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Holland has for many years now been engaged in planning at least where short-term fluctuations are concerned. Belgium, afier being in touch with the French Commissariat, is now developing under the label of ‘programming’ a planning whch the Belgians dare not as yet avow as such. Italy is implementing its Vannoni Plan for its southern half. The United Kingdom, our future partner, has recently set out upon a form of planning that is broadly inspired by French experience. That leaves West Germany: until recently her rapid growth without inflation left her opposed to any state intervention on principle, but now that the mainspring of the miracle-the influx of rehgees from the East with its simultaneous impact on labour and on demand-has disappeared, the situation has changed and there are many signs that the Germans are becoming interested in solutions of the French type.

The time may thus soon be ripe when we can begin overall economic planning on the level of the Common Market.

What form then should such planning take? One might envisage that each country should draw up a national plan in as uniform a lay-out as possible, and that these national plans should then be har- monized. On the other hand one might suggest an overall plan for the Community as a whole which could then be broken up into national and regional sections. In a matter of t h l s land one cannot proceed u priori but must guard against theoretical solutions that might be intellectually satisfjrlng but difficult to apply or even to get accepted. It is not a simple question to solve, and one which requires much deeper discussions in which not only technical arguments but also political and psychological considerations are given their due weight.

My personal preference would be for empirical solutions inspired by the concept of the continuous creation exempMied in French planning. Afier the collection of data, the discussion and the con- frontation of facts, overall growth targets would be laid down (which would not necessarily be the same for each region). Then those sectors would be chosen for which studies should obviously be carried out at the Community level in order to prepare a Community development plan for them. At the same time comparative studies would be made of all the measures required for ensuring the Plan’s implementation. All this may seem very modest to some and over-ambitious to others: yet I feel that in the present situation there are realistic notions which would allow us to make substantial economic progress.

MARKETING IN EUROPE

BY ROY SMITH

WHATEVER the outcome of British moves to join E.E.C. (which may be clear when these h e s come to be read), the problem of distributing and selling in Western Europe will be an essential study for all firms in this country who aspire to operate beyond a local scale. It was once said that an efficient maker of mouse traps would have paths beaten to his door by all the world, but this seems to be a phenomenon peculiar to the mousetrap trade. In other fields of endeavour managers d find that they need to give as much careful thought to the channels by which their goods reach their European customers as they allot to their sales organization in the home market. But it would, of course, be quite wrong to assume that the same broad lines of work necessarily apply to both. The problem is intricate, not least because the speed and extent of development of a true common market within the Common Market is so largely imponderable.

In these circumstances, it seems more than usually important to take a very long hard look at the factors in the problem of marketing in Europe that will remain unchanged, the geographical and human factors that will be governing distribution and selling when the concept of the E.E.C. is not stranger than that of the U.S.A. Distance, for example, is one that does not have the same impact on business in Britain as it does in wider lands-a broad generalization which d perhaps be excused when British mileages are compared with those between main centres of population in Western Europe. With or without a Channel Tunnel-but considerably more so without-thu question of distance will pose problems, and wdl for many firms in Britain become the major factor governing the extent of their activities. Distance, more than the other unchanging factors, means money, because of the time and effort it consumes. The interpretation of distance into terms of time and money is not, it is true, very easy at present, because the means of transport are themselves in the course of change. Freight charges from the Midlands to North Italy or Austria may at the moment be as much as three times that to a destination west of the Alpine mass. This is obviously out of line, and a combination of pressure from a will-to-trade on the one hand and fiom the transport

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departments of the E.E.C. Commission on the other will, in all likeli- hood, put it right in the next few years. But the fact wdl always remain that the salesman working from a head office in Frankhrt is likely to have the edge on one &om Birmingham when trying to sell identical products to a firm in the Ruhr. From Birmingham to the Ruhr is, in fact, about four hundred miles, compared with one hundred from Frankfurt. Western Germany shares with parts of France a distinct tendency to lie at the heart of things in industrial Europe. Frankfkt is three hundred and fifty miles from Milan, rather more than three hundred from Paris, and eight hundred from Stockholm. From London the distances are well over six hundred to Milan, two hundred odd to Paris, and most of a thousand to Stockholm. By comparison, from London to Glasgow is of the order of three hundred and fifty rmles. Thus, though a considerable speedmg up of some of the present deplorable freight connections with the Continent may be expected- indeed, must be demanded-it remains a fact that for British business expanding that way additional factors in the cost of distribution d arise-the investment in goods in transit, the added cost of emergency deliveries, the lost time of salesmen and managers operating away from base, and the cost of freight itself.

The next two factors are a h in their effect, but not identical: they are differences in language and in national psychology. Language problems have their impact on the sales approach itself-on the choice of advertising media, on slogans and layouts, on labels and instructions, on the choice of salesmen, on decisions about distribution points. Language plays a vital role in the mechanism of presentation of the product &om completion of manufacture onwards. Language is in fact the medium of presentation, and its frontiers have to that extent to be respected. National psychology is obviously a factor whose effect starts earlier still, in the very design of the product, but plays an almost equally large role in problems of distribution (the phrase is, of course, being used in the widest sense in this context). The language of an advertisement may be good English, but if the message it puts over has an appeal tadored for the American rather than the British view of life it may f d in this country. It may well be profitable to use a foreign approach in sellmg-but not if the alien touch seems accidental. To have advertising copy written by someone other than a native-and a resident native too-is the unforgivable sin, worse than sendmg out a salesman who only partly understands the subtleties of the local tongue. But its disastrous effects can be well matched by the packaging whose colours are the national ones of a not-much-liked neighbour (these exist, even in E.E.C.) or by the sales story that ignores

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local preferences and customs (‘a deep comfortable mattress’ in Scan- dinavia is almost a contradiction in terms), or gives any other outward sign that the goods were really meant for some other market. Less than ever in the Europe of the future will it be possible to treat ‘exports’ as a sort of bonus sale with a cheap holiday thrown in. It may well be that in the generations to come language differences and differences of national outlook, of national psychology, may wither away. But that time is not et, and the sales manager of to-day and to-morrow must

The fourth major factor in Europe that will not change is c h a t e . The Swedes and the Norwegians know already what it means to have one end of the country reaching for the Polar ice cap and the other laved by seas warmer than our bit of the Atlantic. French businessmen cater for the windy mud of Armentiercs and the unyieldmg sun of the CGte d’Azur. British designers and British distributors have had, neither of them, to cope with such a spread of requirements in the home market. There are, of course, s e h g seasons in this country, but the habits of marketing are not ruled by the weather and the seasons in quite the same way as they are in parts of the Continent, nor do they-and this is the point-vary so much across the country as they do in Continental Europe. The blendmg-in of campaign timings, of

rogrammes, of sales tours, to avoid clashes and to meet the needs o all im ortant parts of the market is one half of t h i s problem. The visithgfp other ha1 fp is to ensure that advertising themes, marketing tech- niques, packaging, are all so framed as to avoid the pitfalls arising from climatic differences. In Norway, Switzerland and Austria, snow means winter sports, sunshme, gaiety; English children may have the same basic view, but their elders thmk of slush and general nastiness, and the approach does not attract.

These, then, are the basic factors, the skeleton on which the flesh of a distributive system and a marketing organization must be hung. We in this island have been cooped up here so long, as well by our own tariffs and other people’s as by the sea, that we may tend to forget their existence. But they will not be ignored, and it wdl be cheaper to heed them from the beginning.

On to these bones-or perhaps within this frame-of unyielding facts the distribution system has to provide certain essential require- ments, which are themselves in essence unchanging. For a first im- perative, there is reliability of supply. Europe is now, and will increas- ingly be, a buyer’s market. The European buyer, sometimes more so than in t h i s country, will insist on goods being avadable when he wants them and where he wants them-and, indeed, how he wants them. The larger the market, the more the number of suppliers open

give them Y d respect.

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to any buyer; quick reliable delivery will be the order of the day. It is hardly necessary to add that the basis of comparison will not be with other British or foreign firms, but with the local man. It is he whose delivery service will be thrown in the scales, with the other items which motivate a buyer’s choice, when the balance is made up. All this will generally add up to the need for supply depots in the selling area. The economic organization of such forward supply points can well be the difference between success and failure, between a profit and a loss.

Goods do not sell themselves. Good supply arrangements must without question be backed up with close and continuing customer contacts-again, of the sort that the buyer receives from suppliers based in the area. Without such contact there will be no confidence, on the customer’s side, that the seller can really deliver the goods. Ths is the very stuff of selling, the sim qua non, the crux of the matter. There are few firms whose products are so novel, so good, so cheap that mere presentation does the job. But, even if they are, the newcomer to the market must still persuade the buyer that deliveries will come up to sample, that after-sales-service is reliable, and so on. Selling in the Europe of the sixties w d not be a matter of a busman’s holiday once a year. It will require the same close, planned, steady contact as it requires in Kent or Manchester or Ayrshre to-day.

And all this, of course, requires quick reactions to changing cus- tomer’s demands, deep understandmg of the motives that move them. T b may be less easy than it looks, for distance seems to play an intangible role in making a customer’s requests look more unreason- able-and less urgent-the farther he is away. An adequate system of reporting back, real understandmg of the salesman’s problems in the places where decisions are made, confidence in the man on the spot- and not misplaced confidence, either-all these are essential to successful distribution at long range. Confidence is perhaps the key, and t b is a confidence that must be two-way. Distrust is bred by distance in both directions. It is as important for the salesman to understand head office’s reasons for saying no as it is for the sales manager to see the true importance of the request. Much of this boils down to a question of communication, and the physical means of communication are very good in Europe to-day. A habit of long distance telephoning can admittedly eat into profits fast. But telex, properly understood and well used, is a most convenient channel whose popularity must increase in this country as it has on the Continent.

These generalizations on the basic factors of distribution and the requirements of a distribution system do not, of course, apply equally to all types of wares. There are those which lend themselves, like

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motor cars, to a continent-wide presentation, making relatively little difficulty about distance or national or climatic differences. Provided that market research has been properly done at the beginning, so that no basic requirement of any major market-heaters in Sweden, and so on-is omitted, there does not seem to be any particular difficulty in finding a model to suit all Western Europe. The Renault Dauphine does well in most markets, the success of the Volkswagen is ubiquitous, the Innocenti version of the Austin A.40 does well in Italy, the B.M.C. Minis are spreadmg fast, and so on. The turnover involved is easily worth the cost of proper translation of literature and re-vamping where necessary. In fact, the whole thmg boils down to proper organization of distribution. This is, of course, the rub. Even the finest cars need salesmen and service and spares, and these do not grow on gooseberry bushes-not, that is to say, disengaged distributors who possess or can organize them. To go in and build up one’s own distribution system is a considerable act of faith perhaps more easily undertaken by a manu- facturer whose model has stood the test of time. And, of course, it may involve an enormous outlay of capital.

Consunier durables of lesser weight, electrical kitchen equipment, sewing machines and so on present a rather different problem. From the point of view of design their appeal may be as universal as that of a car. But the presentation may well have to be different, subtly or basically. The sales literature will not only need translating, but probably rewriting if the job is to be done properly, and the turnover to support the cost of all this is, per unit, very much less than that of a car. Yet proper presentation, spares, after-sales-service, all these are essential to sell such things in a European market which is already well supplied with more or less competitive ones. In most cases the likely answer is a concentrated approach on one worthwhile market at a time, to build up in each a sales organization with an adequate dealer chain. Carell organization of distribution is the key.

But other house equipment in which form and colour and details of style play a larger role present another sort of problem. Furniture and furnishmg materials, tableware, glass and ornaments and what the Scandmavians helpfidly call ‘useful art’, all these are matters of local taste which, generally speaking, either hit or miss. If the stuff is of good quality at the right price in the right style, then the outlets for it exist already-all that it needs is to be fed into them by good salesman- ship and adequate supply arrangements. There are plenty of stores all over Europe which are always loolung for good merchandise which suits the local taste. This is not an attempt to make the job of selling look too easy, nor are the large stores or wholesalers who can place big single orders necessarily always the most suitable outlets. But there

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is not normally a problem in providmg sales literature or training sales people or organizing service, and so on. If such products suit a certain market, they can be sold there without more ado than an adequate sales approach to wholesale or retail customers, together with the necessary provision for supplies. If they do not fit existing tastes, it is not impossible that the mountain may be induced to come to Mahomet, but the operation may involve elaborate and costly marketing projects which may well not be worthwhle unless there is some% really novel about the product.

What has been said about furniture and tableware and so on is also very largely applicable to clothing and footwear. Here the adhtional hurdle of differing trade selling seasons comes in, sometimes in quite a big way, and national advertising of branded products is rather more frequent. In all these categories, proper contact with sales outlets must of course be backed up by good supply arrangements, or there will be no repeat orders. Stores and wholesalers d not expect to have to hold larger stocks on their own account simply because the supplier lives the other sidc of the Channel. The standard is that set by the local man, nothing less. And he, seeing his territory invaded, d, of course, try to improve hs service.

There is no really deep difference between these problems of selling to wholesalers and stores, where often there is no particular ‘brand image’ involved, and that of s e h g raw materials or semi-fabricated parts. Nowadays, with production techques developing so quickly, the business of marketing materials to industry is not quite what it was. Co-operation between supplier and user must be closer than ever, but at the same time loyalty and close connections cannot withstand the attack of a competitor with some new or mod&ed material that will simplitjr processes or improve thc fnished product. The production man and his buyer will be on the qui uive all the time to pick up new ideas about materials. A supplier with wide contacts may be concen- trating on only a few of them at any one time, but he d keep the rest warm for the day when he will have somethmg new to offer that d tempt them from their existing suppliers. That is the time when carefidly bdt-up confidence comes into its own, when studies of fieight routes and stock-holdmg possibilities pay ofX

These same generalities hold good for the selling of standardized industrial products and components like nuts and bolts and batteries and the rest. Standards-millimetric, inch and the like-play, of course, a much greater role here. But, as with raw materials, questions of taste and matters of language and climate are very much less impor- tant. Apart &om standards, the question is to get a competent salesman with the right language abilities into the customer’s office, armed with

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adequate spedications, the right prices, and advance knowledge of how the supply problem can be met. Afier that it is a question of salesmanship.

Finally, there is the matter of specialized machinery. This seems to boil down to the problem of a good product and a good salesman- marketing organization is only a minor factor, even if it may some- times be desirable to keep up close contacts by the use of a local agent. The basic need is that the product is really suitable for the job, its price competitive, and its salesman really able to explain its virtues (and explain away its failings). There is perhaps some danger here of seem- ing to minimize the importance of selling. Nothmg could be farther &om the intention. There are very few machine tool firms whose products are really the only ones for any given job. Equally, there are few groups of competitive maches so exactly alike that all the salesmen can talk about is price and delivery. There is one theme that runs through the problems of all these different product groups-the need for skilful sellmg.

This article has so far set out the basic problems of distribution and the extent of their application to various sorts of goods. The question now for discussion is the range of possible organizational forms that exists to meet these problems. Enough has been said to make the point that British entry into E.E.C. does not automatically mean that the marketing organizations existing in this country can be extended in the same form to embrace the Continental markets. For a firm moving into Europe, analysis of the distribution problem to establish the proper-and most economic-organization is of the first importance. It is not always easy to remedy mistakes. If a third party-agent or distributor-is brought into the matter, it is sometimes not easy to dispose of hun later. And a bad reputation, once acquired through rash and later broken promises, may stick.

The simplest form of selling is, of course, direct. The salesman operates &om home base, he calls on customers large enough to warrant the expense of long-range visiting and able to cope with import formahties and so on, and that is all thcre is to it. It seems likely that as the E.E.C. develops this form of selling, of distribution, will increase, simply because the number of stores and wholesale houses ready to look abroad for their supplies will increase. Such people will be anxious to avoid middle men if they can, and so will tend to arrange themselves these services for which middlemen exist-provision of contact between buyer and seller, import formalities (which will diminish, but seem d k e l y to &sappear in the foreseeable fbture) and the securing of payment. Nevertheless, the area of usefihess of the direct selling technique in its simplest form does appear to be limited.

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It does not offer a solution to the problem of really close and continuing contact, or of stock-holdmg, or of sales promotion, or of after-sales service. It may suffice for unbranded consumer goods, components and semi-fabricated goods, and raw materials. In all those h e s it will suffer a disadvantage against the competitor who is close enough to receive a quick ’phone call and send across a man or a service team or a truck fidl of goods at a few hours’ notice. It is not, in fact, easy to envisage the products for which direct selhg-in its simplest form- will provide a basis for real expansion in Europe.

There are, of course, possible variations on the theme. One method is to appoint a series of regional wholesalers-not necessarily with exclusive rights, not necessarily with areas correspondmg to national ones, though the development of cross-frontier wholesaling is only now beginning to burgeon w i t h the Common Market. Such whole- salers can solve the problem of stockholhg and of customer contact, and can spread the net of selling points very much wider. They can be used to organize sales promotion and after-sales service. Indeed, it may well be difficult to describe the difference between a good wholesaler of this sort and what one is tempted to call, in the European context, the old-fashioned type of agent. Nevertheless it would be wrong to assume that the Common Market has no place at all for the exporter’s agent. Where he fills a true commercial need there will always be room for the energetic agent, representing a restricted list of manufacturers, offering specialized market knowledge and contacts that his principal finds it hard to obtain, and with arrangements for carrying stocks or for getting supplies to customers quickly enough in some other way. The man for whom the bell is tolling now-and this applies probably on both sides of the Channel-is the agent or distributor who depends on his principals’ inability, through language or organization or temperament, to go and find out for themselves, or on his customers’ similarly insular views.

It thus seems likely that wholesalers acting on a non-exclusive basis (under the anti-cartel clauses of the Rome Treaty, exclusiveness may be hard to enforce) may enter in a much larger way the field of cross- fiontier tradmg, and thus f‘ulfil hct ions which the agent and the stockholhg distributor have covered in the past. But there seems no reason to suppose that it will become any easier to lay hands on good, efficient, energetic representation by any of these methods than it has been in the past. The same problems of fmding good agents or whole- salers who really have got room for one more h e in their range, who really are prepared to put their backs into an introductory campaign, those problems d not change. But, as always, they wdl be helped by imagination on the part of the manufacturer. A good product, well

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presented, obviously backed up by a good supply and service organiza- tion, principals who are clearly aufait with the problems of markets other than their home one, all these can fire the imagination of an agent or a wholesaler as well as of the ultimate purchaser. So will a wdingness to back one's judgment by credits and an advertising allocation. If a manufacturer is not w&g to put his own money into the distribution of his product, how much less is another Lkely to take that risk. All this, of course, involves a policy of knowing the market oneself, not of leaving it all to the agent. There is no alternative.

There are already a number of interesting examples of distribution arrangements on an exchange basis, both within the E.E.C. and across its fiontiers, between firms in the same h e of business whose ranges complement each other. The German lorry-manufacturers Henschel- werke have quite far-reachmg co-operation with Saviem in France, who make motor coaches. Apart from supply of components, each company will sell the other's products in its own market, and they plan to set up a number of joint marketing organizations overseas. In a rather different sphere, the British shoe-manufacturer Baby Deer Shoes have arranged with Bidegain S.A. in France to sell the latter's nursery shoes in the United Kingdom, while Bidegain d do them the same service in France. The inherent difficulties of this sort of arrangement speak for themselves, and seem to have a certain tendency to increase with the size of the firms; personal contact and sympathy is essential to success, and tlus is not so easy to get at all decision- making levels in big firms. An exchange of shareholdmgs may, of course, be usefd in this, because the major difficulty will always tend to be a suspicion that one side is getting the best of the bargain. It is not unreasonable to assume that a natural outcome of such an arrange- ment, if it were successfd, might be a f3d-scale merger of the two firms. Mergers are, after all, likely to be unusually fiequent in the early years of the Market, as firms seek to adjust themselves to some form of the specialization, in products or in s e h g areas, that will be so very important to success in a market of well over 200 million

peof I le. none of these forms of distributive organization seems likely to give a manufacturer the outlets he needs in Europe, then he must probably take distribution into his own hands by setting up his own s e h g company or branch. The corporate structure involved is not, from the selling angle, important, though it may be fiom the tax point of view. The basic essential is a branch, owned and controlled by the manufacturer, in each of the national markets he wishes to enter. To try to run a number of markets from one branch on the Continent on the whole seems for most products to have little advantage over

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operating from the U.K. (except in the market in which the branch is sited). The object of the operation is, after all to meet the difficulty, that Europe is not one market, but many.

Generally spealung, the branch or local company will represent to the manufacturer an investment on quite a large scale. Admittedly h s investment may, as far as its major elements-stocks and credits- are concerned, be no greater than the credit which might have to be given to a distributor operating on the same sort of scale. It is also true that local bank loans to cover h s working capital may extend the total credit fadties avadable to a firm. But it is certain that the establishment of a local s e h g company has to be carried out with great care if both capital employed and expenses are to be kept down to the level at whch an established local competitor can operate. Foreign staff-'expatriate' seems to be the fashonable word now-are in any market an expensive item. An intimate knowledge of local demand and practice is essential if stock levels are to strike a proper balance, and if credit to customers is to be used properly as a sales weapon and not simply become a financial burden. S e h g from a local company generally means sales contacts at commercial and social levels with people not used to meeting or deahg with foreigners. In other words, the locally established company has to take on a more or less fully national guise. Thus its practicability d often depend on securing a man (or woman) who can represent the home company and its basic policy while ensuring that its local interpretation has the authentic local accent. Such people are not always easy to find, even in the bigger firms, unless there has been carell pre aration and training over a long period. To recruit from outside may g e necessary; indeed, it almost certainly will be for smaller firms who have not operated in this way before. The problem then is to ensure that the new recruit is I l l y indoctrinated with the practices and philosophies of the parent company. This is much more important for a company official who is going to operate overseas than for one at home. The latter will be under pressure all the time to fit into the organization; if he goes wrong in h s interpretation of company aims or methods, he d soon be put right. But distance and independence are great ferdzers of misunderstandmg. If a man goes out to head up an over- seas organization without being completely in sympathy, in every sense of the word, with those to whom he is responsible and those with whom he has contact on day-to-day problems in the home company, then friction and difficulty are very probable.

The final sopbtication in overseas trading is, of course, the establish- ment of a comprehensive manufacturing and distributing organization. The pros and cons of the production aspects of such a move do not

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come w i t h the scope of dm article, but it is important to note, because it affects distribution policy, that within the E.E.C. there is bound to be a choice between two h e s of development. A factory can be established to meet the demands of an area-not necessarily defmed by national boundaries. Or it can be integrated into a supply system consisting of a number of factories spread about the Community, each concentrating on products for which it is best suited by reason of local demand, local s k d or local raw materials. Where the product of each factory is a finished article or is sold out as a component (that is, is not assembled or processed further within the group), there is no doubt which of these two organizations suits the salesman best, provided always that the cost of the product is the same. The organization where production and sales are all under one management, based in one place, aimed at the customers in one area, this type of organization tends to have the flexibility, the quick reaction to changes of the market, which provides the salesman with the most favourable climate in whch to work. Reasons of production efficiency, of cost, may make it essential to separate sales and production organizations, even when based on one factory, so that the production side may fit into a European supply organization and the sales division draw supplies of various items in its range from different factories. Rationalization of production may very well call for this, but it must be reahzed that the price to pay is the h t h e r separation of maker and buyer. Thus we return to the underlying theme of the giant market-the tug-of-war between speciahzation in production efficiency (which calls for concentration on a standard product), on the one side, and on the other specialization in marketing (which presupposes the intention to give the customer exactly what he wants). The wider the market-in terms of popula- tion, of national tastes, of standards generally-the greater this tension will be.

The importance of the selection of staff for overseas organizations has already been touched upon. At any level w i t h the admirustrative or s e h g functions, q d t y of staff tends to play a larger part in operations abroad than it does at home. Morale is a major factor in this-particularly in larger markets whose industries have tended to be self-sufficient and where the ‘international concern’ holds no particular place of honour. Basically the problem is to avoid any sense of in- feriority, any too evident difference of opportunity between ‘expa- triates, and staff ‘locally engaged’. One of the strengths of the Turkish cnipire in its heyday was that a Cypriot shepherd lad could become the Sultan’s Grand Vizier in Constantinople. A commercial concern need not perhaps go as far as that, or at least not yet, but it does have to face up to the fact that unless top jobs are self-evidently open to local

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boys, it will have to pay more than the market price for good recruits- and may lose them s0on.l

Ths is one argument for cutting down the number of people sent out fiom home to run an overseas organization. Another is the high cost of doing it. Taking costs of living as being equal (and they are often not), an increase of 50 per cent over the home rate is no excessive inducement for a good man to uproot himself and h s farmly and move to France or Sweden-and h s takes no account of fares or school fees or the rest. Then there is the problem of language. The weight of this cannot be overstressed, but the difficulty varies. To find an Englishman who speaks German is more difficult than to ftnd a French speaker, but both have some relation to the opposite problem of ftndmg an English-speakmg German or Frenchman. If, however, the operation is to be in Sweden or Denmark or Holland, it is generally either a question of fmdmg a local nian or of allotting time for an Englishman to learn the language.

It is, of course, essential that in such an operation senior staff are fluent in both languages. Any international group, whde it must operate locally in the language of the country, must have a lingua j a n c u . If English is spread far enough down the h e of the European subsidiaries of British companies or their wholesalers or agents, central- ized sales training becomes possible. It is particularly important to be able to do this if the individual operations in the various countries are small ones, because clcarly there is a certain h u t of numbers below which it is not economic to arrange specialized training in the tech- niques of s e h g a company’s products. Moreover, such training at home in Britain, with factory visits and so on, can greatly rnagnie the parent company’s image in the overseas salesman’s eyes, and thus give h s morale a boost. In Europe he may need it; the going will not be all that easy.

This article on distribution in the Common Market cannot be complete without referring to the anti-cartel regulations of the Com- munity and their impact on traditional forms of export s e h g . It is the aim of the Rome Treaty-and one energetically pursued by the Commission in Brussels-to ensure that no greater price differences for the same product shall exist within the Community than exist, say, within one of the member states to-day. To further this aim of removing artificial price barriers, the intention is to remove territorial limitations on the rights of re-sale. To put it at its briefest and bluntest, sole distribution rights within individual states do not seem to have much hture in the Common Market in the sense in which they are now practised. There is a great deal yet to come out in the wash, but it seems that a distributor who has had exclusive rights in, say, Holland

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for a British firm will in the future neither be h i t e d legally to that territory nor able to defend himself by law against another distributor in another market-even in Britain-selling the principal’s products in Holland. That t h i s will involve a great deal of rethinking need hardly be stressed. But it brings us f d y back to the starting-point of this article: in all our thinking about distribution in the Common Market we must continually depend on one precept as a sheet anchor-that the factors that will remain unchanged are the geographical and human ones, while admmstrative barriers of all sorts will be swirled away by the tide.

1 Cf. the concept of ‘the European Company’ in John Pinder’s, ‘Implications for the Operations of the Fim’,]CMS Vol. I, No. 1, esp. pp. 54-5.