If you’ve dined in both the UK and the US, then you don’t need any focus groups to figure out that Brits and Americans have different culinary palettes. So it’s no surprise that a global food company might need a slightly different strategy in each country.

An article called McDonald’s: The World’s Local Restaurant pointed out how McDonald’s business has grown significantly from introducing products tailored to the specific customer tastes in other parts of the world like Little Chorizo Melt in Britain, McItaly burger in Italy, Maharaja Mac in India, McLobster in Canada and an Ebi Filit-O in Japan.

This is similar to what Macy’s found when it tailored its local merchandising as part of its My Macy’s strategy. In Macy’s case, the local changes affected different parts of the US.

These efforts are not isolated but represent a move to a strategy called Glocalisation. While the term was originally used by Japanese businesses in the 1980s (thanks for the reference Deepak), here’s my spin on a definition:

Tailoring products and merchandising to meet local needs while supporting global brands

Here are some differences between Glocalisation and the typical approach of just translating a global strategy into local markets:

  • Corporate marketing and merchandising groups will need to rethink their efforts. Rather than just setting strict global standards, they will also need to define parameters for local innovation.
  • Local leaders will need to take on more responsibility for innovation, and not just operate in conformance with corporate standards.
  • Innovation will need to be funded at both the global and local levels.

The bottom line: Is your strategy Glocal enough?

This blog post was originally published by Temkin Group prior to its acquisition by Qualtrics in October 2018.