1) Indian food preparation versus Western food preparation. (2) Values and customs that might affect opinions about microwave ovens. (3) The effects of competition in the market. Answer the questions and consider its affects in India’s marketing This article was written in year 2000, when the Internet saw a massive growth from its birth from year 1994. It is said that: International communication network (W.W.W) is the second greatest invention of mankind, after the first one is language. According to the articles, more and more businesses are discovering the W.W.W as a fundamental communication tool used to conduct daily business. Larger and small companies are embracing the web to communicate with current and prospective customers in a same cost and ease as in their countries. The internet Era is changing the way people doing business. It hasthe fastest growing and most innovative componentsthat make them center to the paradigm of marketing. In some way, digital marketing is different with the traditional networking as it shifts from “one-way” to “two-way” information flows between companies and consumers. Digital is excellent way to broaden your network “one- to- many” and create great opportunities to establish relationship with customers in a mutual communication. Never before has it been so easy to access information on a worldwide basic and never before so many people been exposed to and used a single information sharing system. Therefore, many firms have to rethink their strategy and place more emphasis on digital world. Reza Kiani also pointed out the many marketing opportunities on the Web as a twoway Communication, in four logical situations: Company-to-consumer, consumer-tocompany, consumer-to-consumer, company-to-company. (1) Company-to-consumer: According to Morgan (1996), marketers can use interactive media to provide higher services and lower cost by delivering up-dated product and non-product related information. Compare to traditional marketing communication channel, digital marketing is faster, less expensive, highly immediate communication, round the clock and global. It offers wider and deeper material and richer advertisement content. Assignment 1 3 Many articles pointed out the 3 basic advantages to business using the Web as: Addressability, Flexibility and accessibility. The strong “Addressability” of the web is the primary marketing resources for many firm to define target market, with the “ Flexibility”, customer will shape the firms that serve them. (2) Consumer-to-company: The consumer is now an active participant, and a partner in the production. Marketing today has learned that the probability of purchase by a repeat buyer is much greater than that by a randomly mailed house-hold who has never been a customer. As the product or service becomes customeised, the consumer faces serious problems to identify the product or service s/he desires. To deal with this difficulty, Blattnerd.

1. 1) Indian food preparation versus Western food preparation.
(2) Values and customs that might affect opinions about
microwave ovens.
(3) The effects of competition in the market.
Answer the questions and consider its affects in India’s
marketing
This article was written in year 2000, when the Internet saw a
massive growth from its
birth from year 1994. It is said that: International
communication network (W.W.W) is the
second greatest invention of mankind, after the first one is
language.
According to the articles, more and more businesses are
discovering the W.W.W as a
fundamental communication tool used to conduct daily business.
Larger and small companies
are embracing the web to communicate with current and
prospective customers in a same cost
and ease as in their countries. The internet Era is changing the
way people doing business. It
hasthe fastest growing and most innovative componentsthat
make them center to the paradigm

2. of marketing.
In some way, digital marketing is different with the traditional
networking as it shifts
from “one-way” to “two-way” information flows between
companies and consumers. Digital
is excellent way to broaden your network “one- to- many” and
create great opportunities to
establish relationship with customers in a mutual
communication. Never before has it been so
easy to access information on a worldwide basic and never
before so many people been
exposed to and used a single information sharing system.
Therefore, many firms have to
rethink their strategy and place more emphasis on digital world.
Reza Kiani also pointed out the many marketing opportunities
on the Web as a twoway Communication, in four logical
situations: Company-to-consumer, consumer-tocompany,
consumer-to-consumer, company-to-company.
(1) Company-to-consumer: According to Morgan (1996),
marketers can use interactive media
to provide higher services and lower cost by delivering up-dated
product and non-product
related information. Compare to traditional marketing
communication channel, digital

3. marketing is faster, less expensive, highly immediate
communication, round the clock and
global. It offers wider and deeper material and richer
advertisement content.
Assignment 1 3
Many articles pointed out the 3 basic advantages to business
using the Web as:
Addressability, Flexibility and accessibility. The strong
“Addressability” of the web is
the primary marketing resources for many firm to define target
market, with the “
Flexibility”, customer will shape the firms that serve them.
(2) Consumer-to-company: The consumer is now an active
participant, and a partner in the
production. Marketing today has learned that the probability of
purchase by a repeat buyer
is much greater than that by a randomly mailed house-hold who
has never been a customer.
As the product or service becomes customeised, the consumer
faces serious problems to
identify the product or service s/he desires. To deal with this
difficulty, Blattnerd (1994)
suggest that it will be necessary for the firm to develop
integrative information –processing

4. system to simplify the consumer’s decision process. The system
should allow the customer
to enter specific desired characteristic and trade-off and then
design the product. If the
product costs too much, the consumer can look at the related
options to reduce it.
(3) Consumers-to-consumers: Interactive media allows
marketers to establish a dialogue and
benefit from nay possibilities that media can provide. The
concept of interactivity can be
clarified better by the notion of the on-line communities
(4) Company-to-company: The rule of the game in the
interactive media is changed and it is
expected more co-operation will take place among companies in
the future.
Lastly, the author suggests that the new marketing models for
marketing in the new
environment should consider all opportunities which the
interactive media can provide for
marketers and be well-matched with the new marketing
paradigms.
Even though this article has written 17 years ago, but they are
correct in predicting the

5. marketing trends. Nowadays, digital marketing is an excellent
way to broaden network beyond
referral. Social media is a “must” for marketing in building
relationship with clients.
Consumers can interact more with Influencer Marketing, Mobile
Video, Livestreaming.
Chatbots... Thus, company should adopt a continuous
improvement strategy challenged by the
digital revolution and to changing consumer behavior.
Assignment 1 4
Reference
G. Reza Kiani (2010). Marketing opportunities in digital world.
Internet Research, Vol 8. Iss 22
pp.185-194. Retrieved from:
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/106622498102
11656
The People’s Republic of China opened up to foreign
investments in the late 1970s. Since that
time, numerous companies have tried to establish operations and
sell their products to
customers in China. Many more companies will try in the years
to come—China is expected to
have some 190 million people in the middle- and upper-income

6. categories by 2020. This is an
increase from only about 17 million people in these income
brackets as recently as in 2010.
China’s purchasing power for virtually all products and services
has strong potential, and
foreign companies will seek these market opportunities. What
have we learned culturally that
can help Western-based companies in China’s marketplace?
Some background on China can serve as a starting point for
better understanding the culture in
China and what some well-known companies such as Best Buy
and eBay have done to target the
Chinese marketplace. The motivation for many foreign
companies to enter China—beyond those
that have been there for a few decades for reasons of low-cost
production—was the triple growth
of the Chinese economy that was seen from 2000 to 2010. China
overtook Japan to become the
second-largest economy in the world behind only the United
States, and its large population
makes for an enormous target market. Investment from foreign
companies was the largest
driver of China’s growth in the decade from 2000 to 2010.
However, many companies also

7. increased their exports to China. The United States, for
example, saw its companies increase
exports to China by 542 percent from 2000 to 2011 (from about
$16.2 billion to $103.9 billion),
while total exports to the rest of the world increased by only 80
percent in the same time period.
Interestingly, while foreign investments grew, domestic
consumption as a share of the Chinese
economy declined from 46 percent in 2000 to 33 percent in
2010. This consumption decline—
coupled with slower growth globally and, ultimately, the
worldwide economic downturn that
started in 2008—raised questions about China’s momentum.
Right now, around 85 percent of
mainstream Chinese consumers are living in the top 100
wealthiest cities. By the year 2020,
these advanced and developing cities will have relatively few
customers who are lower than the
middle- and upper-income brackets by Chinese standards. The
expectation is that these
consumers will be able to afford a range of products and
services, such as flat-screen televisions
and overseas travel, making the Chinese customer much more of
a target for a wide variety of

8. consumption. This begs the question, can the unprecedented
Chinese growth really continue,
and would it come from increased consumption?
The resounding answer is yes according to research conducted
by McKinsey & Company.
McKinsey found that barring another major economic shock
similar to what we saw in 2008,
China’s gross domestic product (GDP) will continue to grow,
albeit not at the historic levels seen
between 2000 and 2010 when it grew about 10.4 percent
annually. The growth from 2010 to
2020 is expected to be about 7.9 percent per year, which is still
far above the expected growth
for the United States (2.8 percent annually), Japan (1.2 percent
annually), and Germany (1.7
percent annually)—the three countries among the top four
worldwide economies along with
China. And, the key is that consumption will now be the driving
force behind the growth instead
of foreign investment. The consumption forecast opens up
opportunities for foreign companies
to engage with Chinese consumers who are expected to have
more purchasing power and

9. discretionary spending.
But culturally translating market success from one country or
even a large number of countries
to the Chinese marketplace is not necessarily as straightforward
as it may seem. Often, a
combination of naiveté, arrogance, and cultural
misunderstanding have led many well-known
companies to fail in China. Lack of an understanding of issues
such as local demands, buying
habits, consumption values, and Chinese customers' personal
beliefs led to struggles for
companies that had been very successful elsewhere in the world.
Let’s take a brief look at Best
Buy and eBay as two examples.
Best Buy, the mega-store mainly focused on consumer
electronics, was founded in 1966 as an
audio specialty store. Best Buy entered China in 2006 by
acquiring a majority interest in China’s
fourth-largest appliance retailer, Jiangsu Five Star Appliance,
for $180 million. But culture
shock hit Best Buy, best described by Shaun Rein, the founder
of China Market Research Group.
He pointed to a few reasons for this culture shock and lack of
success. First, the Chinese will not

10. pay for Best Buy’s overly expensive products unless they are a
brand like Apple. Second, there is
too much piracy in the Chinese market, and this reduces demand
for electronics products at
competitive market prices. Third, like many Europeans, the
Chinese do not want to shop at huge
mega-stores. So, these three seemingly easy-to-understand
cultural issues created difficulties for
Best Buy. Solving these issues, Best Buy believed that it would
have to develop and implement a
different business model for the Chinese market than it has
used, for example, in the United
States.
Question #1: How far should a company go outside its normal
business model to adhere to
cultural values and beliefs of a new market?
eBay, the popular e-business site focused on consumer-to-
consumer purchases, was founded in
1995. The company was one of the true success stories that
lived through the dot-com bubble in
the 1990s. It is now a multi-billion-dollar business with
operations in more than 30 countries.
But China’s unique culture created problems for eBay in that

11. market. Contrary to the
widespread cultural issues that faced Best Buy, one company in
particular (TaoBao) and one
feature more specifically (built-in instant messaging) shaped a
lot of the problems that eBay ran
into in China. Some 200 million shoppers are using TaoBao to
buy products, and the company
accounts for almost 80 percent of online transaction value in
China. Uniquely, TaoBao’s built-in
instant messaging system has been cited as a main reason for its
edge over eBay in China.
Basically, customers wanted to be able to identify a seller’s
online status and communicate with
them directly and easily—a function not seamlessly
incorporated into eBay’s China system.
Clearly, built-in instant text messaging is a solvable obstacle in
doing business in China. It
sounds easy now when we know about it, but may not always be
the case when we take into account all the little things that are
important in a market.
Question #2: How can a foreign company entering China ensure
that it tackles the most
important “little” things that end up being huge barriers to
success as we approach the year

12. 2020 when China is expected to have significantly increased
purchasing power among its
middle class?