International Direct Marketing

13 Pages 3239 Words

2000; Bird, 2000).

Now-a-days direct marketers have a vaster range of information at their disposal thanks to improved database technologies and new media, such as computers, the Internet, fax machines, e-mail. In contrast years ago, direct marketers, who were mainly direct mailers, catalogue companies and telemarketers, gathered customer names and sold their products mainly through the mail and the telephone.

Many direct marketers have started looking at opportunities overseas, as domestic markets have become crowded. The gradual reduction of trade barriers, increasingly efficient international transportation systems, improvements in international payment systems are all factors that further pushed the development of international direct marketing.

Although international direct marketing has been around a long time in both the USA and Europe, industries have evolved under different sets of circumstances.
Direct marketing among European countries has been stimulated since the formation of the European Community in 1957 (International Direct Marketing Strategies, Iyer R. T. And Hill J. S., European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 30, Issue 3, 1996).
According to Hengst, general manager of Deutsche Post Global Mail USA, few US direct marketing companies do business overseas, despite the fact that many offer products and services that would be very competitive in foreign markets. On a global scale the USA remains the world leader in mail order markets at more than $ 90 billion annually, they are then followed by Germany at $ 30 billion, Japan at $ 22 billion, France at $18 billion and Great Britain at $ 17 billion (Plotting your global strategy, Hengst R., Direct Marketing, Vol.63, Issue 4, August 2000).

Germany is the country that holds the highest share of the EU’s marketing dollars with 37% followed by France with 18% and the UK with 14%. Germany even surpasses the USA when it comes to mail order spending per capita.
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