International Marketing Challenges

It is clear to state that the expansion of globalization cannot submerge geographic borders and other distinctions such as culture and silent languages. Such distinctions, on the other hand, become increasingly important that any business should pay more attention to pursuit international integration. As a result, the international marketer has figured out the central challenges of global markets that each company has to manage differences among nations on the path to becoming a market leader. Furthermore, in order to develop a global marketing strategy to compete in today’s business world, it is necessary to emphasize the vital role of regional strategies, as the aggregation of these strong planning obviously results in global leadership.

Involvement in international markets presents the firm with more threats to compete with numerous Multinational Corporations (MNCs) and domestic companies, more especially are firms in newly industrializing countries such as Singapore and South Korea as well as emerging markets. Nimble competitors, modern communication and information technology have also paved the way to heighten further the pace of competition. Additionally, corporate social responsibility (CSR), which is related to the firm’s moral and environmental-social responsibilities, has been increasingly aware of by many firms to benefit society while also benefitting themselves. As such responsibilities cover all aspects of the firm’s activities, they offer many new opportunities to thrive a business, such as innovation, cost savings, brand differentiation and customer-employee engagement. However, the firm finds it difficult to fulfill these responsibilities as the process requires extraordinary investment of time, money and energy. The company is also penalized in case they cannot meet the requirements in such responsibilities in the host country, which affects dramatically to the brand’s image, as Volkswagen emissions scandal is taken as a typical example. In general, it can be said that the challenges for strategic planning is shaped by the characteristics of change, complexity, competition and conscience in the economic environment itself and the society. Besides the consideration of aforementioned challenges, the firm also needs to pay more attention to a terminology ‘economic imperative’ as it defines where various elements of the value chain in a given business should be located, for example, being global or country centralization. Unlike the economic imperative shaped by the value added in the value chain’s upstream