Establishing a Virtual Marketing Team: Pros and Cons for XYZ

This report analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of establishing a virtual marketing team for XYZ, an international company with operations in multiple countries. It discusses the challenges of bringing together marketing personnel from different geographical locations and cultural backgrounds, and the impact of linguistic and time barriers on communication and coordination within the team. The report concludes that setting up a virtual marketing team might not prove to be as effective as the Marketing Director believes, and suggests that the Marketing Director should avoid establishing a virtual marketing team for his company.

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Case Background.........................................................................................................................3
Virtual Teams..................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
Bibliography....................................................................................................................................6

Introduction
Case Background
XYZ is an international company that has expanded its presence globally over the past few years.
One of the core functions of the company is marketing of its products and the Marketing Director
of the company has recently been thinking of establishing a virtual team with the marketing staff
located in Melbourne, Los Angeles, Shanghai and Bangalore. Therefore, this report discusses
whether a virtual marketing team will be beneficial for the company or not.
Virtual Teams
In simple words, a virtual team is a group of people who work from different geographical
locations and belong to different cultural backgrounds, ethnicities and speak different languages.
The main objective of establishing virtual teams is to use information systems, technology and
internet to communicate with the members of the group in order to achieve a common goal
(MCCONNELL, 2010).
In the contemporary business world, business organizations are becoming more and more
practical and are incorporating sustainable business practices in their day to day work to reduce
their carbon footprints on the environment. A virtual team in such a scenario sounds like a great
strategy, but for a company like XYZ, forming a virtual marketing team to look over the
marketing strategies of Melbourne, Los Angeles, Shanghai and Bangalore can prove to be a
challenge for the higher level managers. Some reasons that would prevent a virtual marketing
team from achieving its intended goals are discussed below:
First of all, a major disadvantage of bringing marketing employees together from Melbourne,
Los Angeles, Shanghai and Bangalore is that there are a number of cultural differences between
these geographical locations. India, America, Australia and China are definitely poles apart from
each other when it comes to working culture, which will make it difficult for the marketing
director to establish a coalition amongst the members of the team. Further, the linguistic barriers

between the team members will also make it difficult for the team to fulfil its intended purpose
(MaRS, 2015).
Secondly, the customers in India, China, Australia and America have preferences that cannot be
matched in any way. Marketing is a process that is used by business organizations to create a
demand for their product or service in the marketplace by reaching out to the customers and
communicating how a product or a service would fulfill their needs. If the preferences or the
buying behavior of the customers would not match, the marketing personnel would have to
develop separate marketing strategies for a different group of customers. This means that the
marketing strategies designed by the marketing personnel in Bangalore would be tailored for the
Indian customers and might not prove to be as effective for the American customers as for the
Indians. Therefore, bringing together marketing personnel from different parts of the world
would not have any major benefit for the company.
Thirdly, involving team members from different geographic locations will generate a time and
linguistic barriers amongst them, which would make it almost impossible for them to be
available at the same time and understand each other’s viewpoint properly. This would result in a
lack of proper communication and coordination within the team members and would become
difficult for the virtual team to meet the expected performance levels (Brandongaille, 2015).
Fourthly, establishing a virtual marketing team comprising of marketing personnel from China,
India, Australia and America would involve extensive use of information systems and
technology. This might have an impact on the operational expenses of the company because of
the cost of the technology would become exponentially high. Further, extensive use of
technology might also compromise important data and information of the company stored on the
information systems (Ocker & Fjermestad, 2008). If an accidental loss of XYZ’s financial,
strategic, marketing, etc. data takes place; it could have some serious repercussions for the
company in the market.
Lastly, due to too many geographical locations involved, the process of decision making might
slow down because of the unavailability of employees at a single point of time. For taking a

decision, the team leader would first have to gather all his or her team members, share
information with them and then come to a conclusion, which can be a lengthy process.
Conclusion
The concept of virtual teams is relatively new and has its pros and cons. For a company like
XYZ, which has its business operations running in multiple countries, setting up a virtual
marketing team might not prove to be as effective as the Marketing Director believes. Involving
marketing personnel from too many countries might make the intended virtual marketing team
ineffective and inefficient. Therefore, the Marketing Director should avoid establishing a virtual
marketing team for his company.

Bibliography
Brandongaille, 2015. 8 Pros and Cons of Virtual Teams. [Online] Available at:
https://brandongaille.com/8-pros-and-cons-of-virtual-teams/ [Accessed 4 December 2018].
MaRS, 2015. Virtual teams: Benefits and disadvantages. [Online] Available at:
https://www.marsdd.com/mars-library/virtual-teams-benefits-and-disadvantages/ [Accessed 4
December 2018].
MCCONNELL, E., 2010. Virtual Teams – Definition, Management and Benefits. [Online]
Available at: https://mymanagementguide.com/managing-virtual-teams-understanding-
definition-management-and-benefits/ [Accessed 3 December 2018].
Ocker, R.J. & Fjermestad, J., 2008. Communication differences in virtual design teams: findings
from a multi-method analysis of high and low performing experimental teams. ACM SIGMIS
Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems, 39(1), pp.51-67.