Some companies use a one-size-fits-all marketing approach. This approach is doomed to fail because what people in one culture like, another those in another nation abhor.

To market globally well, you must learn characteristics of the people in each nation and culture. The best way is through market segmentation.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Targets Different Types of People

USA market segmentation concentrates on demographics, psychographics and buying behavior. But the information provided by these characteristics doesn't cross borders.

Even with USA residents, culture differs by national origin. Yet, most USA residents have been somewhat assimilated into the USA culture. So differences intensify across borders.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Demographic Segments Differ

In addition, many market segmentation criteria change from nation to nation. For example, generations are influenced by cultural and historical events they experience. Some of those events may be similar across nations, but they are not experienced the same.

The World War II generation in the USA was influenced by the second world war just like most people in the Western world. However, the influence of Pearl Harbor on the USA WWII generation was greater than for those in the rest of the world.

If a business plans one campaign for the world around characteristics for USA markets, the campaign will fail in the rest of the world.

Global and Domestic Marketing: USA Psychographic Characteristics Don't Cross Borders

Psychographic characteristics also differ by nations. For one reason, culture, morals, values and attitudes are learned within a society. Different nations develop different social pressures and expectations. They teach different values and attitudes within familiesand schools.

What is considered "good" in one nation may be considered "bad" in another.

For example, it was once common for USA Caucasian families to teach their children that African or Black Americans were inferior and should be treated as such. Some organizations like the Klu Klux Klan even regularly practiced murdering and torturing Blacks and got away with it. And this was after World War I when the Nazis were considered abhorrent for their racial hatred.

This illustrates that many nationally specific events, beliefs and culture form the personalities of people. So personality characteristics must differ nation to nation.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Buying Behaviors Differ

What people can afford to buy, how they buy, and what they buy changes from nation to nation.

Obviously, the people in some nations have more spending power and more discretionary income than those in other nations. But even among comparatively wealthy nations, people spend differently.

Take grocery shopping as an example. In many prosperous European nations, people still buy fresh groceries from local markets and purchase every day for that day's meals.

In the USA, we don't buy groceries like that. Instead, we buy many processed foods weekly or monthly. We also eat lots of fast food although we know that most of it isn't as healthy as what we could cook at home. We just think we are too busy to spend lots of time shopping and cooking.

I'm sure that many European residents are appalled by our over-processed food and would never consider serving it to their families.

So if we differ so much on something as basic as food, just think how our other buying habits differ.

Global and Domestic Marketing: Synopsis

Marketing campaigns can not be successfully transferred from one nation to another.

To effectively market internationally, unique marketing campaigns must be developed for each nation. But first marketers and business owners must learn about the people in the targeted nation.

Unfortunately, there is little systematic research being accumulated and shared with business owners about people in other nations. As the world gets smaller and the Internet gets larger, that has to change. We must do a better job of global and domestic marketing.