Think ASEAN! Rethinking Marketing toward ASEAN Community 2015 (review)

This book can be considered as the first book that exposes the practical implications of ASEAN economic integration on businesses, especially in marketing. In a nutshell, this book explores what ASEAN means for businesses. The importance comes mainly from the fact that there has been much things said about ASEAN integration, but business communities have complained that there is little that they have seen and experienced arising from the benefits of integration.

Think ASEAN! is a counter to those sceptical views. By outlining the success stories of marketing companies in Southeast Asia, the book provides compelling cause for businesses to see ASEAN as an integrated community offering high potential and lucrative markets. It makes reading the book imperative as a lesson for companies and entrepreneurs with intentions to go global, as it will show them that seizing the potential in this region would be the way to go.

For academics and policy-makers, Think ASEAN! is also something they might have needed: a set of evidence showing that the regionalism mantra brings benefit for the people. In their quest for the right formula of integration in ASEAN, critics pointed that they might have forgotten the man in the street in ASEAN countries. The book shows that regional integration has brought benefits as there are more men on the street who can fly from one ASEAN country to another with Air Asia, or more men on the streets of Jakarta, Bangkok and Manila who can taste the hot chicken-floss bun of Singapore's BreadTalk, for example.

Thus, Think ASEAN! shows that thinking, going to, and doing ASEAN as a whole brings meaning not only for business, but also for the people of ASEAN.

The book consists of three parts, with the first focusing on the theoretical models and the latter two parts elaborating more on the empirical evidence of the marketing practice in ASEAN by companies, both local companies in ASEAN as well as multinationals.

Part I, entitled "ASEAN from the Top", starts with the authors' 4C diamond model to depict the changing business landscape and its driving force. Based on this model, Part I further elaborates the phenomenon of digitization and globalization, and their impacts on ASEAN as market and its competitive landscape with its four chapters within.

Chapter 1 on the digitization of the world argues that the impact of ICT (information and communication technology) on ASEAN economy has been one of the key drivers in the changing business landscape. However, it was also noted that despite efforts by all ASEAN countries' governments to develop and launch policies in ICT towards e-ASEAN, the digital divide among ASEAN countries is widening.

Chapter 2, on the impact of globalization on ASEAN economies, elaborates on the challenges posed by globalization on ASEAN. Political and legal changes as well as economic changes have shifted the agents of change from the hands of the government of countries to multinational companies, and lastly to individuals. Globalization in its current era described by the authors being in its third wave — following overseas venture to seek colonies and industry revolution as the first and second wave — has shifted the focus of mind from globalization itself to regionalization. Thus, China and India have become the main performers in the leading role in this era of globalization, while regionalization has become the new mantra at the time when Asia is the region with the highest growth and most lucrative potential.

Regionalization has brought about the consequences elaborated in Chapter 3 on ASEAN being the future market. Exactly forty years after its formation in 1967, ASEAN has become not only an organization, but also a community and region, which also means a market. The changing business landscape from a traditional market to a future market, based on a set of factors elaborated in the book, transformed ASEAN into one of these future markets. The goal to have an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015, though ambitious, is the main benefit...