Crossing Borders: Globalization as Myth and Charter in American Transnational Consumer Marketing

Abstract

In this article, I explore the strategic practices and cultural theories of marketing managers in three U.S.-based transnational corporations (TNCs) as they seek to meaningfully direct their products across national borders. While cultural anthropologists have lately focused on local adaptation and appropriation of TNCs' products to local meanings, the reverse process by which TNCs co-opt local meanings to a universalizing evolutionary paradigm-in what they have come to regard as a consumption-led new global order-has not been examined. Globalization is explored as a key cultural concept driving marketing managers' practices-the myth and charter behind large TNC border crossings, [consumer marketing, globalization, transnational corporations, United States] The accumulation of capital has always been a profoundly geographical and spatial affair. Without the possibilities inherent in geographical expansion, spatial reorganization, and uneven geographical development, capitalism would have have ceased to function long ago as a political-economic system. This perpetual turning to what I call "a spatial fix" to capitalism's contradictions has created a global historical geography of capital accumulation. David Harvey, 1995The global world is the marketer's myth for the golden age to come-and he is its prophet. Ingrid Jordt, personal communication, May 25,1999While geographical expansion has historically typified the capitalist system, from a managerial economic perspective, corporate expansion has only recently been impelled by extrinsic factors that have changed the conditions for the survival of firms. Management expert Ken'ichi Ohmae (1990:7) explains that the shift in the cost structure of the modern corporate enterprise from a variable-to a fixed-cost environment has stimulated the current expansion efforts of firms, driving them to globalize. Various factors have raised the ratio of fixed to variable costs-including automation, the high costs of research and development, and the growing expenses of establishing a brand name among excessive advertising clutter. This shift has prompted firms to confer American Ethnologist 27(2):257-282. Copyright C 2000, American Anthropological Association. 258 amerlcan ethnologist central significance to marketing, since the most profitable and sustaining way to maximize marginal contributions to fixed costs is to boost sales. Thus, marketing logic now subsumes corporate goals in manufacturing, finance, human resources, and general management. Peter Drucker, often cited as the world's leading management theorist, declares, "Marketing is so basic it cannot be considered a separate function. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer's point of view" (in Kotler 1991:1).Concurrent with this growing emphasis on marketing's integral role in corporate expansion, there is a mushrooming of popular literature issuing from the social sciences that describes the world as altogether different from what it was 20 years ago. This n...

Towards a history of critical marketing studies

“…Rather, as part of the political stance characteristic of critical marketing studies, the articles included look at what marketing or advertising managers actually do in their day-to-day organisational activities (Brownlie & Saren, 1992) and from this demonstrate the power relations that exist between marketers and their core constituents (e.g. Applbaum, 2000;Hackley, 2002;Svensson, 2007; see also Skålén & Fougère, 2007). So where might critical marketing research and marketing management meet up?…”

Why Global? Diagnosing the Globalization Literature Within a Political Economy of Higher Education

“…Theodore Levitt's groundbreaking 1983 article “The Globalization of Markets,” published in the Harvard Business Review , argued that while the multinational corporation “adjusts its products and practices” depending on the country, the newly coined global corporation “operates with resolute consistency—at low relative cost—as if the entire world (or major regions of it) were a single entity.” In other words, Levitt argued that it is cheaper to “sell the same things in the same way everywhere” (Levitt :92–93). This argument amounted to a profound conceptual shift in marketing strategy predicated on the innovative assumption that companies could develop “a worldwide convergence of tastes” rather than cater to existing national markets (Applbaum :265). Levitt's argument made an immediate splash as major corporations changed their marketing strategies to develop their “ global potential ” (Applbaum :264), and the article quickly become “required reading in business schools across the world” (Quelch and Deshpande :9).…”

“…This argument amounted to a profound conceptual shift in marketing strategy predicated on the innovative assumption that companies could develop “a worldwide convergence of tastes” rather than cater to existing national markets (Applbaum :265). Levitt's argument made an immediate splash as major corporations changed their marketing strategies to develop their “ global potential ” (Applbaum :264), and the article quickly become “required reading in business schools across the world” (Quelch and Deshpande :9). As such, by the time social scientists began studying globalization in the 1990s, they were actually studying the materialized effect of a conceptual shift developed by their business school colleagues a decade earlier.…”

Extension in the Subjectifying Power of Marketing Ideology in Organizations

“…Power has been a comparatively neglected concept in mainstream management studies (Clegg, Courpasson, and Phillips 2006), and this is also true for mainstream marketing (Merlo, Whitwell, and Lukas 2004;Tadajewski 2006Tadajewski , 2010. However, power is interrelated with efficiency and effectiveness in management practice and should be a fundamental concern for all managerial theories, including marketing theory (Arvidsson 2006;Applbaum 2000;Clegg, Courpasson, and Phillips 2006). The inherent managerialism developed in marketing theory-typically understood as based on ''neutral science'' and aiming for efficiency and effectiveness-needs to be counterbalanced and problematized by a power-based notion of managerialism, conceptualizing the managerialism of marketing as ''an ideology'' (see Deetz 1992, p. 222).…”