Marketing remains one of the key determinants of any business’ success. Consumers get to know about the existence of a product through marketing. The success of a marketing strategy depends on the approach taken by the business. All marketers must consider several issues about the targeted market(s) in order to meet the set sales goals (Hisrich, 2010).
Target Market
In demographic considerations, marketers should choose to market their products in countries with big populations. Countries that have a high number of citizens provide more market for products than those with small populations (Hisrich, 2010). Statistics of the year 2013 show that Germany has a population of about eighty one million.
England boasts of fifty six million citizens while the USA has about three hundred and fifteen million inhabitants. This means that the USA could offer the best market for any product in the country. As for Germany and England, marketers should prioritize selling in Germany than England because the former has a bigger population than the latter (World Bank, 2012).
Cultural Issues
When marketing internationally, marketers should consider the language of the country that they intend to market their products. Different countries have different languages that they use to communicate. Products meant for Germans should have labels in German language, and the marketers must be fluent in German.
This helps in breaking the language barrier that may arise in the process of marketing. Language does not affect marketing in the United States of America. Even though separate American states have distinctive dialects, it does not create a communication barrier between American marketers and customers (Knoblock, 2007).
Americans’ lifestyles are also distinct from those of nationals of other countries. Marketers should consider the fact that some products consumed in America may not do well in foreign markets when supplied in their original forms. For example, there is a sharp decrease in the rate of birth in Germany.
This is mainly because of their lifestyle, which does not like giving birth. This means that there are fewer children in Germany than in the United States of America or England. Marketers should not consider going to market lunch boxes in Germany because there are minimal chances of selling the product there than in the USA or England. Instead, they should market bait boxes. Bait boxes can be useful to Germany’s aged population, especially when they go for activities like fishing (Knoblock, 2007).
Most meat cooking appliances from United States of America may sell poorly in Germany than England. The rate of meat consumption in Germany is high. When marketers from the United States of America want to provide kitchen appliances, like cooking devices, they should consider the cultural methods of cooking that the Germans employ. For instance, the Germans use the pot-roasting method to prepare their meat.
They also utilize pans to fry meat, which they consider as the best methods for meat preparation. It may be an exercise in futility for marketers from the United States of America to supply improved ovens to the Germans as one of the appliances for preparing their meat. This product will not perform well, given the cultural methods used to prepare meat in Germany. However, improved ovens may do well in England markets because they use ovens more often to prepare their meat (Knoblock, 2007).
Patent Laws and Personal Views
Previous patent laws only protected individuals or businesses that had already developed a product and introduced to the market. Ideas that were still under development did not have protection from the previous USA’s patent laws. Contravention of these laws brought many challenges to the international market because a business could have had an idea for a product, but the thought ended up stolen by another business.
The business that stole the idea could have been faster in developing the product than the original owner. This culminated in the product reaching the market as a brand of the second business. The moment the original owner of the innovation developed the product and supplied it to the local or international market, the business that stole the idea had already strengthened its customer base in the international market. The product then appeared as counterfeit (Hisrich, 2010).
The international patent laws do not issue patent rights to anyone or business. They only help in searching for patent rights from different countries to find out the possibility of similar rights being held by a second person. They offer little help to innovators. This leaves individual countries with the authority to issue patent rights. The USA patent laws that President Barrack Obama signed in the year 2011 require inventors to ensure that their ideas of inventions reach the market as fast as possible.
These regulations help inventors to protect the products they invent because the law requires them to register their ideas as soon as they develop them, and not the product. However, the laws are not being advantageous to small businesses because registration and issuance of patent rights are expensive. Big businesses may take advantage of this by registering invention ideas that belong to small businesses under their name because smaller businesses cannot afford the registration fees (Hisrich, 2010).
In conclusion, marketing is a challenging task for businesses. The successful marketing strategy depends on the cultural beliefs and the population of the market. It also depends on the existing patent laws. Minority populations provide poor customer bases for products while big ones act as the best markets for products. Patent laws should be advantageous to both small and large businesses. This will enable all of them to benefit from their innovations.
References
Hisrich, R. D. (2010). International Entrepreneurship: Starting, Developing, and Managing a Global Venture. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications Inc.
Knoblock, K. (2007). Primary Source Fluency Activities: World Cultures Through Time. Huntington Beach: Shell Education.
The World Bank. (2012). World Development Report 2013: Jobs. Washington D.C: World Bank Publications.