Desktop and Laptop Computers Marketing in Philippines Essay

Desktop and Laptop Computers Marketing in Philippines - Essay Example In the website of CIA-The world fact book (2007) it is stated that "The Philippine Islands became a Spanish colony during the 16th century; they were ceded to the US in 1898 following the Spanish-American War. In 1935 the Philippines became a self-governing commonwealth. Manuel QUEZON was elected president and was tasked with preparing the country for independence after a 10-year transition. In 1942 the islands fell under Japanese occupation during WWII, and US forces and Filipinos fought together during 1944-45 to regain control. On 4 July 1946 the Republic of the Philippines attained its independence." In dealing with this statement alone, it would give us the idea of chances in penetrating the market, since our country has made significant change in this Arizona-sized country. Despite the fact that the country is the second poorest nation in Asia (Next to Bangladesh), the country showed significant demands on the acquisition and utilization of desktop and laptop computers since the country is gearing for the digitalization of all of the offices and industries and with this events, utilization of computers is one of the need of this country. Furthermore, the world fact book of CIA described the economic overview of the country as "The Philippines was less severely affected by the Asian financial crisis of 1998 than its neighbors, aided in part by its high level of annual remittances from overseas workers, no sustained runup in asset prices, and more moderate debt, prior to the crisis. From a 0.6% decline in 1998, GDP expanded by 2.4% in 1999, and 4.4% in 2000, but slowed to 3.2% in 2001 in the context of a global economic slowdown, an export slump, and political and security concerns. Average GDP growth accelerated to about 5% between 2002 and 2006 reflect ing the continued resilience of the service sector, and improved exports and agricultural output" This kind of situation gave us enough grounds to consider that this country has the money and resources to purchase such goods. In order to further determine that the market has enough resources to shell out and to be able to determine that the product would be a hit for this country, using Hofstede's Five Dimensions of Culture as a parameter is a good pendulum to analyze the capability of this country in a cultural perspective as well as comparing it to US are important factors to be analyzed. International Marketing 3 The first thing that we should consider is the Power distance index (PDI) of the Philippines. Based on the research conducted by several non government organization and voluntary group, there is a huge distance between the rich and the poor from this country. Unanimously, these organizations concluded that less than 10 percent of the families are included in the so-called upper class of the society (the rich and famous) and the remaining 90 belongs to the B,C and D classes of the society. Among these classes, the class C and D are the ones who are the majority. In this case, it is established that the rich and the famous does have distance with each other and such a scenario suggests imbalance since less than 10 percent of the population are wealthy and the poor ones does have grater