Is the Strategy of “Glocalization” a Dead End for Multinational Companies?
After World War II, global companies began to utilize “glocalization” as a means to step up revenues in the global marketplace. The word “glocalization,” a mash up of the words “globalization” and “localization,” has many interpretations and uses. The use of the word that I am referring to came out of Wikipedia: “The creation or distribution of products or services intended for a global or transregional market, but customized to suit local laws or culture.” In business school, the term glocalization was used as liberally in core business courses as it was in marketing courses. But is this widely-used strategy as effective as it used to be? Vijay Govindarajan, Director of the Center for Global Leadership at the Tuck School of Business, says no. On a recent Harvard Business School podcast, Vijay suggests that many multinational companies will have to ditch the strategy of glocalization and replace it with a new strategy that will be more effective in our current and future economy. This
