International Advertising Concepts and Market Penetration Limitations & considerations

Market penetration approaches differ from one country or an organization to another, thus the advertising strategy varies.  Some advertisers choose to standardize and stick to the brand origin while others adapt the indigenous symbols of the market they are approaching. The factors advertisers take in consideration is the degree of ethnocentrism, and the level of the animosity of the market regarding a certain country.

The relation between the concepts portrayed lays in the process of taking decision in the different approaches to penetrate a certain market. Let’s look at some examples, if the majority of people living in a country are ethnocentric, the standardization approach might be a bit difficult to apply. If the people are so attached to their country and their products they won’t accept foreign brands thus they won’t buy them.  Brands in this case won’t show the country of origin (COE) of that certain brand and it must take the adaptation approach, in order to avoid brand animosity.

Some advertisers suppose its better to adapt to a market by using symbols that reflects the people, believing that the brand will reflect more to the people when it uses their language, symbols, and cultural norms, and thus will decrease the level of animosity and ethnocentrism. For example, Henkel changed the name of Persil Tunisia, Morocco & Algeria to “Nadif” they utilized a certain brand in order to suit the market they were entering. Organizations like Henkel and P&G tend to use the adaptation approach, while organizations like Pepsi and Coca-Cola prefer to standardize and stick to the COE, it’s true that they are taking a risk of high animosity but they tend to utilize their advertisements by using cultural symbols and famous acceptable figures in the market.

Some advertisers tend to change some of the symbols and words that relates to a country of origin, when a certain political transformation takes place between two or more countries. For Example, Americana[1] used the tagline “Quality” after the boycott that took place in 2003 (Iraq war), Americana changed its tagline to” 100% Arabian” and then changed it back after the boycott was slightly forgotten. American took this step to decrease the level of animosity Middle Eastern felt towards the United States of America, although American is not from an American origin but the country of origin effect changed people’s perception and attitude towards it, due to the fact that most of its brands and chains were franchised.

Adaptation VS. Standardization

The choice between adapting or standardizing the message should to be looked at on a case by case basis. Even  if the same objectives applies in al target markets, it is very possible that it is necessary to modify the advertising according to cultural, social, and economic features of these markets, as well as the motivations of your target customers. Deciding to adopt a standardized or adapted advertising strategy will result in a balance between the advantages of a single campaign, and those of a specific campaign for each market.

In reality, companies often adopt a strategy to integrate these two extremes, the difficulty arising when deciding to what degree each will be enforced.

The different aspects which could be subject to standardization or adaptation are the following: Campaign objectives, target market, choice of media and the choice of the message.

The approach that Pepsi & Coca-Cola uses is and integration of those two extremes which has been recently defined as adapted standardization, which means that they are sticking to the origin of the brand and the country while changing some of the symbols in order to match the needs of a certain ethnic group or culture.

Ethnocentrism VS Animosity

The subject of consumer ethnocentrism is discussed in the framework of advertising country-of-origin effects. The impact of media on consumers' ethnocentric sense during a special situation (animosity) (conflict between two countries) is examined. Then, the effect of a developed ethnocentric sense on consumers' perception of foreign-made brands is studied along two brands with different levels of reputation. Results show that consumers' ethnocentrism can be activated by media and oriented by the context. Only extreme ethnocentric attitudes are found to drive consumer behavior. Respondents exposed to the media campaign evaluate badly the country with which their own country knows a conflict, and therefore express a negative perception for the brands made that country. Highly reputed and less reputed brands perceptions are affected differently when consumers' ethnocentrism is activated. (Koubaa, 2009).

Here comes the link between ethnocentrism and animosity when a certain country has a high level of ethnocentrism, it can’t accept foreign brands, yet when animosity exists between two countries they still won’t accept foreign brands. Putting in consideration that ethnocentrism is unlike animosity and it is engraved in the roots of a certain culture.

if the land receiving the  product has a very high level of ethnocentrism, thus a level of animosity of the brand and the country of origin will increase, in that case the advertisers has to take in consideration that the adaptive approach is best to apply at this situation other than the standardization and sticking to the brand origin.

The practice

As a practitioner  you must be keenly aware of the transient nature of animosity. An alerting or a measuring system has to be created to measure the animosity level in a certain country. Politics transformative and the level of animosity between two countries decrease and increase in seconds, meaning if two countries are doing well in a day they might not be doing well together in another and vice versa. In that case the animosity research has to be updated regularly due to the fact that it changes regularly, unlike ethnocentrism that is rooted in the culture.

It’s true that ethnocentrism is rooted, but that doesn’t mean that I have to neglect the country that has high level of ethnocentrism. Digging deeper into the society we might find sub-cultures that some people perhaps the top educated ones might accept foreign brands. Here we figure out the digging deeper into these sub-cultures we might find a very high potential target segment that will benefit and be benefited from the brand,

Another area that grabbed my attention is the fact that we should be highly aware of the culture orientation, religion sensitivity and a culture historical background. An example that came in mind, is in 2010 when Vodafone launched its “USB Stick” campaign featuring (Samir, Shahir, & Bahir). Vodafone didn’t take in consideration the historical and religious background that might offend the people who were watching “Abas Ibn Fernas” commercial. If Vodafone have studied the culture thoroughly it wouldn’t have been trapped in such an error. Looking deeper into the culture research we figure out that, demographic characteristics, which include age gender and social class, reflects severely on ethnocentrism level on a group or/and individual

 The regulation or legal considerations of a country differ from one another, for example in KSA has a sensitive regulation for females to appear on local TV and billboards and they absolutely forbid  any nudity or sexist images. Another regulation KSA has is the fact that it’s unacceptable for any advertising model even a man to appear with his eyes on billboards and local TV, usually he wears glasses. If those regulations not taken in consideration while penetrating a certain market the brand will brutally fail

Country regulations are part of the creative challenges that faces in advertiser while penetrating a certain market, while it’s not the only challenge an advertiser has to deal with. Language limitation is part of the challenges that must be taken in consideration, and by language limitation I don’t mean only the different language countries speak with.  In international markets the procedure of communicating to a target audience is more difficult because communication takes place across several situations, which differ in terms of language, literacy, and other cultural factors. A message may, therefore, not get through to the audience because of people's inability to understand it due to literacy problems) because they misinterpret the message by attaching different meanings to the words or symbols used, or because they do not respond to the message due to a lack of income to purchase the advertised product.

Some countries have a high level of illiteracy in that case language limitation exists; Illiteracy: as defined by the United Nations is being unable to read and write a simple short sentence about ones everyday life. It limits the person ability to communicate and to learn and to grow. Language barrier also take place in multilingualism countries like Canada, in that case and advertiser has to provide the content to meet the audience needs in different languages

 Another limitation concerning language is the fact that the way I speak to certain social class is different from another. For example when P&G launched Ariel, it had two types of ads, one that is the default for all Ariel ads all over the world, just changing its language to Arabic , while they had another custom made ad for the lower class that speaks in their language. The former example is also applicable for the culture diversity in a certain country, a country like America for example is what we call in international communication a “salad bowl” it has many cultures, like Hispanics, Indians, African Americans and more this diversity will make it hard for advertiser to communicate with one common message for all groups of the society, and here is when proper segmentation takes place.

Media limitations also play a role in the failure of a communication to reach its proposed audience. The process of communication in international markets involves a number of steps. First, the advertiser must decide on the appropriate message for the target audience. Next, the message is encoded so that it will be visibly understood in different cultural contexts.

The message is then sent through media channels to the audience who then decodes and reacts to the message. At each stage in the process, cultural barriers may slow down the effective transmission of the message and result in miscommunication. (Douglas & Craig, 2009)

Media may reduce the role of advertising in the promotional program and may force the marketers to stress the other elements of promotional mix. In addition to encoding the message so that it attracts the attention of the target audience and is understood correctly, advertisers need to select media channels that reach the planned target audience. For example, use of TV advertising may only reach some audience in certain countries while print media will not be effective when illiteracy highly exists.

Works Cited

Douglas, S. P., & Craig, C. S. (2009). Internationl Advertising . New York : New York University- Stern School of Business.

Koubaa, Y. (2009). Ethnocentrism, country of origin, and brand perception in a special context. Inder Sceince Publishers