ABSTRACT
A market is governed by a single standard of competitiveness that is determined by the most competitive product in that market. The competitive edge of this product is based upon a particular combination of price, quality and service, and can be met or beaten through a different combination of characteristics, a different strategy: to be a discounter, a service champion or just a better balancer of all the basics. For this reason there is nothing more threatening for an entrepreneur than when a new player enters the market with a different business model as this ‘upsets’ the established relationship between price and quality and services and thereby sets a new standard to which all market participants must somehow adjust (Fligstein, 2001). This is exactly what happens with economic globalization: an exogenous, global standard of competitiveness starts to challenge existing, local, indigenous practices. Then the issue of compatibility arises: how can this new standard be met? This pressure for compatibility translates again into a need for convergence, to ‘copy globally in order to cope locally’.
