ABSTRACT
In the wake of the cataclysmic events of 1997, a cross section of Japanese and Western-based multinationals sought to exert increasing levels of control upon their ASEAN subsidiaries’ marketing strategies. A major plank of these initiatives involved both the gathering and the presentation of market data in an attempt to render the process both effective and transparent. This is exemplified by BP’s reimposing its global consumer categories of “enthusiastic,” “appreciative” or “uninterested” upon its newly acquired Castrol ASEAN units. Yet there were major problems encountered in making “effectiveness” and “transparency” into mutually inclusive factors.
