International Marketing

• International marketing involves planning and executing transactions across borders.
• The standardization approach focuses on standardizing goods and services.
• Adaptation tailors offers to fit international market dimensions.
• Samsung uses both adaptation and standardization by standardizing core competencies and adapting non-core traits to fit cultural and economic aspects of different countries.
• More emphasis is placed on adapting the promotion marketing element

Marketing Mix Elements

• Placement and pricing are standardized
• Product concept and name are standardized, but some characteristics like color can be adapted to local preferences.
• International marketing involves planning and executing transactions across countries to meet personal and corporate goals.
• It involves global standardization and local responsiveness.
• Standardization may lower sales, while customization can cut the firm's production and marketing efficiencies.
• Marketing mix includes activities comprising a firm's marketing program, where each element impacts brand equity either positively or negatively.
• Multinational corporations' marketing strategy is based on standardization and adaptation.

CAGE Framework

• Culture involves interactions between people and cultural and language differences among countries that can affect the possibility of economic transactions.
• Administrative factors involve laws, policies, institutions, and international organizations.
• Geographic factors: physical distance between countries, common land borders, and different time zones.
• Economic factors: differences in economic mechanisms that affect cross-border activities, relationships, GDP, unemployment rate, and inflation.
• Countries that share a language, trade arrangement, border, and similar per capita income levels have a 10-15 times higher probability of trading.

International Marketing Considerations

• Inner circle: marketing mix elements
• Outer circle: domestic variables
• Much outer circle: influences on multinational corporations from foreign countries.
• The marketing mix is the only element under the company's control.
• Domestic and foreign environments cannot be controlled.

Standardization vs. Adaptation

• Glocal combines global and local perspectives
• Four strategies: domestic (low integration, low differentiation), multidomestic (low integration/standardization, high differentiation), global (high integration/standardization, low differentiation), and transnational (high integration/standardization, high differentiation).
• Adaptation helps in market development, physical condition differences, and legal/political reasons.
• Standardization allows for easier planning/control and cost reduction.

Qualitative Methodology

• Primary data: qualitative employee interviews.
• Secondary data: country, market, and company profiles.

Hofstede Dimensions

• Power Distance (PD): China is highest, US is lowest.
• Individualism: South Korea is lowest (collectivist), US is highest.
• Masculinity: South Korea is lowest, China is highest.
• Uncertainty Avoidance: France is highest, China is lowest.
• Long Term Orientation (LTO): South Korea is highest, US is lowest.
• Indulgence: US vs. China, restrained.

Product Life Cycle

• Stages include introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.
• Samsung's product lifecycle is in the maturity phase.

Marketing Mix - Samsung

• Product: each country has a different product portfolio on its website, different colors for each country, and the same storage size of products.
• Placement: Websites have 8 sorting criteria, with series name, storage size, and key features being the three common ones, plus e-commerce and mixed retailers.
• Samsung employs direct and indirect distributor model.
• Promotion: Utilizes social media such as YouTube and Instagram.
• Price: Pricing determines the value perceived by the target consumer in a competitive context.

Conclusion

• Samsung uses both adaptation and standardization, standardizing core competencies while adapting some parts to fit the local culture.
• The placement highlights a mix of direct and indirect distributors, the promotion strategy at the company level, and pricing strategy at the company level.
• Samsung uses a transnational strategy, with high integration (standardization) and high differentiation (adaptation).