I found this article very interesting regarding global marketing because it directly relates to our International Marketing Class. It is hard for me to imagine a six story building in China dedicated to Barbie. I agree with the statement in the article, “To succeed in dynamic markets such as China and India, managers need to learn rapidly what and how to localize—while avoiding the risk of catastrophic failure from inevitable mistakes.”
When Wal-Mart entered China in 1996, it experimented with different store formats to figure out which would have the greatest customer appeal. However, there is a lower-risk for a multi-brand retailer such as Wal-Mart than for a single-brand retailer such as Barbie.
Coca-Cola understands the balance between localization-globalization. While Coke is pretty much a globally accepted product, most of the company's sales outside the U.S. come from products and brands created locally for the unique needs and desires of local customers.
According to this article, emerging markets such as China and India are changing at three to four times the pace of developed markets. This means that today's perfect blend of localization and globalization could easily become obsolete three years from now.
edited by mjones on 8/13/2011
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