INTERNATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF MARKETING

One way to understand the concept of international
marketing is to examine how international marketing
differs from similar concepts. Domestic marketing
is concerned with the marketing practices
within a researcher’s or marketer’s home country.
From the perspective of domestic marketing, marketing
methods used outside the home market are
foreign marketing. A study becomes comparative
marketing when its purpose is to contrast
two or more marketing systems rather than
examine a particular country’s marketing system for
its own sake. Similarities and differences between
systems are identified.
Some marketing textbooks differentiate international
marketing from global marketing
because international marketing in its literal sense
signifies marketing between nations (inter means
between).The word international may thus imply that
a firm is not a corporate citizen of the world
but rather operates from a home base. For those
authors, global or world marketing is the preferred
term, since nothing is foreign or domestic about the
world market and global opportunities.
One might question whether the subtle difference
between international marketing and multinational
marketing is significant. For practical
purposes, it is merely a distinction without a difference.
As a matter of fact, multinational firms themselves
do not make any distinction between the two
terms. It is difficult to believe that International
Business Machines will become more global if
it changes its corporate name to Multinational
Business Machines. Likewise, there is no compelling
reason for American Express and British Petroleum
to change their names to, say, Global Express and
World Petroleum. For purposes of the discussion in
this text, international, multinational, and global
marketing are used interchangeably.