Introduction
The media associated with the Russian authorities are conducting an information campaign against the coronavirus vaccines created by the American companies Pfizer and Moderna. The New York Times reports about this with reference to analysts, sources in the US government, and a representative of the State Department (Frenkel et al., 2021). According to the NY Times’ sources, the campaign is primarily aimed at Latin America and Eastern European countries.
The misinformation process is hosted by the local editorial offices of the RT channel and the Sputnik agency. They select news to highlight the benefits of the Russian drug Sputnik-V and instill distrust of Pfizer and Moderna drugs. Their techniques include decontextualization of reports and misinterpretation of scientific findings. For instance, they write about deaths of people who received American vaccines ignoring subsequent reports that these deaths most likely were not related to vaccinations. Misinformation about the AstraZeneca vaccine included speculation that the drug would turn humans into monkeys because it was developed using the chimpanzee adenovirus.
In the first months, the anti-propaganda was directed, among other things, against the vaccine of the Swedish-British company AstraZeneca. However, since AstraZeneca agreed to cooperate with the creators of Sputnik-V in December, the pro-Kremlin media began to write positively about the drug. The US State Department’s press service considers the actions of Russian propaganda as undermining global efforts to end the pandemic.
Connection to International Business
This event shows the new difficulties of entering foreign markets in the era of the high role of Internet technologies in any business. First of all, competition is moving to the online environment and brings new risks to all traders. When entering a foreign market, careful preliminary groundwork is required in the field of online reputation management. The discussed story of vaccines shows that evidence about the product, its production methods, and scientific research regarding its properties become insufficient to successfully convey the information about the product to its new consumers. Competitors trying to simultaneously enter the same market can engage in unfair competition, which consists primarily of misinformation about the product. An important point here is that opponents target specific audiences in a sophisticated way using their knowledge of the culture of the locations they aim to enter.
How Others Learn from Situation
In some situations, the specificity of the product determines the need for competent work not only on the part of the business but also on the part of the buyers themselves. In the field of biomedicine and pharmacology, patients must become reflexive consumers able to advisedly separate truth from fiction. Thus, a long-term strategy for avoiding unfair competition in online reputation management would be to develop and increase scientific literacy among consumers.
The vaccine manufacturers are global first movers in the global market. Whereas it is possible for first movers to “erect significant entry barriers for late entrants,” this situation demonstrates that current forms of unfair competition aim at developing obstructions for their competitors to enter the same market (Arnason, 2019). At the same time, the demand is already existing, and there is no need in shaping consumers’ need for the product. Apparently, in such situations, a competitor’s strategy to undermine the product’s reliability and safety are common and expectable. Based on this assumption, the focus should be on co-marketing with the stakeholders in the foreign market.
References
Arnason, M. (2019). International business in a new age of global disruption. Published online on TopHat.
Frenkel, S., Abi-habib, M., & Barnes, J. (2021). Russian campaign promotes homegrown vaccine and undercuts rivals. Web.