ABSTRACT
Over the course of the postcrisis period, the diverging brand priorities outlined in the above sections have to an extent been enmeshed and compromised in the emergence of a set of “cross-vergent” positioning practices. These have been depicted to us in a number of varied – though converging – definitions and suppositions. As a senior marketing executive with the US oil giant Caltex expressed it,
To summarize the sentiments of a host of both local and expatriate marketing managers, the branding strategy of the foreign MNC must “fit” the level of development of the domestic market. This “fit” has been described in varying terms, one of them being the catch-all claim to target the “right” products to the “right” people. The more specific issue of “sensitivity” to local cultural mores was also expressed on numerous occasions as an underlying balance to the push for regional standardization. Within the varied domestic markets of the region, obviously the basic needs and underlying motivations of consumers change only very slowly – reinforcing the need for adapted marketing strategies. At the same time, fashion and more superficial needs tend to change much more quickly – hence the opportunity for globalized strategies linked to localized behavior adaptation. A cross section of Japanese and Western MNCs are progressively seeking to identify and explore a potential blend of the necessarily local and the ideally global in order to manage their respective brands across the region.
