Temptations of standardisation and communication visionaries

The differentiation of cross-border strategies, as well as the differing scale of internationalisation, can be determined through the criterion of perceiving a global market. Seeing the market as culturally diversified, composed of individual markets with their own specifics which call for adaptation, is characteristic of the multilocal approach. As a result, firms might decide to design a set of multiple strategies adjusted to local specifics. Seeing the market as homogenous is characteristic of a global, integrated strategy and global marketing.

The basis of such an approach, which aims at the realisation of a more or less utopian vision of the whole planet as a unified market with unlimited absorption capability for standardised products and demand created through global promotion constructed with culturally and socially unified narratives, seems to derive from the concept of the global market promoted by the Harvard Business Review and the notion of a “global village”.

In 1983 Theodore Levitt published The Globalization of Markets, which encouraged firms to create standardised products of high quality for global distribution (Keegan, Green, 2008).

The notion of a “global village”, popularised by McLuhan (Marshall McLuhan's theory…, 1960) with his vision of a development of easily accessible media, which can become a certain transmission belt of ideas on a global scale, in effect creating unprecedented opportunities for advertising and promotion, seems to justify a standardised global strategy as the basic way to operate internationally. From the perspective of more than half a century, McLuhan's vision can be seen as a prophetic and adequate description of changing consumer behaviour.

Additionally, the idea of global marketing developed under very favourable conditions, i.e. the 1960s saw a relatively high level of quality becoming standard and therefore ceasing to be the only condition sufficient for guaranteeing market share. As a result, companies began to seek alternative strategies. This is how a brand, seen as a factor of building competitiveness and an effective tool for operating under the conditions of easy, quick and mass communication, emerged, thus making it possible to convey standardised messages via different channels.

The question about the possibilities of making marketing truly global should be analysed through the concept of the marketing mix, which includes product, price, distribution and promotion (Naghi, Para, 2013).