Many multinational organizations view the world as a single market. This phenomenon is the result of sustained action by forces driving globalization (Armstrong & Kotler, 2011). With technological advancement, reaching consumers in any part of the world is very easy. As a result, “international trade has boomed over the last three decades” (Armstrong & Kotler, 2011, p.481).
The internet plays a significant role in this process because it makes web content available to everyone who cares to look. In addition, there is a lot of international culture exchange because of the export of media items, international events beamed on television and the use of marketing methods where the products in question find their way to international markets.
This situation has brought up an interesting marketing challenge for multinational companies. On one hand, it is very expensive to customize products and marketing campaigns for each country. Different companies end up, “pursuing different strategies” (Porter, 1991). On the other hand, it is futile to approach the world market as though it is homogenous.
To tackle this marketing challenge, multinational companies use either one of two strategies. The first strategy involves developing a single marketing campaign for the whole world, and localizing only the culturally incongruent elements. A good example of a company that pursues this strategy is the Coca cola Company.
The second general strategy that multinationals use is the localization of their products and their marketing campaigns to appear as a local company. McDonald’s is a company that pursues this strategy to an appreciable extent.
The headquarters of the Coca Cola Company is in Atlanta, Georgia. The Company serves markets literally all over the world, and is a well-known brand. The name of the latest marketing campaign is “Open Happiness”, and it targets all the Coca Cola markets in the world.
The reason why the Coca Cola Company finds it easy to use a single advertising campaign for its worldwide marketing is that it sells a novel product that does not suffer from individual tastes and preferences or cultural prejudices. Coca Cola’s Management is however, regional based.
The company licenses a number of bottlers who run the operations of the company. The Coca Cola Company provides the necessary syrup for the bottlers who then mixes it into the required consistency and distributes it for sale in their regions (Armstrong & Kotler, 2011).
On the other hand, McDonald’s adopts a high degree of localization to enables it to access different markets. McDonalds is susceptible to differences in tastes and preferences at regional level. The supply of raw materials for the production of its fast foods makes it rely on locally available materials. Most of these define the taste that a particular region.
That is why McDonald’s sales vary from region to region, with the flagship product for any one region differing significantly from other regions in their markets. This approach requires, “continually staying in touch with customers” (Levinson et al., 2007, p.6).
However, the companies do not pursue a pure strategy in their marketing efforts. They still have to pursue a degree of localization and globalization in the marketing campaigns. While the Coca Cola Company uses a single marketing campaign across the world, it nonetheless takes into account local perceptions, and has some products marketed in some markets only.
In the US for instance, the product coke light in other markets sells as diet coke. In the McDonald case, they use similar branding and product service techniques in all their stores worldwide regardless of market. These elements show that “marketing continues to evolve and mature” (Levinson et al., 2007. P.iv).
Reference List
Armstrong, G., Harker, M., Kotler, P. & Brennan, R., 2009. Marketing: An Introduction. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Financial Times Prentice Hall.
Levinson, Jay Conrad, Jeannie Levinson and Amy Levinson. Guerrilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business. 4. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007.
Porter, M.E., 1991. Competitive Advantage. In C.A. Montgomery & M.E. Porter, eds. Strategy: Seeking and Securing Competitive Advantage. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing Division.