La "glocalisation"

Résumé du document

At first sight, few people have ever heard about the term glocalization. They have indeed heard about globalization, internationalization, localization and international marketing through different medias but this term appears more an error of pronunciation than anything else to them. It is quite comprehensible as this phenomenon is very recent and relatively unknown. To understand today's world changes, more and more specialists and politicians try to understand the causes and consequences of this new appearance. The first ones to be directly concerned are companies and consequently people. Understanding how these parties are involved and how they deal with this phenomenon may appear to be very complex at first, but in the end this could become an outcome to current world troubles on the international level.

In the manner of all the emerging phenomenon of our society, glocalization has its own benefits and limits. Born out of the linguistic porte-manteau joining of global and localization, it is nevertheless imperative to differentiate these different terms as this phenomenon is not simply an association of characteristics. The same thing goes for all socio-economical levels, from the strategies run by the multinationals to the final consumer. What is presented, as an economic issue is more and more assimilated to a social matter as long as we deal with this brand new phenomenon.

The global economic context is not really working in anybody's favor nowadays. Because of the financial crisis, now extended to the main economic domains, people and companies are going through adverse periods. According to the French economist magazine L'Expansion (2009) all sectors are facing historical drops. On the global basis, the recession initially started from the subprime phenomenon, where banks saw their assets depreciated because of the non-refunding of their loans. Thus, the financial sector was the first to see its wealth decrease. Since then, the situation has gotten worse, paralyzing the worldwide economy.

In this context, companies acting on the international scene have seen their strategy of doing business considerably affected. Being successful on the domestic market is one thing, going abroad and implementing in order to develop is another story…
Each major company has its own way of doing business overseas. Most of the time it is a savant mix of understanding how to answer consumers' expectations, but also how to manage the interaction with other cultures in different ways.

To start off, we will try to master the core issue of being successfully global. This implicates demonstrating how local specificities have an impact on global trends. Once we have described and developed this as our starting point, we could then focus on the main subject of the glocalization phenomenon. It would be interesting to identify the local problems companies could be made to face. Finally, we will study several cases of multinationals and theirs international strategies. This aims to see if there is a miracle “recipe” or if on the contrary, everyone has their own way of doing business abroad. Some recommendations will be also given following this analysis.

Extraits

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[...] The style of communication is more implicit. See Appendices Table “Business negotiation and style of cultural communication”. Negotiate on an international level implies informing oneself on the main cultural codes (like the distance to respect with its representative (proxemics, gestures to avoid) and on the business uses (like the business practices of exchanging gifts or business cards), linked to the cultural differences concerning the relation with time, to others, power, rules space and friendship. For example, the protocol of exchanging business cards in China is a lot more formal than in Europe: one must look at one's representative in the eyes, give or receive the card solemnly, always with both hands, often by softly inclining the bust (but not too much), turn the card in direction of the representative, carefully read the card by showing some interest, smile and not show too strong emotions (anger, pain, too much enthusiasm, too much indifference)(Koshy and Prime, 2006). [...]

[...] We distinguish two types of delocalization. The first one is undoubtedly the least dangerous. It represents the fact that a company decides to open production units in other countries in order to get closer to its potential markets. This type of delocalization does not necessarily reduce employment in the country of origin; it can even possibly stimulate it by increasing outlets. However, in the long term it can generate negative effects. The second type of delocalization is characterized by the implementation of production units in other countries with a return of a part of the produced goods in order to be sold in the country of origin. [...]

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