History and Geography
Global Perspective
Historical Perspective in Global Business
Geography and Global Markets
Dynamics of Global Population Trends
World Trade Routes
Communication Links
To interpret behavior and attitudes in a particular culture or country, a marketer must know a country’s history and geography.
To understand fully a society’s actions and its points of view, you must have an appreciation for the influence of historical events and the geographical uniqueness to which a culture has had to adapt.
Anyone doing business in another country should understand at least the comprehensivec version of the people’s past as a matter of politeness, if not persuasion.
Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine were accepted as the basis for U.S. foreign policy during much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Manifest Destiny meant that Americans were a chosen people ordained by God to create a model society.
The Monroe Doctrine
no further European colonization in the New World
abstention of the United States from European political affairs
nonintervention by European governments in the governments of the Western Hemisphere.
Roosevelt Corollary: US prohibited non-American intervention in Latin American affairs. It also guaranteed that Latin American nations met their international obligations.
Expropriation: confiscation of foreign investments, even though the investments were making important contributions to the economies.
Geography: study of Earth’s surface, climate, continents, countries, peoples, industries, and resources.
element of the environment that confronts every marketer but that receives scant attention
Climate and Topography
Altitude, humidity, and temperature extremes are climatic features that affect the uses and functions of products and equipment.
Within a single national market, climate can be diverse enough to require major adjustments.
Mountains, oceans, seas, jungles, and other geographical features can pose serious impediments to economic growth and trade.
Geography, Nature, and Economic Growth
Less-privileged countries suffer disproportionately from natural and human-assisted catastrophes.
Climate and topography coupled with civil wars, poor environmental policies, and natural disasters push these countries further into economic stagnation.
Without irrigation and water management, droughts, floods, and soil erosion afflict them, often leading to creeping deserts that reduce the long-term fertility of the land.
Social Responsibility and Environmental Management
Consensus in the last decade
Environmental protection is not an optional extra; it is an essential part of the complex process of doing business.
Sustainable development: economic growth with “wise resource management, equitable distribution of benefits and reduction of negative effects on people and the environment from the process of economic growth.”
Current population, rural/urban population shifts, growth rates, age levels, and population control help determine today’s demand for various categories of goods.
Controlling Population Growth
Economics, self-esteem, religion, politics, and education all play critical roles in attitudes about family size.
The prerequisites to population control are
adequate incomes
higher literacy levels
education for women
universal access to healthcare
family planning
improved nutrition
change in basic cultural beliefs regarding the importance of large families.
Migration from rural to urban areas is largely a result of a desire for greater access to sources of education, healthcare, and improved job opportunities.
Worker Shortage and Immigration
Trade routes bind the world together, minimizing distance, natural barriers, lack of resources, and the fundamental differences between peoples and economies.
Trade routes represent the attempts of countries to overcome economic and social imbalances created in part by the influence of geography.
Trade routes among Europe, Asia, and the Americas were well established by the 1500s.
An underpinning of all commerce is effective communications
Knowledge of where goods and services exist and where they are needed and the ability to communicate instantaneously across vast distances.
Continuous improvements in electronic communications have facilitated the expansion of trade.
Each technological revolution has profoundly affected human conditions, economic growth, and how commerce functions.
Confucian philosophy: emphasizes the basic virtue of loyalty “of friend to friend, of wife to husband, of child to parent, of brother to brother, but, above all, of subject to lord,” that is, to country.