Standardization Versus Adaptation

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Assignment The globalization of markets, the increased trading in foreign markets, and the integration of the main economies of the world have forced companies to focus their attention on the global environment. They need to take into consideration cultural and social differences while marketing their products in these markets. This has led to a major issue for market research and practices i.e. standardization or adaptation in international business. The dilemma for companies and managers is to decide whether to ‘standardize’ their marketing strategy or whether to ‘adapt’ to local markets across different countries. The idea of standardization can be dated back to 1920 (Agrawal, 1995) and ever since studies and debates have been carried out over standardization. There has been no universal explanation of standardization term. Some coin it as a common marketing plan and some term it as a common pattern of allocating firms resources. Over the past 40 years, there has been considerable research on the issue of standardization and has led to three separate directions. One sect of researchers argues in favor of standardization approach (Levitt, 1983), the second sect of researchers argues in favor of adaptation and a third sect advocates in favor of a contingency framework that can be formulated by taking a combination of both standardization and adaptation as per the requirements in the foreign country. People in support of standardization argue that there may be some culture differences among different countries but the basic requirements of a human being are same in all countries. So, managers need such difference while designing international marketing and advertising strategies. In the words of Lemark, standardization is a uniform approach for international business worldwide. The idea of standardization was supported by Levitt, who suggested that the companies
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