For most ambitious companies in today's complex business environment, gaining competitive advantage and achieving expansion in capacity often requires internationalising operations and entering new markets with the goal of building a broader and more diversified customer base. However, internationalisation typically presents the problem of how to establish the company’s business or brand in a foreign market, considering the cultural and contextual differences in global markets (De Mooij, 1998). Due to the spread of globalisation and the convergence of markets and economies, it has been increasingly acknowledged that a broad range of products and services can potentially have a global appeal and generate considerable revenues across the world. As long as the marketing activities designed to promote products and services are tailored to suit respective markets in line with the prevailing cultural and environmental realities, there is every possibility of achieving commercial success (Kandampully and Duddy, 1999). Accordingly, global marketing requires a flexible framework or structure that enables companies to respond dynamically to observed differences in the respective markets in which they do business (Philip et al., 1994). This makes it possible to organize, plan, and control global marketing activities effectively and efficiently (Keegan, 1989). This report therefore focuses on the marketing activities of the furniture market, specifically on two leading international furniture manufacturing and retailing companies: IKEA and Ashley Furniture Industries, with a view to establishing the kinds of marketing activities they have adopted to establish their presence in specific countries.
IKEA in Russia
As the largest furniture r...
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Each country has its own culture, with subcultures inside the dominant culture (Schaefer, 2009, p.69). “Culture is the totality of learned, socially transmitted custom, knowledge, material objects, and behavior” (Schaefer, 2009, p.57). Values, artifacts, and ideas are also part of culture (p57). With globalization there is the integration of these cultural aspects, as well as language, social movements, and ideas throughout the world (Schaefer, 2009, p.20). Internationalization helps with this integration. Internationalization is the process of planning and implementing products and services so that they can easily be adapted to specific local languages and cultures (Linfo, 2006). Numerous American retail firms have expanded to other countries. Many have been quite successful due to their internationalization. However, failure to study the culture, retail practices, and consumer market of the country they intend to expand to can be quite costly. Although Home Depot is one of the world’s largest home improvement stores, their expansion to Chile cost them enormous financial loss, resulting in their divestment (Bianchi & Ostale, 2006, section 1, para3). This paper will look at successful international expansion of Home Depot stores, analyze what mistakes were made in Chile, and make suggestions of what could have been done differently.
Hence the corporation needs to evaluate and possibly adjust the corporate branding strategy on a regular basis. Obviously, a corporate brand should stay relevant, differentiated and consistent throughout time, so it is a crucial balance. The basic parts of the corporate branding strategy like vision, identity, personality and values are not to be changed often as they are the basic components. The changes are rather small and involve the thousands of daily actions and interpersonal behaviors, which the corporations employ as part of the brand marketing efforts. But make sure complacency does not take root in the organization and affects the goal setting. The strong brands are the ones which are driven forward by owners whom never get tired
Every home, apartment, and dorm room will often require some piece of furniture. One important way to remain competitive in this market is to be competitive with price without sacrificing quality; thereby, maintaining a cost leadership over any competitors. In fact, to become a cost leader would give a firm such as Ikea a competitive cost advantage and add customer value in an efficient and sustainable way over its competitors (Heizer and Render, 2014).
Various competitors have adapted or created a similar approach to marketing furniture and fittings and therefore Ikea’s market share is being threatened. Most of Ikea 's rivals are located in Europe where Ikea makes most of its revenues, but the competition is very limited everywhere else due to Ikea’s excellence in cost leadership and differentiation in their products.
IKEA is a widely famous furniture retailer company which has started its operation since 1943. Now it has wide variety of 9500 product items. It has been operating in 24 countries with 253 stores among them 32 are run by franchisees. 560 million people visited their stores in 2008 by physic and 455 million on their website. For that they earned 23 billion Euros as sales revenue. The competitive advantage of this company is its low price and sustainable marketing strategy. To compete in the market and to win the customers’ mind they took many business strategies. In this assignment, the definitions of different terms, their engagement, different business strategy, marketing programs, SWOT analysis, SMAR...
With a presence of fifty stores in North America, thirty eight of which are in the United States, IKEA’s North Am...
Globalisation is having a significant impact on marketing. This is because a business, by distributing itself across international borders makes its product more readily available to international customers and creates employment opportunities in the country it has moved to. To understand the impacts, globalisation, marketing (particularly market segmentation), global marketing strategies and general history of Qantas need to be examined.
IKEA is more than a furniture store they are a company driven by values (IKEA, 2014). The company seeks to make their consumers lives easier by providing them with modern, innovative, inexpensive products which they use to tackle daily home activities. IKEA Group has 298 stores in 26 different countries (IKEA, 2014). The company’s vision is “to create a better everyday life for the many people” (IKEA, 2014, para 1). Using innovative techniques for creating, producing, and marketing their products IKEA can provide consumers with durable products for reason...
Branding is defined as “the promot[ion] of a product or service by identifying it with a particular brand” (Merriam-Webster, 2015). Branding is also used to create a corporate image or brand by utilizing logos, corporate statements, and other images that will be associated with or displayed on all of that company’s products (Wolak, 2002). A brand is a valuable, enduring asset that is essential in creating and maintaining competitive advantage in an industry (Wolak, 2002; Murphy, 1988). This corporate asset can be just as important as the product or service behind it, because it carries name recognition and peace of mind to customers in the purchase decisions they make everyday (Hall, 2008). Brands essentially work as a “shorthand device” for consumers to evaluate product decisions by conveying a message of uniform quality, credibility, and experience
This paper, therefore seeks to critically analyze and present an optional organizational structure that IKEA can adopt to better support its international strategy and elevate its innovative approach in the global expansion.
Branding and marketing are both buzzwords that to the uninitiated seem interchangeable. After all, they’re both methods businesses can use to increase their profits and productivity. Despite this end goal, there are subtle differences in how and why the tactics are used.
IKEA is known globally for its low prices and innovatively designed furniture. In China, however, it faced peculiar problems. Its low-price strategy created confusion among aspirational Chinese consumers while local competitors copied its designs. This case study analyses how IKEA adapted its strategies to expand and become profitable in China. It also assesses some lessons the company learnt in China that might be useful in India, where it plans to open its first store by 2014 and 25 stores in 10 to 15 years.
IKEA conceptualizes and assembles goods and products that are designed to be practical, while at the same time possess tasteful designs and accessible at a low cost (IKEA, 2016). IKEA markets itself as a store established for the people, such that they are open to being the people 's companions for an improved life. The positioning testimony of IKEA opens up a partnership with its customers is to arrive at the desired effects perceived by their clients and by the store performing their part in the development. This permits the company to serve the large middle and low income earning groups as they are able to secure furniture affordably. This marketing strategy is called, “merchandise”, the product range and the prices of the products (Waller, 2014). This results to a cost-effective technique of providing for the needs of the customer and the price should be the same in every market. As new companies hit the market, several of them try and mirror IKEA. It does not prove beneficial and IKEA manages to keep their competitive edge and advantage over the companies. They are still the strongest retailer in business and vastly growing. The key to their continued success is
...enture into overseas market comes with expectations as well as uncertainties due to unfamiliarity. Charles and Keith, the fashion retailer, has to understand clearly that what appeals in one market might not be accepted in the others and this is almost the same for all industries. Thus, a thorough research on cultural background has to be done before entering an unfamiliar ground.
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