Selecting a foreign market
The ability to select a viable foreign market is a crucial undertaking whenever there is need to expand and diversify operational strategies. Before expanding to foreign markets, it is vital to consider the level of demand for products being marketed by an organization. Market demand is an essential selection criterion when diversifying into foreign markets (Hirt & Block, 2012). Both the world imports and domestic production in the targeted foreign market should be put into account when assessing demand level. When demand is evaluated appropriately, it is possible to understand both the growth rate and size of the targeted market in a foreign location. A decreasing market size may not be suitable for expansion purpose. On the other hand, a foreign market that has been growing for a number of consecutive years is bound to generate the much-needed demand for new products. In any case, a product receptivity into a new market largely depends on its demand.
Second, the level of competition matters a lot when seeking to diversify in a foreign market (Moen, Bakås, Bolstad & Pedersen, 2010). It is necessary for the management team in an organization to clearly understand the degree of competition in a targeted market before making the final decision. Some of the factors worth considering under this domain include loyalty of consumers, methods and channels of distribution used by competitors, quality of products supplied by competitors as well as their pricing strategies.
The team charged with the diversification task should also perform an assessment on how the selected country performs in various sectors of the economy. Some of the important indicators entail consumer demographics, per capita income and population. Other key factors to consider include trade barriers, political risk, distribution accessibility, climate and location, infrastructure, environmental concerns, intellectual property protection, currency convertibility, cultural knowledge, and the existing legal environment.
TV advertising
Although other modern forms of advertising have emerged, TV advertising is still vibrant in promoting goods and services in various targeted markets. Quite a large segment of the global population obtains information from Television sets. For instance, TV offers a ready platform for entertaining viewers who are spread across a wide geographical area (Kotler & Keller, 2012). In most cases, it is possible to bombard the audience with advertising news even when they are not prepared for it. Since TV advertising entails both audio and visual aspects, it remains as one of the most effective channel of advertising goods and services.
The advent of cable TV was once thought to be a major threat in effective TV advertising. However, this has never been the case. Since digital TV broadcasting has become mandatory across several nations in the world, the audience can still be reached through the cable TV just as it used to be with analogue broadcasting. It might not be true to argue that TV viewership is losing its value to the public because some households even prefer owning two to three sets.
Kotler and Keller (2012) argue that advertising through TV is a rather expensive undertaking. Nevertheless, embedded advertisements can still be incorporated in movies displayed in TVs. Movies that were once in theaters tend to attract viewership of TVs. In other words, when such theater movies are played on TVs, it is possible to attract and retain the attention of a large audience. To a large extent, TV advertising is the most appealing platform for marketing goods and services (Prakash, 2012). In regions where other forms of advertisements (such as billboards, internet and radio) are not accessible, TV comes in handy in marketing goods and services.
References
Hirt,G. & Block, S. (2012). Fundamentals of investment management. (10th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Kotler, P., & Keller, K. (2012). Marketing management (14th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
Moen, Ø., Bakås, O., Bolstad, A., & Pedersen, V. (2010). International market expansion strategies for high-tech firms: Partnership selection criteria for forming strategic alliances. International Journal of Business and Management, 5(1), 20- 30.
Prakash, S. (2012). A study on the effectiveness of advertising through TV channels. International Journal of Applied Services Marketing Perspectives, 1(2), 101-106.