Asian Competitors

The following sections are included:

• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• DEDICATION
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• LIST OF ORGANISATIONS
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE

Over the past decades, marketing has transformed through several stages. Long ago, during the industrial age — when industrial machinery was the core technology — marketing was about selling the factory’s products to all who would buy them. The products were fairly basic and were designed to serve a mass market. This was Marketing 1.0 or the product-centric era…

In today’s era of hyperconnectivity, a product-centric company in Asia cannot solely rely on its internal structure and resources to generate new ideas and innovate. In order for the new product development (NPD) process to run with as much accuracy and speed, the involvement of external parties such as customers, suppliers, and regulators is absolutely necessary. The contribution of external parties in each stage and gate of the NPD process becomes increasingly important. For example, in the discovery stage, companies cannot just rely on the marketing research team to look for new ideas out in the market; at this stage, customers should be actively engaged to provide inputs. Technological advancements have greatly improved companies’ abilities to establish greater connectivity with customers, thus aiding the process of collaboration on the development of new products…

Companies need not always be competing for product leadership. They may choose a different marketing strategy by putting customers at the center of gravity. This is the main idea of the customer-centric perspective. Firms must create value for customers and see the business from the customers’ point of view. The strategic question that drives the customer-centric perspective is not “what else can we make?” but “what else can we do for our customers?” Customers and the market — not the factory or the product — stand at the core of the business…

We believe that companies concerned with social problems can obtain greater economic benefits. Citing the words of Bill Gates, “they can do good and do well at the same time”. This basic idea also underlines the emergence of the concept of human-centric marketing or Marketing 3.0. This concept asserts that we can combine economic objectives with social objectives in “one package” while gaining a sustainable competitive advantage…

Technology is not only revolutionizing the way industry players conduct business but also changing the pattern of customers’ decision-making processes. In the preconnectivity era, a customer’s journey to buying a product or service was relatively simpler and shorter and could be described with help of the 4A process: Aware, Attitude, Act, and Act Again. This funnel-shaped process demarcates various points in the customer journey: customers become aware of a brand, develop an attitude toward it — of like or dislike — based on which they decide whether to purchase it and also consider if it’s worth a repeat purchase. The shape of the funnel represents a decline in the number of customers as they move from one stage to another — people who like the brand would naturally be aware of it; those who buy like it; and those who buy again would have already purchased it once…

Marketing is about creating, enhancing, communicating, and delivering value to companies’ stakeholders. To develop a consistent value, strategic marketing concepts must be implemented. This involves the analysis of internal competitive conditions and the external environment in order to formulate a strategy to position an organization’s brand, products, and services in the minds of its stakeholders. Next, the strategy needs to be translated into a set of tactics, which are more down to earth and practical…

In the legacy era, marketing strategy is known to consist of three main elements: segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Segmentation can be defined as the way companies look to market their products and services creatively. We call segmentation a “mapping strategy” as it primarily deals with mapping the market in order to determine segments…

Marketing tactics, the second component of the marketing architecture, consist of three main elements: differentiation, marketing mix, and selling. Differentiation is the core tactic of a company that describes the uniqueness that it offers to the target market. This uniqueness is then created through the 4Ps — product, price, place, and promotion (marketing mix). Further, selling is an effective tactic to build and maintain long-term relationships based on mutual benefits with customers…

As noted previously, the third component of the marketing architecture, apart from “strategy” and “tactic”, is “value”, which consists of three sub-elements: brand, service, and process. In the horizontal era, brand, which is at the core of “value”, has undergone a transformation to include a more human character. The other two sub-elements of “value”, service and process, have also changed in the New Wave era: service has been redefined into “care” and process has become “collaboration”…

Asian companies, especially those that are going to expand their businesses beyond the local market, should adopt the 3C formula that we call the glorecalization mindset. In order to capture the minds and hearts of the increasingly digital customers, the formula must be implemented through a new, more horizontal wave of marketing…

In any market, indigenous businesses can be among the toughest niche players. Multinationals today would be much less anxious about their peers as they would have — more or less — similar business models and hence adopt similar strategies. Big global businesses, with sophisticated systems and standardized products, also tend to struggle with cultural shocks and blocks when entering new, niche local markets. Smaller domestic players that are extremely agile in meeting the needs of the local customers are difficult to predict and therefore difficult to beat in the markets that they are entrenched…

With its population size and economic growth, Asia has become one of the biggest potential market for companies from various industries. The region has been dubbed the global economic engine. Growth in Asia will be driven by rising middle-class wealth and supported by governments around the region that are implementing structural reforms and strengthening macro-economic policy frameworks…

Not many companies are truly global; most companies are usually strong only in some regions in the world. The regional scale that provides profitable opportunities makes regional markets attractive. However, even large companies with popular brands, abundant resources, decades of experience, and world-class management teams may still find it challenging to grow in markets and geographies far away from their homes…

The following section is included:

• INDEX