Globalization and Its Effect on Consumer Behavior

Globalization was established in 1942 (O’Rourke 1). Globalization is the creation of international rules by governments and corporations in order to facilitate and regulate trade between nations (The Phenomenon 1). Globalization has left many positive and negative affects on the world, but more positive than negative effects have been left on the United States.

Countries are no exception, their course of history and culture created a unique identity for themselves. Their cultures involves; language, values, belief, religions, and norms that identify who we are. This has caused division and struggles between groups or people, which influence our daily lives. Nevertheless, at the same time makes every person or country a unique culture to learn and explore. As the article, “The Roots of Identity and denial” stated more than 200 years ago there were no borders on this planet. People were able to travel through the hemisphere with no problem or differences.

"Economically through job creation, growth in shareholder wealth, infrastructure development, new product innovations and as a significant customer of domestic agricultural and manufacturing production.

Countries are no exception, their course of history and culture created a unique identity for them selves. Their cultures involves; language, values, belief, religions, and norms that identify who we are. This has cause division and struggles between groups or people, which influence our daily lives. Nevertheless, at the same time makes every person or country a unique culture

The economy is based of both producers and consumers, but the customers are the ones that ensure the success of each company. More than half of the world’s population lives in a portion of Southeast Asia (Schuman). The population of Southern Asia is affecting the economy of other countries around the world because so many consumers are located in one condensed area. The Countries of China, India, and Japan consume many American goods that help both countries’ economy grow from recovery of the stock market crash. However, the Asian countries seem to be benefiting more from this globalization of the economy than America.

The issue of globalization for the people of the United States has been a long and terrifying problem for them. Although other countries many have had issues with this problem it appears the U.S. is still being affected by it to this day. Although not everyone in the United States may have been affected by the issue. Majority of the people (mid class and lower class) have somehow been affected by it or knows someone that has been affect because of it. This issue of globalization has been talked about by politicians so it appears it had to been a major impact to the country. Thus, this issue of globalization has been an issue for the United States for a long-time way before the twentieth centuries. Therefore, this paper will discuss what is globalization and how it has impacted Americans views and how some people’s views changed because of it and finally, what is the impact of communications technology. All these key topics will help with getting a better understanding of what these issue is and how it has affected society today.

It creates the assumption that all individuals born within a nation states boundaries share the same culture. However, due to economic restructuring there has been migration that proves this assumption wrong. However, this ultimately serves as the basis for the

Theodore Levitt is often considered to be the first to recognize the trend towards globalization and states that: “companies must learn to operate as if the world were one large market – ignoring superficial regional and national differences…” In addition, he argues that the companies that do not adapt to the new global realities will become the victims of those that do.

Culture, according to Hofstede (1982), is a “collective programming of the mind which distinguish the members of one category from another”. The term “category of people” can be a nation, a region, a work organization, or even a family.

the genesis of these striking and distinctive cultures is caused in part by the different approaches

One of the key attributes of modernization is the globally interconnected marketplace. The globalization of consumerism allows for companies and their goods to be recognized internationally. The United States (followed by the United Kingdom, Germany, and China) is one of the most culturally influential countries in the world today. It sells its music, clothes, movies, literature, products, and perhaps most recognizably, its fast food, all throughout the world. Companies like McDonald’s and Coca Cola are archetypical examples of this. This globalization is believed to be creating an increasingly homogenous world because Western values and lifestyles sustain the possibility of obliterating countless unique, local cultures that don’t posses the means to market themselves to the rest of the world.

However, not all nations have been successful in identifying with one particular culture, Huntington states, referring to Mexico, Turkey, Russia, and Australia 25. These states, he says, could be described as “torn countries”26; countries which are torn between multiple cultural identities - the tradition cultural identity they’ve held, and the new cultural identity they wish to adopt. “A torn country... has a single predominant culture which places it in one civilization, but its leaders want to shift it to another civilization. They say, in effect, ‘We are different peoples and belong in different places’”27. In “Chapter 7: Core States, Concentric States, and Civilized Order”, Huntington states that a small, powerful number of core states will be the centre of a new structure of civilizations. France and Germany are examples of these states in the European Union. He goes on to describe “core states”, the divide between Western Europe (Protestantism & Catholicism) and Eastern Europe (Orthodox Christianity & Islam), and the lack of a core state in Islam.

Today more than ever, individuals and societies are built as an integration of different cultures and carry different characteristics that construct their unique identity.

countries like France and Italy (xxx, xxx). But this resulted from the erasure of the identity of a significant sector of the peoples residing within their borders (xxx, xxx). Moreover, enhanced self-esteem and an improving lifestyle accruing from industrialization made assimilation less painful in these earlier cases of nation-building (Stephen Castles 1998). The incongruity between state and nation is therefore compelling scholars to draw a distinction between the two. The belief that all states are, or must be, nations has almost inevitably generated an urge to make states out of all nations (Lord Acton, xxx). The people category is also embracing heterogeneity. From people perspective, two parallel trends have emerged: while the

In today’s world, with a few notable exceptions, nearly everyone in every region of the world has access to the same products, information and services. A long-distance relationship is no longer so distant, since each party involved in the relationship can communicate through Skype, Facebook or through any of the vast amount of social media available. A person in Easter Island, one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world, can go to the other side of the world and travel to Canada. An economic crisis in Argentina could affect the economic landscape in Brazil. A person in Chile or Peru can buy an Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt because this transnational corporation decided to expand its market to developing countries, or as you might prefer, to emerging economies in South America. Although many of these examples might be trivial, these are the consequences of globalization.