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Background on India
India and China cover nearly 40 percent of the world’s population and their cumulative output accounts for nearly 25 percent of the global GDP. India is today the second fastest growing economy in the world. The growth is being driven by domestic consumption and the expansion of the information technology industry; India has 75 percent of the IT services export market. India’s consumer goods market is already among the top ten in the world and is expected to be the fifth largest in the world by 2010.
The main drive for reform occurred in 1991. The Finance Minister took on a sequence of policy initiatives when India was facing the balance of payments crisis; he lowered tariff levels, eliminated industrial licensing, allowed foreign investors 51% equity in their business enterprise and helped reform the exchange rate policy.
Since these economic changes, poverty levels declined and the information technology sector has grown at a rate of 30 percent annually for the last few years. The rapid growth of the Indian economy has resulted in a growing middle class. According to Sala Kannan, an expert on global economic trends, by 2015, there will be 628 million middle-class Indians whose incomes have already doubled over the last 10 years.
Pricing Strategies
Multinational pricing is a lot more complex than local pricing because international currency fluctuations and price fluctuations due to tariffs among other things that need to be considered. Multinationals also have to worry about currency to price, exchange rates, hedging, price coordination to prevent grey trade, etc. and, most importantly discussed in this report which marketing mix including pricin ...