Research Summary
Research Summary
Rooting Marketing Strategy in Human Universals
Description
Localization strategies can be costly to implement while globalization strategies may fail to develop or create demand by stressing readily shared product features rather than shared needs. Thus the question: Is there, somewhere between the extremes of localization and globalization, an approach to global marketing that would respect and enhance the local consumers sense of self while benefiting from the economic advantages of standardization?
The thesis of this essay is that this can be achieved by rooting marketing strategy in human universals. Beyond their superficial benefits, consumption goods possess basic characteristics that connect them to emotional patterns and schemes of thoughts that are almost universally shared among human beings. What we propose is basing product concepts in these shared human traits and then facilitating the process by which consumers create a personal connection to the offered goods. (with Ivory Liu and Gerald Zaltman in The Global Market, a Jossey-Bass book edited by John Quelch and Rohit Deshpande)