Introduction to Marketing:
Marketing are the efforts put in order to attract customers, it’s not just about the advertising and sales; marketing is everything you do to make a relation with your customer and give them what they want by means of your product or service. We have studied Marketing management and Special studies in marketing in the past and so we have a good idea of what marketing will be talking about and how we can deal with it. But this last semester of BMS we progress beyond the boundaries and look at going overseas for marketing, explained below is the concept of international marketing, one of the most interesting subjects you will come across in this semester.
International Marketing is taking a marketing job outside India, right?
Hehaha No! International marketing is not about going out of your own country and taking up a job there as a marketing professional, as there too, you will be marketing those products within a particular country. International marketing is crossing the borders of your nation to market any product, so you may be working in India or outside India if your product is going out of that nation, then it is termed as International Marketing.
With International Marketing your target audience changes because you look at things beyond the borders of your country and hence you market as per the norms, conditions, cultures and traditions prevalent in the country you are marketing your product into. Every country is different, every culture is different and as a marketing professional it is important that we understand these differences well before we plan on marketing anything to a new place. Asians stress on family values while Americans believe in independence and freedom, the British are very particular about discipline, Pakistani’s take green as a friendly and auspicious colour, Australian’s are well built while the Japanese and Shorter in structure in comparison.
Everyone is different and every where the belief’s differ, Indian’s follow Buddhism so do many other oriental nations like China, Japan and Taiwan but the way in which all of these perceive their religion and its belief has certain differences depending upon the geographical factors and the cultural aspects prevalent in the nation.
The same way the religion of Islam and Christianity are wide spread in the world but each country has something unique and native as compared to another one practicing the same religion. So as a marketing professional it is a must that we are aware of all of these small yet significant practices that matter and make all the difference. It is this process of learning and understanding a completely new culture and marketing accordingly that makes all the difference between domestic and international marketing.
The difference between International Marketing and Global Marketing
Now these terms international and global have been used by us interchangeably for years but with the context of marketing there is a difference and it is that difference which separates the two. Global marketing is when a firm manages to successfully conduct business all across the globe, it ensures that it can develop customer loyalty and brand relation with different people across the globe.
The pricing factors are made keeping each nation in mind and the strategies evolved and the tasks done are all done in a way that keeps the different countries that they cater to in mind. It’s not as simple as taking into consideration the factors of a single nation, it deals with multiple countries at the same time and hence the processes involved are more complex and on a larger level than for a firm who deals with international marketing.
Why do I have to Study this subject?
You need to study this subject because you must never stagnate or limit your dreams. Let me put it in a ‘not so dramatic’ fashion, what I meant was if you take up marketing as a profession you will obviously aim to work for a multinational corporation or an Indian brand that is on the top of its game and in order to do that you must know all about marketing on the international level because if the firm is big, it will definitely be catering to international clientele, and you must be ready for that.
If you become an entrepreneur and set up your own firm, you will have to utilize marketing because marketing is the life-line of any business. Once you are doing business there will come a time when you will plan to go global so that will be when all of this knowledge will come in handy. It’s the mentality of career growth and planning on a large scale that makes the study of this subject seem very logical and essential.
Is International Marketing Boring?
Was Marketing management or SSM boring? No, it was a lot of fun and the same can be applied to this subject, theory but with a very practical approach. Fun and exciting and yes no body can hate it because it’s truly engaging in every way.
Is it Difficult?
Nope, this is the Business Ethics equivalent of your Sem6, that cool subject with the thin textbook, easy concepts and a gold mine of marks.
Do I need a Coaching Class for international marketing?
Absolutely not! Why would someone need to join a coaching class for something so easy and interesting, at times I fear a coaching class will make this subject very mundane and average and miss out on the fun factors involved, so coaching class is surely avoidable!
What is the Syllabus for International Marketing?
Unit I : Introduction
Unit II : Product Packaging and Distribution
Unit III : Pricing Policy in International Markets
Unit IV : Overseas Market Selection
You can find the detailed syllabus and list of reference books for international marketing Here – International Marketing Syllabus and Reference Books!
Where can I get Reference Notes for this subject?
BMS.co.in International Marketing Notes
How do I Study International Marketing to Score good marks?
Your units can be divided as: Unit 1- easy, Unit 2- Moderate, Unit 3- Difficult and Unit 4- Moderate. So, we should obviously study in a way that we don’t start with the difficult unit that puts us off the subject entirely or leave it for the end where it gets difficult and we end up leaving it for option.
With such an easy subject do not leave anything for option, just focus on doing it right. You can start with a moderate Unit followed by a difficult unit – a moderate unit and end it with an easy unit so you know things will be easy to complete and there will be no burden on your head for this subject.
Study regularly for an hour a day, you can do it by following these steps:
- Read the chapter
- Understand and underline whatever seems important or difficult
- Get the doubts solved by professors
- Make notes of all the long answers / short answers/ concepts and read them well while making the notes
- Finally revise all the notes you have made.
- Take up past year’s university papers and solve them, timing yourself simultaneously to check whether you can complete the paper or not, don’t be disappointed if you can’t manage the whole thing in the initial stages just keep practicing and you will be able to do it successfully.
- Revise the question answers from any important question banks and question sets that you can manage.
- Do the final revisions from the important questions put up on BMS.co.in and in 8 simple steps your IM studies are complete.
If you do wish to score very good marks you can follow the above given steps by setting up timelines and date line for it so you know that you are not missing out on any part of the syllabus. As I said earlier you need to devote an hour a day for this subject. Steps 1 and 2 should not take more than 2 days per chapter. Similarly step 4 and 5 should not take more than 3, because you have already read it and it really is no rocket science, to understand the very simple terms and explanations in this subject.
20 days to complete the steps 1-5 and 10 days for steps 6-8. The 10 days of paper solving may go beyond an hour because it takes 2.5 hours to complete a 75 marks paper. Work smart instead of doing donkey work and you will surely succeed in this subject.
If you don’t have a month to spend on this subject because like majority of T.Y.BMSites the seriousness we have in Sem 6 is less than half of Sem 5, you can still pass! Don’t believe me? Here is a story a close friend of mine shared that agrees to that statement: “ It so happened that one month before my University exams certain things fell into place and a family holiday to Dubai got planned. Now being the typical TYBMSite I was I had not taken up IM with the thought that I will complete it in the last one month using the above given schedule, which was tried and tested and given out by my college faculty.
Now a trip overseas I could not miss but then exam ka kya kiya jaye? So I packed up my books with me to read whenever I could! Yes it’s crazy but what I did was I read them as frequent fliers read novels on the flight, in the aircraft, at night post sightseeing and in the wee hours of the morning on the breakfast table where none of the other tourists had arrived for the breakfast buffet and my family snored their lungs off!
The smart thing I did was while I read I marked all that seemed important using a textbook. I read through everything once and then made notes. Now notes when you are on a vacation are pretty different from notes made in the library so these notes were like the question followed by the head points of each answer or a short 3-4 line description of what the concept is all about.
I completed the entire syllabus for IM on my 7 days- 6 nights holiday and came home to simply revise from the notes from BMS.co.in because I had to do up a lot of my practical subjects where I had missed out on the crucial 7 days of practice.
My family called IM the ‘Dubai paper’ and threatened not to take me anywhere in the future if I did not score well in IM, convincing them to take me was such a task in the first place but when the results came it was of the subjects where I had scored really good.
No there is nothing awesome studying in the flight, the thing that made the difference was my thought process. Since I knew I had little time whatever I did, I did it with a lot of focus and concentration. Also I had attended all my college lectures in the past and had worked hard in the past two marketing papers, so I could pull it off with ease.”
Things you can do when you are short on time for IM are:
- Read through the entire textbook and mark the important or difficult parts you come across.
- Make notes, but the holiday style easy and convenient notes that take very little time to be made and while you make notes you learn the chapter because you have no time for revision.
- Take up question banks from BMS.co.in and revise all of those.
Work smart and utilize subjects like these to get good grades, if I would have had the time and would have studied well I could have scored really well, the same applies to you, try and study as much as you can and do it in time, because time once gone won’t get back anything except eggs on your answer sheet!
All the best for IM 🙂
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