Offset: uma estratégia de marketing internacional para o futuro

Abstract

The objective of this communication is to state that high tech firms get competitive advantage through offset sffategies, which become a challenging form of marketing in the future. This work is divided in two parts. Part one deals with the economic aspects of cúter-trade and offset. Part two deals with management aspects of offset, as an international marketing strategy. In the first part, it is argued that offset, contrary to other counter-ffade forms, does not violate Pareto optimality, because options to offset are non-trade situations. Besides, in a world With generalised intervention, both by economic arguments (market imperfections, monopoly and monopsony situations, etc.) and political (strategic) reasons, offset shows to be compatible both to free trade and politically managed trade. Offset is a positive sum game in the field of international trade, because the two sides (export firm and import country) win with this kind of operations. Offset can not be seen as a barter solution to financial difficulties both to export firms and import underdeveloped non-oil exporting countries. On the contrary, offset is a complex set of international operations requiHng a special strategy to high tech export firms, and technical development programmes for the import developed or underdeveloped. The management of an offset programme deals with all kinds of goods and services that can be important to the strategy of the import country (developed or underdeveloped), financing techniques, joint ventures, personnel training, etc. The theoretical approach to explain this kind of relationships is the systems exchange paradigm, a particular type of system whose internal structure is permanently changing. Offset programmes cannot be analysed only on the tactical and operational fields. The firm needs a strategic approach leading to a mutual advantage. The chief elements to get a competitive advantage in an offset strategy are management ability and organisation structure. What is necessary is to react pro-actively, in order to profit in the long run from the opportunities in a changing environment. The traditional performance measures, like annual profits, internal rate of retum or market share are useless in this kind of transactions because their large period of accomplishment.