Apple's marketing strategy in China Literature review

Apple's marketing strategy in China - Literature review Example The competitiveness of the global environment has been made possible by technological advances that have leveled the playing field for international businesses to penetrate cross-border markets (Friedman, 2007). Modern means of communication, which facilitates information gathering and business transactions, â€Å"allowing people around the world to compete, connect, and collaborate† (Cherunimal, 2010). Nor is the globalization trend limited to commerce and trade, such that â€Å"No institution, whether a business, a university or hospital, can hope to survive, let alone to succeed, unless it measures up to the standards set by the leaders in its field any place in the world† (Peter Drucker, 2007, p. 66). Several frameworks for international marketing planning have been conceptualized to capture its nature and scope, although the specific nuances of the process continues to evolve with the changing dynamics of globalization. Li and Li (2009) proposed an Internet-enabled , multi-agent-based hybrid framework, which was designed to address the three types of uncertainty conditions identified by Ashill and Jobber (2001), namely: state uncertainty, or the inability to forecast future events in the global marketing environment; effect uncertainty, which results from failure to understand the causes and effects of the changing environment; and response uncertainty, or the inability to predict how the market will respond to the changes. The framework is graphically portrayed in the following diagram: Figure 1: The Internet-enabled multi-agent-based hybrid intelligent support framework (Li & Li, 2009). The decision-making framework synthesizes the processes identified in earlier academic literature. Environmental scanning and monitoring involves the continuous observation of political, economic, social and technological events, and competitors’ moves (Jain, 1990). Strategic analysis assesses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, evalu ates the principal criteria or factors which the firm must address. Management identifies the strategic intention, risk, synergy effects, and market attractiveness, and thereby defines the firm’s competitive advantage. Go versus no-go decision under uncertainty is a pass/fail test conditioned by fulfillment of the Go condition and failure of the No-go condition (Cohen, Rolph & Steffey, 1998). The decision-makers decide the course of action and possible alternatives to take, with cognizance of the state, effect, and response uncertainties. Entry mode selection under uncertainty is the choice of the manner in which the firm enters the target market, given the degree of risk and the level of market control (Chee & Harris, 1998). Finally, formulating marketing strategies is concerned with the means of achieving the defined marketing goals and objectives towards creating the competitive advantage defined for the firm. These processes will be more closely described in the following sections. In the hybrid model, the processes are carried out by multiple software agents, working in an Internet-enabled system through a suitable software architecture and underlying integration method (Li & Li, 2009). Table 1: International marketing envir