Telemarketing as a Global Market Tool

Telemarketing as a Global Market Tool

KARAJBIĆ, Adnan
DUMAN, Teoman

Globalization as unstoppable trend, changes all aspects of life as we know it. In traditional way of business relations, product was brought in a new market by a sales representative personally and if the seller would recognize possible success, business unit would be established in form of subsidiary, franchise or any other type of business model. If the market was on a different geographical area, far from headquarters, new business unit would have to have a full capacity establishment often including middle management; this actually represents a situation where extra cost cannot be avoided. Today though, call agent from Sarajevo can sell a product to buyer in Adelaide in a situation where none of them saw actual product but all information needed were obtained through websites and phone lines. The only person that actually saw an item of sale is a distributor in Melbourne that will get information from Sarajevo that specific package needs to be delivered to an address in Adelaide. This form of sales is a new trend that international companies are more than welcoming, it lets them keep their businesses running and sales high with significantly lower labor costs. It is already a common practice that customer support and sales centers of American and Australian companies are based in South Asia, the only difference that customer will notice is agents accent but other than that they are giving them all needed information as if they were in their local communities and they are very familiar with issues that customer might be having with a company`s product. So far I have mentioned sales and support being realized over the phone, but it is just an aspect of what tele-business actually is. The one that is mostly used is for user telephone advertising and sales in combination. Product awareness is a stage that every product has to go through and companies have been trying to make it as shorter as possible and as cheaper as possible, but now it seems they finally got so long needed solution. With extremely cheap phone costs and staff that can locate a customer in any part of the World from one single office,telephone advertisements are absolute hit of today`s business. Not all companies are global; there is an example of German insurance company, selling its policies to German customers but from offices placed all across Western Balkans. Lower labor costs are significant but not the only reason for dislocated business operations, management control of all business aspects is genuinely simpler and more effective. Not all aspects of telephone marketing and sales are positive, as I have already stated, agents are often not familiar with type of product or service they are selling, but this is something that can be resolved with a good training. Hence, there is another issue that cannot be so resolved in such a simple way, different legal standards that agents have to be aware of. This will represent important aspect of this thesis; here I will just give an example where in Canada and most States in the USA there are laws that enable person to start a legal process against the certain company for unwanted calls. Telemarketing is still in a growth phase but it is a trend that helps and encourages global market development. Keywords: Telemarketing, Global Market Tool, Western Balkans, Sarajevo..

Article
PeerReviewed

ISSN 2303-4564

International Burch University

2013-05-10

1464