Global Strategy Term Paper

Global Strategy for Service Industries

The advent of technological advancement and Internet culture and technology has created globalization, wherein societies and nations all over the world go beyond the boundaries that physical geography has limited. This means that through globalization, people are able to gain access and knowledge about nations all over the world, thereby encompassing differences in each society. Applied in the business environment, globalization is characterized by a company's ability to "serve domestic and foreign markets or to use a different strategy in each country" (Churchill 1995 309). In fact, this definition is aptly applied to the definition of globalization in the broader sense, which is the "integration and democratization of the world's culture, economy, and infrastructure through transnational investment... communication and information technologies... And free market forces" (Microsoft Encarta 2002).

Applied in economics and the business environment, the concept of globalization is mainly anchored towards the integration of domestic and international markets.With the integration of both the international and domestic markets, companies try to come up and formulate some strategies that that will encourage domestic and foreign consumers to purchase a well-known brand of product. These strategies include the following characteristics: (1) Product is the same in all countries; (2) Centralized control in the company's activities; (3) Effectiveness of differences between countries are small; and (4) Advantages of coordinated activities and faster product development (QuickMBA.com 2003).

It is evident that these factors all contribute to the development of the consumer-oriented and services-oriented strategy among companies involved in global activities. In fact, keeping a company's product line constant at all regions in which it operates is one way of keeping the coordination of business activities among international branches of the company. However, a constant product line is also 'customized' to suit….....