ESTABLISHING MARKET ENTRY MODE

 

 

 

KIMATI ELITRUDAH

Once a company has decided to market in a foreign country, it must determine the best mode of entry. Its choices arc exporting, joint venturing and direct investment.  These routes to servicing foreign markets, along with the options that each one offers. As we can sec, each succeeding strategy involves more commitment and risk, but also more control and potential profits.

 

Importing. The simplest way to enter a foreign market is through exporting. The company may passively export its surpluses from time to time, or it may make an active commitment to expand exports to a particular market. In either case, the company produces all its goods in its home country. It may or may not modify them for the export market. Exporting involves the least change in the company's product lines, organization, investments or mission.

 

Indirect Exporting. Companies typically Start with indirect exporting, working through independent home-based international marketing intermediaries. Indirect exporting involves less investment because the firm does not require an overseas sales force or set of contacts. It also involves less risk. These home-based intermediaries – export merchants or agents, co-operative organizations, government export agencies and export-management companies - bring know-how and services to the relationship, so the seller normally makes fewer mistakes.

 

 Direct Exporting. Sellers may eventually move into direct exporting, whereby they handle their own exports. The investment and risk are somewhat greater in this strategy, but so is the potential return. A company can conduct direct exporting in several ways. It can set up a domestic export department that carries out export activities. Or it can set up an overseas sales branch that handles sales, distribution and perhaps promotion. The sales branch gives the seller more presence and programme control in the foreign market and often serves as a display centre and customer service centre. Or the company can send home-based salespeople abroad at certain times in order to find business. Finally, the company can do its exporting either through foreign-based distributors that buy and own the goods or through foreign-based agents that sell the goods on behalf of the company in exchange for an agreed fee or commission.

 

Joint Venturing. A second method of entering a foreign market is joint venturing joining with foreign companies to produce or market the products or services. Joint venturing differs from exporting in that the company joins with a partner to sell or market abroad. It differs from direct investment in that an association is formed with someone in the foreign country. There are four types of joint venture: licensing, contract manufacturing, management contracting and joint ownership.

 

Licensing is a simple way for a manufacturer to enter international marketing. The company enters into an agreement with a licensee in the foreign market. For a fee or royalty, the licensee buys the right to use the company's manufacturing process, trademark, patent, trade secret or other item of value. The company thus gains entry into the market at little risk; the licensee gains product-ion expertise or a well-known product or brand name without having to start from scratch. Coca-Cola markets internationally by licensing bottlers around the world and supplying them with the syrup needed to produce the product. Tokyo Disneyland is owned and operated by Oriental Land Company under licence from the Walt Disney Company. Licensing has potential disadvantages, however. The firm has less control over the licensee than it would over its own production facilities. Furthermore, if the licensee is very successful, the firm has given up these profits, and if and when the contract ends, it may find it has created a competitor.

 

Contract Manufacturing. Another option is contract manufacturing. The company contracts with manufacturers in the foreign market to produce its product or provide its serviec. Many western firms have used this mode for entering Taiwanese and South Korean markets. The drawbacks of contract manufacturing are the decreased control over the manufacturing process and the loss of potential profits on manufacturing. The benefits are the chance to start faster, with less risk, and the later opportunity either to form a partnership with or to buy out the local manufacturer.

 

 Management contracting, the domestic firm supplies management know how to a foreign company that supplies the capital. The domestic firm exports management services rather than products. Hilton uses this arrangement in managing hotels around the world. Management contracting is a low-risk method of getting into a foreign market, and it yields income from the beginning. The arrangement is even more attractive if the contracting firm has an option to buy a share in the managed company later on. The arrangement is not sensible, however, if the company can put its scarce management talent to better uses or if it can make greater profits by undertaking the whole venture. Management contracting also prevents the company from setting up its own operations for a period of time.

COMPANIES EXPANSIONS INTERNATIONALLY

COMPANIES EXPANSIONS INTERNATIONALLY

Expand Markets and Increase Sales

Expanded markets and increased sales mean more profits. Profits mean success for a business. They also mean that a business can make contributions to causes that they believe in.

For example, MAC Cosmetics is a business that increased sales and broadened their markets in order to become more successful. This business started as a small idea and eventually expanded to a greater establishment by going international. This business in particular decided to create a fund dedicated to the cure and prevention of AIDS. MAC Cosmetics really did expand their markets.

Controlling Expenses

Every business wants to have low expenses; so some companies will therefore enter the global arena to minimize their costs. Companies will examine the resources they need and where they can get them at the lowest price. By searching outside of their own borders, companies hope to find more economical solutions to the production and manufacturing problems they have. Business might choose to take advantage of lower labor costs, they might move manufacturing plants closer to natural resources, invest in new and more efficient technology, or profit from another countries innovations or tax structures.

Diversification

In order to diversify a company’s product line they may choose to enter a specific international market. This will apply to both a large scale international business along with a small company. Companies have a foothold in a number of countries so they don’t have to depend on the economy of one country. Companies engaged in international business can protect their investments and their markets by dealing with countries in a variety of countries. A recession in one county won’t have a huge effect if business is doing well in another country.

Competitiveness

Many companies expand globally for defensive reasons to protect themselves from competitors or potential competitors, or to gain advantage over them. In today’s business environment, even a small business is competing with international businesses. On the other hand, local businesses may find it difficult to compete with the selection and price that multinational companies can offer. If their businesses are too threatened, they may find wider markets or merge with a larger, possibly international company.

By Mkula Dennis

Functions of corporate communication

MEDIA RELATIONS

This may be the function for which corporate

communication managers are best known. Media

relations work includes writing and distributing

news releases and responding to media inquiries.

Corporate communicators oversee all planning for

news conferences, including selecting the site for

an event, arranging for banners and other

graphics to be displayed at the event, preparing

packets of information to distribute to the media

and preparing executives to speak at news

conferences. Media relations also involves

arranging for spokespersons to appear on local

television and radio programs. Corporate

communicators monitor newspapers, television news

broadcasts and other outlets to see what the

media is saying about the company and to devise

strategies to address misinformation.

Public Relations

Building relationships with customers and

responding to inquiries from the public fall under

the public relations function of corporate

communications. Duties in this area include

producing newsletters, brochures and other

printed materials designed for the general public.

Corporate communicators also manage a company’s

website and social media presence, which includes

monitoring what customers and clients are saying

about the company on social networking websites

and responding to inaccurate posts or requests

for information. Communication professionals may

respond directly to calls and emails from citizens

and customers with questions about a company’s

plans or activities. They arrange for speakers

from the company to make presentations to local

community groups and may facilitate group tours

of a company’s operations.

Related Reading: The Importance of personnel

Staffing to a Business Office Manager

CRISIS COMMUNICATION

When an event occurs that threatens public safety

or a company’s reputation, corporate

communicators function as advisers to CEOs and

senior leaders in managing the crisis. Special

training in the issues unique to crisis

communication helps corporate communicators

prepare for events such as chemical spills, violence

in the workplace, an accidental death on the job,

layoff announcements and allegations of company

wrongdoing. They often work with staff

throughout their organizations to develop crisis

communication plans before disaster strikes. A

crisis may require communications staff to work

with attorneys, government regulators, political

officials, emergency response personnel and

communications staff from other companies when

developing crisis messages.

EMPLOYEES COMMUNICATION

In addition to conveying a company’s messages to

external audiences, corporate communicators may

also be called on to function as employee

communications managers, which includes designing

printed publications and writing emails to

announce company news, benefits information and

training opportunities. Corporate communicators

may facilitate focus groups to learn what issues

matter most to front-line employees. They advise

senior leaders on how to improve relationships with

their staff and gain support for their initiatives.

The corporate communications staff may also

manage a company’s Intranet and internal blogs.

KINGALU AVIN

BAPRM 42697

CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS

CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS

Crisis communication is sometimes considered a sub-specialty of the public relations profession that is designed to protect and defend an individual, company, or organization facing a public challenge to its reputation. These challenges may come in the form of an investigation from a government agency, a criminal allegation, a media inquiry, a shareholders lawsuit, a violation of environmental regulations, or any of a number of other scenarios involving the legal, ethical, or financial standing of the entity. The crisis for organizations can be defined as follows

Internal/employee communications

As the extent of communication grows, many companies create an employee relations (ER) function with dedicated staff to manage the numerous media through which senior managers can communicate among themselves and with the rest of the organization. Internal communication in the 21st century is more than the memos, publications, and broadcasts that comprise it; it’s about building a corporate culture on values that drive organizational excellence. ER specialists are generally expected to fulfill one or more of the following four roles:

Efficiency: Internal communication is used primarily to disseminate information about corporate activities.

Shared meaning: Internal communication is used to build a shared understanding among employees about corporate goals.

Connectivity: Internal communication is used mainly to clarify the connectedness of the company's people and activities.

Satisfaction: Internal communication is used to improve job satisfaction throughout the company.

Investor relations

The investor relations (IR) function is used by companies which publicly traded shares on a stock exchange. In such companies, the purpose of the IR specialist is to interface with current and potential financial stakeholders-namely retail investors, institutional investors, and financial analysts.

Public relations: issues management and media relations

Public relations

The role of the public relations specialist, in many ways, is to communicate with the general public in ways that serve the interests of the company. PR therefore consists of numerous specialty areas that convey information about the company to the public, including sponsorships, events, issues management and media relations. When executing these types of activities, the PR Specialist must incorporate broader corporate messages to convey the company’s strategic positioning. This ensures the PR activities ultimately convey messages that distinguish the company vis-à-vis its competitors and the overall marketplace, while also communicating the company’s value to target audiences.

Issues management

A key role of the PR specialist is to make the company better known for traits and attributes that build the company’s perceived distinctiveness and competitiveness with the public. In recent years, PR specialists have become increasingly involved in helping companies manage strategic issues – public concerns about their activities that are frequently magnified by special interest groups and NGOs. The role of the PR specialist therefore also consists of issues management, namely the “set of organizational procedures, routines, personnel, and issues”. A strategic issue is one that compels a company to deal with it because there is “ a conflict between two or more identifiable groups over procedural or substantive matters relating to the distribution of positions or resources”.

BY MKULA DENNIS

CHARACTERISTICS OF CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

by KIMATI ELITRUDAH

CHARACTERISTICS OF CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

1. Nobody knows principle : Demand uncertainty
exists because the consumers' reaction to a
product are neither known beforehand, nor
easily understood afterward.
2. Art for art’s sake : Workers care about
originality, technical professional skill, harmony,
etc. of creative goods and are willing to settle
for lower wages than offered by 'humdrum'
jobs.
3. Motley crew principle : For relatively complex
creative products e.g., films the production
requires diversely skilled inputs. Each skilled
input must be present and perform at some
minimum level to produce a valuable outcome.
4. Infinite variety : Products are differentiated
by quality and uniqueness; each product is a
distinct combination of inputs leading to infinite
variety options (e.g., works of creative writing,
whether poetry, novel, screenplays or
otherwise).
5. A list/B list: Skills are vertically
differentiated. Artists are ranked on their
skills, originality, and proficiency in creative
processes and or products. Small differences in
skills and talent may yield huge differences in
(financial) success.
6. Time flies: When coordinating complex
projects with diversely skilled inputs, time is of
the essence.
7. Ars longa : Some creative products have
durability aspects that invoke copyright
protection, allowing a creator or performer to
collect rents.
The properties described by Caves have been
criticized for being too rigid Not
all creative workers are purely driven by 'art
for art's sake'. T property also
holds for certain noncreative products The 'time flies' property also
holds for large construction projects. Creative
industries are therefore not unique, but they
score generally higher on these properties
relative to noncreative industries.

BY KIMATI ELITRUDAH

According to Moyer, 2015

In the meantime, corporate leaders can do their part to improve how their companies communicate. Here are five steps to take.

1.Recruit talented, senior-level communications executives with solid business skills and deep knowledge of the company’s products and processes.

According to David Moyer, president of the executive search firm Moyer, Sherwood Associates, Inc., which specializes in corporate communications and PR, the challenges of the role now make it more essential for candidates to hold an MBA.More broadly, companies need to give communications chiefs the titles, reporting relationships, access, and resources to be effective companywide. And that means investing in senior communications roles for the long-term.

Communications professionals like to tout their ability to be quick studies. But it can take years to truly know a company's business, and a communications person without the right level of industry knowledge won't get the respect it takes to do an effective job. Being the perpetual new kid on the block is a strategic liability.

2. Learn to trust and understand the communications function.
Management can’t get away with listening to its communications leaders with half an ear. Companies "need to learn more about communications and the communications consequences of their actions and not treat it like a foreign language," urges Moyer. Otherwise, they'll end up spending too much time mopping up after crises as opposed to preempting them. Not only can that be tremendously expensive, but communication blunders can do real damage to companies' brands.

3. Let communications leaders advise and educate the C-suite. 
If corporations need to listen better to their communications leaders, then the reverse is also true. Communications execs need to help other leaders understand why they're important. "Good communications chiefs recognize that one leg of their job is representing communications to senior management," says Moyer. "They can point to communication wins in that area with the same pride they do to a media relations victory outside. The CFO or the head of engineering doesn’t need to explain their functions the same way. But the communications person needs to do this."Companies shouldn't compound their problems by obfuscating or denying responsibility for problems.

4. Eliminate command-and-control communications.
The best companies are transparent, and when they are wrong, they promptly admit it rather than hide behind 'corporate speak, Clark says. Closing ranks can be dangerous in the digital age, but it's a most common reaction when things go wrong. "Apologize, take responsibility, and do what's necessary to right the wrong. Companies shouldn't compound their problems by obfuscating or denying responsibility for problems; that simply drags out the story and ensures it'll be at the top of news headlines and Twitter feeds for days and weeks to come."

5. Let employees be ambassadors, Clark advises. 
Don’t gag them on social media. "Smart, far-sighted companies recognize that if employees are using social media anyway, you might as well tap that power," she says. "Give them information about the company's vision, goals, and what it's doing, and allow them to spread that positive message online. They'll have far more credibility among their friends and contacts that your official brand page ever could.

DIGITALIZATION

JAMES CATHERENE

The digital age, also called the information age, is defined as the time period starting in the 1970s with the introduction of the personal computer with subsequent technology introduced providing the ability to transfer information freely and quickly

Digitalization is imposing many challenges on cultural transformation of organizational, practice related to individuals, institutions users and producers

When we think of marketing and social media in organizations it’s often with the focus being on the external environment and our external customers. This is not wrong by any means, but I think we can too often take for granted another key stakeholder we are communicating to, our internal customers, our employees.

Our employees make up who we are as an organization and they have a great impact on our culture. The questions we have to constantly ask as leaders are “What experience am I creating for them?” And, “Is it aligned with the culture I want in the organization?” Social Media and how we use it as an organization can have a great impact in creating experiences that impact the culture. Social Media creates experiences, period. The experiences employees are having, both by external and internal communication, in organizations greatly impact how they think and act at work and if they are truly engaged or not.  Leaders need to recognize that all experiences create culture, and their culture is either working for them or against them that is Change the Culture, Change the Game. Social Media provides a very powerful, viral experience that can help accelerate the needed cultural changes internally. The platforms will come and go, but how organizations leverage people as the media in a smart way 

The web has become the place where young people most find their opportunity to explore and express their identities and their social relations,. The greatest transformation with the web compared with television, radio and print is that the technology puts the kids in the centre as culture creators rather than culture consumers. Not only does this upset traditional top-down marketing models but it also means that a single youth culture is now almost impossible to pin down But now, with so many technological touch points and interest-driven groups, there's no single social change that catalyses them. We are at a period in which our societies are coming to grips with the new technology. Part of the process is watching how people who have never experienced anything else push the boundaries. The Internet has been hailed as an unprecedented democratizing force, a place where everyone can be heard and all can participate equally. But how true is this claim? It is argues that for all that we tweet  and like  and share in the Internet  in fact reflects and amplifies real-world inequities at least as much as it ameliorates them. Online, just as off-line.