Industrial Marketing Strategy in Global (2)

Since I have been in Singapore for more than half a month from the beginning of this year, I have had many chances to engage in discussions with members of local subsidiaries. I have heard that it is not enough for the local office to only communicate and collaborate with their perspective corporate headquarters in Japan, although they have already begun conducting business in Southeast Asia, including Singapore.

What this means is that on one hand, corporate headquarters do not grasp what really matters within their local offices, and on the other hand, their local offices do not completely understand the effort of developing technologies and products in their headquarters. As a result, products planned and developed in the limited scope of understanding within the Japanese headquarters cannot be marketable in Southeast Asia. This is because the product’s specifications and prices are not suitable for the local markets.

Recently, we have been receiving frequent offers for consultation to build the structures of business development, to include global businesses. Reflecting on those discussions in Singapore, I realized the importance to involve the local offices that have ample amounts of knowledge about their local markets, not only in selling, but also in the preparation of planning and developing the appropriate strategies.

In my last column, I introduced the 7 points For Industrial Marketing In Global, and I described the details of the first three points (Figure 1). In this column, I will describe point No. 4, “Benchmarking global competitors without preoccupation.”