Marketing — Edexcel A-Level Business
Test yourself on Marketing with PEARSON EDEXCEL A-Level practice questions.
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Marketing explained
The standardised approach sells one product, one brand and broadly one campaign everywhere, spreading development and promotional costs over enormous volume and building a single recognisable identity.
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The glocal approach keeps that identity but adapts parts of the mix to local taste, law, religion, income and language. McDonald's runs the same brand and service system worldwide while selling the Maharaja Mac and vegetarian burgers in India, where beef is unacceptable to much of the market. Hofstede's dimensions help predict where adaptation earns its cost, although they rest on national averages from dated surveys and say nothing about the subcultures inside a country. The trade-off is easy to state and hard to settle, because every adaptation raises unit cost and slows the launch.
b) Different marketing approaches: domestic/ethnocentric; mixed/geocentric; international/polycentric
These labels describe where marketing decisions are actually taken. The home centred approach exports the domestic mix and domestic managers unchanged, which is cheap and quick but assumes foreign customers want what the home market wants; Walmart transplanted an American store format into Germany and withdrew in 2006. The country by country approach treats each national market as unique, with local managers, local research and a local mix, which maximises relevance but duplicates cost and can fragment the brand. The world market approach builds one global platform and varies the details, taking good ideas from anywhere, which is roughly what Netflix does when it commissions local language originals and releases them worldwide.
c) Application and adaptation of the marketing mix (4Ps) and Ansoff’s Matrix to global markets
Going abroad forces a choice on every element of the mix: sell one standardised offer and reap economies of scale, or localise and win share at a higher unit cost. Price has to reflect local incomes and exchange rates, place often means a joint venture or an agent because retail structures differ, and promotion is where translation and humour break. McDonald's keeps its branding global and changes its menu, selling the McSpicy Paneer in India. Ansoff sorts the growth options: an existing product sold in a new country is market development, changing the product is product development, and entering a new country with something new is diversification, the riskiest quadrant. Ansoff is blind to competitor reaction, to cultural distance and to whether the firm has the cash and the management capacity to execute, which is where the evaluation marks sit.
Your focus
- a) Global marketing strategy and global localisation (glocalisation)
- b) Different marketing approaches: domestic/ethnocentric; mixed/geocentric; international/polycentric
- c) Application and adaptation of the marketing mix (4Ps) and Ansoff’s Matrix to global markets
Marketing exam tips
Marking Points
- Say which element of the marketing mix is being adapted, product, price, promotion or place, since most businesses standardise the product and adapt promotion and price first.
- Give the cost argument precisely, that one formulation, one pack and one campaign cut development and media cost per unit through economies of scale.
- Give the revenue argument precisely, that adaptation to local taste, regulation or income raises the volume sold and reduces the risk of causing offence.
- Use Hofstede or evidence in the extract to judge how culturally distant the market is, and state what would have to be true for standardisation to be the better choice.
- Match the approach to evidence in the case, who makes the decisions, where research happens and how much the mix varies between countries, rather than asserting a label.
- Explain the cost consequence of each, that a single home mix is cheapest per unit, that country by country marketing duplicates research, staff and production runs, and that a global platform needs expensive coordination.
- Link the approach to risk, since exporting the home mix unchanged carries the greatest risk of cultural mismatch and wasted promotional spend.
- Judge the fit against the product type and the business objective, because commodity and technology products standardise more easily than food, retail and financial services.
- Taking each of the four Ps in turn for the named business rather than listing them, so a product change, a price set against local income levels, a channel decision such as exporting through an agent or a joint venture, and promotion in the local language.
- Placing the move in the right Ansoff quadrant and justifying the placement, since selling into a new country carries less risk than diversification and that risk ranking is what the model is for.
- Weighing standardisation against localisation explicitly: global scale economies and one consistent brand against higher unit costs and slower launches in every market.
- Supporting the judgement with evidence from the extract, such as export sales as a percentage of revenue, a margin figure or a rival's share of the target market.
Examiner Tips
- 💡Examiners reward a concrete example of an adapted element on the named business, so one specific product or pricing change beats a paragraph of theory.
- 💡When asked to recommend, frame the answer as how much to adapt rather than whether to, because the realistic options sit between the two extremes.
- 💡Define the approach in a single clause and then spend the rest of the paragraph on the named business, since the marks sit in application and analysis.
- 💡In extended answers, argue that businesses move along this spectrum as they grow, and use the stage the case business has reached as the basis for judgement.
- 💡This theme is usually examined as an assess or evaluate question on a named multinational in the extract, so plan two developed points and a judgement rather than four thin ones.
- 💡Paper 3 is synoptic, so link the mix decision to the finance and operations evidence, because capacity, cash flow and margins decide whether localising is affordable.
- 💡Make the judgement conditional, for example that one global offer works while the brand is aspirational but must change once local rivals copy it.
Common Mistakes
- Describing glocalisation as simply translating the advertising, when it typically reaches the product, the pricing and the distribution channel as well.
- Assuming adaptation is always right, and never costing the extra production runs, separate stock and slower launch it forces.
- Using Hofstede as a fact about individuals rather than as a generalisation about national averages, which is where its evaluation marks come from.
- Mixing up the terms, in particular attaching the country by country meaning to the world market approach, which reverses the whole argument.
- Treating the home centred approach as always wrong, when it is rational for a small exporter with little cash and a product that travels unchanged.
- Describing the approaches with no reference to the business in the extract, which limits the answer to knowledge and understanding marks.
- Describing the four Ps generically with no target country in sight, which earns knowledge marks and nothing for application.
- Treating Ansoff as a recommendation engine; the matrix ranks risk, it does not promise success, so an answer calling diversification best for growth has skipped the risk.
- Mixing up market development and product development, when a new country for an unchanged product is market development.