Standardisation or Adaptation for Businesses Essay

At its basic understanding, international marketing engages the firm in making one or more marketing mix decisions across national boundaries. At its complex level, it involves the firm in establishing

Standardization, in case of international or multi-national businesses, broadly refers to the process of using the same strategies throughout the business operations in all of the markets. Adaptation, on the other hand, refers to the strategy of fine tuning the brand methods of a business and customizing them to suit each of the markets.

The article is divided into four parts. First part focuses on the traditional perspective on international marketing strategies focusing on the dichotomy between standardization and adaptation. The second part examines key assumptions underlying the philosophy of global standardization. The third part focuses on the constraints to implementation of global standardization. The last part of the article concludes on the bases of its review that a more general approach is suitable which incorporates various degrees of standardization or adaptation strategies. It is an important article as it concludes that an effective global marketing strategy does not guarantee the marketing of standardized products and global brands worldwide. It might work for some companies but cannot work for all.

In the business industry, if businesses want to export their goods and services to other countries, they must become familiar with and adopt international and global strategies. Consequently, there are three types of international and global business strategies. The first type is international, which entails conducting a significant amount of activities outside the home country, yet its focus remains on the home market (Fung, 2014). The second type is multinational, which consists of operating in multiple countries, yet the headquarters is in its home country, not to mention that the competitive advantage will vary by country (Fung, 2014). The third and final type is global, which is when the organization treats the whole world as one market and one source of supply, not to mention, that its competitive advantage is contingent of common brands, standardized products, and global scale production (Fung,

As the globalization opens many doors for sales, it also opens doors for more clients demand on the company 's products. This creates a new approach for managers to adapt new cultures and adopt new strategies to build what the client likes and dislikes in the global market. It is stated that the giant

The definition of the concept of standardization in business is hugely dependent on the nature of business activity under consideration (Roach 2007). Although the concept is easily defined in the marketing context, since it is defined in terms of the 4Ps (product, price, place and promotion), the concept is more complex when used in the context of the product choices. A multinational corporation would be forced to make a decision on whether to adopt complete standardization, which involves creation of completely new product for each geographical market or complete

The continued accelerating pace of change in globalization is forcing an entirely new level of emphasis on individualized, highly targeted marketing across the many regions and countries of the world. Global marketing today must contend with a wider array of constraints, both economic and cultural, that as ever been the case in the past (Gupta, 2003). These constraints fuel a high level of creativity and focus on how to overcome cultural and economic constraints through rapid product development lifecycles, exceptional levels of supply chain integration (Wu, 2011) and greater focus on relationship market over just selling with a transaction mindset alone (Hansen, 2008). The pros and cons of globalization of form the foundation of today's highly competitive global marketing arena, forcing many companies to be more focused on the strategic and long-range over the tactical while compensation for a rapidly changing cultural mix of factors (Osland, 2003). The pros and cons of globalization are evaluated and the unique factors of global marketing also analyzed.

The Coca-Cola Company is the world’s leading beverage company, with markets in over 200 countries and over 1,100 brands under their portfolio. The company was founded in 1886 and is currently headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. This paper seeks to explain the impact of globalization on the standardization versus adaptation decision using examples from the Coca-Cola Company’s performance and strategies since their inception as a company.

The process of globalization has important effects on companies' strategies. These effects mostly refer to their marketing strategies that must be adapted to the increasing competition in most industries, and to the challenges of the business environment. In order to improve their position on the market, some of these companies prefer to expand their business on international level. This means they develop global and domestic marketing strategies.

When it comes to conducting international business, there are many additional factors that play a role that organizations need to take into consideration compared to how they conduct business in their local countries. Although the magnitude of the effects of these additional factors differ based on the products and/or services a given organization provides, it is almost always the case in which such organizations need to adapt to the local market, even if marginally so. That said, there are certain situations

Globalization has caused products designed in California, being assembled in China. This is interchange of market resources helped many MNE’s spread across the globe offering similar or different products in regions and states. Theodore Levitt (1983) criticizes MNE’s who have different strategies for different regions, and called for the global company, which will have standardized product offerings all over the globe. There are others like Kotler (1985) and Fisher (1984) who encouraged MNE’s to adapt product and marketing strategies according to individual market.

There is a tendency for international corporate-level strategies to be substituted for global marketing strategies; namely, multi-domestic strategy to concentrated marketing, global strategy to standardized marketing, and transnational strategy to differentiated marketing. However, the borderline lies as the former focuses broadly on firm’s operations while the latter narrowly involves factors within the marketing mix that directly influences the customer behavior. Although this distinction is used to promote accuracy across the paper, there will be

Levitt explains, because of globalization, how the world is moving from the Era of Multinational Corporations to the Era of Global Corporations as the needs and wants of the worldwide customers are getting more and more homogeneous (Levitt, 1983) and they demand for more standardized products in terms of quality and price (Levitt, 1999). According to Theodore Levitt the companies who focus on a particular market in terms of providing value added products are most likely to achieve failure in this dynamic industrialized world and that’s why to survive with the competition in the market companies should focus on more standardized products by keeping in mind the different markets of the world and their common interest (Levitt, 1983, pg-6). The other main key point mentioned by Theodore Levitt was that the organizations should focus their concentration in knowing the requirements of the customers rather than presuming their needs by themselves and forcing the already manufactured

As a company enters into the foreign market, so does their marketing efforts. In hindsight, if a company’s marketing activities are not perceived well abroad, it could completely destroy the business’ plans to venture into the global market. When a company decides to go beyond their domestic country they must consider the changes that will be made within their

Roberto Goizueta switched from localization strategy to global standardization strategy because during his initial control over the Coca Cola Company in 1980’s, the Coca Cola brand has already been marketed to more than 76 countries in the world and the subsidiaries were managed individually by the local management to match with the local taste and preference. This practice has given bad impact on the company profit as there were a lot of duplication of functions, smaller scale of production runs and too much of the customization which limits the ability of the firm to capture the cost reduction.The benefit of Global Standardization is the company will enjoy increased profitability and profit growth by reaping the cost reduction through economies of scale(produce in large quantity), learning effect (the production efficiency is improving from time to time as the worker become expert after repetitive sequence) and location economies (product’s value creation is done at the optimal location/environments). So by having the Global Standard, the product is produced at the most economic price and will create better perceived value for money spent by the customer.