Marketing strategies adopted by Global Companies can be broadly classified as follows:
1. A Global Strategy
It treats the world as a single market. This strategy is warranted when the forces for global integration are strong and the forces for national responsiveness are weak. This is true of the consumer electronics market, for example, where most buyers will accept a fairly standardized pocket radio, CD player, or TV. Matsushita has performed better than GE and Philips in the consumer electronics market because Matsushita operates in a more glob ally coordinated and standardized way.
2. A Multinational Strategy
It treats the world as a portfolio of national opportunities. This strategy is warranted when the forces favoring national responsiveness are strong and the forces favoring global integration are weak. This is the situation in the branded packaged-goods business (food products, clean ing products). Unilever can be cited as a better performer than Procter & Gamble (P&G) because Unilever grants more decision-making autonomy to its local branches.
3. A “Glocal” Strategy
It standardizes certain core elements and localizes other elements. Glocal strategy makes sense for an industry (such as telecommunica tions) where each nation requires some adaptation of its equipment but the providing company can also standardize some of the core components. Ericsson can be cited as balancing these considerations better than NEC (too globally oriented) and ITT (too locally oriented).
One of the most successful “Glocal” companies is ABB, formed by a merger between the Swedish company ASEA and the Swiss company Brown Boveri.