The Standardisation vs. Adaptation Debate Essay examples

One of the most important “dos” is for countries to pay renewed attention to the market selection which they are competing in. More precisely, these countries should focus on maximizing their opportunities where they can find cultural, administrative/political, geographic, and economic affinities. Companies use three different techniques to compete globally. These techniques are adaptation, aggregation, and arbitrage. According to Ghemaway, companies must be able to “vary products, policies, market positioning, and so on to suit local markets.” However, this method of adaptation is intended for companies which have large success and not those who have marginally. Another, important “do” is for “companies to externalize some of the costs of adaptation via franchising, joint ventures, or other types of partnerships.” Some “don’ts” are not put adaptation above all because it would get rid of competitive advantages and not to over-rely on localization. Relying too much on localization would hinder the value of across borders for a

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 only way to build a great global company is with a single global standard of business practices, vigorously communicated and rigorously enforced. Companies must layout the same business standards in Chicago, Paris, and Shanghai as in London.

In the present business environment there are no fixed methods for globalization of the business. As there are various complexities in the entire process of the business which varies from place to place and business to business. The standards of internationalization of the process of any business are set by the owners by themselves. In general view in terms globalization few concepts are relatively popular in terms of globalization of the process.

Doing business in such different countries ask you to be flexible and need to be able to adapt quickly to the local demand and cultural differences. Your strategy has to be adapted to the ethical standards, cultural norms, but also the way the business is going locally. In others world, the company has to localize its distribution and marketing strategy to the requirements of the local market.

In today’s highly globalized world, companies are facing competitive pressure to expand into international markets. These markets offer immense opportunity, but they come with challenges and they require companies to develop new skills and abilities in order to success overseas. These developments include recognition of diverse consumer needs, cultural attitudes, political regulations, and product adaptations. The differences between operation in one country or multiple countries are significant, but if an organization can successfully adapt and implement these important abilities, it can tap into markets with great potential.

The firms select the target market in which the customers have a similar needs, preferences, perception, expectations, and taste etc. They should consider some factors at the time of targeting market are consumer's lifestyle, social status, age group, education and income etc (Caiazza, Very and Ferrara,2017). The most significant decision that firms have to be taken is that to done the marketing function at international or not. Therefore, when they decide to go at the global level they must have known about the legislations and regulations of the global market. Therefore, the firm cannot globalize market as they do not have a sufficient knowledge about the international market’s rules and

The global marketplace has witnessed an increased pressure from customers and competitors in manufacturing as well as service sector (Basu, 2001; George, 2002). Due to the rapidly changing global marketplace only

As quoted by Koffi Annan- "We must ensure that the global market is embedded in broadly shared values and practices that reflect global social needs, and that all the world's people share the benefits of globalization", Globalization has made a huge revolution in today's world. Now-a-days, no business is limited to a single country/continent. Companies no more shy away from exploring different countries and culture, they are adapting to different challenging situations to increase their presence felt on the global map. This attitude leads to a high competition among the national firms trying to bring out their markets into the world. Different techno cultural differences lead to multiple need of tackling the situations whilst globalization.

The contemporary global market sphere has gone through a wide range of socio-economic and political transitions and transformations over time so as to fit and match the ever changing market trends, change of human needs and lifestyle and the quest to remain relevant and efficient within the competitive and dynamic global market (Keillor, B. D. 2014). Global commercial changes occur very swiftly with new developments in place, inventions, and innovations more changes are still expected to take place within the market domain. Commercial entities have also constituted to the massive global market advancements in the way they adopt, integrate and implement modern market operations and interventions, they have equally succeeded in widening

In internationalization, the most challenging decision faced by the company to choose between standardization and adaptation in its operations, products or services. It has been one of the important and most popular research topics since 1960s to understand whether standardization is better or adaptation for marketing mix in international marketing. The increasing role of international expansion of business across the borders has also increased the focus of companies towards the international marketing strategies. It is also a biggest challenge for companies to better understand the different needs and choice of customers due to the huge differences among the cultures from various nationalities. This leads to the dilemma in

Most businesses are seeing the benefits of globalization; they offer similar service or products to a variety of customers. However, it is not an easy road to take for business must ‘…deliver and clear and consistent message…and tailor their business model so that it can accommodate many different countries (Walcott, 2014).’

Standardizing a product and selling it all over the world might not work, for several reasons but mostly because it does not connect with the audience or the required demographic. Each brand needs to be able to customize their product in a way that connects to the culture of that particular region.

Globalization is ‘ Crystallization of the entire world as single place.”(Mooji,1998) According to Anderson and Svensson, 2009, globalization in business activities has started in early 1980’s. Bartlett and Goshal says that the global term is interchanged generally with the words international and multinaltional, however there is significant difference in usage. Globalization is more of global marketing strategies applied to local culture to gain the markets internationally. The possible three reasons for emerging globalization into business is i) Entering the foreign markets ii) international standardization of products in the market and iii) increasing the acquisitions internationally (Sheth, 1986).

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.