[00:10.86]What exactly does globalization mean? Concepts related to globalization include internationalization,
[00:22.25]“multidomestic marketing”, and “multinational or transnational marketing”,
[00:28.32]suggesting that the basic criterion is transactions across national boundaries.
[00:34.51]In the marketing and strategic management literature,
[00:38.66]globalization is conceptualized as a means to gain competitive advantage by locating different stages of production
[00:47.97]in different geographic regions according to the particular region’s comparative advantages.
[00:55.92]This conceptualization focuses only on the economic aspects of globalization;
[01:03.32]social, cultural and political factors are only considered in the context of achieving economic advantage.
[01:12.67]Thus, being “culturally sensitive” in global markets is being able to sell one’s product with enough ingenuity
[01:21.40]to avoid possible pitfalls arising from the seller’s ignorance of local customs.
[01:28.24]International marketing textbooks discuss such cultural pitfalls in great detail:
[01:34.97]however, the cultural contest of globalization is always framed by the economic.
[01:42.32]Broader conceptualizations of globalization can be found in other disciplines such as sociology and anthropology.
[01:52.31]Waters defined globalization as “a social process in which the constraints of geography
[01:59.43]on social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding.”
[02:08.65]This conceptualization with its much broader scope,
[02:12.55]allows for the examination of a number of consequences of globalization, not just economic but social,
[02:19.43]cultural and political ones.
[02:22.73]While there are a few different conceptualizations of globalization,
[02:28.06]researchers seem to be in agreement that there are at least three dimensions of globalization: economic,
[02:36.56]political and cultural.
[02:39.84]The economic aspects of globalization stem from the spread of the capitalist world economy
[02:46.36]and the resulting expansion of geographical boundaries for the production and consumption of goods and services.
[02:54.30]The need for cheap raw materials,
[02:56.97]cheap labor and new markets saw the expansion of the capitalist world economy from one
[03:03.16]that was primarily Eurocentric to one that encompassed the entire world.
[03:09.80]This process was achieved by various means
[03:12.88]and often involved overcoming political resistances (frequently through military means) in the new “markets”.
[03:22.91]The political aspects of globalization involved establishing control over markets
[03:28.01]and raw materials through either the use of direct military power
[03:33.61]or the establishment of international institutions (through diplomacy) that control such markets.
[03:41.31]The rise of the nation state is an example of the political aspect of globalization,
[03:47.71]although it is argued that advances in telecommunications and information systems
[03:53.31]and the resulting constructions of institutions that transcend territorial boundaries are making the nation state obsolete.
[04:03.63]If the economic and political aspects of globalization involve material and power exchanges,
[04:11.54]the cultural of globalization involves the expression of symbols that represent facts, meanings,
[04:19.59]beliefs, preferences, tastes and values. In fact,
[04:25.50]these symbolic exchanges are increasingly displacing economic and political exchanges in the spread of global mass culture.
[04:35.51]Traditional barriers of language pose no problems to modern means of cultural production
[04:41.48]such as satellite television and film. However, the new “global culture”,
[04:48.40]despite its manifestations through consumption of global products and symbols in different parts of the globe,
[04:55.46]is essentially the culture of domimant groups centered in the West.
