Companies that do not adapt to the new global realities will become victims of those that do.
In this quote Theodor Levitt a former professor at the Harvard Business School points out
that companies all over the world need to deal with a process which has changed the way they
carry on a business in many ways. The process namely globalisation takes advantages as well
as disadvantages not only for the business world but also for the individual. The importance
to face globalisation has always been there but it has increased with the evolving stages of
globalisation. Ever since this process started companies have tried to derive advantage from
globalisation while at the same time they had to deal with the disadvantages. For marketers in
particular this process seems to offer a lot of potential for the exploration of new markets
and customers. However the questions determining the success or failure of a marketing
campaign are more complex than in domestic marketing. Accordingly the terms international and
global marketing are strongly connected to globalisation and have become a key factor for the
success of companies. Corporations that want belong to these successful multi-national
companies (MNC) or global players certainly have to deal with the different issues that come
along with marketing products in other countries. These can have a significant impact on
international operations but also on the overall performance of a company. Since a company s
approach to these issues determines the success or failure in marketing a product abroad these
situations have to be addressed at an early stage. Among others cultural differences are one
of the major obstacles that have to be considered in international marketing. Every culture has
its own individual values behaviours ways of thinking lifestyle and language which make it
unique. Accordingly companies have two different possibilities to deal with that process. At
first standardisation an identical marketing plan is used across different cultures and
secondly adaptation appropriate adjustments are made to the special cultural environment of
the target market. It is therefore important for a marketer to be aware of these differences
and to use the right tools to advertise products successfully in multiple varied cultural
environments. This study provides a comprehensive framework of cultural differences in the USA
and Germany and analyses how companies should conceive their marketing efforts in terms of
theory and practice. Thereby the author illustrates those subjects on the basis of positive
and negative business examples.
