History and Geography

History helps define a nation’s “mission,” how t perceives Its neighbors, how It sees its place In the world, and how It sees itself. The history of a country is important in understanding many aspects of a culture. One cannot fully understand how businesspeople negotiate, how they conduct business, their attitudes toward foreign investment, the legal system, and other aspects of the market/business system without a historical perspective. A historical perspective helps prepare an International marketer for many of the cultural differences that often cause misunderstandings and In many cases, mistakes.

While a racketeer may not be able to change a person’s attitude or behavior, if you have an historical perspective of why they react as they do, you can gain insights that can possibly make it easier to adapt your strategies for a successful outcome. To understand, explain, and appreciate a people’s image of itself and the attitudes and unconscious fears that reflected In its view of foreign cultures, it is necessary to study the culture as It Is now as well as to understand the culture as It was-?that is, a country’s history.

Loyalty to family, to country, to company, and to social groups and he strong drive to cooperate, to work together for a common cause, permeate many facets of Japanese behavior and have historical roots that date back thousands of years. To understand, explain, and appreciate a people’s image of itself and the fundamental attitudes and unconscious fears that are often reflected in its view of foreign cultures, it is necessary to study the culture as it is now as well as to understand culture as It was, that Is, a country’s history.

An awareness of the history of a country Is particularly effective for understanding attitudes about the role of overspent and business, the relations between managers and the managed, the sources of management authority, and attitudes toward foreign Mac’s. History is what helps define a nation’s “mission,” how it perceives its neighbors, and how it sees its place in the world. To understand a country’s attitudes, prejudices, and fears it is necessary to look beyond the surface or current events to the Inner refinement of the country’s entire past for clues.

Geography Is a study of the physical characteristics of a particular region of the earth. Involved in this study are climate, topography, and population. The interaction of the physical characteristics is one of the principal determinants of a country’s customs, products, industries, needs, and methods of satisfying those needs. Marketing is concerned with satisfying the needs of people. International marketing seeks out the whole world as its marketplace.

Therefore, for an International marketer to know how to satisfy the needs of the International factors of the people’s needs are. International marketer must know that various climates and topographies do exist and that they are vital in shaping the marketing plans that an international marketer must make. As an example, a producer selling machinery in the tropics would have to realize that special protection is needed to keep a machine running properly in hot and humid climates. Study of geography is important in the evaluation of markets.

Marketers need to be knowledgeable about the effects of geographic diversity on the economic profiles of various nations. Climate and topography are examined as facets of the broader and more important elements of geography. Knowledge about geography, the climate and physical terrain when appraising a market influences marketing from product adaptation to ore profound influences on the development of marketing systems. Climatic features affect the uses and functions of products and equipment.

Companies looking to build manufacturing plants in countries with more liberal pollution regulations than they have at home are finding that regulations everywhere are becoming stricter. Many Asian governments are drafting new regulations and strictly enforcing existing ones. A strong motivator for Asia and the rest of the world is the realization that pollution is on the verge of getting completely out of control. Neither Western Europe nor the rest of the industrialized world are free of environmental mage; rivers are polluted and the atmosphere in many major urban areas is far from clean.

The very process of controlling industrial wastes leads to another and perhaps equally critical issue: the disposal of hazardous waste, a by-product of pollution control. Estimates of hazardous wastes collected annually exceed 300 million tons; the critical question is disposal that does not move the problem elsewhere. The business community is responding positively to the notion that the focus must be on the global environment rather than the quality of the air, land, and water in our own backyards.

An International Chamber of Commerce Industry Forum on the environment reflected a shift in company attitudes toward environmental issues away from a reactive and largely defensive stance to a proactive and constructive approach. Some disbeliever may dismiss such statements as “window dressing” and they could be, but the beginning of change is awareness. Responsibility for cleaning up the environment does not rest solely with governments, businesses, or activist groups. Each citizen has social and moral responsibility to include environmental protection among his/her highest goals.