Briefing Reading - Assignment Example

The Myth of Globalisation The Myth of Globalisation Douglas and Wind p.568) argue that, in a world of increasing internationalisation, the key to success would be to focus on the development of standardised global products and brands. However, others claim that, due to numerous standardisation barriers, success can only be obtained by developing marketing strategies and products that match the specific characteristics of the international markets. This paper will examine the myth that the key to success in the international markets requires a focus on marketing strategies of global products and brands.

Traditionally, the main topic of discussion on international markets revolved around adopting a uniform strategy globally verses using specific local market strategies (Douglas and Wind, 2010: p.568). Adopting a uniform market strategy in the whole world is said to enable companies to take grab the available opportunities that arise from other countries’ operations, which gives them a competitive advantage in the global markets. However, Douglas and Wind (2010: p.568), argue that adopting specific local market conditions is likely to cause division among countries in the global markets.

This is due to internal forces such as political, cultural and economic differences in the local environments, which create pressure on the integration of market strategies across the states. According to Douglas and Wind (2010: p.569), there are three underlying assumptions about the global standardisation philosophy. First assumption states that the needs of customers and interests are becoming homogenous. Second, customers are willing to sacrifice their preferences of products for lower prices and high quality.

Third, through supplying international markets, substantial economies of scale in marketing and production can be achieved. However, each of these assumptions has its own pitfalls. The implementation of international market strategy requires consideration of many aspects of marketing and not the product-and-brand aspects alone. For this reason, these assumptions are misleading because they focus only on the product-brand aspects of strategy and ignore other key strategy variables (Douglas and Wind, 2010: p. 570). There are certain conditions that are likely to provide a winning strategy in the global markets.

These include the existence of an international market segment, efficient infrastructure and communication for distributing products to customers’ world-wide and potential synergies from standardization. These conditions can considerably increase the capacity to manage operations in the international markets and thus facilitate the implementation of global standardization strategy. However, the implementation of market strategies world-wide faces a number of difficulties and constraints both external and internal.

The external constraints include trade regulations, competitions, governmental and institutional constraints, transportation costs and differences in customer demand among others. Internal factors are such as compatibility with existing global operations and lack of motivation from the local management (Douglas and Wind, 2010: p.573). This makes it difficult to impose standardisation of all global products and services in the international market. Therefore, the development of an effective global strategy requires a thorough examination of global options with regards to standardisation and other systems open to the firm.

Apart from global products and brands, there are other national and regional products and brands that can characterise the international operations of a firm. Additionally, some target segments may be global, regional or national. Douglas and Wind (2010: p.575), conclude that hybrid strategies enable companies to take advantage of the benefits of standardisation and potential synergies by operating in the global production scale, and at the same time not losing the benefits provided by the adoption of specific characteristics in local markets and consumer preferences.

Bibliography Douglas, S and Wind, Y 2010, ‘The Myth of Globalisation’, in De Wit, B. and Meyer, R., Strategy: Process, Content, Context. An International Perspective. Cengage Learning EMEA, Hampshire, pp. 568- 574.