recent years has been relationship marketing. The Internet has opened up immense new possibilities for creating a relationship with global customers, potential customers, suppliers, and channel members. The end of segmentation m eans that marketers can now focus on delivering value to the individual customer (W.J. Keggan, 2002). p> In addition to increasing volatility, the move from an industrial to a post-industrial e-economy also represent the global marketer with a new set of rules. Long established principles, such as the emphasis of retailers in "location, location, location", are passГ©. People in such rigid time prefer to buy goods via the Web, instead of spending valuable time fighting traffic to buy these goods somewhere in a town. Looking at the changing business principles forced by the new e-economy, A. Rangaswamy summarized the situation in such way:
Table 5. A. Rangaswamy, "Toward a Model of eBusiness Performance", 1999. /Span>
From To
Market share
Strategic control
Technology as an enabler
Technology as driver
Seller-centric market
Buyer-centric markets
Physical assets
Knowledge assets
Vertical integration based on size
Vertical integration based on speed
Decreasing return to scale
Increasing return to scale
Firm-centric marketing strategies
Network-centric marketing strategies
In a similar vein, Andersen Consulting stated that the new economy will force companies to adopt some new game plans. Among the most important follow:
1. Secure a dominant market position as quickly as possible. p> 2. Form alliances based on their potential for market access and synergies.
3. Anticipate very high start-up investments. p> 4. Defend positions through an ongoing process of innovations. br/>
3.5 Global pricing
Pricing globally is much trickier that pricing in the home market. The level of price is often a minor headache compared with problems of currency fluctuations and devaluations, price escalation through tariffs, difficult-to-access credit risks, transfer prices, and price controls - all common issues in global pricing. Many of the problems in global pricing concern host country institutional limitations that constrain strategy. The problem is that of coordinating pricing across countries, to satisfy multinational customers, without imposing a straitjacket on local subsidi...
