BEE Partner, South Africa Economy Watch

2. Global reach

Q Is South Africa’s reputation as a nation to buy into — whether the customer is a foreign investor, a tourist, a potential immigrant or from one of the other customer categories — strong and solid throughout the world? In this context, can branding be a powerful tool? Finland, for example, embarked on a successful campaign to enhance its image and position as a country associated with hi-tech innovation. It wanted to assist its companies to become more competitive in the United States, and used branding to improve its image. Read the rest of this entry »

A well-known marketing adage states that a bad product will not last very long in the marketplace. No amount of sales, advertising or promotional effort will do it any good if people simply do not want to buy it. As any first-year marketing student knows, and in the words of famed marketing guru Philip Kotler, the marketing concept states that ‘the key to achieving organisational goals consists in determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors’: In today’s bitterly contested global marketplace, countries have customers and competitors too. South Africa is no exception. Read the rest of this entry »