This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Emerging Markets
Many books and journals explain the benefits of the Internet. This book goes further, introducing you to an innovative Internet marketing and sales model defined for business-to-business (B2B) marketing in emerging markets. We call the model ebocube.
The term emerging market describes a region of the world with relatively recent industrial and technological change and now experiencing rapid economic growth. Goldman Sachs popularized the acronym BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China)1 to identify countries that many economists believe to be economically powerful in terms of current and future growth. However, our consideration of EMs encompasses more than just the BRIC countries. For the purpose of the ebocube model, we've researched regions and countries in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and Central Eastern Europe. We have also worked with all these regions.
Even though developing markets are experiencing recessionary effects from the global financial crisis, many countries remain in a robust growth position. Growth will continue to come from EMs for the next "10 to 15 years, not only during this current recession," states James Cronk, Director, Financial Services Industries for Emerging Markets, for a global IT company. The CEO of our previous employer, Cisco Systems Inc., said in a speech that "emerging markets are on fire," referring to sales growth coming from these markets. Although he made that remark before the onset of the recession, economic indicators show that his conclusion still holds true.
EMs are generally characterized by large populations, as is obvious with China and India. Whereas some of these markets remain politically and economically unstable, many other EM nations have through reform successfully stabilized their economies and normalized their trade practices. EMs (130 countries and counting) comprise more than two-thirds of the global land mass. Most are rich in natural resources (in large part because their slow industrial and economic development has left their resources untapped) and host diverse industries, including manufacturing, oil and gas, agriculture, and more. Some EM nations have the potential to leapfrog developed markets because they are not slowed by legacy technologies. Japan, for example, became an advanced economy post World War II by leapfrogging technology developed by countries like the UK after the Industrial Revolution, among other factors. India leapfrogged land-line telephony to become a mobile, wireless economy. Although we could debate whether some of the countries mentioned previously are still emerging economies, the strategies outlined in our book still apply.
When trading in these economies, risks and uncertainty exist, just as in any international market where businesses deal with unknowns. Some EMs we discuss in this book are politically unstable or otherwise risky, and therefore they are less predictable than developed economies, which have stable, established economic and political environments.