REGIONAL COOPERATION AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

CEFTA-2006 AND ANHANCING COMPETITIVENESS OF THE REGION - SOME SECTORAL ASPECTS
Structure of advertising costs in different media is almost the same for MNCs and Serbian
companies. Expenditures for television are the highest, followed by newspapers and
magazines, then for billboards and finally for the radio. Data clearly shows that small and
medium companies do not use television to advertise due to small advertising budget that
they have. However, they try to avoid radio due to its local reach.
The structure of sales promotion costs is very much similar between samples. Almost all
companies are taking part in some fairs, and that causes the highest expenditures in this
group of costs. Then, it is followed by merchandising and representation costs. At the last
place of this structure stand prize games that most of the companies in both samples do
not organize at all. This could be explained by the shortage of finances for smaller ones or
by the type of industrial sector for larger companies in which the return on investments in
prize games would not be satisfying.
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGEMENT
Overall results from the study suggest that there are no many differences in marketing
activities between Serbian and MNCs operating in Serbia. Statistically significant
differences in marketing practices between two samples are found for 7 out of total of 30
variables. This leads us to the conclusion that marketing activities performed in Serbian
companies are rather similar to the marketing practices executed in MNCs subsidiaries.
Certain differences can be observed also. The process of economic reform in Eastern
Europe has been accompanied by a growing interest in the role and applicability of Westernstyle
marketing. Although a number of studies have highlighted the potential benefits of
marketing to the process of transition, the extent to which marketing has developed is still
limited ant there are a variety of constraints which inhibit the positive contribution that
may be made by marketing (Enew, Wright and Kirnag, 1996). Marketing had no prominent
role in the socialist past of the transition economies, and the availability of relevant skills
is still limited. Foreign MNCs, by contrast, typically operate in industries where product
differentiation and marketing are important. It is conceivable that MNCs are prepared to
transfer these skills to their wholly or majority-owned affiliates.
As our research also showed, import of marketing capabilities from foreign MNCs to
Serbian companies should be done predominantly at strategic level. Serbian companies
should diversify marketing activities that they perform, employ more staff and put more
focus on preparing and closing activities, beside organisational ones. The role of continuous
planning and tracking results of marketing efforts have to be recognized in order to achieve
the level of marketing efficiency of foreign companies.
There are several limitations to this study that should be recognized. Firstly, the narrowness
of our approach in focusing only on surveying randomly selected 12 Serbian and 10 MNCs
operating in Serbia prevented us from broader and stronger generalisation of our results.
Secondly, we assumed that foreign companies undertake codified marketing practices (e.g.
market research everywhere comprises same set of activities) which does not have to be
the case. Finally, we did not take into account the feedback correlation that exists between
Serbian and foreign companies. Actually, we did not examined how Serbian marketing
practice affects marketing practice of MNCs subsidiaries, which could be relevant.
247