Glocalization in marketing

GLOCALIZATION IN MARKETING

Complexity and diversity make the world more stable. A global world with identical political, economic, and any other elements could have more, not less conflict. Globality is getting localized, and locality can be globalized, too. These two trends do not contradict each other: on the contrary, their synthesis is a source of stability.

Now the world is once again looking for balance between these two trends, giving rise to a specific dialectical term: glocalization.[1] The purpose of this paper is to analyze the ways of using glocalization strategy in business.

The term “glocalization” was coined by Roland Robertson in the Harvard Business Review in 1980 when he stated that glocalization was “the simultaneity—the co-presence—of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies”.[2]

The concept of glocalization has emerged as global companies develop localized strategies that consider the tastes and needs of people living in a particular region. Especially in global markets where global competition is dominant, the adaptation of global companies to the local market without losing their brand perception can positively affect their market shares. In business and economic the term glocalization is used to describe the process of tailoring an international product or service to better fit the wants or needs of a local community.[3]

Despite the similarities created between countries and societies with the globalization process, traditional structures, different economic frameworks, and political systems separate countries from each other. For these reasons, there have been processes in which global businesses have to reorganize their organizational structures, working systems, goals, and practices.

The following core questions can be asked about glocalization.

What is the idea, structure, or practice of organization and management that is being glocalized? There are ,many examples for ideas, structures, and practices of organization and management: from diversity management, strategies of implementing products, to policies that foster work-life balance, establish a shareholder value-orientation in corporate governance, enforce corporate social responsibility (CSR), or regulate harassment in the workplace –to name only a few.

Who shapes the glocal and steer process of glocalization itself? This agents of glocalization are called ‘glocalizers’  those who carry or otherwise activate the processes of adoption and adaptation across time and space. They are positioned at junctions of translation: experts (i.e., consultants, advisors, academics) and decision-makers who are charged with seeking innovative pathways, deciding on their adoption, and shaping and implementing their modification. The role of glocalizers becomes as complex as glocalization is itself: they are simultaneously charged with interpreting similarities, so to form the basis for the transfer of ideas, structures, and practices, while at the same time charged with establishing uniqueness, so as not to appear redundant.

How does the glocal marketing strategy work? The conducted analysis suggests that there are several glocal marketing strategies to be considered.[4]

The first is glocal marketing strategy that develops a worldwide marketing perception and does planning by considering the values and conditions of each country. One way for firms to market effectively and to fit themselves to local markets is to assure that customers are satisfied with the quality of their product and services that are suitable for the local adaptation and to protect its good brand image through providing after-sales services. After-sales services can help firms “differentiating the product, gaining competitive advantage, and achieving an enduring market position in international markets”.

The second strategy is called glocal product. Although the glocal strategy seems to be applied to the promotion activities of the business, it can also be applied to all management, marketing activities, and the product itself. Global businesses use the glocal strategy to improve their worldwide performance based on local differences. While global products exhibit a homogeneous structure by global demand without any discrimination, glocal products reach the global market with the local characteristics of the product. The reasons for the adaption and preference of glocal products are local. Glocal products gain a competitive advantage by adapting locally to demand.

The next strategy covers promotion efforts within the marketing mix elements such as personal selling, public relations, advertising, and sales development activities that are critical due to reasons such as mass production, the opening of enterprises to large markets, increasing physical distances between producers and consumers, the number of consumers, constantly changing demands in terms of quality and quantity, and intensification of competition. One of the important reasons for glocalization’s popularity is that businesses that carry out a single advertising campaign in all markets to market their products within the globalization strategy cannot succeed in every region.