The marketing mix of the foreign company in Japan as influenced by image will have to be managed in a special way. The strategy must be global, coordinated and continuous.
The Japanese business community has developed a worldwide information network that efficiently feeds headquarters with all relevant data that can be gathered on target markets. The latest telecommunications and computer innovations speed up this information-processing system. This implies that a non Japanese company or institution will have to be consistent in its message and strategy to all target groups around the world. Different or contradictory data, emitted to separate markets, will be quickly confronted with each other at the main offices in Tokyo.
For example, the Diamond High Council of Antwerp (Belgium) spent a considerable amount of money to create the image "Antwerp: Diamond Capital of the World". Problems arise when the Japanese, arriving in Zaventem, the national airport of Belgium, find no confirmation of this image. However, the nearby Dutch international airport of Schiphol (Amsterdam) sells diamonds with certificates in its tax-free shops. This not only confuses the Japanese but could generate a negative image.
When companies use a national characteristic in their marketing strategy, it is clear that it should be coordinated with respective authorities and other export -oriented firms. If the notion "Purveyor to the Royal Court" provides one company with a competitive edge over the Japanese, this effect can be reinforced when several British companies pool their efforts around the same characteristic. This could open up some possibilities for producers who would otherwise not be in a position to face the initial investment. The effort should be undertaken with business and government acting in tandem. After all, such a government-business relationship has long been recognized as one of the major strengths of the Japanese.
Finally, the marketing strategy can only succeed if it has continuity. The creation of an image does not materialize overnight through some fortuitous event. It is a laborious undertaking that will undergo many tests in the marketplace.
Several Western companies operating in Japan have succeeded remarkably well in coordinated efforts at the national level. Although it must be recognized that not all the examples were in fact marketing strategies in which the image variable was taken up consciously, the market dynamics responded spontaneously to image as part of the effort.
National sports heroes are the first image references that can be applied on a large scale, as is done in the United States and Europe extensively, but nearly exclusively for consumer goods. In March 1981, Japanese television channels showed a movie on Swedish industry entitled Advantage. .. Sweden. In this IS-minute program, a series of impressions on the industry followed rapidly the sounds of a tennis ball hitting a racket; at each smashing of the ball, another industry appeared on the screen. Without mentioning the name of Bjorn Borg, the Swedish world tennis champion, the movie took a free ride on Borg's image of superiority. Some Swedish companies with investments in Japan combined their promotion budgets with the governmental one and bought prime time for advertising, reaching approximately 2.3 million households. Belgium and Spain, two countries with hardly any investment in Japan and a low-key image there, could combine efforts at a national level to create an image of quality around "Purveyor to the Royal Court". The success of Lipton's Tea proves that there is a market niche.
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