Parker Pen

Parker Pen: An Adventure inGlobalizationpg. 547 1. -This is the history of thefailureof an international marketing strategy. Which were the reasons? Analyze the 4 P’s. (Price, Product, Place, Promotion) Being one of the largest pen industries in the world, Parker Pen was a failure for having international marketing strategy. This is due to the fact that Parker wanted its products to fall under the concept of standardization. He called this the “Janesville strategy”.

Under promotion, Parker Pen wanted his pens to follow the mission of “one look, one voice”, meaning all Parker products would be sold and re-produced the same way in all countries the company would make partnership with overseas. As a result, all packaging and advertising would mirror the original Parker Pens in all participating countries. The problems which would arise from this is that standardization may not cater to different countries, who may have an interest for specific supply of pens. For example, locations such as France and Italy are fond of expensive fountain pens.

For the company, this was a large risk as green ventures are unknown are this may cause a large fall in profits and sales. Mr. Smith also researched on the sales of Parker pens and discovered that the company had only a small share in the pen industry as most of its profits were coming from pens selling for less than three dollars. Mr. Smith decided that a change was needed, therefore pushed for the promotion of high scale to low scale products. Under the management of Mr. Peterson and Mr. Smith, 400 company managers were trained to market Parker products the same way in all locations. On the other hand, Mr.

Parker was a believer of new product development, turning Parker pens into a company producing over 500 lines of products. His thoughts on the development of the global market were contrary to the ideas of Mr. Peterson and Mr. Smith. 3. -Was it a good idea for Parker Pen to produce and sell a wide range of pens from high-cost to low-cost? Why? It was not a good alternative for Parker Pen to produce and sell pens ranging from high-cost to low-cost. Parker pens are known for the quality in writing instruments and changing their production process by purchasing reduced quality materials will diminish the goodwill of the company.

With a product line of 500, the company should have done more research and evaluation of each international target market before pushing their products into that particular country. Since Parker Pen is a company of no direct foreign marketing, in determining which products should be distributed can be handed to an expert and advisor who will perform that research. Market selection is done using secondary data from previous companies who may have been successful in international markets. Another option is to use precedence to determine whether the company will survive in the global industry.

In the Strategic Decisions in International Expansion model, Parker Pen did not go through the decisions of determining whether the company was export ready and what modes of entry the company would enter by. There was a lack of strategy implemented on the marketing mix and how the company were to distribute their resources. For Parker Pen, there was an overuse of self-reference criterion, where both Mr. Peterson and Mr. Smith believed that a high volume of low-costing pens would perform well in locations overseas.