Strategic regionalization in marketing campaigns: Beyond the standardization/glocalization debate

Abstract

While the economic logic of globalization might impel global marketers to seek the economies of scale and other theoretical advantages of standardization, experience with the realities of linguistic and other cultural differences has obliged them to go some distance towards the ‘glocalization’ of their marketing campaigns. By examining the marketing strategies of Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Procter & Gamble over the last decade or so, with particular attention to Asia as a region, this article suggests that strategic regionalization in its various forms represents a kind of practical compromise with an extreme nation-by-nation approach – that is, a means of ensuring that campaigns are not glocalized any more than is strictly necessary. More generally, it points up the degree to which the global–local dialectic is, in practice, mediated not only by the national but also by the regional.

Acknowledgement

This paper is an output from a program of research under Australian Research Council Discovery Grant – Project DP0556419, ‘Globalisation and the Media in Australia’, funded 2005–09. The authors gratefully acknowledge the ARC's financial support.