Global Marketing and the Bartlett-Ghoshal Model (9BS0 4.3.1)

Model answer guidance: Standardisation creates economies of scale: one product design, one production set-up and one advertising campaign serve every market. Development and marketing costs spread across global sales, cutting unit costs substantially. A single consistent brand image also builds recognition among travelling and online consumers. Apple's largely identical iPhone worldwide shows how scale and brand consistency reinforce each other.

Model answer guidance: Food preferences are shaped by culture and religion, so an unadapted menu would exclude much of the market. In India, where most consumers do not eat beef, McDonald's built its range around chicken and vegetarian options such as the McAloo Tikki. Adaptation turns a potential cultural barrier into acceptance and sales. The extra menu-development cost is recovered through access to customers a standardised menu would lose entirely.

Model answer guidance: A transnational strategy chases global scale and local responsiveness at once, which creates organisational strain: managers must share research and production globally while allowing country teams to adapt, producing tension over who decides what. Coordination costs rise, decision-making slows, and internal conflict between headquarters and local units is common. Duplication creeps back in, eroding the scale savings the strategy promises. Firms like Unilever make it work through strong systems and experienced managers, but the model demands capabilities many businesses lack; a simpler global or multi-domestic position is often more workable.

Model answer guidance: Glocalisation keeps the global brand equity that attracts Asian consumers to Western products while adapting taste, pack size, pricing and promotion to local conditions — the McDonald's approach in India and Unilever's sachet strategy show it captures customers standardisation would miss. It also demonstrates respect for local culture, reducing backlash risk. However, adaptation is expensive: separate product development, supply chains and campaigns per market erode scale economies, and over-adaptation can dilute what made the brand desirable. For products where preferences converge — electronics, luxury — standardisation may outperform. Overall, glocalisation is best where cultural distance strongly shapes consumption, notably food and personal care; the right degree of adaptation varies by category, so the judgement should rest on how culturally embedded the product is.

Model answer guidance: The model is useful because it forces explicit assessment of the two pressures that genuinely shape international business — cost reduction and local responsiveness — and maps four coherent strategies against them, helping boards see mismatches such as running costly multi-domestic structures for a product that could standardise. It explains real positions well: Apple's global approach, Unilever's transnational balance. However, the framework simplifies: firms often need different strategies for different product lines and regions simultaneously; it is static while pressures shift, as digital marketing lowers adaptation costs; and it describes positions without guiding execution, where most strategies fail. The transnational cell is also easier to draw than to manage. Overall, the model is a valuable diagnostic starting point that structures analysis and debate, but the decision itself requires product-level evidence on how much local taste really varies and how large scale economies really are — the model asks the right questions without answering them.