Chapter 7

Chapter seven talks about International Product Strategies. A product is something you offer to the market that satisfies a want or a need. It is divided in two, things you can feel and see or a warranty, after sale service, delivery credit and so on, this are called services.
International marketers need to design a product that can either be standard and meet all markets need or be able to make adaptations to meet special market needs.
A brand on the other hand is the name, word, or design that identifies a product, service, or company. It is the first thing a customer sees and what -if it's good, will remind on their mind for a long time. Once you use this brand to create an image is called product position, in other word what do you customers think when they think about your brand? Volvo... security, Mercedes... luxurious. Advertising is the number one tool companies rely on to gain their brand image.
Brand equity is the additional value that a brand name brings to a product or a company, but then the grey market can come and completely destroy the brand dominance by selling their product outside an established authorized distribution system because their prices are normally cheaper when they are not sold by an authorized dealer. Louis Vuitton can be a perfect example for this. There are so many grey market places out there that sell fake or stolen purses that made the brand accessible for everyone. LV is a high-end brand that is not affordable to everyone, after all this little illegal stores or dealers selling the brand in every spot of the city it became a common brand and it lost it's exclusiveness since everyone was wearing it.
In Colombia there's a very famous saying (I'm translating so it might sound weird) "everything comes through the eyes" sounds weird I know! but it means that at the beginning everything is physical... let's say you are at a bar and see a cute guy, you don't know if he is a good guy or a bad person, all you know is that he is hot and you want him to talk to you and buy you a drink. The same theory applies to the packaging and design of a product. If you go to a store to buy a product you are not familiar with, the first thing that is going to catch you attention is the packaging, if it looks cheap, you are not going to waste your time looking at it you pass it and walk towards the one that looks nice and eye-catching. The book says that product design can have a strong impact on product image and sales.
Finding the name for a brand is also a very important process. It needs to be unique and the most important thing to have in mind is that it needs to have the same meaning in every language. Some words can mean something in English but have a complete different meaning in Spanish or French.

A price is what a consumer pays to get a product, it is normally money but in some cases people or companies uses barter which means exchanging something to get something. At my work for example we barter ads with other organizations, instead of paying approx. 1500 to place an ad on their magazine we give then in return an exhibit space on our conference for example in that way neither has to pay and we both get what we want.
A purchasing power parity determines how much of a product a currency can buy in a country, this is something that an international marketer has to have in mind when pricing a product.
Raw materials are unprocessed products used to make other products, like chemicals, minerals and agricultural products. Component parts are pieces that are partially completed by a manufacturer and sold to another one.
The chapter also talks about business markets and how they differ from consumer markets. They are operated by a derived demand, the demand that comes from the end purchaser. Raw materials are never sold directly to a retailer for example. It first needs to be sold to a manufacturer to create component parts, and so on until it's ready to be sold to retails.
An industrial market is a type of market that has different characteristics that impact international marketing strategies. Classification, Industrial buyers, relationship development and international orientation.
Commodity products are goods that you cannot differentiate easily like grains, minerals, and petroleum for example.

International service marketing has four characteristics: intangibility indicates that a service cannot be physically possessed. As I mentioned before, there are two types of products, tangible and intangible, a service is an intangible product, something you cannot see or feel, it can be offered like a warranty but cannot be touched like a car. Inseparability, suggests that service businesses cannot be separated from their providers. Heterogeneity, means that a service can vary from provider to provider. And perishability, means that services cannot be stored, they can be very time dependant. Sometimes hiring someone from an developing country to work for you might be cheaper but the time that it would take that person to get to your country might not be worth the wait.
ISO stands for International Organization of Standardization, a set of global quality standards.