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o Preface to the First Edition
I Marketing is accepted as a major discipline of management. As such it features
prominently in most courses on business education and management devtfopment. This book defines and explains the basic concepts while avoiding unnJcessary jargon. It draws upon the author's experience and practice of marketing and management in Britain, Europe, North America and some developing countries. The book highlights the extent to which successful marketing management must consider other, non-marketing, aspects of management.
The book treats marketing as an activity that can be applied equally successfully to manufacturing industry, services and non-profit-making organisations, whether at home or abroad, for both large and small enterprises. While dealing with the obvious differences encountered in each sector and showing how basic techniques are adapted for them, it avoids the excessive differentiation that has been drawn in earlier books. The cases mentioned will help all readers to appreciate the practical implications of marketing.
The work is aimed primarily at students on BEC National and Higher courses (certificate and diploma) but will also be useful reading for other similar courses. It will be useful too to all executives, being a handy 'refresher course' or reference work on their bookshelves.
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visits, perhaps numerous, to the country to interview and choose them. Their financial strength and integrity should be sufficient for the work they will do and the stocks they should hold. What is helpful here is advice from other firms already operating in the country, the commercial sections of foreign embassies in the home country and commercial attaches of the home country in foreign countries. Reports by major banks, especially commercial or industrial ones, government departments and agencies at home and trade and industry associations all provide useful information and guidance. Regular 'servicing' visits to appointed
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agents are a so Important. 1
(b) Local facilities .¥
As business increases, or because of difficulties in exporting finished goods (h't governments may discourage or embargo this), local assembly plants can be set up. In the case of cars and some other equipment, complete kits are shipped out and assembled locally. Sometimes local manufacture of simple components can be used with key components shipped out from home. Or if the business is substantial but not big enough to justify local assembly, the firm may set up a marketing (only) subsidiary or office. This could work independently of the original agents who may still carryon the agency, or, more usually, in conjunction with the original agents. The latter is preferred when host governments are particularly keen on local involvement and investment. Only with highly technical products and where the necessary skills are not available would a firm be permitted to go it alone with a marketing subsidiary.
Then when the conditions (sufficient demand, necessary skills available, economic and political factors and experience) are right, manufacturing and marketing subsidiaries can be set up. These may be wholly owned or be in partnership with local nationals and capital as the laws of the land demand. Joint ventures with relatively sophisticated local firms is another variation in more developed countries.
(c) Multinational operations
For the successful firms, the final stage will be evolution into multinational enterprises. This results when a companyhas several overseas organisations, now usually a mix of wholly owned subsidiaries, minority shareholdings in local companies and joint ventures, operating in several countries. Trading of components between the different units may go on freely as the enterprise uses the most economical (low-cost) countries for the manufacture of different items.
Multinationals face many marketing and other management problems. The main one centres around the control of the group's activities including policies on the raising and transfer of capital and the remittance of profits to the initiating, or parent, company. Then there is the question of the multinational balancing its policies for profit, sales and return with the economic and other goals of the host countries. Further, because of their size, the total business can be many times greater than the gross national product of the smaller host nations and political pressure can result from this.
Whatever scale or method of operating may be used, decisions have to be reached on the standardisation of pricing, products, distribution and method of