Globalization and Customer-Centric Business Projects
Overview
Globalization promotes transformations in the business environment and consumer culture along the dimensions of economic geography, which can be evidenced by the growth in the urban areas and shorter travel distances as businesses migrate closer to denser population, and generate competition among firms to take advantage of scale and trade in specialized products. Firms prepare for going global by providing convenience to the consumers toward searching for products, buying through technology platforms and settling payments online. Such firms also aim at boosting up the knowledge on products and services and triggering impulse on shopping. The discussion in the chapter demonstrates that multinational firms have been slow to understand consumers in the developing world and, as a result, they have been vulnerable to local competitors that know how their shoppers think, what they crave, and how they buy. This chapter addresses issues related to local effects on globalization, shifts in communication culture, status of market complexity, knowledge sharing, and building customer loyalty. The emerging theories on localized business projects and role of communication technology in managing business projects are also discussed in this chapter.
Local Effects on Innovation
The marketplace in 21st century has become more complex than before because of increasing competition, shifts in consumer preferences, and corporate governance practices. Companies today have turned customer-centric and consider customer as the focus of developing marketing strategies for business growth. As the consumer behavior is getting multifaceted in the global marketplace due to rapid increase in competition, innovation, and technology in products and services, architecting sustainable companies is not getting any easier. A longitudinal growth of brands across the companies has altered the perception, attitude, and behavior of consumer rapidly over time. Thus, companies are engaging consumers in building confidence on brands and the companies by developing symbiotic relationship between consumers and market for sustainable growth. Companies build consumer perceptions on the product and services by disseminating continuous and sustainable communication through various channels on digital and print media. The first order of business is to take a hard look at the sustainable consumer segment that has long-term profit potential for delivering right brands for segments and to plan for required investment in building the customer-centric markets. While no good company ignores shifts that are clearly under way, they traditionally segment markets in reference to the size, income, age, and ethnicity of various target populations; estimates of their consumption and loyalty; and information about their locations, lifestyles, needs, and attitudes. Well-managed companies have moved from emphasis on customizing items to offering globally standardized products that are advanced, functional, reliable, and low priced. They benefit from enormous economies of scale in production, distribution, marketing, and management. Such dynamism in the business and related activities portrays the functional concepts of globalization (Rajagopal 2008a). The geodemographic, sociocultural, and economic attributes are analyzed by the companies to form the consumer segments. The principal determinants that influence market segmentation are as listed as follows:
Geodemographic attributes
Region, neighborhood, urban, rural, and industrial market territories
Age, gender, and biometric attributes of consumers
Sociocultural attributes
Culture, religion, and family constitution of consumers
Ethnicity, values and lifestyle, and peer dynamism
Consumption preferences, psychodynamics, and literacy levels
Economic and relational characteristics of consumers
Net and disposable income
Spending capacity and propensity to consumer
Value for money and customer satisfaction
Price, promotions, and cost to customers toward buying
Market segmentation is the process of dividing a heterogeneous market into homogeneous groups of customers who respond to the marketing activities of the company in the same way. Conventional markets are segmented on the geodemographic basis; the companies have been leaning mutually with consumers toward developing market segments based on the desirability and feasibility of targeting consumers within the different demographic and regional locations. Most companies have also adopted an operational basis for international market segmentation and emphasized the geodemographic characteristics over the attributes of consumer segment. However, a logical framework, whereby consumers across the world can be grouped together formulating a consumer-based global marketing strategy for a company, is needed (Ko et al. 2012). Global market segmentation is the process of identifying homogeneous groups based on regions or buyer groups with common preferences that show similar consumption patterns. The global markets with cross-market segmentation strategy have turned to be effective in a homogeneous consumer segment where propensity toward specific demand generation across consumer segments dominates the business models of the companies (Kincade, Kim, and Gibson 2010).
Globalization thrust in the market has increased competition on the one hand and behavioral complexities of consumers on the other. The traditional marketing strategies of multinational firms are gradually refined in reference to changing business dimensions to gain competitive advantage. The marketing-mix strategies considerably influence penetration strategies of global firms categorically across markets as firms consider strategies of product, place, price, and promotion dimensions to packaging, pace (competitive dynamics), people (sales frontliners), performance of previous brands, psychodynamics (consumer pull), posture (brand and corporate reputation), and proliferation (brand extension and market expansion) with reference to the market requirements. The firms moving down to the bottom line markets largely affirm the value to the customers in reference to the strategies pertaining to product, price, place, promotion, packaging, and psychodynamics (5Ps) as these factors influence consumer pull effect, which facilitates large market coverage of the firm. However, many firms observe that initial effects of penetration to bottom line markets face consumer sluggishness, which becomes stronger overtime with increasing consumer satisfaction on the services delivered. Global firms need to strike balance of performance between up-market and bottom line markets in reference to service quality, customer relationship, and equity of store brands. Firms belonging to foreign destinations initially create stronger perceptional values of consumers in the premium markets, which may turn sluggish as the competition among firms increases in the segment over the period of time. Accordingly, though global retailing firms tend to earn higher revenue in the premium segment or up-markets, they live in agility (Rajagopal 2008b).
Consumer Analytics
Globalization has catalyzed the growth of consumer products industry and the marketplace attractions have driven the cultural attributes of consumers significantly across various consumer segments. Shifts in the cultural values, consumer preferences, and purchase intentions toward designer products is arguably the most critical issue faced by the marketing managers today. Many researchers argue that the increasing globalization is reducing the homogeneity of consumer behaviors within countries, while increasing communalities across countries (Cleveland and Laroche 2007). Most firms developing innovative products are trying to bridge intercultural differences and build cultural consonance across consumer segments on a variety of contexts that stimulate interest among consumers. Customer-centric market strategy developed on self-esteem attributes of consumers is used by the firms to enhance purchase intentions toward products and services (Horowitz 2009).
Powerful market stimulants such as fashion shows on television, fashion advertisements, in-store displays, and fashion events in the urban shopping malls have influenced the transnational cosmopolitanism among consumers. Such interactive marketing strategies have shown convergence of traditional and modern values and lifestyle to develop a homogeneous global consumer culture. The conventional method of using societal icons as the cultural drivers have now been replaced by global retail players with flagship brands as a basis for product position and market segmentation. It is found that multichannel systems of brand building and differentiation influence the consumers toward innovative products, and need is created at local levels supportive of, and constituted by, cultural industries. The principal stimulants for the company to expand its business, which include internal and external resources, are as discussed as follows:
Consumers
Social and cultural characteristics, consumption behavior, spending capability, stakeholder leadership, and social business responsibilities
Innovation and Technology
Ideation led by consumers for new product development, adaptability to technology, cost to company on innovation and technology, returns on investment by innovations
Political and Economic Scenario
Government regulation on local and international business operations, import and export regulations, tax structure, repatriation of profit and transfer of funds, modes of business, and public equity management
Globalization and increasing competition as well as short product life cycles in retailing cultivate asymmetric consumer behavior and pose a number of marketing challenges for retail firms. In order to survive in this industry, it is vital for manufacturers and retailers to develop and leverage core marketing capabilities.
According to Optimal Distinctiveness Theory, individuals strive to maintain a balance between the need to be assimilated by the peers and family, and the need for autonomy and differentiation. Optimal distinctiveness is a social psychological theory toward understanding internal and external differences within a group of people or consumers. Consumers often form their groups of interest to share experiences and information about consumption practices. Hence, the distinctiveness theory explains the consumer behavior very closely. This concept asserts that individuals desire to attain an optimal balance of inclusion and distinctiveness within and between social groups and situations (Brewer 1991). The distinctiveness behavior exhibits following traits among consumers that direct their decision on consumption:
Conformity
Differentiation
Valuation
Identity, and
Commonality
The purchase intention for fashion and designer apparel is stimulated among consumers in the social contexts. The distinctiveness of fashion features (e.g., designer brand, celebrity endorsement, and media reviews) that are consistently associated with emotional expressions plays the strongest role in the buying behavior among consumers (Clavo and Marrero 2009). Some studies suggest that the perception of a person on his personality is a distinctive and salient trait that differentiates behavior. Individuals who have high social standing and are adaptive to change in lifestyle are driven by the new products demonstrations (Arpan and Peterson 2008). The distinctiveness theory supports the notion that ethnicity can influence consumer responses to various marketing stimuli such as sales promotions and advertisements.
One of the principal drivers of consumer behavior is the dominance of social interactions. The involvement of consumers’ products depends not only on their own perceptions but also on peers’ response to their personality and change proneness (Pinheiro 2008). The relation between clothes and identity is perceived by the consumers from the perspective of their values generated in various social interactions. Consumers get involved in exhibiting lifestyle as an aesthetic way of presenting their personality. Hence, clothing is often considered as an opportunity for communicating a new order of identity of a person. In this process, there are both cognitive and affective incentives that translate into potential welfare gains (or indifference) for the consumer in a given social and work-related environment (Bianchi 2002).
It has been observed by some researchers that cultural values affect the purchase intentions of consumers. In the societies that exhibit hedonic values, consumption behavior is promoted by companies to induce a compelling, socially complex buying behavior through the promotional programs to increase disposable income by facilitating credit to consumer (Venkatesh et al. 2010). Manufacturers and retailers apply both push and pull strategies to make the promotions effective and advantageous to the consumers. Promotions targeted at final consumers, known as pull promotions, directly offer extra value to consumers, with the primary goals of attracting consumers to retail locations and stimulating immediate sales. Though both push and pull promotions are designed to speed up the selling process and increase sales, at least in the short term, their strategic implications as well as their impacts on sales and profits are believed to be different. Such promotion-led retailing culture stimulates debt and spending behavior among consumers (Martin-Herran, Sigue, and Zaccour 2010).
Most retail and departmental stores have redefined the marketing strategies considering global–local buying preferences. The central and northern regions of Mexico have witnessed increase in specialized apparel stores, which imposes new demands on manufacturers, wholesalers, and consumers. It has been observed that the attributes determining overall acceptance of socially stimulus products among consumers are significantly influenced by product attractiveness and price sensitivity. Purchase intent was influenced by overall appearance, brand appeal, and overall liking (Herrera-Corredor et al. 2007). Such socially stimulated products are largely penetrating in the emerging markets through cross-border consumer influence. Outshoppers literally go extra miles to shop for better quality and assortment of merchandise, higher quality of personal service, more pleasant shopping atmospherics, and more competitive prices (Guo and Wang 2009). Outshopping is known as a tool to generate market gravitation or market leakage, which is the practice of going outside the local community to buy products and services and derive the pleasure of being unique or differentiated. Outshopping is a phenomenon that particularly affects retailers in small, rural communities. The personality attributes of consumers toward outshopping include:
Staying alert to the innovation, technology, and new product arrivals in the market,
Developing attitude toward experimentation,
Portraying uniqueness in consumption by going out of neighborhood preferences,
Higher spending and risk-taking attitude,
Serving as gatekeeper to the innovations and new products in the markets, and
Conspicuous consumption.
Consumers in emerging markets are largely influenced by the product attractiveness and show higher store loyalty, irrespective of price and shopping ambience. When choosing apparel and store, consumers evaluate both the fixed and variable utilities of shopping; the fixed utility does not vary from trip to trip, whereas the variable utility depends on the size and composition of the shopping list (Rajagopal 2006a). Preferences and perceptions of consumers also depend on the social and cultural values. Designer brands introduced in the emerging market are generally expensive and price is considered as a major factor influencing consumption. Consumers put more emphasis on the country of origin of products than on brand names. The geodemographic evaluations of products indicate that consumers’ preferences are largely affected by the destination and country of origin brands (Ahmed and d’Astous 2006). New product promotions in emerging markets are derived considering sociopsychographic background of consumers such as age, gender, country of origin, social class, and income status, which are critical to the success of interethnic communications with the ethnic population. Ethnic consumers’ distinctive shopping behaviors, along with a huge market potential, deserve attention from retailers tapping into this market (Seock and Bailey 2008).
The modern market has emerged with the announcement that ethnic dressing comes from the core of the traditional culture whose gorgeous fabrics have been face-lifted as convenience apparel within societal value and lifestyle (VALS) system. It is argued that shifts in consumer culture provide a stimulus to dynamic innovation in the arena of personal taste and consumption. Such dynamism in consumer preferences is considered as part of an international cultural system and is driven by continuous change in VALS. The consumer values such as functionality, fitness for purpose, and efficiency significantly contribute to driving cultural change and recognizing suitable lifestyles (Hartley and Montgomery 2009). The growing technology-led apparel selling is one of the major stimulants for inducing change in fashion and consumer culture. The three-dimensional Automatic Made-to-Measure scheme for apparel products, demonstrated through computer simulation in large departmental stores and lifestyle centers, play major role in generation consumer arousal. Freeform design platform is adopted by apparel designers, manufacturers, and retailers to represent the complex geometry models of apparel products. Apparel products are essentially designed with reference to human body features, and thus share a common set of features as the human model. Therefore, the parametric feature-based modeling enables the automatic generation of fitted garments on differing body shapes. Consumers lean toward buying new designer products largely sold as designer apparel (Wang, Wang, and Yuen 2005).
Retailers have adopted personalization to successfully market a wide range of designer products, such as eyewear, bicycles, coffee, greeting cards, and apparel. The intention of purchasing designer products differs across cultures. Customer preference and value placed on designer apparel is largely influenced by the social differentiation of products and self-esteem of the consumer (Moon, Chadee, and Tikoo 2008). These attributes are likely to vary depending on the customers’ cultural orientation. The cultural dimensions of individualism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and masculinity should be a useful framework to explain cross-cultural differences in customer acceptance of designer products. Fashion products are often used for its symbolic value reflecting the personality and status of the user. When the apparel holds a designer brand, it may be perceived as an ostentatious display of wealth. Thus, consumers are motivated by a desire to impress others with their ability to pay particularity high prices for prestigious products (Solomon 1983). Such personality dimensions often play a critical role in shifting the consumer culture toward brand-led buying behavior of utilitarian goods. The designer apparel brands are perceived by the consumers as prestigious brands encompassing several physical and psychological values such as perceived conspicuous value, perceived unique value, perceived social value, perceived hedonic value, and perceived quality value. Consumption patterns are largely governed by social value of the product, which determines the purchasing intentions, consumer attitudes, or perceptions on brand or advertising slogan. Consumer experience with high socioeconomic power perceptions creates qualitatively distinct psychological motives toward buying designer apparel that develop unique consumption patterns (Rucker and Galinsky 2009). Companies need to understand the factors that drive consumer stimuli toward getting associated with new products and brands. The cognitive drivers that affect consumer behavior are as discussed as follows:
Social status to acquire and use specific products
Self-esteem and personality enhancement
To make contribution to the society and business by service as lead user and brand ambassador
Satisfy hedonic value and self-governance
Stay in public domain and gain social prominence by getting involved in the green products and with eco-friendly companies
It has been observed that the demographic (e.g., gender and generational cohort) and psychographic (e.g., fashion fans, attitudes, and impulse buying) drivers influence frequency and levels of expenditure on buying. The consumer attitudes toward fashion has higher bearing on female buying tendency than male that is more often and significantly different from males on yearly expenditure, fashion fanship, attitudes, and impulsive buying. The younger generation in the present context has higher purchase frequency, fashion fanship, and impulse buying as compared with other cohorts in the society (Pentecost and Andrews 2010). Buying pleasure of consumers to stand unique with fellow consumers has also been a strong behavioral driver for designer apparel manufacturers. Consumers have shown favorable attitude toward exotic products and higher purchase intention. It has been observed that consumers leaning toward buying designer apparel show higher cognitive motivations, and a different shopping orientation from their followers. Lead buyers enjoy shopping more and are not as cost-conscious, traditional, or conservative as the followers.
Manufacturers and marketers develop their strategies through four processes in order to induce change in the consumer culture. These include chartering, learning, mobilizing, and realigning that pave the way for successful institutionalization of a strategic change initiative. The elements rely on an understanding of the mix of task-related, emotional, and behavioral factors in today’s metrics-driven environment. This also drives the shift in conventional wisdom about programmatic change, arguing that managers need to set in motion a series of processes right at the start if widespread changes are to stick (Roberto and Lynne 2005). The cultural change in buying apparel from low-price brands to designer brands in emerging markets has been institutionalized in a family environment. It has been observed that parental and sibling influences decrease with age, whereas peer and media influences increase with increasing age. The television and celebrities also play a significant role in influencing adolescents’ clothing choices irrespective of gender categories. Among the most common two forms of media children largely use are magazines and television, while teens are primarily influenced by visual merchandising, hand-on experience, and spotting the fashion apparel users (Seock and Bailey 2009).
Shopping behavior of consumers is also influenced by the attributes of Social Cognitive Theory that explains how variables such as self-regulation and self-efficacy direct the spending behavior and determine consumer lifestyles. Product attributes influence consumer perceptions of the personal relevance of a product or service to their needs, and consumer preferences for product attributes are significantly linked to their lifestyle. The lifestyle theory suggests that the consumers’ perceived hedonic attributes and social identity factors determine the shopping behavior of urban consumers. The shopping behavior of consumers is driven by the social, economic, and relations factors. The shopping ambience, advertisements, and retail promotions develop pro-shopping behavior. The social learning theory explains this phenomenon as positive reinforcement and it occurs when a behavior (response) is followed by a favorable stimulus (commonly seen as pleasant) that increases the frequency of that behavior. In the conceptual foundations of social learning theory, respondent conditioning and observational learning are empirically supported approaches to understanding normative human development and the etiology of psychosocial problems (Rajagopal 2008a).
Departmental stores and Lifestyle Centers develop their apparel store brands to generate store loyalty among consumers. The store brands are displayed in these stores alongside the designer apparel brands. The changing dynamics of the consumer products industry have forced retailers to aim at low-cost marketing strategies and flexibility in design, and improving speed of penetration in market to gain competitive advantage. The concept of “throwaway” or continuous innovation has emerged since 1990 in the global marketplace, which describes changes from manufacturers to retailers and consumers. The store brands have emerged rapidly in the consumer market considering the fast growth of customer-centric companies (Bharadwaj and Fairhurst 2010). Consumer perceptions toward the store brands include:
Beliefs, trust, and loyalty with the store
Home-grown and serviceable products
Convenience and low cost to customer
Customizable and nearer to the consumer preferences
Relative advantages on price and quality
Store brands are designed and developed considering consumer perceptions on the store image. The shopping satisfaction includes consumers’ perceptions of store attributes as well as subjective evaluations of products purchased from the store by the consumers themselves or by their fellow shoppers. Store brand impact is largely derived also through the word-of-mouth interaction. However, response to the store brands appears to be more complex in nature than a simple affective summary of the relative frequencies of positive and negative emotions during consumption experiences. Another factor that affects the consumer decision on store brands is the recognition of the role of store sales personnel in a retail environment. It has been observed that effective sales people influence not only the buying process of new products but also the consumers to switch their store patronage. Consumers may abandon one store brand to follow specific sales and service personnel to a new store brand (Terblanche and Boshoff 2005). The retail stores play a major role in influencing consumers for both store and manufacturer’s brands. Attitude toward promoted brands is characterized by positive store image, smart shopper self-perception, need for affiliation, and money attitude regarding power-prestige and anxiety. However, attitude of consumers toward store brands is determined by more positive store image, price advantage, range of products to exercise buying options, and loyalty and trust-related factors (Liu and Wang 2008).
There is an increasing trend of carrying store brands in an apparel retailing segment with growing importance in terms of market share. There are reports to the effect that the sales of store brands account for about one-fifth of total volume sales in the United States. Manufacturers make available their brands in various stores, and as such they do not affect loyalty to a particular store. Brands grown by the local companies on the contrary are believed to possess the power to enhance loyalty against the store brands. The brand name thus influences consumers’ overall quality perceptions of the product (Labeaga, Lado, and Martos 2007). Success of the store-branded category depends, in analogy with brand extension theory, on the perceived quality of the parent brand (i.e., the store) and the fit between the parent brand and the subbrand category. It is considered essential that the store image, associated with the parent brand, somehow supports the store-branded product category and mitigates the perceived risk of buying the category (Liljander, Polsa, and van Riel 2009).
Some studies have observed that store brands drive a positive relationship between customers’ familiarity with and loyalty to the retailer’s own brand, and customers’ loyalty to the retailer results from the competitive advantage of the store brand. Although the purchase intentions of consumers toward store brands relate positively to higher loyalty to the retailer, the scope of such relationship narrows down the consumer preferences due to the degree of exclusivity of store brands within the customer’s shopping basket (Martos-Partal and González-Benito 2009). Often consumers realize that whenever the gap between store brands and manufacturer brands gets smaller with regard to quality, perceived value, and confidence, price ultimately becomes the only clearly distinguishing characteristic. Consumer decision on buying is also governed by the price sensitivity factor to a large extent. In this situation, retailers have the opportunity to use store brands in the process of “branding” the store formula. The store brands in a large number of markets have been favored by a set of factors that include actions by manufacturers and distributors on price and differentiation, market competition at both a manufacturer and a retailer level, and the economic-financial results of the latter for the product categories in which they work with the store brands (Luijten and Reijnders 2009).
Customer Product Strategies
Determining product strategies for entering new international markets is a complex process. Many firms take this task easy and move with a narrow vision. Often such myopic management strategies drive firms far short of their goals. Many firms choose their markets and strategies for the wrong reasons, relying on everything from the top managerial decision. A better approach in developing product strategy is to understand customer and market behavior as well as to develop a scientific vision on managing product–market co-dependency. Among various methods of product strategy development, customer-centric and market-oriented approaches are common. The scientific approaches popularly used by principal multinational companies include Six Sigma toward improving the process of product development, positioning, and postlaunch services. Companies operating at the global scale are often concerned with the returns on product as it is one of the key performance indicators. However, measuring returns on products is a painful process, a cost center application, and an area of potential customer dissatisfaction. Many successful organizations have realized that an effective product development and returns strategy can be integrated to provide a number of benefits, such as improved customer service and customer knowledge, effective inventory management, and product positioning (Stock, Speh, and Shear 2006). Global manufacturing companies have established product development activities in different countries around the world constituting cross-functional teams to foster close collaboration among engineering, marketing, manufacturing, and supply-chain functions. Such functional integration delivers customer-centric product designs, faster time to market, and lower cost of production. However, continuous growth and innovation can be more effective if manufacturing companies adapt to unified global product development operation (Eppinger and Chitkara 2006).
Ideation process for new products development is also effectively managed by the customer-centric companies through mapping the consumer perceptions about their needs and expected products. Perceptual mapping is one of the few marketing research techniques that provide direct input into the strategic marketing planning process. It allows senior marketing planners to take a broad view of the strengths and weaknesses of their product or service offerings relative to the strengths and weaknesses of their competition. It allows the marketing planner to view the customer and the competitor simultaneously in the same realm. Perceptual mapping and preference mapping techniques have been the basic tools of the applied marketing research profession for over 20 years now. It is one of the few advanced multivariate techniques that have not suffered much from alternating waves of popularity and disfavor. Although these techniques have been used extensively over a large number of applied research studies, for a very wide variety of product and service categories, and have been subjected to extensive validations, there still remain some very basic issues like the procedure’s applicability and usefulness. In addition, there remain many outstanding issues concerning the proper procedures and algorithms that should be used for perceptual mapping. Customer-centric approaches are practiced efficiently by the call centers to connect the customer issues with appropriate and interactive solutions. Call centers not only offer personalized attention to problems of the consumers on products and services but also help in building customer loyalty. Customers rely on call centers, which have high value workforce toward services scheduling methods such as queuing system models to achieve optimal performance. Most of these models assume a homogeneous population of servers, or at least a static service capacity per service agent. It is observed that a type of specialization minimizes the steady-state queue size and reduces time of customer services (Ryder, Ross, and Musacchio 2008). Measuring customer satisfaction leads to identifying ways to improve product and services quality of the firm, which in turn leads to increasing the company’s competitive advantage. The services oriented distributors are applying various listening tools to obtain information about customers’ needs, preferences, and perceptions to manage effectively customer satisfaction measures (Maguire, Koh, and Huang 2006).
Good manufacturing practices are, in general, a quality system that follows certain basic principles. These principles govern the manufacturing process including the control and evaluation of process changes; the drafting of documentation, including instructions and procedures; the training of operators; the records of manufacture and distribution; and the handling of recall and complaint. Such practices require setting quality system regulation for developing customer-centric product design (Lorenzettin 2010). After the globalization effect experienced by the companies in the recent past, the product had changed in many ways. The switch from a shared house phone to a personal phone has had a significant impact on product appearance as well as product use.
A product development manager should actively observe the activities of team during their regular meetings by taking notes about the most important issues concerning communication about the design content. During the regular face-to-face meeting with the separate actors, which are now mostly about planning and monitoring issues and design problems or changes, the project leader could use the notes as input for discussing the collaborative aspects with the actors. This form of storytelling will provide the project leader with knowledge about the collaborative aspects of the design process. A project leader should also learn to distill the barriers and enablers from these conversations (Maaike, Buijs, and Valkenburg 2010).
One of the challenges for the marketing manager of a firm is to incorporate the preferences of the customer into the design of new products and services in order to maximize the customer value. An augmented and sustainable customer value builds the loyalty toward the product and the brand. Systematically explored concepts in the field of customer value and market-driven approach toward new products would be beneficial for a company to derive long-term profit optimization strategy over the period. Hence, a comprehensive framework for estimating both the value of a customer and profit optimization need to be developed. On a tactical level, managers need to consider the optimum spread of customers on a matrix of product attractiveness and market coverage. This needs careful attention, and the application of managerial judgment and experience to measure the value-driven performance of the product of the firm. It is necessary for the managers to understand that customer value is context dependent and there exists a whole value network to measure, not just a value chain. Appropriate promotional strategies considering the economic and relational variables discussed in the study may be developed by the managers upon measuring the intensity of leisure shopping and the scope of expanding the tenure of leisure shopping in view of optimizing customer values and profit of the firm.
Synergy of Technology and Customer Value
The role of marketing strategies in fostering controlled consumer empowerment is reflected in the development of information-based consumer-centric marketing strategies that seek to enable and control delegation. In designing such strategies, consumers’ familiarity with the use of information and communication technologies are both strengthened and widened, emphasizing the uncontrolled nature of the consumer empowerment process. There is a need to regain control over the marketing process, that is, to either manage the technological empowerment of consumers, or devise new strategies cognizant of the possibility that such technological empowerment cannot be managed. The valuation of consumer loyalty in this environment rises significantly. Organizations seeking to adopt a more customer-focused strategy will learn from the approach of DuPont. It took in grappling with this challenge, based on an extensive program of qualitative and quantitative research with customers around the globe. The customer touch-point analysis of the organization facilitated alignment of functional groups within the organization (product, sales, customer service, etc.) and equipped them to deliver on newly developed, segment-specific value propositions. This major initiative has enabled DuPont to reprioritize internal efforts and business practices, and has been a catalyst for broader organizational changes notably the dissolution of many functional silos that previously had hindered its ability to deliver against its brand promise (Rajagopal 2014).
The companies engaged in sales and services of high-value—hightechnology goods such as hybrid automobiles need to explore new modes of cooperation among customers, retailers, and manufacturers resulting from co-design, which leads to a customer-centric business strategy. Co-design activities are performed at dedicated interfaces and allow for the joint development of products and solutions between individual customers and manufacturers (Berger et al. 2005). Customer-centric research aims at developing pro-customer strategies to focus on better ways of communicating value propositions and delivering the complete experience to real customers. Learning about customers and experimentation with different segmentations, value propositions, and effective delivery of services associate customers in business and help frontline employees acquire and retain customers with increasing satisfaction in sales and services of the firm.
A common observation about self-service retail stores is the similitude among the in-store ambience and retailing operations. Hence, self-service retail stores are increasingly using point-of-sales promotional activities to drive buying stimulation among consumers through redeemable coupons corresponding to the value of purchase. Such promotional strategy and market dominance have significant implications on the volume of sales and inflow of consumers in retail stores (Parsons and Ballantine 2004). The prospective customers have an objective to buy at the right time so as to minimize the expected price of the acquired item. However, point-of-sales promotions stimulate compulsive buying behavior among customers, which dominates the buying decision despite comparative differences in the prices of alternative channels. By making the attractive products accessible to customers at the point-of-sales promotion, customers would be driven by the “me too” feeling and preferential prices. The concept of point-of-sales promotion to create compulsive buying behavior is based on a brilliant understanding of the human mind and a smart way of increasing volume of store sales. Self-service retail stores introduce electronic cash cards (ECCs), shopping advantage cards (SACs), and bulk purchase price (BPP) offers as point-of-sales promotion to acquire new customers and retain the existing customers (Rajagopal 2008).
As market is getting complex, consumer-centric companies are getting engaged in exploring the preferences of their customers periodically and planning allocation of resources. Developing value propositions that are meaningful to target customers has emerged as a major challenge among the consumer products manufacturing and marketing companies. Drawing on the best practices in business markets, companies develop strategies on powerfully captivating consumer value by making their offerings superior to target customers. Companies also demonstrate their performance and communicate to consumers to develop sustainable customer relationships (Anderson, Narus, and van Rossum 2006). Retailing firms build most profitable strategies through services differentiation and competitive advantages offering customers something new they value that other retail outlets do not have. Self-service retail stores differentiate at every point of customer services and relationship from the moment customers express store loyalty. Since the mid-20th century, information technology has contributed manifold growth in improving the business of large and small firms. The technological innovations have percolated down to the consumers from the business-to-business platforms. The 21st century has shown great potential of designing and developing marketing communications for delivering via mobile devices, personal data assistants (PDAs), and the evolution of near-field communication technologies. In developing and disseminating marketing information, most firms have considered the factors influencing consumers’ acceptance of social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, supported by the outreach of technology (Rajagopal 2013). Growing market competition has induced consumers to adopt the mobile marketing across three influential regions—the United States, China, and Europe. Firms need to examine the extent to which the usefulness of mobile information/ programs and individual characteristics—namely, innovativeness, personal attachment, and risk avoidance—jointly influence attitudes toward mobile marketing, and how the latter influences consumers’ mobile marketing communication activity across the three large and influential markets. The efforts of prominent international companies have shown that perceived usefulness, consumer innovativeness, and personal attachment directly influences attitudes toward mobile marketing communication not only in the markets of developed countries but also in the emerging markets. Marketers seeking to build and maintain customer relationships via mobile platforms should view these individual characteristics as the levers to amplify consumers’ acceptance of mobile marketing (Rohm et al. 2012).
It has been recognized that enhancing the role of technology in a service organization would serve to reduce costs and improve service reliability. The new information technology is becoming an important factor in the future development of financial services industry, and especially banking industry. However, it is argued that there remains an important role for customized relationships in the delivery of any service proposition (Durkin et al. 2008). A large number of customers use the Internet, as a medium of business (electronic-commerce). Association of self-service technologies with customers indicate that six attributes common to the diffusion model, including perceived convenience and financial benefits, risk, previous use of the telephone for a similar purpose, self-efficacy, and Internet use, play a significant role in the performance of retail banking operations (Eastin 2002).
Global–Local Marketing
The global growth products of multinational companies are mostly centralized in the country of origin and the products that emerge tend to have FABs (features, advantages, benefits) specified by central marketing system of the company. Hence, key technologies and major product introductions cater primarily to customers in that geographical region. The product targeting goes beyond the perceived use values of the customers, local preferences, and local language. Expectations regarding size, shape, customized items, price, and availability vary widely. Hence, regional markets tend to be dominated by local companies. Often the companies offer locally engineered or customized products at a differential price to win market share. For growth and success in the new global economy, the guiding principle must be: Go Global—Think Local! Automation suppliers must become truly global by allowing local development of products for local markets. The best approach is to develop technology (hardware and software) through global alliances—preferably with relatively small, fast-moving local companies. In a global market, there are three keys that constitute the winning difference:
Marketing abilities that assess correctly the local needs in a global arena.
Proprietary technology and products targeted specifically for local markets.
High-value-added services offered through effective local service providers.
In the global village of the new economy, automation companies have little choice—they must find more ways and means to expand globally. To do so, they need to minimize domination of the central corporate culture, and maximize responsiveness to local customer needs.
There are many new hybrid business cultures emerging across the countries. Of these, the regional ones are reemerging through international partnering under the aegis of globalization. The evolution of trade partnerships with the companies of other countries is a phenomenon that often reflects deep structural changes in the whole economic system of a country. It usually takes a long time to unfold since comparative advantages in international business partnering have long-term gains. Globalization has increased the access to the markets as the remote markets have been reduced following the political and economic changes worldwide. The structural reforms in developing countries have broadly focused in five major areas comprising international trade, financial markets, labor markets, and the generation and use of public resources (Ahmad and d’Astous 2006). Consequently, the financial development has improved, especially the depth of financial intermediation, private sector participation in banking, and the size and activity of stock markets. The economic integration and structural reforms in Latin America considered that import substitution in manufacturing sector would be synonymous with industrialization, which in turn was seen as the key to development (Rajagopal 2005).
The market access has also been improved by the growing trade blocks at the regional level. Such accessibility to the markets is further reinforced by reducing the trade barriers through far-reaching business communication strategies, product and market development programs, and customer relations. This situation has given a boost in the market opportunities as narrowing the trade barriers has helped in deregulating certain sectors of trade such as financial services. However, there may be some exceptions to this common pattern. The global market place equipped with the application of global communications has become the focus of the global business arena that makes the world markets remain open and involve in the fair competitive practices. At the same time, there are antiglobalization moves in the process of development that protest against the hazards of suppressive strategies of the global companies affecting the regional trade entities. The globalization moves have opened up high competitive advantages in many manufactured goods through partnership deals to explore the business in the emerging economies. They generally display an increasing specialization trend and high consumer values. The leading alliances between the major multinational enterprises may be seen in reference to production, finance, technology, and supply chain along with other complementary activities.
Production sharing is the contemporary global economic trend based on the concepts of advantages in the factors of production that offers economic advantages by stages of the production process. The strategy of production sharing has emerged as a solution to an economic problem in developing countries where the absorption of the surplus manpower in industry is a national economic issue. Consequently, the developing countries turn to the developed countries as major cost-effective labor market in order to share production of labor-oriented products. Investment in production-sharing operations has become an integral part of global efforts to reduce manufacturing costs and has contributed to the accelerated pace of cross-border integration of manufacturing in North America and the Caribbean Basin. Currently, production sharing seems to be a growing practice that helps in building and strengthening the international partnerships with global firms such as Volvo, a Swedish automobile company having its manufacturing partners for heavy-duty engines in India and Mexico. This practice offers both the developed and developing countries a scope to share their resources and strengths for the mutual benefits of international partnering.
Markets today not only provide the multiple goods and services to the customers but also expose their behavior to the cross-cultural differences and innovations. The specialization of the production process has also brought such cultural changes by business penetrations in the low-production-skills regions across the countries. The apparel from Asian countries such as Indonesia and Korea and all types of consumer goods from China, electronics from Japan, and perfumery from France may be some good examples to explain the specialization and cross-cultural sharing of consumer behavior. Conducting business is a creative enterprise and doing it out of one’s own country is more demanding. The industry structure varies dramatically across the countries in the world and a global enterprise to strive against odds requires strong adaptation behavior. In the international business, a company needs to best prepare itself to achieve competitive advantage in the marketplace. The international partnering in reference to production technology, co-branding, distribution, and retailing may bring high success to the companies of home country in increasing the market share in the region as well as augmenting the customer value for mutual benefit.
With the emergence of virtual shopping and liberalization of economic policies in the developing countries all over the world, competition has become like a traditional derby in which many companies participate for neck-to-neck race. In this business game, the rules are subject to change without notice, the prize money may change in short notice, the route and finish line are also likely to change after the race begins, new entrants may join at any time during the race, the racers may form strong alliances, all creative strategies are allowed in the game and the state legislation may change without notice and sometimes with retrospective effect. Hence, to win the race any company should acquire the strategies of outwitting, outmaneuvering, and outperforming the competitors. In this process, a company must understand thoroughly all the moves of the rival firms from various sources. The locales of the business rivalry have to be spotted to assess their strengths. In the given situation, it may be necessary for a firm to hold the shoulder of a strong brand to swim across the competition safely enhancing the reach to the markets. To do so, international partnering may be one of the most popular and low-risk strategies. The companies of Latin American region may look into this concept not only for growing their market share in the region but also to acquire long-term sustainability in the international business.
Knowledge-based competition has magnified the importance of learning alliances as a fast and effective mechanism of capability development. The parameters of success and effective knowledge transfer are used interchangeably to indicate a relatively high level of achievement of intended as well as the unintended benefits to a firm (Daghfous 2004). However, Kohn argues that cooperation is more effective when the size of the organization is smaller and the degree of interdependence is higher among its units. He strongly phrases his idea on cooperation as a rider over the negativity of competition. In his view, competition works just as any other extrinsic motivator does (Kohn 1986). The movement of public services into direct competition with their private enterprise counterparts is a common feature of public sector policy throughout the developed world. The publicly funded provision of school education has not been exempt from this trend. The creation of a competitive climate is placing public school leaders and teachers under pressure to improve performance in an environment where parents-as-consumers choose the schools to which they send their children (Dempster, Freakley, and Parry 2001). However, one may disagree with the fact of involving increasing competitive efforts for augmenting the extent of achievements and argues that so far from making us more productive, then, a structure that pits against one another tends to inhibit our performance. Children simply do not learn better when education is transformed into competitive struggle. Many teachers conclude that competition holds attention better even though they have never worked with cooperative alternatives.
Relationships among competition, athletic skill, and social relationships among children have received considerable attention from social psychologists and have also sparked considerable public debate. Most studies of these relationships have concentrated on sports programs involving upper elementary or older boys. Competitive environments heightened the tendency for athletic skill to function as a generalized status element in peer networks. After-school sports programs contributed to the reproduction of athletic skill as a basis of peer status, even for young children. A passive argument has also emerged on pushing children to competition, though at times his arguments seem to be pro-competition. It has also been observed that forcing children to compete is something defended precisely on these following grounds (Kohn 1986):
Early experience with competition will lead to more effective competition on later life;
Competition works just as any other extrinsic motivator does;
The distinction between trying to do well and trying to beat others is not the only explanation we can come up with the competitions failure;
Competition also precludes the more effective use of resources that cooperation allows;
The dynamics of cooperative effort make this arrangement far more efficient, while competitors hardly are predisposed to like and trust each other enough to benefit from it.
Some studies have shown that cooperation is a better tool for growth and achievement as compared to the competition. While analyzing the behavioral attributes of children, it has been observed that combining cooperation with other behaviors has been observed as a successful strategy for competing for resources. Children quickly learn to cooperate, however, viewing times varied significantly between them, suggesting that they were competing against each other even while cooperating. The inequitable outcomes appear due to individual differences in the ability to combine helping others with more competitive behaviors (Charlesworth 1996). It has been evident from the Kohn’s debate for and against competition that when firms compete, they do so out of the primary concern of own welfare. Working together as a group would not be a strategy for maximizing individual gain but a logical consequence of thinking in terms of what benefits could be availed. Sometimes, such a trade-off will occur, but it will not be seen as catastrophic.
The contemporary concepts of economic advancement are largely based on the concepts of collaboration, cooperation, and competition for developed countries that include the entire range of governmental functions, including sectoral policy reform, economic integration, privatization, public sector enhancement, labor market competitiveness, investment climate enhancement, e-government, soft infrastructures for developing a knowledge economy, macroeconomic management, and effective long-range planning. The weight of the public sector constitutes a serious impediment to more rapid growth for many countries. Importantly, the large expenditure burden it requires does not always translate into an efficient and equitable distribution of services. Such performance is reflected by the public sector efficiency and governance in promoting the economic advancement of a country (Rajagopal and Rajagopal 2007). Competition is a pivot of economic development that allows cooperation to lead the competition many times. The inadequate functioning of some product markets and lack of competition have undermined the dynamism of the economy, in particular, productivity growth. While discussing economic environment Kohn seems to be pro-competition and states that despite the enormous discrepancy between perfect competition and the actual state of our economic system, competition is still the stated ideal. Businesspeople and public officials use the term as an honorific, discussing ways in which they can make their companies and countries more competitive and never pausing to ask whether a competitive system really is the best possible arrangement.
The need for economic as well as market competition has been endorsed by many applied studies conducted to evidence the driving factors in the economic growth. Market competition is essential for any economy to be efficient. In order to develop competition in a transition economy, it is conventionally thought that privatization should take place first. This wisdom has been challenged by the Chinese reform experience of the past two decades, which modified the incentive structure of state enterprises and created markets and market competition in the absence of large-scale privatization. China’s experience, however, raises the question of whether its chosen type of reform is sufficient to promote competition in a market dominated by public firms (Liu and Garino 2001). There are many new hybrid business cultures emerging across the countries. Of these, the regional ones are reemerging through international partnering under the aegis of globalization. The evolution of trade partnerships with the companies of the other countries is a phenomenon that often reflects deep structural changes in the whole economic system of a country. It usually takes long to unfold since comparative advantages in international business partnering have long-term gains. Globalization has increased the access to the markets as the remote markets have been reduced following the political and economic changes worldwide. The structural reforms in developing countries have broadly focused on five major areas comprising international trade, financial markets, labor markets, and the generation and use of public resources. Consequently, the financial development has improved especially the depth of financial intermediation, private sector participation in banking, and the size and activity of stock markets (Durkin 2007).
The challenges of firms are growing to manage business in future. The first challenge is to keep pace with the rapid growth and greater involvement of firm in global business activities. Social media has emerged as one of the new and powerful platforms for the firms to stay abreast with the consumer dynamics at global marketplace. In particular, greater attention should be paid toward developing the interactive marketing activities to improve the business performance in the competitive marketplace. The second challenge for the firms is toward the business process transition, which demands in managing supply chain systems through greater coordination of entire distribution channels, alliances, and relational exchanges. Most companies are relying on social network platforms for faster exchange of communication on the one hand and implementing sophisticated technology of market communication through radio frequency identification platform on the other. Finally, another challenge fostering a major change in how firms conduct business and compete is the transition to electronic forms of exchange, particularly with respect to information access, storage, and retrieval (Samiee 2008).
Market access has also been improved by the growing trade blocks at the regional level. Such accessibility to the markets is further reinforced by reducing the trade barriers through far-reaching business communication strategies, product and market development programs, and customer relations. This situation has given a boost in determining the market opportunities as narrowing the trade barriers helped in deregulating certain sectors of trade such as financial services. However, there may be some exceptions to this common pattern. The global market place equipped with the application of global communications has become the focus of the global business arena that makes the world markets remain open and involve in the fair competitive practices. A route to market is a distinct process followed by customers toward buying a selected product or service through a market channel. Globalization and growing urban retailing practices have introduced multichannel retailing in the recent past. It is observed that multiple channel retail strategies enhance the portfolio of service outputs provided to the customer, thus enhancing customer satisfaction and ultimately customer–retailer dyadic loyalty (Wallace et al. 2004). There are diverse communication strategies used by the retailing firms to attract shoppers, which include closed circuit television in the shopping malls, public television commercials, advertisements in print media, and direct marketing. It is observed that urban shoppers showed confidence and fashion-conscious shopping orientation, and catalog and Internet shopping orientation as key predictors of customer satisfaction level with information search through multichannels (Lee and Kim 2008).
Global Perspectives of Innovation
In early 20th century, most enterprises began as cottage industry focusing on the home markets. Later, agglomerations of such small enterprises have grown global. However, in the early 21st century, more and more firms have born global chasing opportunities created by distance, learning to manage faraway operations, and pursuing for the most advantageous manufacturing locations, brightest talent, most willing investors, and profitable customers since the beginning of the enterprise. The global start-ups of the new age face many challenges, some of which some are discussed subsequently:
The basic challenges for the born global enterprises are apparently the logistics problems and socio-cognitive barriers caused by remote business operations and socio-cognitive concerns pertaining to cross-cultural limitations, language, education systems, religion, and economic development levels. Often global companies also face problems in workplace culture adjustments such as accommodating homogeneous workweek schedules in the local context as it may put a strain on the staff at local units,
Managing the challenges and exploring opportunities with the social, economic, political, legal, and technological, and
Global enterprises must find a way to compete with large firms using low-cost remote resources such as virtual retailing, distribution, and competitive price offerings.
Most start-up companies today consider overseas expansion from their inception. Global managers must cultivate four competencies in clearly articulating their causes and effects for going global, learn to build alliances with powerful partners, excel international supply chain management, and create a cross-cultural work ambience within their organization. Of many emerging firms, the most successful ones are those that overcome tensions between resources and opportunities and offer local business framework with global thinking by anticipating a variety of strategic, financial, organizational, and regulatory factors (Isenberg 2008). Managers shouldn’t fear the fact that the world isn’t flat. Being global may not be a pursuit for the fainthearted, but even start-ups can thrive by using distance to gain competitive advantage. The example of the global growth of an air-freight delivery service may be illustrated as a firm that progressed pursuing local opportunities within local resources with an objective of going global to pursue cross-border opportunities. Similarly, a consumer-loan provider firm may begin by pursuing a local opportunity with local resources, and then add cross-border resources (Kuemmerle 2005).
In a recent development in global market segment, Citizen Sector Organizations (CSOs) have been formed in the developed countries that are attracting talented and creative leaders, and managers in changing critical industries such as energy and health care. Profit-oriented companies now have an opportunity to collaborate with CSOs to create new markets for reaching the market world over. The power of such collaborations lies in the complementary strengths of the partners in scale of business, expertise in manufacturing and operations, and financing. Social managers offer lower costs, strong social networks, and deep insights into potential customers and communities (Drayton and Budinich 2010). The main goal of any international strategy should be to manage the large differences that arise at the borders of the markets. Most managers learn from adaptation, aggregation, and arbitrage during the process of expansion of their business activities to the global marketplace. Young managers learn to boost revenues and market share by maximizing their local relevance through adaptation while they attempt to deliver economies of scale by creating regional, or sometimes global, operations during the process of aggregation of their business. Firms exploit disparities between national or regional markets, often by locating different parts of the supply chain in different places, working through the arbitrage. However, to make a strategic choice, firms require some degree of prioritization and they must focus on building competitive advantage (Ghemawat 2007). Emerging managers should also attempt to address the following issues while developing global framework for enterprise expansion:
Comprehension questions help understanding of the nature of the environment before addressing a consumer challenge.
Connection tasks stimulate thinking about the current situation in terms of similarities and differences with situations previously faced and solved.
Strategic tasks stimulate thoughts about which strategies are appropriate for solving the problem (and why) or pursuing the opportunity (and how).
Reflection tasks stimulate thinking about their understanding and feelings as they progress through the consumer process.
Adaptability drives managers who are able to increase cognitive adaptability have an improved ability to:
Adapt to new situations.
Be creative.
Communicate one’s reasoning behind a particular response.
Organizational integration is increasingly essential. The cutting-edge companies are putting their efforts to meet challenges by integrating the organizational issues horizontally like subunit- or area-autonomy and centralized monitoring and control. The fundamental management challenges of the emerging and small enterprises are diversified activities, decision making, and companywide cohesion. In the mid-20th century, performance criteria were often ignored by the small firms. However, empowerment of managers in enhancing the production improved the unit competitiveness but deteriorated the organizational efforts in diffusing knowledge sharing within the firm. The consumer philosophy in 21st century has changed to decentralization of power to drive the business decisions faster. Managers today are responsible to help another employee to improve both individual and collective performance (Ghoshal and Gratton 2002).
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