How to Balance Global Scale with Local Differentiation in Marketing

Fine-tuning your balance between global scale and local customization can pay dividends.

In today’s world, how can you make the most of your multichannel, global marketing? Should you emphasize a global perspective or a local one?

From what I am seeing, the correct answer is an emphatic, “Yes!”

Thanks to technology advances and lower-cost mobile devices, even developing markets are leaping headlong into the digital world. Along the way, they are becoming increasingly attractive targets for marketers’ digital campaigns. As these consumers are exposed to many of the same apps and services that we find in the U.S., Europe and Japan, we see the worldwide market flattening in crucial ways. Many of the same key market segments can be found readily on different continents. The “ambitious striver” segment—which GfK Consumer Life calls “achievers”—has come to define modern China and India but is also on the rise in both developed countries (U.K., France and U.S.) and emerging ones (Mexico and Brazil).

David Krajicek

David Krajicek is a member of the GfK management board and chief commercial officer of GfK Consumer Experiences.