ABSTRACT
The discussion on global standardisation or local market adaptation is one of the key issues in international marketing. Intuitively, it is easy to understand that the firm should adapt to local tastes and requirements and that these are in immediate conflict with the central demands of rationalisation and scale economies leading to standardised solutions – both in marketing and manufacturing. This chapter discusses this conflict and its causes, and gives examples of how it has been solved in different firms. Various researchers have tried to identify and classify factors that affect a firm's choice to standardise its marketing activities. Some studies have addressed the influence of cultural factors on management's propensity to standardise or adapt its international marketing strategy. Later, into the 2000s, S. Zou and S. Tamer Cavusgil found that global market strategies are positively related to strategic and financial performance in a sample of US global firms.
