As we broaden our viewpoint of marketing as
a worldwide phenomenon, we must come to a better understanding of global
marketing processes. This can provide us with a forum for fulfilling our
global responsibilities as marketing scholars. Marketers and researchers
have included various domestic minorities and international cultural groups
in their marketing and marketing research efforts, but we need to make
global marketing still more inclusive by progressively targeting the great
majority of consumers who have been underserved—the economically disadvantaged
the world over, especially in developing nations. Companies engaged in
international marketing activities need to be thinking more inclusively
when they strategize on how to do business across and within national and
regional borders. Moving beyond serving the upper and middle socioeconomic
classes to the presently emerging and economically submerged consuming
masses is required if marketing is to fulfill its global promise: creating
value for the world’s consumers.
How can well-intentioned marketers and research
scholars shepherd the marginal and marginalized masses into the global
economy (thereby effecting upside opportunities for marketers and consumers)
without simultaneously leaving many of these consumers vulnerable (i.e.,
while limiting downside risks)? Key research questions must cover both
sides of the same coin: (1) serving the world’s presently underserved consumers
and yet (2) preventing their exploitation by global marketing opportunists.
1. In December 2001, Matthew O’Brien encouraged
us to expand our marketing perspective to billions of the world’s neediest
consumers. Understanding how to engage in B2-4B (business to four billion
consumers; James 2001) marketing is essential for reaching consumers living
in abject poverty and for fulfilling our global responsibilities as marketing
practitioners and academicians. Globally inclusive marketing would strive
to meet the needs of the billions of physically deprived and economically
destitute. How are these needs currently being served, if at all, and by
whom? How might accepted marketing theory and conventional marketing practice
be revisited, revised, and perhaps transformed to benefit the great majority
of the world’s burgeoning consumers who are presently excluded from global
marketing efforts? How can marketers and marketing scholars help move these
consumers from subsistence living to sustainable consumption?
2. In June, Kate Gillespie (2002) reminded
us that multinational marketers have been complicit in smuggling goods
and directly involved in black markets. The global trade of conflict diamonds
should have us inquiring whether international marketers play a supportive
role in the marketing system undergirding this and other vexing social
problems. Globally inclusive marketing would strive to reduce consumer
vulnerability and eliminate consumer exploitation. Are consumers increasingly
vulnerable to cross-border opportunists? Is consumer exploitation expanding
(shrinking) as globalization processes evolve? Are global marketers profiting
handsomely on the one hand, yet on the brink of moral bankruptcy on the
other? Who are these marketing opportunists? How do they differ, if at
all, from other international marketers? How can they, their marketing
efforts, and those vulnerable to unethical global marketing practices be
distinguished, classified, and conceptually understood?
The collective efforts of research scholars
and their potential impact on marketing practice, markets, and consumers
should be more consciously considered. By focusing predominantly on topics
of particular interest to mainstream practitioners, we risk continued inattention
to otherwise significant issues of our times. But if we devote attention
to these latter issues and join hands with globally inclusive marketers,
we might gain a greater sense of satisfaction in our work while contributing
considerably to the world in which we live. Those of us in academia in
the developed world are fortunate for what we have and the lifestyle we
lead relative to billions of others the world over. Should we not, as international
marketing scholars and practitioners, work toward improving the desperate
lives of those who are so very much less fortunate?
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References
Gillespie, Kate (2002), “Are International
Marketers Responsible for Smuggling?,” Global Marketing SIG, Research Issues,
June.
James, Dana (2001), “B2-4B Spells Profits:
Billions of Third World Buyers Are Rich Opportunity,” Marketing News, November
5, pp. 1+.
O’Brien, Matthew (2001), “Needs and Wants,”
Global Marketing SIG, Research Issues, December. |
