Coca Cola

© SYMPHONYA Emerging Issue in Management, n. 1, 2000-2001 www.unimib.it/symphonya

Think Local-Act Local: Is It Time to Slow Down the Accelerated Move to Global Marketing?

Isabelle Schuiling∗

Abstract In view of the accelerated move of great corporations towards global marketing, the strategic changes of such companies raise interesting questions. Is marketing globalization reaching its limits after years of implementation? Is it time for companies to rethink their strategies and move back, like Coca-Cola, to a multidomestic marketing approach? Keywords: Global Marketing; Multi-Domestic Marketing Approach; Brand Equity; Drawbacks of Marketing Globalization; Coca-Cola

Just over a year ago (March 2000) Douglas Daft, CEO of Coca-Cola, announced that the next big evolutionary step for the company would be ‘going local’. CocaCola, he had concluded, was operating as a big, slow and sometimes insensitive ‘global’ company at a time when the market was demanding ‘greater flexibility, responsiveness and local sensitivity’. In view of the accelerated move of most international firms towards global marketing, the strategic change of a company with such an undisputed ‘global’ brand raises interesting questions. Is marketing globalisation reaching its limits after years of implementation? Is it time for companies to rethink their strategies and move back, like Coca-Cola, to a multidomestic marketing approach?

1. The Marketing Globalisation Debate The marketing globalisation debate has been exercising the minds of academics and practitioners for more than 30 years. In the 1980s, proponents like Ted Levitt have argued that movement towards standardisation was inescapable due to the fast diffusion of technologies, standardisation of consumer needs and economies of scale. Opponents like Wharton Professor Jerry Wind suggested that differences

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Lecturer in Marketing, IAG, Université Catholique de Louvain (isabelle.schuiling@uclouvain.be) ISSN: 1593-0319

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