Marketing is the process through which a company familiarizes potential customers with its products and tries to get them to make purchases. A company can sell only what customers will buy, so managers must continually ask themselves, "What do customers want and what will customers buy?" A lesson multinational managers have learned over years of trying to answer this question is that equating customer wants with customer purchases is dangerous. Marketing textbooks are replete with anecdotal and documented incidents of marketing blunders. A mismatch between what the firm thinks the customers want and what the customers actually buy can be caused either by the firm's misjudging market trends (bad marketing research) or by the customers' changing their buying habits for psychological, economic, or political reasons. In either case, a mismatch between what the company offers and what the customers buy results in large inventories of unwanted products and/ or large losses of customers to competitors.
The international marketing manager's task is to assess customers' needs and purchases and inform production managers as to the types, quantities, and qualities of products most likely to be sold. Often hundreds of markets worldwide must be researched, analyzed, and targeted. Subsequently, a multitude of strategies for market segmentation, product introduction, pricing, and promotion must be coordinated so as to avoid missed sales in one area and inventory buildups in another.
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