Abstract
The author is in negotiations to produce a business primer textbook specific to the applied arts (an outline appears in the Appendix). Given the evolution and inextricability of Globalization, the text intends to speak to global (as opposed to domestic) concerns, as a matter of course.
The easy target would be to market the textbook to all the art institutions in the US. However, a true test of the text would lie in its ready ability to be translated and adopted elsewhere.
Although the author is not part of the marketing arm of the publisher (nor presuming to tell them what to do), this document serves purely as an exercise of the text itself to explore some considerations exactly to that end, in Indonesia.
A combined back translation along with a blind parallel translation of the text would be ideal. Given that the Indonesian currency, the rupiah, has been trading in the 40s to the US dollar for more than a decade now, the cost of such extensive translation is easily justified. It is useful to note that the presumed publisher, AVA, is Swiss-based, with an English-language subsidiary in the UK, chiefly for translation purposes. It would be a small matter to engage a few other-language translators on a consulting basis.
Indonesia
Context & Consideration
If one were to market this textbook into Indonesia, the first natural audience would also be institutions of higher learning. A cursory look at the market yields more than 30 such institutions on the island of Java alone (a table appears in the Appendix). For the unacquainted, that should be read as staggering; there is no equivalent in the US. For balance, consider the entirety of the archipelago as likened metaphorically to a region in the US as one would have to concede, the island of Java is the downtown of the big city of that region. Nonetheless, these numbers bode well. This author's numbers place all institutions of higher learning for art in the US at a number just over 150. Conservatively, if one were to pad that number by 25% that still clocks in fewer than 200. Without being exhaustive of the other 17,000+ islands, one imagines that further research would reveal at least as many more institutions (and the thought remains that this is severely understated).
Among the cautions as regards the numbers of institutions is that approximately half of the 30 are not just applied arts schools, but specifically schools associated with fashion. Given approximately a dozen other arenas of applied arts, it remains currently possible that there would be handfuls of schools focusing in similar other direction, photography, animation, etc., not yet unearthed.
There may also be institutions just hanging on with a student or two. While this may be the case anywhere in the world, let us look at one of the institutions that indicates itself as a standard among the rest; the Indonesia Institute of the Arts (the ISI) in Yogyakarta. According to their site, they average a student population of 2500, one hundredths of which are foreign, with semester tuition cost of approximately $1000 US.
Given the cursory nature of the research (not definitive, yet a solid start) one can be cautiously confident that the market in Indonesia for such a textbook definitely exists. If only 1/10 of the students at the ISI purchased the textbook, that is 250 units. The next suggested step in this process would be to become more definitive about the database; if for no other reason but to support the on-ground marketing representative in saturating the market.
Phase 2
An easy conjecture is that if market research dollars were spent, we would find a healthier alternative market than one might in a Western country. This is predicated on a number of things: Indonesian literacy has been increasingly on the rise, technology remains limited relative to Western countries based on the current price tag and Indonesians are increasingly hungry to participate in the global economy (and the product is a business primer).
The preceding paragraph serves to introduce the second consideration for penetrating the Indonesian market. A marketing representative (of the right qualifications, demonstrated sales ability and a familiarity with the book trade), armed with all the research necessary would be able to penetrate at least the secondary education market, and possibly a significant amount of the book vendors as well. Please also note that the actual production for AVA occurs just across the Malacca Straits in Singapore. This already in place association might further inform the larger movement.
The marketing representative would almost have to be an Indonesian. "...To set up in Indonesia there are plenty of day-to-day challenges to keep you on your toes..." (New Zealand, Trade & Enterprise (Government of) , 2010). While no one wants to hear such cautionaries, it is smart at a minimum to be aware of the many layered, multicultural considerations that would otherwise burden on noncitizen with a nagging, constant mandate to translate everything. Again, given the thoughtful approach and the right research, the cost may easily be justified.
With Indonesia, as a significant aspect of the ASEAN (Associations of the organization of Southeast Asian Nations), and a significant Democratic presence in the region, such an opportunity becomes a great test market for entrée into the larger Asian market.
All the Rest
The reader may be inclined to view this document as something of a compromise vis-à-vis the larger conversation of marketing into a new country. The author recognizes that the implication of demographic has little effect, insofar as the overarching conversation for an Indonesian artisan student and an American artisan student is the global business nature of the art (which flattens the conversation, culturally). Indeed, the global approach to the business text consciously collapses the collateral material as well: posters for bookstores, bookmarks and the like. Beyond excellent translation, there should be no overt difference.
Among the challenges was to increase sales by 50%. However, taking this product into the Indonesian market increases sales by 100% (for a market that had not yet existed). Given the product does not exist yet, and would presumably be offered to an American audience first, comparatively speaking, there is no current way to have Indonesian sales constitute half of American sales. This is simply recognition of the generic comparative of supply-chain, as it exists in the US with almost anywhere else in the world.
The exercise that this document constitutes recognized such disparities going in. The embrace of Indonesia was pursued given the ability to justify other goals: a more Asian entrée to the Asian market (otherwise India is also attractive), the proximity to the subsidiary operations in Singapore, the democracy of the country and the attractive economic considerations (Australian School of Business UNSW , 2010) (Sauvin , 2010).
Conclusion(s)
The author is familiar enough, with both Indonesia, and marketing in general, to recognize that one could paint the larger conversation with the following broad-brush stroke: the cosmopolitan Indonesian that would be the market for such an item is, at essence, no different from his or her Western counterpart. What is different, however, while minor, needs noting nonetheless (the covert). These would be the subtle nuances of communication, negotiation, and day-to-day interaction generally. With a significant Chinese minority deeply embedded in the business class, with the largest Muslim population on the planet and Indians among the significant minorities, one finds a whole host of details that we simply need to honor. This would include paying attention to one's basic posture (not literally but figuratively) in human interaction. Also, the colors being used in communication, the kinds of visual matter that one needs to avoid and even the business card of the marketing representative (Anonymous, 2008)(“Executive Planet“, 2010)(Global Marketing Strategies, 1997-2010)(Hofstede, 2009)(House, R., Hanges, P.J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P.W., & Gupta, V. , 2004)(Kwintessential Ltd, 2010)(World Business Culture, n.d.).
Approval for the textbook remains pending. Is this a presumption of a fantasy or an academic exercise; humbly submitted this offering is the latter. Nonetheless, if AVA were so inclined, Indonesia represents a cost-effective market and a potentially excellent entrée into Asia.
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