The world is a small place thanks to the Internet, but there are still plenty of differences between people by nations. Those differences often translate into global and domestic marketing problems.

As a result, marketing techniques require the use of national and cultural characteristics.

Values, concerns and attitudes need to be considered for target markets using the concept of market segmentation.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Consider Differences In People By Nations

Different cultures within the USA, and across the world, are going to have different buying habits. This presents a problem when you are trying to sell a product across nations.

The United States is known as a melting pot, and that means marketing to different cultures within one nation. That’s hard enough, but when it must be done across borders, it gets even harder.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Demographic Characteristics Vary By Nation and Culture

Demographic segments vary across the world. For example, some characteristics for Generation Y in the USA may be similar worldwide, but most will be quite different.

The World War II generation in the USA was influenced by the second world war just like most people in the Western world. However, the influence of Pearl Harbor on the USA WWII generation was greater than for those in the rest of the world.

If a business plans one campaign for the world around characteristics for USA markets, the campaign will fail in the rest of the world.

Global and Domestic Marketing: People From Different Nations Think Differently

People’s attitudes, morals, values, concerns, and expectations vary by nations. They result from each nation’s culture, history, experiences, and social expectations. Different nations vary by what they teach in their schools, what they expect within families, the role of established religion, and the type of government.

What is considered “good” in one nation may be considered “bad” in another.

For example, religious freedom is a basic right in the USA. We consider forcing a certain religion on a person to be abhorrent. Yet, in other nations, governments and powerful people force their religious perspective on others even to the point of murdering those who don’t accept their religion.

So psychographic characteristics like attitudes, values, and concerns change drastically across borders.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Buying Habits Are Nationally Specific

Each nation’s economic well-being influences buying habits of its citizens.

Obviously, the people in some nations have more spending power and more discretionary income than those in other nations. But even among comparatively wealthy nations, people spend differently.

For example, people buy even the most basic needs according to buying habits within their nations. Many buy groceries daily from local “farmer’s markets.”

In the USA, we don’t buy groceries like that. Instead, we buy many processed foods weekly or monthly. We also eat lots of fast food although we know that most of it isn’t as healthy as what we could cook at home. We just think we are too busy to spend lots of time shopping and cooking.

I’m sure that many European residents are appalled by our over-processed food and would never consider serving it to their families.

If we are so different in the way we purchase survival products like food, how much more different are we when it comes to buying other products.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Conclusion

Developing a marketing campaign for the people in one nation and trying to transfer that campaign to another nation doesn’t work.

International marketing demands that a unique marketing program be created for each nation and that marketers know characteristics of the people in each nation.

In order for businesses in all nations to improve their business and national economies, the world needs to share specific characteristics that cause people to respond to marketing campaigns differently. When that happens global and domestic marketing opportunities will become more equal.