Research and Development is very important for a business company in today’s business world if you want that company to succeed in the market. But the time when a company was exclusively or at least in most part included within one country, are over. Today’s corporations but even smaller companies are multinational and do not operate through a board which members are exclusively from one particular country and view most the interests of that country (Taylor, 2006, p. 14). The modern day’s company does retain its revenues from its dispersion among different countries or by operating in a world wide scale.
Thus it would be improper and inadequate not to include all the different countries, all the branches and subcontractors from other countries in order to have a broader picture and have an international impact on the market. Of course we must differentiate between two different types of product development here. The first one is when the company desires to launch a product in a particular national market and the second is when the company wants to launch a product on an international scale, thus implicating more than one country. In the first case one would think that it is not appropriate to include other subcontractors from other countries for the development of the strategy of this product. But even in this case the research and development team should not forget that even within a specific country there exist groups with different national, ethnical or cultural background. You cannot launch the product and try to address them all by sending a message which is uniform only with the mainstream cultural or ethnical group.
This way there is the risk that the message will not be perceived positively from other cultural or ethnical minority groups (Gomez-Mejia et al. 2008, p. 48). This is why it is important to include in the product development for this local market even subcontractors or members of other ethnic, national or cultural background in order to make sure your message reaches the maximum audience possible.
In the second case it becomes ‘obligatory’ to develop a product with the involvement of different subcontractors from other nationalities. You cannot send a unified, same cultural message to different nationalities and pretend to have the same level of positive feedback and appealing of them all (Gomez-Mejia et al. 2008, p. 66). This way you are increasing the possibilities for a negative response by part of the consumers. At least, you are not trying to create a positive brand image recognition which, if not immediately, will have a negative effect on your revenues in the not to distant future. This is why by implementing various cultural, or ethnical, or national, backgrounds you create the possibitility for your message to be positively perceived by as much people as it is possible.
If we are dealing on an international level then it becomes obligatory for a multinational corporation to take feedback and thoughts from all of its different subcontractors or branches for a product to be launched in different national markets. A product designed for only according to fit the values of one particular national market may not be as successful in the international market due to differences in valeus and norms of the societies. Thus, by lsitening to different voices during the development process, you increase the possibility of positive recognition of your product in different national markets.
References
Taylor, W. (2006). Introduction to Management. Ninth Edition. Prentice Hall: New Jersey.
Gomez-Mejia, Luis R.; David B. Balkin and Robert L. Cardy (2008). Management: People, Performance, Change. 3rd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.