1. What is the difference between international marketing and domestic marketing?
The biggest difference is that, with very few exceptions, the methods used to sell a product in America seldom have the same efficiency in foreign markets. This is often due to the fact that the American company does little research ahead of time and come up with a logical penetration plan. In addition, the company sometimes makes the mistake of assuming there are two marketplaces -- America and the rest of the world. The successful companies, on the other hand, realize that it will take a special way to market a product in France, which is different than the way it would be marketed in Italy. And what works in France and Italy could fail miserably in China or Taiwan.
Let's consider a hypothetical. Assume that Company X has created an all purpose makeup that has found wide acceptance in the American market. The makeup has an important range of features that appeal to American women, more particularly American women aged 35 to 52. The product has been on the American market for five years, and although it was the first in its category, there are now 12 spin-offs of the product, each substantially the same.
The typical sales model in the United States has been to advertise the product heavily on television with the hope of getting the target demographic into local stores to buy the product. In fact, local store names are included at the end of each commercial. As the company begins its sixth year, it decides that its share of the American market is flat, and decides that it should sell its product overseas. And following the American model, buys lots of TV time in France, Germany, Taiwan and Malaysia. The chances of that company failing are high, since the company has not studied the makeup buying habits of the women in those four countries. In other words, in "international marketing" the same attention to psychographics and dem...