Standardization and Adaptation

This chapter distinguishes among domestic, international, and global marketing with a common vocabulary. It also reflects on the benefits and risks of standardization and adaptation, based on seminal articles on the topic. The chapter reviews some of the most important factors identified, such as firms' organizational design and international experience. It focuses on another important factor, firms' strategic orientation, using the EPRG framework. The EPRG framework proposes a typology of strategic orientations that firms adopt when expanding abroad. The chapter describes that global marketing raises the same questions as international marketing but favoring standardization and centralization over adaptation and delegation. Moreover, global marketing tends to be performed by "global companies," which brings forth the topic of organizational structure. In less-competitive markets, marketing managers may have more room for standardization, while particularly vigorous competition usually forces them to locally adapt in order to be more reactive and relevant to customers.