We now live in a global world in which Ghana must start paying a significant attention to tracking her competitors in order to fully understand global markets and exploit opportunities.

Given that we are trying to leverage our beautiful nation in the New World of tourism as a place of tourist attraction, we?ll need to ask ourselves what it takes to build a sustainable tourism business.

Ghana?s potential in the global market has not gone unnoticed by multinational companies, that are now aggressively moving in to take positions. China, India, Korea, Germany, U.S, Britain, Iran, Sweden etc. all see Ghana as a viable place for good business these days. But then how prepared are we?

There is no doubt others have already written long theses about our government?s responsibility in this connection and I would not want to belabour these points. Processes such as easy and faster business registrations, transparent and equitable justice system, just to mention a few are needed to expose the country?s competitive advantages.

These turn of events should serve as a major opportunity for Ghana. The nation needs to be innovative and to revivify our market with all our marektable products we have, to blossom, be profitable and stronger economically within the artery of globalization. In doing so Ghana is more likely to attract powerful investors and competitors from other nations, helping for the nation to accomplish the status of ?Golden Gates of Africa?

This is a prime opportunity for Ghana to be innovative by rethinking our efforts to be more attractive to the investor community so that together we can revitalise our local economy, grow a profitable market economy, sustain the growing needs of the country?s population. In doing so Ghana is more likely to achieve the supposedly ?Golden Gates of Africa? dream as we attract powerful competitors from other industries and organisations in the international community.

How could we as a nation understand this term marketing?

Understanding basic marketing concepts is what every Ghanaian i.e. the hawkers, traders and business people need. I would recommend that our Government offer a free eight-week crash courses for everyone interested in learning these basics. Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) currently operates in Ghana; this we should take advantage of; but then have we embraced (CIM) into our school curriculum yet?

I would recommend the Government to perhaps make a deal with this institute to offer this crash course universally free of charge to anyone interested. This could be the starting point to ensure that every Tom, Dick and Harry grasps this opportunity as a tool to widen their perspective of marketing.

Once our nation and its populace understand these marketing concepts, we would then be more likely to gain the knowledge and skills to understand what exactly is meant by competitive advantage. Ghana would then be able offer products and services that would satisfy our target-customers. We might then deliver more added value to our porducts to our customers than our competitors for similar products and services. As every business is aware listening to customers naturally leads to new business propositions. Over a period of time, customer centric organisations become more accepted and known for their customer focus backed by ?value for money?.

The Cocoa Industry and Tourism

Linking tourism with business and having a global positioning of Ghana?s chocolate; ensuring that our Ghanaian brand of Chocolate is promoted worldwide through for example the World Cup in Germany; Golf club tournaments etc. would ensure exposure of our products to the world. This could have been a simple by effective way of promoting Ghana?s chocolate.

How many customer groups should we try to satisfy?

Currently, we have two variations of our chocolate i.e. Orange and Lime.

Though it is good to start slow it appears we are stuck in the mud by providing only lime and orange varieties of chocolate. We have lots of other fruits we could combine with chocolate to make very exotic products.

The Cocoa industry needs to diversify their ?Golden Tree? brand into other products and customer segment. For example, let?s say a target group is, organically conscious or environmentally aware. . This throws a challenge for the need to conduct a preferential market research to identify this group. It could be such a group might prefer to have different chocolate filling, the shape, the packaing element how much they are willing to pay for a product.

Communication Intelligence from our client group

Why don?t we put suggestion boxes at strategic spots for the tourist to inform us what they actually would expect as a good service? Currently, many Ghanaians are just guessing what they assume the tourist might want. Does Ghana as a nation have any qualitative and quantitative knowledge about our tourists at all?

Where they are coming from?

Why are they coming to Ghana?

What is the best time of the year do these tourist want to visit?

Are they married or single?

Do they visit as a group or not?

Perhaps the Ghana Tourist Board might have this information to pass on to hoteliers and new businesses such as bed and breakfast hostels.

There is opportunities to be created and wealth to be made by everyone, as there are so many segments of target groups waiting for their own unique needs to be spotted and addressed as service package in tourism. Take a look at an orange and you would find that an orange (e.g. tourism as the orange) has so many segments.

Providing what the customer (tourist) wants if captured correctly and proactively would give Ghana the competitive advantage over other players in this market. Getting it right is the vital crucial key to our survival in tourism. There are many areas that need tackling in order to get things right. We desperately need to diversify, be flexible and adapt to perhaps the global food presentation in order to be competitive. The British, Spanish, Italian, French all have excellent food presentation initiative we could emulate.

Reflecting on some of our strengths, Ghana has so many artists, designers? etc. who are not making enough money to fully enjoy the fruits of their labour. So where is the problem shooting? Absences of marketing and presentation techniques are major problems in Ghana. Instead some foreigners come to Ghana buy the artist?s piece of work, take it abroad and add the finishing element to the same product making more profit than the Ghanaian artist, what is known in marketing as value adding. With such lack of knowledge in basic marketing, no wonder every Ghanaian thinks we are so poor; therefore the only solution for us as a nation is to beg for aid.

Lack of presentation oreintation to products

These are our significant weaknesses on our part, which no one is publicly acknowledging. Ghana really behind in this area . Had the ethos of creativity instilled in us right from nursery education that would have widened our scope of presentation perhaps?

Art and craft are fetching volume of money globally in art galleries, however our shoddily presentation of our products does not give us the competitive advantage in this area.. It empowers the customer to have the upper hand of bargaining our products dead cheap from our poor artists?, not equipped with any right marketing techniques. Hence, the dire need for a free eight week (CIM) out reach crash course these group people within our society.

Many artists in Ghana lack the sphere of creativity. There is a significantly wide gap to enable artists to appreciate a three dimension presentation of a product and beyond as currently we are stuck in just a two dimensional. Presentation.

Does Ghana have an Art gallery that our youths could go to for inspirations? Such places are necessary to have in big cities and town to motivate our youth, enhance their sphere of creativity and their confidence. Art gallery may need to be re discovered by department of culture and heritage. Art galleries could be linked with an effective transportation system either by sea with ferries, by railway links, or buses. Opportunities for restaurants, caf??s high street type of shops would spring around these areas thus boosting our economy.

Where does the Government think Ghana would stand, if our youth were not competitive enough to sell the right products to the right tourists? No wonder many tourists flock to Ghana, buy our art and craft, pay peanuts and repackage the same product with their own presentational brand.

Who is the smart person here? The man who wakes up at dawn carving wood with no electric equipment and gets paid peanuts for his work or the tourist who buys and re-brand the product for huge profits? Where does our competitive advantage stand? I think the answer would be practically a null point.

Manufacturers in Ghana have to realize soon that consumers are willing to pay more if the product is well presented, with all other of functionality and quality factors in mind. One has seen dried pepper frame in a three-dimensional form and integrating several materials to produce a sort after product.

In the same way, we could we could apply the same concept to variety of chocolates with each chocolate having its own target market. Ghana should not assume that everyone likes the plain golden tree chocolate. Our promotional techniques for chocolate are not catchy at all, given that Ghana is one of the mains producing countries in the world.

We need to sell the benefits of cocoa, its richness plus adding the appropriate filling to chocolates in attracting the right customer willing to pay the right price for our products.

Widening Participation in the Tourism Industry

Tourism package could be included in our school curriculum in the first year of Senior Secondary School (SSS). This would enable students to have a wider perspectives of the region they come from and how best to market what nature have given them. Creating this crucial awareness would encourage our youths to be more appreciative of our natural beauty, Parks and nature reserves. Our youths are desperate to show off the skills they have and perhaps designing a menu for a pseudo restaurant, theme parks, museum, tourist information centre would broaden then critical thinking skills .They could then also look beyond into the general sanitation, food hygiene and others with focuses on the satisfaction of the tourist into their own region. The regional MP could even set up a an award ceremony for the youth to competet against each other.

This opportunity could open avenues for our youth, forming a taster of becoming travel agent, offering ideas of what product to include in their brochure to ensure that their service delivery in tourism would become a winner among other players in this market. Our youths would also be exposed to the vital skills in business that negotiating and influencing skills necessary to sustain Ghana?s new dream.

Surely, this direction would not only shape Ghana?s economy drastically but also provide opportunities for our youth to want to live and work in Ghana. This fundamental structures if introduced rightly in schools would instil into the students the need for growth in business, appreciation of nature and valuing the Eco system etc.

It is best to capture the youth young and as they are more willing to take on challenges, be innovative , proactive and productive. Currently, it appears these crucial elements are missing in schools. Ghana schools have never been creative or innovative to offer our children challenges and developing them to critical and lateral thinking. Our children appeared subdued and even at SSS level there seem to be no adult to adult relationships with tutors. The system rather encourages the youth to be subsebient to products from other country without appreciating what nature has given Ghana.

It is not surprising that after completing (SSS) and University, our youth want to leave the country for greener pastures chasing the brand name instilled into them and to which have become hooked on. This is not solely any one fault but the system we were brought up in. Any made in Ghana products are classified as an inferior products thus giving a high profile to foreign products.

Whilst touching on school curriculum, it would be helpful to offer students an exposure to the filming industry thereby perhaps is integrating filming industry at (SSS) level and encourage the youth to have a knowledge about filming..

Competitive Analysis

The process of identifying the key competitors, assessing their objectives, strategies, strengths, weakness, reactions and patterns is crucial in selecting which competitors to avoid or attack.

In order to effectively plan a competitive marketing strategy, our Government may need to ensure that youth of today, freely assess the necessary knowledge and skills, i.e computer literacy and find things out for themselves who our l other competitors are in the global market.

Reflecting on the macro environment , technology have advanced significantly with E-bay, online transactions, are all powerful selling platform. Any country which is not cashing in on this platform is missing out to market share in this competitive world. Ghana would be very disadvantaged if it fails to capture the impact of ebay is having on business. This is how the youth could exploit this opportunity available globally.

Ghana is the one of the African countries advancing with technology and could benefit from online commerce. For example, the farmer would be sitting in one corner of Ghana, could link with tourists industry and be the supply chain to hotels etc.. Farmers would no longer need to transport their products to the markets but aim to the multi-nationals super gaints willing to do such business deals. This mode of business should be great news for everyone and needs to be warmly embrace our marketing techniques.

Ghana must constantly compare its products, channels, and promotions with those close competitors. This would enable Ghana to launch an effective marketing campaign against its competitors and prepare stronger defences against their actions. Thailand, Malaysia, Britain, US have greatly advanced in tourism and Ghana need to emulate from these icons in tourism.

When targeting customers we must also include the buyer behaviour strategies. For example, many tourists would like to send a mother?s or father?s day card etc to their family where ever they are. They would be more likely to buy some traditional Ghanaian cards as their choice to send off. Arts and Crafts and pottery would need to be labeled with a mark as to where it was made perhaps, village, region with dates or symbol. Thus Ghana is tracking the tourists to their country of origin and offering something for example, a mug made in Vume, Volta region as talking point in discussion.

Global Vision to Tourism

Ghana also needs to emulate America, Europe with ideas such as theme parks, facilities geared for children, as tourist would love to come to Ghana with their children. However, have we got facilities for these groups at all? Mock villages dotted along town, villages to encourage the tourist to stay and be introduced to the Ghana way of daily activities for a day or a week with package tailored to suit these group of tourists.

As a nation we may need as many possible local parks as possible for people to sit, rest and relax. An opportunity for local individuals to open up a restuarant at their parks Churches, Mosques, and others religions should try and preach the message of educating their audience that it would be worth considering donating benches in the memory of the beloved relatives or personalities to be fixed at local Parks.. The benches could be engraved with the name of the deceased person.

Seaside?s , beaches are tourists paradise but do we have sign posts integrated with the street management system directing the tourists where the nearest beach is? With this seaside management comes the lucrative opportunity for hiring deckchairs may be for $2 a chair, also locals could build Xmas huts and hire them out for the tourist to use for changing, picnics etc.. By doing this we are empowering the tourists to stop and admire nature and engage in any business around the beaches, rivers, lakes, streams, water falls, with coconut in hand.

Sadly, in certain areas the locals are driving the tourist away by using sea shores as places of convenience. Communities may need to club together and build toilets for the locals to halt this unhealthy practice.