Please read Levitt’s “The Golobalization of Markets” and Kafka’s “An Imperial Message.”
1. Please explain in your words the meaning of Levitt’s metaphor “the earth is flat.” (50-80 words)
2. Kafka’s short text has been interpreted in many ways. After reading Levitt (and including your own ideas about globalization) try to read it as a text that deals critically with the promises and dangers of globalization. (150-200 words) You might consider questions like Who or what might the Emperor be? What are the messages (the one given by the Emperor and the received by the dreamer)? Who is represented by the strong messenger? Who is represented by the “humble subject?” What is the meaning of the spatial and temporal obstacles in the parable? Or you might address your own ideas regarding globalization while considering Kafka’s text.
The Neighbouring Village
My grandfather was in the habit of saying: ‘Life is astonishingly
brief By now it is all so condensed in my memory that I
can hardly understand, for instance, how a young man can
undertake to ride to the neighbouring village without wonder
ing whether – even if everything goes right – the span of a
normal happy life will be enough for such a ride.’
208
A Message from the Emperor
The Emperor has – it is claimed – sent you a message on his
deathbed, to you, you alone, you miserable subject, the tiny
shadow fleeing as far as it can from the imperial sun. He asked
the messenger to kneel down at his bedside, and whispered the
message in his ear; and it mattered to him so much that he had
the man say it back to him. By nodding he affirmed that that
was what he had said. And before all the massed spectators at
his dying – all the obstructing walls were knocked through,
and on the wide and lofty staircase the great figures of the
empire stood in a ring – with all these people watching, he
dispatched his envoy. The envoy set off straightaway; a strong
man, tireless; now putting out one arm, now the other, he
clears a way through the crowd; if he encounters any resistance,
he points to the emblem of the sun displayed on his chest; he
gets ahead easily, better than anyone else. But the crowds are
so great; their abodes are never-ending. If a path opened before
him, how he would fly, and ere long you would hear the
majestic pounding of his fists on your door. But instead, how
futile are his efforts; still he is forcing his way through the
apartments of the inner palace; never will he have put them
behind him; and if he succeeded there, still nothing would be
won; he would have to battle his way down the stairs; and if he
had succeeded there, still nothing would be won; he would
have to cross the courtyards; and after the courtyards, the
209
A Country Doctor: Short Prose for my Father
second, outer palace; further staircases and courtyards; another
palace; and so on for thousands of years; and once he finally
plunged through the outermost gate – but this can never ever
be – then the imperial city will still lie ahead of him, the middle
of the world, piled high with its sediment. No one can make his
way through there, much less with a message from a dead man.
– But you, you will sit at your window and dream of it as
evening falls.
210
The Worries of a Head of Household
There are some who say the word Odradek comes from the
Slavic and they look for its etymology there. There are others
who say it’s a Germanic word, merely inflected by the Slavic.
The doubt surrounding both versions forces one to conclude
that neither is true, especially as neither is any help in finding a
meaning for the word.
Of course, no one would bother themselves with such ques
tions, were it not that there is a real being called Odradek. One’s
first impression of it is of a flat, star-shaped reel of thread, and
indeed it appears to have thread entwined in it; admittedly,
only broken old pieces of thread, in all sorts of colours and
thicknesses, knotted or even tangled together. But it’s not a
reel, since a little rod emerges from the centre of the star, and
this rod has another rod going off it at right angles. With this
rod on one side, and one of the points of the star on the other,
the whole thing is able to stand upright as on two feet.
One might be tempted to believe this structure had once had
a practical form, and was merely now broken. This doesn’t
seem to be the case; at least there are no indications of it;
nowhere are there beginnings or broken places that would
suggest something of the kind; the whole thing looks func
tionless, but after its fashion complete. There is not much more
to be said about it, other than that Odradek is extraordinarily
manoeuvrable and impossible to catch.
2II
CHAPTER I
THE GLOBALIZATION OF MARKETS
Theodore Levitt
A pmverful fixce drives the world toward a converging commonality, and that
force is technology. It has proletarianized communication, transport, and travel.
It has made isolated places and impoverished peoples eager for modernity’s al
lurements. Almost everyone everywhere wants all the things they have heard
about, seen, or experienced via the new technologies.
The result is a new commercial reality-the emergence of global markets
for standardized consumer products on a previously unimagined scale of
magnitude. Corporations geared to this new reality benefit from enormous
economies of scale in production, distribution, marketing, and management.
By translating these benefits into reduced world prices, they can decimate
competitors that still live in the disabling grip of old assumptions about how
the world works.
Gone are accustomed differences in national or regional preference. Gone
are the days when a company could sell last year’s models-or lesser versions of
advanced products-in the less-developed world. And gone are the days when
prices, margins, and profits abroad were generally higher than at home.
16
THE GLOBALIZATION OF MARKETS 17
The globalization of markets is at hand. With that, the multinational com
mercial world nears its end, and so does the multinational corporation.
The multinational and the global corporation are not the same thing. The
multinational corporation operates in a number of countries, and adjusts its
products and practices in each-at high relative costs. The global corporation
operates with resolute constancy-at low relative cost-as if the entire world
( or major regions of it) were a single entity; it sells the same things in the same
way everywhere.
Which �trategy is better is not a matter of opinion but of necessity. Worldwide
communications carry everywhere the constant drumbeat of modern possibilities
to lighten and enhance work, raise living standards, divert, and entertain. The
same countries that ask the world to recognize and respect the individuality of
their cultures insist on the wholesale transfer to them of modern goods, services,
and technologies. Modernity is not just a wish but a lso a ,,·idespread practice
among those who cling, with unyielding passion or religious fervor, to ancient
attitudes and heritages.
Who can forget the televised scenes during the 1979 Iranian uprisings of
young men in fashionable French-cut trousers and silky body shirts thirst
ing fr>r blood vith raised modern weapons in the name of Tslarnic funda
mentalism >
In Brazil, thousands swarm daily from preindustrial Bahian darkness into
exploding coastal cities, there quickly to install television sets in crowded cor
rugated huts and, next to battered Volkswagens, make sacrificial offerings of fruit
and fresh-killed chickens to ivlacumban spirits by candlelight.
During Riafra’s fratricicfal war against the Jbos, daily televised reports showed
soldiers carrying bloodstained swords and listening to transistor rad.ios Vhik
drinking Coca-Cola.
In the isolated Siberian city ofKrasnoyarsk, with no paved streets and censored
news, occasional Western travelers are stealthily propositioned for cigarettes,
digital watches, and even the clothes off their backs.
The organized smuggling of electronic equipment, used automobiles,
western clothing, cosmetics, and pirated movies into primitive places exceeds
even the thriving underground trade in modern weapons and their military
mercenaries.
A thousand suggestive ways attest to the ubiquity of the desire for the most
advanced things that the world makes and sells-goods of the best quality and
reliability at the lowest price. The world’s needs and desires have been irrevoca
bly homogenized. This makes the multinational corporation obsolete and the
global corporation absolute.
18 THEODORE LEVITT
Living in the Republic of Technology
Daniel J. Boorstin, author of the monumental trilogy The Americans, character
ized our age as driven by “the Republic of Technology [whose] supreme law … is
convergence, the tendency for everything to become more like everything else.”
In business, this trend has pushed markets toward global commonality.
Corporations sell standardized products in the same way everywhere-autos,
steel, chemicals, petroleum, cement, agricultural commodities and equipment,
industrial and commercial construction, banking and insurance services, com
puters, semiconductors, transport, electronic instruments, pharmaceuticals, and
telecommunications, to mention some of the obvious.
Nor is the sweeping gale of globalization confined to these raw material or
high-tech products, where the universal language of customers and users facilitates
standardization. The transforming winds whipped up by the proletarianization
of communication and travel enter every crevice of life.
Commercially, nothing confirms this as much as the success of McDonald’s
from the Champs Elysees to the Ginza, of Coca-Cola in Bahrain and Pepsi-Cola
in Moscow, and of rock music, Greek salad, Hollywood movies, Revlon cosmet
ics, Sony televisions, and Levi jeans everywhere. “High-touch” products are as
ubiquitous as high-tech.
Starting from opposing sides, the high-tech and the high-touch ends of the
commercial spectrum gradually consume the undistributed middle in their cos
mopolitan orbit. No one is exempt and nothing can stop the process. Everywhere
everything gets more and more like everything else as the world’s preference
structure is relentlessly homogenized.
Consider the cases of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola, which are globally stan
dardized products sold everywhere and welcomed by everyone. Both successfully
cross multitudes of national, regional, and ethnic taste buds trained to a variety
of deeply ingrained local preferences of taste, flavor, consistency, effervescence,
and aftertaste. Everywhere both sell well. Cigarettes, too, especially American
made, make year-to-year global inroads on territories previously held in the firm
grip of other, mostly local, blends.
These are not exceptional examples. (Indeed their global reach would be
even greater were it not for artificial trade barriers.) They exemplify a general
drift toward the homogenization of the world and how companies distribute,
finance, and price products. 1 Nothing is exempt. The products and methods of
the industrialized world play a single tune for all the world, and all the world
eagerly dances to it.
Ancient differences in national tastes or modes of doing business disappear.
The commonality of preference leads inescapably to the standardization of
l
THE GLOBALIZATION OF MARKETS 19
products, manufacturing, and the institutions of trade and commerce. Small
nation-based markets transmogrify and expand. Success in world competition
turns on efficiency in production, distribution, marketing, and management,
and inevitably becomes focused on price.
The most effective world competitors incorporate superior quality and reli
ability into their cost structures. They sell in all national markets the same kind
of products sold at home or in their largest export market. They compete on
the basis of appropriate value-the best combinations of price, quality, reliabil
ity, and delivery for products that are globally identical with respect to design,
function, and even fashion.
That, and little else, explains the surging success ofJapanese companies deal
ing worldwide in a vast variety of products-both tangible products like steel,
cars, motorcycles, hi-fi equipment, farm machinery, robots, microprocessors,
carbon fibers, and now even textiles, and intangibles like banking, shipping,
general contracting, and soon computer software. Nor are high-quality and
low-cost operations incompatible, as a host of consulting organizations and
data engineers argue with vigorous vacuity. The reported data are incomplete,
wrongly analyzed, and contradictory. The truth is that low-cost operations are
the hallmark of corporate cultures that require and produce quality in all that
they do. High quality and low costs are not opposing postures. They are com
patible, twin identities of superior practice. 2
To say that Japan’s companies are not global because they export cars with
left-side drives to the United States and the European continent, while those
in Japan have right-side drives, or because they sell office machines through
distributors in the United States but directly at home, or speak Portuguese in
Brazil is to mistake a difference for a distinction. The same is true of Safeway
and Southland retail chains operating effectively in the Middle East, and to not
only native but also imported populations from Korea, the Philippines, Paki
stan, India, Thailand, Britain, and the United States. National rules of the road
differ, and so do distribution channels and languages. Japan’s distinction is its
unrelenting push for economy and value enhancement. That translates into a
drive for standardization at high quality levels.
Vindication of the Model T
If a company forces costs and prices down and pushes quality and reliability
up-while maintaining reasonable concern for suitability-customers will prefer
its world-standardized products. The theory holds at this stage in the evolution
of globalization-no matter what conventional market research and even com
mon sense may suggest about different national and regional tastes, preferences,
20 THEODORE LEVITT
needs, and institutions. The Japanese have repeatedly vindicated this theory,
as did Henry Ford with the Model T. Most important, so have their imitators ,
including companies from South Korea ( television sets and heavy construction),
Malaysia (personal calculators and microcomputers), Brazil (auto parts and tools),
Colombia (apparel), Singapore (optical equipment), and, yes, even the United
States ( office copiers, computers, bicycles, castings), Western Europe ( automatic
washing machines), Rumania (housewares) , Hungary (apparel), Yugoslavia (fur
niture), and Israel (pagination equipment) .
Of course, large companies operating in a single nation or even a single city
don’t standardize everything they make, sell, or do. They have product l ines
instead of a single product version, and multiple distribution channels . There are
neighborhood, local, regional, ethnic, and institutional differences, even within
metropolitan areas. But although companies customize products for particular
market segments, they know that success in a world with homogenized demand
requires a search for sales opportunities in similar segments across the globe
in order to achieve the economies of scale necessary to compete . Such a search
works because a market segment in one country is seldom unique; it has close
cousins everywhere precisely because technology has homogenized the globe .
Even small local segments have their global equivalents everywhere and become
subject to global competition, especially on price.
The global competitor will seek constantly to standardize its offering every
where . It will digress from this standardization only after exhausting all possi
bilities to retain it, and will push for reinstatement of standardization whenever
digression and divergence have occurred. It will never assume that the customer
is a king who knows his own wishes.
Trouble increasingly stalks companies that lack clarified global focus and
remain inattentive to the economics of simplicity and standardization . The most
endangered companies in the rapidly evolving world tend to be those that domi
nate rather small domestic markets with high value-added products for which
there are smaller markets elsewhere. With transportation costs proportionately
low, distant competitors will enter the now-sheltered markets of those compa
nies with goods produced more cheaply under scale-efficient conditions. Global
competition spells the end of domestic territoriality, no matter how diminutive
the territory may be .
When the global producer offers its lower costs internationally, its patronage
expands exponentially. It not only reaches into distant markets, but also attracts
customers who previously held to local preferences and now capitulate to the
attractions of lower prices . The strategy of standardization not only responds to
worldwide homogenized markets but also expands those markets with aggressive
low pricing. The new technological juggernaut taps an ancient motivation-to
THE GLOBALIZATION OF MARKETS 2 1
make one’s money go as far as possible . This i s universal-not simply a motiva
tion but actually a need .
The Hedgehog Knows
The difference between the hedgehog and the fox, wrote Sir Isaiah Berlin in
distinguishing between Dostoevski and Tolstoy, is that the fox knows a lot about
a great many things, but the hedgehog knows everything about one great thing.
The multinational corporation knows a lot about a great many countries and
congenially adapts to supposed differences. It willingly accepts vestigial national
differences, not questioning the possibility of their transformation, not recog
nizing how the world is ready and eager for the benefit of modernity, especially
when the price is right. The multinational corporation’s accommodating mode
to visible national differences is medieval.
By contrast, the global corporation knows everything about one great thing.
It knows about the absolute need to be competitive on a worldwide basis as well
as nationally and seeks constantly to drive down prices by standardizing what
it sells and how it operates. It treats the world as composed of few standardized
markets rather than many customized markets . It actively seeks and vigorously
works toward global convergence . Its mission is modernity and its mode is price
competition, even when it sells top-of-the-line, high-end products. It knows about
the one great thing all nations and people have in common: scarcity.
Nobody takes scarcity lying down; everyone wants more. This in part explains
division oflabor and specialization of production. They enable people and nations
to optimize their conditions through trade. The median is usually money.
Experience teaches that money has three special qualities: scarcity, difficulty of
acquisition, and transience . People understandably treat it with respect. Everyone
in the increasingly homogenized world market wants products and features that
everybody else wants. If the price is low enough, they will take highly standard
ized world products, even if these aren’t exactly what one’s parents said was
suitable, what immemorial custom decreed was right, or what market-research
fabulists asserted was preferred.
The implacable truth of all modern production-whether of tangible or
intangible goods-is that large-scale production of standardized items is gener
ally cheaper within a wide range of volume than small-scale production . Some
argue that computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) will allow
companies to manufacture customized products on a small scale-but cheaply.
But the argument misses the point. (For a more detailed discussion, see Exhibit
1 . 1 . ) If a company treats the world as one or two distinctive product markets, it
22 THEODORE LEVITT
can serve the world more economically than if it treats it as three, four, or five
product markets.
Exhibit 1 . 1 Economies of Scope
One argument that opposes globalization says that flexible factory auto
mation will enable plants of massive size to change products and product
features quickly, without stopping the manufacturing process. These fac
tories of the future could thus produce broad lines of customized products
without sacrificing the scale economies that come from long production
runs of standardized items. CAD/CAM, combined with robotics, will
create a new equipment and process technology (EPT) that will make
small plants located close to their markets as efficient as large ones located
distantly. Economies of scale will not dominate, but rather economies of
scope-the ability of either large or small plants to produce great varieties
of relatively customized products at remarkably low costs. If that happens,
the customers will have no need to abandon special preferences .
I will not deny the power of these possibilities. But possibilities do not
make probabilities. There is no conceivable way in which flexible factory
automation can achieve the scale economies of a modernized plant dedicated
to mass production of standardized lines. The new digitized equipment
and process technologies arc available to all. Manufacturers with minimal
customization and narrow product-line breadth will have costs far below
those with more customization and wider lines .
Why Remaining Differences?
Different cultural preferences, national tastes and standards, and business institu
tions are vestiges of the past. Some inheritances die gradually; others prosper and
expand into mainstream global preferences. So-called ethnic markets are a good
example . Chinese food, pita bread, country and western music, pizza, and jazz
are everywhere . They are market segments that exist in world-wide proportions.
They don’t deny or contradict global homogenization but confirm it.
Many of today’s differences among nations as to products and their features
actually reflect the respectful accommodation of multinational corporations to
what they believe a re fixed local preferences . They believe preferences are fixed,
not because they are but because of rigid habits of thinking about what actually
is. Most executives in multinational corporations are thoughtlessly accommodat-
THE GLOBALIZATION OF MARKETS 23
ing. They falsely presume that marketing means giving customers what they say
they want rather than trying to understand exactly what they would like . So the
corporations persist with high-cost, customized multinational products and prac
tices instead of pressing hard and pressi ng properly for global standardization .
I do not advocate the systematic disregard of local or national differences .
But a company’s sensitivity to such differences docs not require that it ignore
the possibilities of doing things differently or better.
There are, for example, enormous differences among Middle Eastern coun
tries. Some are socialist, some monarchies , some republics. Some take their
legal heritage from the Napoleonic Code, some from the Ottoman Empire, and
some from British common law; except for Israel, all are influenced by Islam.
Doing business means personalizing the business relationship in an obsessively
intimate fashion. During the month of Ramadan, business discussions can start
only after 10 o ‘clock at night, when people are tired and full of food after a day
of fasting. A company must almost certainly have a local partner; a local lawyer
is required (as, say, in New York) , and irrevocable letters of credit are essential.
Yet, as Coca-Cola’s senior vice president Sam Ayoub noted, “Arabs arc much
more capable of making distinctions between cultural and religious purposes
on the one hand and economic realities on the other than is generally assumed.
Islam is compatible with science and modern times .”
Barriers to globalization are not confined to the Middle East. The free trans
fer of technology and data across the boundaries of the European Common
Market countries is hampered by legal and financial impediments. And there i s
resistance to radio and television interference ( “pollution” ) among neighboring
European countries.
But the past is a good guide to the future . With persistence and appropriate
means, barriers against superior technologies and econoi;nics have always fallen.
There is no recorded exception where reasonable effort has been made to over
come them. It is very much a matter of time and effort .
A Failure in Global Imagination
Many companies have tried to standardize world practice by exporting domestic
products and processes without accommodation or change-and have failed
miserably. Their deficiencies have been seized on as evidence of bovine stupidity
in the face of abject impossibility. Advocates of global standardization see them
as examples of fai lures in execution .
In fact, poor execution is often an important cause . More important, however,
is failure of nerve-failure of imagination .
24 THEODORE LEVITT
Table I.I Consumer Preferences as to Automatic
Washing Machine Features in the 1960s
Features Great Britain Italy W. Germany France Sweden
Shell Dimensions* 34″ and Low and 34″ 34″and 34″
narrow narrow and wide narrow and wide
Drum Material Enamel Enamel Stainless steel Enamel Stainless steel
Loading Top Front Front Front Front
Front Porthole Yes/no Yes Yes Yes Yes
Capacity 5 kilos 4kilos 6 kilos 5 kilos 6 kilos
Spin Speed 700 rpm 400 rpm 850 rpm 600 rpm 800 rpm
Water-heating System Not Yes Yestt Yes Not
Washing Action Agitator Tumble Tumble Agitator Tumble
Styling Features Inconspicuous Brightly Indestructible Elegant Strong
appearance colored appearance appearance appearance
*34″ height was in the process of being adopted as a standard work-surface height in Europe.
tMost British and Swedish homes had centrally heated hot water.
t!West Germans preferred to launder at temperatures higher than generally provided centrally.
Consider the case for the introduction of fully automatic home laundry
equipment in Western Europe at a time when few homes had even semiautomatic
machines. Hoover, Ltd., whose parent company was headquartered in North
Canton, Ohio, had a prominent presence in Britain as a producer of vacuum
cleaners and washing machines. Due to insufficient demand in the home market
and low exports to the European continent, the large washing machine plant
in England operated far below capacity. The company needed to sell more ofits
semiautomatic or automatic machines.
Because it had a “proper” marketing orientation, Hoover conducted consumer
preference studies in Britain and each major continental country. The results showed
feature preferences dearly enough among several countries (see Table I.I).
The incremental unit variable costs (in pounds sterling) of customizing to
meet just a few of the national preferences were:
Stainless steel vs. enamel drum
Porthole window
Spin speed of 800 rpm vs. 700 rpm
Water heater
6 vs. 5 kilos capacity
£ s. d.
2
I
£6
0
JO
15
15
10
IOs
$18.20 at exchange rate
of that time
0
0
0
0
0
Od
Considerable plant investment was needed to meet other preferences.
THE GLOBALIZATION OF MARKETS 25
The lowest retail prices (in pounds sterling) ofleading locally produced brands
in the various countries were approximately:
U.K.
France
West Germany
Sweden
Italy
£110
114
113
134
57
Product customization in each country would have put Hoover in a poor
competitive position on the basis of price, mostly due to the higher manufacturing
costs incurred by short production runs for separate features. Because Common
Market tariff reduction programs were then incomplete, Hoover also paid tariff
duties in each continental country.
How to Make a Creative Analysis
In the Hoover case, an imaginative analysis of automatic washing machine sales
in each country would have revealed that
L Italian automatics, small in capacity and size, low-powered, without built-in
heaters, with porcelain enamel tubs, were priced aggressively low and were
gaining large market shares in all countries, including West Germany.
2. The best-selling automatics in West Germany were heavily advertised
(three times more than the next most promoted brand), were ideally
suited to national tastes, and were also by far the highest-priced machines
available in that country.
3. Italy, with the lowest penetration of washing machines of any kind
(manual, semiautomatic, or automatic), was rapidly going directly to
automatics, skipping the pattern of first buying hand-wringer, manually
assisted machines and then semiautomatics.
4. Detergent manufacturers were just beginning to promote the technique of
cold-water and tepid-water laundering then used in the United States.
The growing success of small, low-powered, low-speed, low-capacity, low
priced Italian machines, even against the preferred but highly priced and highly
promoted brand in West Germany, was significant. It contained a powerful
message that was lost on managers confidently wedded to a distorted version
of the marketing concept according to which you give customers what they say
they want. In fact, the customers said they wanted certain features, but their
behavior demonstrated they’d take other features provided the price and the
promotion were right.
26 THEODORE LEVITT
In this case, it was obvious that, under prevailing conditions, people preferred
a low-priced automatic over any kind of manual or semiautomatic machine and
certainly over higher-priced automatics, even though the low-priced automatics
failed to fulfill all their expressed preferences. The supposedly meticulous and
demanding German consumers violated all expectations by buying the simple,
)ow-priced Italian machines.
It was equally clear that people were profoundly influenced by promotions of
automatic washers; in West Germany, the most heavily promoted ideal machine
also had the largest market share despite its high price. Two things clearly influ
enced customers to buy: low price regardless of feature preferences, and heavy
promotion regardless of price. Both factors helped customers get what they most
wanted-the superior benefits bestowed by fully automatic machines.
Hoover should have aggressively sold a simple, standardized high-quality
machine at a low price ( afforded by the 17% variable cost reduction that the
elimination of £6-10-0 worth of extra features made possible). The suggested
retail prices could have been somewhat less than £100. The extra funds “saved”
by avoiding unnecessary plant modifications would have supported an extended
service network and aggressive media promotions.
Hoover’s media message should have been: this is the machine that you, the
homemaker, deserve to have to reduce the repetitive, heavy daily household bur
dens, so that you may have more constructive time to spend with your children
and your husband. The promotion should also have targeted the husband to
give him, preferably in the presence of his wife, a sense of obligation to provide
an automatic washer for her even before he bought an automobile for himself.
An aggressively low price, combined with heavy promotion of this kind, would
have overcome previously expressed preferences for particular features.
The Hoover case illustrates how the perverse practice of the marketing concept
and the absence of any kind of marketing imagination let multinational attitudes
survive when customers actually want the benefits of global standardization. The
whole project got off on the wrong foot. It asked people what features they wanted
in a washing machine rather than what they wanted out of life. Selling a line of
products individually tailored to each nation is thoughtless. Managers who took
pride in practicing the marketing concept to the fullest did not, in fact, practice it
at all. Hoover asked the wrong questions, then applied neither thought nor imagi
nation to the answers. Such companies are like the ethnocentridsts in the Middle
Ages who saw with everyday clarity the sun revolving around the earth and offered
it as Truth. With no additional data but a more searching mind, Copernicus, like
the hedgehog, interpreted a more compelling and accurate reality. Data do not
yield information except with the intervention of the mind. Information does not
yield meaning except with the intervention of imagination.
Accepting the Inevitable
THE GLOBALIZATION OF MARKETS 27
The global corporation accepts for better or for worse that technology drives
consumers relentlessly toward the same common goals-alleviation of life’s
burdens and the expansion of discretionary time and spending power. Its role is
profoundly different from what it has been for the ordinary corporation during its
brief, turbulent, and remarkably protean history. It orchestrates the twin vectors
of technology and globalization for the world’s benefit. Neither fate, nor nature,
nor God but rather the necessity of commerce created this role.
In the United States, two industries became global long before they were
consciously aware ofit. After over a generation of persistent and acrimonious labor
shutdowns, the United Steelworkers of America had not called an industrywide
strike since 1959; the United Auto Workers had not shut down General Motors
since 1970. Both unions realize that they have become global; shutting down
all or most of U.S. manufacturing would not shut out U.S. customers. Overseas
suppliers are there to supply the market.
Cracking the Code of Western Markets
Since the theory of the marketing concept emerged a quarter of a century ago,
the more managerially …