Marketing Issues in Western Europe: Changes and Developments
Marketing Issues in Western Europe: Changes and DevelopmentsErdener Kaynak and Frederic JallatBinghamton, NY2004ISBN 978-0-7890-2837-2$49.95 (hard cover)ISBN 978-0-7890-2838-9$29.95 (soft cover)Review DOI 10.1108/09555340510630626
What this book does is to point out that, although with the introduction of the Single Market in Europe the hope by those at the cutting edge of commerce was that a single pan-European market would be created, the fact is that the diversity of the various national and regional preferences still prevails. Moreover, history suggests that it will do so for a considerable time. Business people do not want the wool pulled over their eyes. They need to know things as they are in order to exploit the markets.
The editors begin by specifically addressing this question:
Legally, Europe is a single market, but it is not a mass (monolith) market,but a culturally and linguistically diverse market with divergent, sub-markets. There are regional, country and in-country differences within the market. The differences between the north and the south versus east and west are enormous indeed. As well, there are discernable differences between Greece and the United Kingdom, Portugal versus Denmark, Italy versus Sweden, Ireland versus Austria. Tastes vary from country to country – sometimes dramatically – and marketing planning should be done on a local basis not a pan-European, level.
John Kay of the London Business School made the same point in 1992. The French, he said, like a car that they can throw sheep into the back of, and drive off!
This all corresponds with up-to-date thinking on the way marketing is developing. It is being widely recognised by those at the cutting edge of markets that the situation has changed over the last few decades. In the middle of the twentieth century, when consumer goods had been in short supply after the Second World War, there were indeed mass markets. That changed, however, as consumers became steadily more sophisticated and more precise in their demands. As has been said, whereas around the 1960s we had dozens of markets of millions,we now have moved to situation where we now have millions of micro-markets. Developments in electronic technology can now enable us to respond effectively to the changed situation, not just in Europe but in the whole world.
We still have to work out what all this all means for politics and the social sciences, and this book should help us to do exactly that. The commercial reasons for large political groupings may well have disappeared.
For further information, visit the web site: www.haworthpress.com
John ColemanJoint Editor of New European
