Welcome to the very first segment of this course, where I will lay the foundation for what marketing means, not only in the general sense but also in the international marketing context. Okay, what is marketing? I'm sure that you've heard the word even if you've never studied it. And I can quote you a reference about what marketing means, but I've never been a believer in long definitions. So I'll keep it really short. So for me, and I've been teaching marketing for a very long time, simply means Noon Nopi. Noon Nopi you ask. What is that? Well, it's actually a Korean word, and it means eye level. So I'm watching you through the camera at a certain eye level. Now let's say that I were to kneel this low. Or to kinda sort of stand on my toes. I will be out of frame. And that's sort of the problem with Noon Nopi. Because Noon Nopi is about not only the matching of eyes, but it's also the matching of minds. And this can be between any two or more parties. So, we don't have to limit this to just a seller and a consumer. It could be between people. It can be between let's say a school and their students. And I think what's lost on many people often, that marketing also has to be done inside an organization. Let's say by a company with its employees. And this matters very much, especially in service marketing. Okay, so if Noon Nopi is done very well, in the previous slide I had a yellow bar, and I had a blue bar. And let's say that the yellow is the seller, and that the blue is the buyer. Well then you have this sort of marriage between the two parties. What was once yellow and blue now together have become green. That in essence is what Noon Nopi is all about. It fosters relationships and this relationship will last as long as each party keeps their Noon Nopi at the same level. Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen. So at first or over time there may be this gap created between the parties. Over time, consumers may become more sophisticated in terms of the level of quality which, in essence, is a very subjective sort of concept, become higher. Such as in terms of more personalized service. And what results is dissatisfaction by consumers. Worse yet, they may kinda spread that sort of bad word of mouth that a company is not doing well. The opposite can happen, where we may over-estimate consumers' expectations, or their ability to buy. And this is just as bad because with us overestimating especially their ability to buy, we may overprice our products. And the result here, again, would be unmet demand, and from our standpoint, unmet supply. Okay, now that we've understood marketing in general means, let's try to understand what international marketing means. Well, to me it's the very same thing. The only difference is that we're adding a market. So, in contrast to the previous slide where we only had two parties, I've added an extra party. And it just so happens that their Noon Nopi is the same as that at home. And if the circumstances permit that, that enables us to simply extend our offering. It's a very good situation to be in. And it could be, for example, Canada and the US. And I might have Canadians arguing that, oh no we're different. Yes, to some extent you are different, but for many standpoints, and having lived in Canada, I can say that many aspects between those two markets are similar. And therefore, the marketing of products can be very similar as well. But here too, we have possibilities for either under Noon Nopi or over Noon Nopi. And here in Asia, many consumers are becoming much more sophisticated in terms of what they are demanding, such as for luxury products. So, I think even though that income is very low in some countries, if we look at the target segment, that is where maybe such instances of under Noon Nopi occur. And of course, the opposite can happen as well. We may generalize from the per capita income that our products are more affordable, but when we look more closely into some other segments within that population that may not be true. Therefore again, our prices, our level of expectations about our consumer, especially our target consumer, may be actually too high. Okay, there are many variations of that theme. So we hear words like multinational marketing and global marketing. And for me, again, we can still apply the concepts of Noon Nopi here. So in the case of multinational marketing, that's a situation where a supplier is able to meet the Noon Nopi levels of many consumers across many different countries. So instead of just assuming that we need just one type of Noon Nopi, or product, we can create a multiple markets, such as a green market and a orange market. We'll try the combination of course the blue and red with yellow. And this results in a greater expansion of our market. What then is global marketing? Well global marketing is, in a way, proactively unifying the different markets into one Noon Nopi. Even though differences still exist, it's sorta the notion that we can find this greater common ground. But the caveat here is that you still have gaps remaining, which I've indicated with these blue and red arrows. So this sort of leaves some room that competitors, either global or local, may exploit. So that's something that we have to be aware of, and we have to make sure that our global marketing proposition still outweigh the more localized ones. Okay, so the key international marketing takeaway here is that the concept of Noon Nopi matters no matter where you are. That is, I think, the lingua franca of marketing. But in terms of how you do it, it depends. It depends on the circumstances, in terms of the economic circumstances, in terms of the regulatory circumstances, in terms of the cultural circumstances. And that said, if still the circumstances are similar, that enables us to extend. But to the extent that they are different, we have to adapt, we have to match the Noon Nopi better for those markets. And these markets aren't static, they are becoming more similar. You do have the so called convergence. Not only in terms of technology and infrastructure, but also even in terms of culture. And that is where, again, we may try to create through this more unified kind of demand on the part of consumers. And that's what globalized marketing speaks of.
