The traditional notion of a 'mass market' is no longer relevant. A homogenous mass market of ‘more-or-less’ equivalent consumers is today splintered into many small sub-segments. Each sub segment demands services and products customised to their highly specific needs. Companies can deliver on this need today thanks to cutting edge technology that enables cost effective production in small quantities - virtually any time /anywhere.

 

Thanks to the instant global reach of the web, today’s web savvy customer is spoilt for choice. The consumer wants marketing messages to be of global standards yet be locally relevant - all at the click of a mouse. The ‘Glocal’ approach to online branding is more challenging than ever. 'Glocal' (a term coined by Akio Morita, founder of Sony Corporation) stands for ‘marketing locally in the context of global village economy’. Pepsi, for example, markets globally, yet tailors its messaging to appeal to local tastes. It sells its localized food products through promotions that use local location names, people and references. Increasingly, technology is facilitating custom delivery of brand promotions to sub segments defined geographically, psychographically, demographically, lifestyle or even entertainment preferences. While offline branding can have the luxury of time, Internet branding needs to evolve and be relevant to changing needs and tastes instantly.

Glocal Marketing Strategy

Consumers want both global and local brands – brands that make them feel part of wider international community yet they should be aligned to their home tastes and culture. Companies need to follow a five-stage plan to develop an effective glocal marketing strategy. These are:


1. Forecast future trends
2. Predict evolving consumer needs
3. Build sub-customer group core competencies
4. Develop a collaborative work culture
5. Localise marketing strategies


At the same time at each of the above stages, organisations need to adopt four critical perspectives - technological view, economic view, social view and political / ideological understanding. These help the company deliver effective strategies for re-aligning its offerings and promotions to effectively capitalise on future market needs of its targeted customers.

Future Trends

In the not so distant future, the new age ‘glocal’ era will be very different from anything that organisations have experienced so far. Rapid socio-economic changes are fragmenting the markets. Future market segments will be more focused and smaller - right down to the smallest possible target market level: the individual customer. Evolving consumer behaviour, is driven by the customers’ unique biographical subculture. This is largely determined by 3 general yet personally-diverse constituents - ethnic identity, generational identity and gender identity. In fact there is no such thing as a 'melting pot'; as root culture lives across many generations. Today cultural and ethnic identification is a strong and pervasive market force that just cannot be ignored by smart marketers. A culture today is both the source and adopter of different values, ideas, and innovations. Culture is now a product of social mixing - and we all are mixing to create new Glocal opportunities. The global flows of people, money, and information into local markets are creating a multi-ethnic glocal smorgasbord. This trend is fuelled by the following irreversible trends:

a) Growing global free trade is opening up new markets with unprecedented ease and speed

b) Tele-computer revolution has vastly improved productivity and quality of output; and

c) Globally prevalent low inflation and a higher savings rate is boosting consumerism.    

Friendly adaptive branding

Glocal strategies are facilitated by online marketing that has the advantage of instantly contacting global customers with real-time localisation - at a fraction of offline business costs. However this has its own localisation challenges. People do not change their preferred choices for the sake of limited offerings of a business; they simply go to the competitor. Online branding thus needs to be adaptive to localised needs instantly. For example an online garments store needs to offer its customers in different geographic regions varied choices as per their local needs. The majority of consumers dislikes dramatic changes and appreciate brands that are friendly and adaptive to their changing needs i.e. speak their regional language and are simple. Depending on the local IP of the Internet visitor the online promotion web page presents locally relevant branding (culture, tone) and product offerings. Different types of online promotions can even allow online customers to engage in web chat with other users for making a better informed choice. Online branding leverages technology to add new paradigms to localised customer convenience.