Brand Globally but Advertise Locally?: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

In the heated debate about marketing globalization, the issue of brand standardization has received much less attention compared with advertising standardization. When both issues have been addressed, empirically or conceptually, they have not been considered simultaneously. The current study develops and empirically tests a framework to simultaneously consider brand and advertising standardization strategies. A survey was conducted among brand managers in firms operating in Canada, with data collected on a brand level. The results revealed an independence of brand and advertising standardization practices. It was also found that brand standardization was practised to a much higher degree than advertising standardization, with the most used combined strategy involving brand name standardization and non‐standardization of advertising. Effects of product type and brand age were also investigated. The findings clearly indicate that companies tend to “brand globally, advertise locally”.

Glocalizing methodology? The encounter between local methodologies

“…For example, in Israel, after initial protests, Big Macs are served without cheese in several outlets, thereby permitting the separation of meat and dairy products required of kosher restaurants. (Vignali, 2001, p. 99) This politics has been adopted also in advertising and promotional strategy, following the maxim 'brand globally, advertise locally' (Sandler & Shani, 1991). So McDonald's had a wide range of advertising campaigns in various countries, from the UK to France, passing through East Asia, China, and Hong Kong (see Vignali, 2001, pp.…”

The Anatomy of Brand Name Translation Under Skopos Theory: A Model of Customer Satisfaction, Awareness of Translation Strategy Use and Purchase Intention

“…This has contributed to a mounting academic interest in strategy use and assessment criteria for brand name translation in recent years (Alashban, Hayes, Zinkhan, & Balazs, 2002;Dong & Helms, 2001;Fan, 2002;Francis, Lam, & Walls, 2002;He & Xiao, volumes increased when brand names were more standardized. An earlier study by Sandler and Shani (1992) also revealed that companies tend to brand globally and advertise locally. Their works illuminated the importance of brand name design adaptation across different target markets within the same language system.…”

Product global reach, advertising standardization, and cultural values: an analysis of 2008 Beijing Olympic TV commercials

“…Standardized advertising refers to the practice of using a consistent message and executional elements that are largely driven by Western culture to address consumers across multiple countries; in contrast, localized advertising refers to the practice of adapting dominant values of a given market in advertising (Levitt, 1983;Taylor & Johnson, 2002;Yin, 1999). Instead of treating standardization versus localization as two separate dichotomous variables in international advertising strategy, researchers have proposed to see them as two ends of a continuum (Dunn, 1976;Harris, 1994;Mueller, 1991;Peebles, Ryan, & Vernon, 1977;Sandler & Shani, 1992). This is because partially standardized and partially localized advertisements rather than fully standardized or fully localized advertisements are much more prevalent in multinational campaigns (Harris, 1994;Mueller, 1991;Yin, 1999).…”

“…Specifically, Tai and Pae (2002) hypothesized that durable products such as household appliances offer greater opportunity for standardization than non-durable products, because they need fewer changes to appeal to local cultures (Douglas & Urban, 1977;Sandler & Shani, 1992), whereas non-durable products, such as culturally sensitive foodstuffs, are less likely to be suitable for advertising standardization . As predicted, findings show that standardized ads gained more acceptance in the case of durable products than for the non-durable products .…”