Global Marketing Professor

Over the past few decades sustainability has become a key focus for many companies; but the term is board and has different meaning from industry to industry. For many companies sustainability focuses on material and packaging of a product, and factors like education, environment, water, or power are not addressed by these sustainability programs.

Recently Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) launched a program called BETTER WORLD, “Our Dream is to Bring People Together for a Better World. We are building a company to last, brewing beer and building brands that will continue to bring people together for the next 100 years and beyond.” The key component of this strategy is companies view on the environments effects on its product. AB InBEV is reliant on high quality ingredients, which rely heavily on a healthy environment.

To accomplish this task, AB InBev has set rather significant sustainability goals by 2025. For water stewardship, they’ve pledged to have 100% improved water availability and quality. For packaging, they want to have 100% of their products packaging to be returnable or made from recycled content. For the environment and power, they want to purchase 100% of their electricity from renewable sources and reduce 25% their CO2 emission across their value change.[1]

Anheuser-Busch InBev is the world largest beer brewing company and has a 30% global market share, with location in every major market. In 2017, AB InBev produced 612.6 million hectoliters of beer worldwide. [2] When putting that into prospective that’s more water than the two largest man-made lakes in the United States combined, Lake Powell and Lake Mead. When such a large company makes sustainability pledges on such a level, the impacts will be immense. Especially when you factor how they need to accomplish these goals in underdeveloped markets that don’t have well developed infrastructure.

Water will be one of the biggest sustainability issues in future with the first major city, Cape Town, South Africa, on the verge of running out of tap water at some point in 2018. In 2015, AB InBev and SAB Miller had a 98% market share which equivalent to approximately 3 billion liters of beer.[3]  Even the most minor water efficiency gains on production could conserve millions of liters of water per year.

AB InBev sustainability programs covers much more than most typical corporate sustainability program. AB InBev seems to be committed to major issue that will be a major problem in their field in the coming decades. AB InBev is focused on the next 100 year of growth, and tackling these issues will allow the company to remain an industry leader.

[1] http://www.ab-inbev.com/better-world.html

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/269114/production-volume-of-anheuser-busch-inbev-by-region/

[3] https://www.drinkstuff-sa.co.za/heineken-grabs-market-share-sabs-nose/

 

Many social factors influence markets that retail businesses serve. Business are keenly interested in effective marketing and in the quality of the products and services they sell. Many food businesses in the U.S. understand that they need to become familiar with the various social factors that can influence their customers’ buying behaviors. Further more, some business even become expert in leveraging social media to build brand loyalty.

 Ben& jerry is a high quality ice-cream manufacturer who focusing on creating Innovative flavor of the ice-creams and improving the quality of life for their customers.

They are different than other ice-cream brands on creating a Social progressive brand image, which they focusing on social, economic in addition to product aspects. Ben & Jerry’s has the best social media presence in U.S. restaurant industry beating the giants like McDonald and Starbucks.

They’ve been on the cutting edge with respect to environmental causes; they are good on communicating with customers on social media. For example, Ben& jerry are actively involved in social factors like the presidential campaigns by making politically related ads and launch limited time flavor with names like Empower mint and Bernie’s yearning. It’s their strategy to use their product to connect with their customers on an emotional level. Engagement has always been a high priority for the brand and the company has remained a strong presence on social medias following trendy news and social events.

 

Another way that Ben and jerry is different from other brand is they offer customer with high-perceived value by the use of high quality, innovative flavoring, natural ingredients as well as considering environmental issues while production and distribution.

Taco bell is an American fast food restaurant held the biggest market share in low cost Mexican fast food market and identified as winner with millennial. They seem to be aware that their target market is young people who looking for a different option for late night snack or people between 16-33 years old who know that eating healthy is important but also enjoy having one or two taco from time to time. Taco bell is one of the early players that recognize the importance of social media in the lives of millennial and understand how the social media can help boosting the brand’s popularity. The company’s has 1.86 million followers on twitters and regularly top lists of best brand accounts on social media.

Brand loyalty is defined as the partiality of a consumer towards one business or product over another, and it can truly make or break a company. In today’s international marketing environment, brand loyalty depends on your ability to leverage the power of social media to build connections with your prospects and customers.

 

 

In any industry today, operating globally became an essential part of expanding your business and increasing profit. The demand for data continue to grow, companies need to stay ahead of the curve not by just providing additional content, but more so meet client’s expectation globally on quality and price prospective. Because of the emerging market, the global marketing challenges presents their own set of issues. It has become very important to analyze the risk and manage it by making significant investment in research. Typically, most companies do their due diligence prior to investment and expansion. Using a full intelligence profiling, businesses will be able to protect the business integrity and reduce any additional risk the business may faces. These research can be done in many segments using various infrastructure and surveillance operatives that will let businesses get the most accurate assessment possible.

Investment in research and profiling has gone much farther than just the small improvement on existing products. Companies are profiling based on geographic location to add unique contributors and making sure high quality content has continued. Many consultant groups are providing global activity report to the companies along with portfolio analytics. Each of the intelligence report tailored to specific clients to access the global intelligence information on that industry. It also benefits consumers to have access to the products of their choice based on the geographic location. These intelligence report can also manage the inquiry within a given budget and complete a phased approach if that is preferred by the companies. It gives the benefits of early identification of any potential risk and therefore reduce the cost involved with the final report.
S&P Global, a market intelligence platform, gets into deeper data to help making smarter decision. According to them, data means nothing without collecting it proper sources, analyze them and interpret to the specific business needs. When it comes to analyzing complex business sectors, to them dig deeper is everything. Based on specific industry they provide insights, deep sector analysis, and flexible tools to give a 360-degree view. By offering personal guidance with specific profiling globally, companies can identify new opportunities, mitigate risk, assess a potential deal, or navigation regulations. Warren Breakstone, managing director and general manager, capital markets, at S&P Global Market Intelligence, says the tablet app has taken off: “Users are happy to access research remotely, be able to read it offline and share it with colleagues within a mobile experience.”

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/about/index

In recent years one of the largest and fast growing trends in urban transportation service has been bike sharing. The bike sharing concepts has seen drastic growth in China and Asia, as a viable alternative to automobiles or public transit. In 2016, there were over 750,000 shared bikes in China; just two years earlier there were fewer than 140,000 worldwide.[1] Bike sharing programs in China have offered a solution to massive growth and expansion of urban communities, and a clean alternative to automobiles.  Original bike sharing platforms have used a physical bike racks or docks for users to pick up and drop of bikes. Today’s proliferation of smart phones has shifted the industry away from docks to virtual drop off and pick up locations. This allows customers to pick up and drop off bikes without the need for docks. The companies benefit from not having to build expensive docking stations at several points across a major city.

 

In recent years as the expansion of the bike service have expand outside of Asian markets into markets like Australia and United States. The culture difference between western and eastern market has resulted in some interesting market dynamics not seen in Asia.   The author Conor Wynn of “ Three reasons why share-bikes don’t fit Australian culture” used the Hofstede Model to identify the difference between Asian, specifically Singapore, and Australian markets. The three main model differences between the culture he identifies were power distance, individualism, and uncertainty avoidance.[2]

Power distance dimension as defined by The Hofstede Model our “‘the extent to which less powerful members of a society accept and expect that power is distributed unequally’.” The higher the power distance the more defined culture hierarchy is in the society and respect for authority. Australia comparatively low power distance; and results in most Australians viewing rules, like drop off locations, as guidelines or suggestions. [3]

 

Individualism as defined by The Hofstede Model our “people looking after themselves and their immediate family only, versus people belonging to in-groups that look after them in exchange for loyalty.” The research shows Australians as considerably more individualistic than Singaporeans; which is common in Asian culture. Asian cultures are more concerned about the society and the long term impacts of their actions. Australians will focus on what benefits them in the short term, resulting in leaving bikes in non-designated areas.

 

Uncertainty avoidance as defined by the Hofstede Model, “can be defined as ‘the extent to which people feel threatened by uncertainty and ambiguity and try to avoid these situations’.” Singapore has one of the lowest uncertainty avoidance and the result is that Singaporeans are much more open to change. The open mindedness of Singaporeans has allowed bike sharing to gain wide acceptance and flourish.

 

The major culture difference between these two markets will have a major impact of the success of the bike sharing. Bike sharing companies will need to look at different ways to modify the behaviors of it western customers to develop good bike sharing habits. In the Wynn article, he suggests making it clear that the user is being monitored and that a penalty could be enforced if the rues are not followed. These problems will only grow larger as the bike share market increase in the West.

[1] “Factors influencing the choice of shared bicycles and shared electric bikes in Beijing” by Andrew A. Campbell, Christopher R. Cherry, Megan S. Ryerson, Xinmiao Yang

[2] “Three reasons why share-bikes don’t fit Australian culture” by Conor Wynn

[3] “The Hofstede model Applications to global branding and advertising strategy and research” by Marieke de Mooij and Geert Hofstede