International Marketing - Essay Example

While marketing goods and services to the various countries, there are instances whereby adaptation may be necessary, like when we want the new market to become acclimatized with our new products. At other times, we may opt to employ a standardization strategy, especially if the product being marketed has a national appeal, or in a known global brand. This is a term that is used in reference to the practice of importing unauthorized products that ideally should be sold at a lower price, with the intentions of selling these at a higher market price.

The implication of a grey market is that to some extent, the company is question is offering competition to own products in the market (Cateora & Graham 2002). A grey market shall have an effect both the manufacturers and the distributors in different ways. For the manufacturer, there is the risk of having their brand value lost in the market. This is in addition to the ensuing competition that the products in the grey market give to a manufacturer’s own products. Moreover, the manufacture is forced to redesign his/her pricing strategy on a global scale, with the intention of containing this new competition that appears to ape the existing price strategy.

This is in addition to the manufacturer having to spend so that he/she may be able to solve this problem of parallel import (Terpstra & Sarathy 2002). To the distributors, the effect of a grey market is that a competition n incentive comes into effect. This is because now, we have competition that is offering to the market a similar product to that being offered by the distributors, but alt a lower price. Another effect of the grey markets to the distributors is a potential loss of customers and consequently, their market shares for a given region.

In addition the revenues generated by a distributor plummet, along with the associated profits (Cateora & Graham 2002). What this means is that the distributors shall