A world without international marketing?

Sometimes we only know what we lost when it has left us. I put this thought to the test it in my class of Georgetown University students. In our course “Marketing Across Borders”, we worked on the question: “What would life look like without international marketing?” The answers offered various perspectives reflecting their interest and training in international affairs. The range was broad, addressing the impact of international marketing in the context of diversity, choices, cultural exchange, and international quality standards.

On a personal level, students saw substantial impact of international marketing on their lives. Some mentioned that international marketing and its activities creates thousands of jobs around the world.This was seen as highly relevant to themselves, but they included their parents as well since such a change clearly involved today and the future. Some students said that without international marketing a life would be simpler but not necessarily in a good way. International Marketing was seen to bring to life a variety of products that enrich consumers and make them more productive.

 Some respondents highlighted the exposure to new thoughts and ideas that international marketing brings to people around the world. Such exposure motivates the competition between companies to supply better quality combined with better value. This competition leads to innovation in products across different markets around the world. Without international marketing, the high quality standards we have today would diminish due to decreasing competition.

Companies would also feel  the absence of international marketing. Expansion across borders will be harder and would have to rely without marketing heavily on word of mouth communication. Exports and imports will be far less than today’s value since international activities will be less profitable. Selling products to other cultures in which they are not interested will be difficult. Companies will have fewer opportunities to learn and develop from others as well. Problems will be caused by a lack of willingness to adjust or a lack of motivation to develop and compete. In consequence, the world won’t be as efficient as today.

There was the hypothesis that international marketing is likely to reduce poverty and increase international cooperation. These benefits would disappear when foreign direct investment decreases. Sales in foreign markets would diminish without the lubricating effect of international marketing. Less cultural awareness of others would be the consequence of a decline in intercultural communication. Companies would be less socially responsible and transparent as they won’t be inspired by other international companies who serve international communities. This would newly insert more psychic distance between cultures and countries, and reduce the attention paid to common problems and actions taken for the public good.

Finally, we explored what students would miss most, where does the pain threshold begin: We know about the wide variety of products that are moved and brought to market thanks to marketing. So how about the loss of video games, cars, music tourism or even commercials. These items were touched on, but the core of items one would miss the most were food, food and food again. Students were quite varied in their thinking as long as the items whose loss was deplored dealt with sustenance or alimentation. Leading among products held dear were chocolate, snacks, noodles, candies and anything else which could be eaten by chopstick. Quite a broad base from students whose parents were only introduced to new eating utensils. Food and its variety tend to give staying power to globalization and also encourage cross fertilization. Let it give new opportunity to a life with spice.

Michael Czinkota teaches international business and trade at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and the University of Kent. His key book (with Ilkka Ronkainen) is “International Marketing” (10th ed., CENGAGE).

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