International Marketing Structure: Approaches and Analysis

Fact sheet
(LO – 4)

INTERNATIONAL MARKETING STRUCTURE
Referring to the British American Tobacco which is a British multinational corporation established in 1902 is engaged in
manufacturing and selling of tobacco, cigarettes and other products related to nicotine there are various approaches of
international marketing such as multinational strategy, global strategy, transnational strategy and meta – national strategy.
Such a type of international marketing approach involves
having physical locations of business and staff in different
locations. This allows catering of goods and services to
varied individual markets and provides benefit of altering the
business strategies as per the requirements of the individual
business locations. These varied business strategies as per the
type of market being catered to will lead to more effective
variation in the goods and services and creation of various
luxury purses as per the specifics of each individual location
of operations. Also, such purses can be effectively adjusted
depending on the market being served. This will naturally
allow variations in the prices based on the demand of a
product or demographic in the market.
It is the complete opposite strategy of the multi-domestic
strategy. This strategy involves providing essentially the same
goods and services in each international market for the sole
purpose of gaining low costs of operations and economies of
scale. Thus, it can be said that modification in the
responsiveness to the local requirements are compromised in
each of such international markets to attain low costs and
enhanced efficiency. This may include the products and services
which are essentially hidden from the view of the customers
being catered like the software programs being offered by
Microsoft, silicon chips make by Intel. It shall be noted that for
the entities utilizing such strategy, variations according to the
local preferences is the least important factor but, pricing is the
most essential factor.
INTRODUCTION
MULTINATIONAL GLOBAL
When an entity tries to gain balance between the global strategy
and the multi – domestic strategy, it implements and utilizes the
transnational strategy. This gaining of balance involves
achieving of reduced costs of operation and enhanced levels of
efficiency along with adjusting to the localised preferences and
tastes of various international markets and countries. This
balance between the global strategy and multi – domestic
strategy is attained through coordination, interdependence and
cooperation among its headquarters, division of operations and
retail outlets or subsidiaries which are located internationally.
TRANSNATIONALMETA-NATIONAL
A multinational which is operating at a large entrepreneurial
scale which is efficient and effective in tapping and
accessing the hidden reserves of market knowledge,
innovation and technology dispersed throughout the world is
referred to as meta-national. Important point to be noted is
that these hidden reserves of market knowledge, innovation
and technology are present in the emerging markets of
various economies which are underexploited. Therefore,
under this strategy, the tasks of innovation that takes place
are global from the most initial day and includes tasks of
expanding and accessing the new customers, market