cannot have pig meat or any other pig product if it is going to be sold in a Muslim community. Self reference criterion is very crucial when it comes to making these decisions based on culture. The importance of culture in international marketing is based on the fact that there are some products or practices which are considered taboo by some cultures and considered right by others (Anderson, 2009). Hubbard presents its products according to the individual cultural beliefs and practices. This is all aimed at making people comfortable when using these products. Self referencing criterion is used by Hubbard to judge the actions of people from different cultures in reference to their culture. This helps in knowing whether the decisions made are right or wrong. Mistakes made in self referencing can be avoided by adapting people’s culture in the products. Therefore it is advisable that international and global marketers master cultures of their different clients.
Question Two (b)
As stated earlier, culture is very important when it comes to international and global marketing. This is due to the fact that different people have different cultural practices and culture is found to have influence on the market demand. Decisions in an organization are based on the cultural practices of the target market. The decisions are also based on the level of knowledge the decision makers have about a particular culture (Anonymous, 2011). Therefore organizations have the obligation of making sure that they have enough knowledge about different people in the target market before even designing their products. For Hubbard, it is not enough to know only New Zealand culture only. It exports its products and therefore it is crucial for it to know the cultures of the areas where its products are exported. Culture affects what one can consume and what they cannot consume and therefore affecting the whole individual’s behavior. It affects how business negotiations are carried out as it dictates the behavior of the negotiators. It can also be a barrier to enter a particular market. What is necessary for marketers is to be sensitive to culture, work hard and produce high quality products.
Culture has been found to dictate people’s behavior especially consumption behavior since it determines what is culturally acceptable and what is not culturally acceptable (Anderson, 2009). In international and global marketing, culture is used as the silent language which determines an organization is going to penetrate the market or not. It determines the relationship which the international or global marketer is going to have with the particular consumers. It is not advisable to generalize culture based on region, country or region. This is because some of them are multicultural. For instance, India and China have subcultures. Since culture determines people’s behavior, Hubbard makes decisions about its product in such a way that they are nutritional and healthy. This makes consumers like them and buys them so much not only for breakfast but also for any time of the day. Therefore, the decisions made by Hubbard are depended on the culture of its customers.
Question Three
Culture can be explained by various dimensions as it determines people’s way of life. The first dimension is power distance (PD) which explains the degree of inequality which exists in the society. This inequality is accepted as it determines the people with power and those without power (FAO, 2011). If the power of distance within a society is high, it show that that particular society has agreed to unequal distribution of power and every one appreciates their position in the society. A society with low power distance shows that power is shared well and is well dispersed. In this context all members of the society are viewed as equal (Schein, 2010). Hubbard puts in to consideration this aspect but all its products are sold to every person equally as it treats all individuals with equal opportunity of using their food.
The second dimension is individualism (IDV) which shows how strongly people are tied to each other within the community (FAO, 2011). If individualism is high within a country it shows that people are not well connected and responsibilities are not shared except may be among family members or close friends. If the individualism level is low, it shows that the society has a strong cohesion and individuals respect one another and loyal to one another. The level of responsibility is also high (Schein, 2010). Hubbard ensures that they are responsible for other people’s well being by making healthy and nutritious foods. It ensures that the level of individualism is very low by respecting its customers and maintaining a high level of loyalty to them.
The third dimension is masculinity (MAS) which explains the level to which the particular society sticks to the traditional roles of male and females (FAO, 2011). A society which expects its men to be tough, assertive, strong and providers are found to have a high masculinity. A society with low masculinity is where roles can be performed by either a man or woman. It is where both men and women work together for the success of the whole society (Schein, 2010). This is what happens in Hubbard. No role is assigned specifically to men or women but both work together for the success of the organization.
The fourth dimension is uncertainty/avoidance index (UAI) which explains how anxious members of the society get when unfamiliar situations occur (FAO, 2011). A high uncertainty/avoidance index shows that the society has rules to show truth and ambiguous situations are avoided as much as possible. A society with low uncertainty avoidance index is the one which values indifference and no rules to show the truth. Every aspect in Hubbard is straight and no uncertainties are allowed to happen. Every thing is made clear and true. This increases the trust employees and customers have on Hubbard.
The fifth dimension is long term orientation (LTO) which shows s how the society long term values as opposed to shot term values (FAO, 2011). Hubbard orientates both its employees and customers to be able to adopt its marketing strategies (Schein, 2010). This aims at ensuring that they are retained for a long time instead of having employees and customers who come and go.
Conclusion
For organization to succeed in international marketing, they should ensure that all cultures are incorporated and avoid generalization of culture depending on country or region. Culture has different dimensions and they must be put into consideration in international marketing. Culture determines the behavior of individuals including purchasing behavior therefore decisions made by organizations should focus on culture. Internal marketing improves the kills of employees for satisfactory services. Domestic marketing involves marketing on convenient and free markets while global marketing involves selling products in all markets worldwide.

References
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