General Environment of Business Part II

Author : Ami Fitri Utami., SE., MSM

Talks more about the market’s dynamism, the global recession in 2008 resulted a significant effect on the market’s buying behavior changes. In this vein, the value consciousness becomes the prominent principle for buying trend during the post-recession years. For example, in years after recession consumers considerably prefer cheaper product even when they need to trade it off with the brand, and convenience. As Egol et al (2010) and Cetelem (2010) postulated that these customer realize and do not want to do the hedonistic behavior on consumptions, most of them prefer to do some savings rather to spending. Thus, with the new behavior possessed by market, companies also need to adjust the strategy. By this, Quelch & Jotz (2009) and McPartin et al (2010) aimed that there are three strategy to face this kind of shifting. First, company’s new customer should be defined and classify based on their price sensitivity. This classification then becomes the basis for the second and third strategy. The second strategy is to adjust the product offering and pricing strategies for each classified market. And the third is to adjust the message and promotional offers. All in all, Kotler et al (2010) aimed that in this era, current companies should be able to be more consumer-centric with a more collaborative and adjusted approach to the market.

Moreover, if previously the global recession resulted in changing market behavior, the mapping of economic power also changed during this era. In this vein, the global crisis in 2008 was able to accelerate the rate of some country’s economic success which includes most developing countries. As their economic growths are remain positive during the recession era, their GDP per capita will also face a major rise. Thus, the emergence of developing country’s economic growth will urge businesses to see that these countries not only as the main destination for a low cost manufacturing but also as a potential market. However, to reach the developing countries as a potential market, business need to differentiate their strategy from what they had applied in the west. In this case, businesses need to understand the local value of their market which able to be applied in all of their strategy. Thus, even the business is going global physically, strategically the business need to do a massive localization on each targeted market includes understanding cultural, political and environmental aspect.

References :

Cetelem Körkép (2010) Fogyasztás 2010-ben (Cetelem Overview 2010, Consumption in 2010),pp.1–42, BNP Paribas, Paris, Budapest.

Egol, M., Clyde, A., Rangan, K. and Sanderson, R. (2010) ‘The new consumer frugality’, Strategy+ Business, 15 March, pp.1–12

McPartin, S., Dugal, L.F. and Whitfield, M.B. (2010) The New Consumer Behavior Paradigm:

Quelch, J.A. and Jocz, K.E. (2009) ‘How to market in downturn’, Harvard Business Review