When it comes to the question of creating a new trade policy, one should perform an in-depth analysis of the business environment to make an informed decision concerning whether the focus group of the outcomes of this policy should be the business or its consumers (Smith, 2014). The customer is always right, but it should not be the case with the trade policy for several reasons. First of all, businesses dictate “fashion” when it comes to releasing new merchandise and products. Of course, they are relatively dependent on customer demand but on the bigger scale, it only the business itself that is responsible for drafting, producing, and distributing the end product to the stores and other locations. As Feenstra (2016) mentions in his book on international trade, such thing as trade policy requires decisions that are made on a high administrational level and not consumer level because the latter do not see the bigger picture. The responsibility of the business, in this case, relates to the issue of developing a policy that would take into account the interests of their customers but would not put them in the forefront (Smith, 2014). The key to a successful trade policy can be described as a comprehensive understanding of the market and its fluctuating and constant variables.
The general public should not be seen as one of the active actors because they are interested in receiving the end product and not investigating all the causal relationships inherent in trade and marketing (including all the costs, investments, and management efforts) (Smith, 2014). Of course, this does not mean that customers should be taken out of the business equation. The whole process of interaction between the actors, in this case, should not be similar to cutting out a person from a photo as if they were not there at all. The business should see the problem from two sides, but the latter cannot assign their responsibilities to the public (Feenstra, 2016). Consequently, the interests of the customers may be taken into consideration on a local scale only. Also, the employees may be perceived as the main company’s asset as human resources are recurrently utilized to create business value. Consequently, Feenstra (2016) believes that this hints at the fact that customers do not contribute to the development of the business to a significant extent. Then, it would be reasonable to limit the customers’ influence on the trade policy and choose an approach that would help the business put their prosperity ahead of the customers’ demands.
Despite its hypothetical unfairness, Smith (2014) claimed that this tactic is successfully employed by the majority of the businesses worldwide and the outcomes of this approach go merely unnoticed by the customers. The key issue inherent in paying more attention to the business than the customers can be explained as a phenomenon of partially excluding one of the parties from the equation but still being able to operate efficiently and maintain the multi-layered structure of the business (Feenstra, 2016). In perspective, this will positively affect the vertical development of the business because the organization will concentrate its efforts on extending its reach and perfecting its marketing strategy. Overall, the strategy of developing a trade policy with an eye for the customers’ interests can be considered unviable.
References
Feenstra, R. C. (2016). Advanced international trade: Theory and evidence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Smith, P. J. (2014). Global trade policy: Questions and answers. Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell.