Globalization

Globalization refers to growing economic interdependence among countries as reflected in increasing cross-border flows of three types of entities: goods and services, capital and knowhow The term globalization can relate to any of several levels of aggregation: the entire world, a specific country, a specific industry, a specific company, or even a specific line of business or functional activity within the company.

The most strategic expansion routes for international retail expansion are global and multinational strategies). Global retailers replicate a standard format throughout their expansion worldwide while multinational strategies result in adaptation of their retail offering. Multinational retailer's expansion is generally slower than global retailers and the management is decentralized. Multinational target markets in closer proximity. International expansions of retailers are challenging and unpredictable, and a slow approach is healthy

As markets evolve, differentiation becomes more important. It's interesting to note, most of the industries, practically all the industries are attempting to globalize today like the automobile industry has done over the last few decades. Automobile industry peaked during the 1950s and since then there has been a decline and ever since it's been growth of the major players and consolidation of the smaller ones. Success in the motor industry comes not from size and scale but from developing competitive advantages in operations and marketing these advantages internationally.

Global brands are a recent phenomenon. Until 10 to 15 years there weren't any global brands, many companies were multinationals tending to function as a collection of individual enterprises with separate factories and different products in each country. The manifesto of global brands emerged in 1983 when Theodore Levitt published

...