Forces Affecting Global Integration and Global Marketing

Global integration is the state in which one national market (including a firm's home market) is significantly affected by other national markets. Because of global integration, international marketers cannot continue to successfully employ multiple single-market strategies but instead must adopt global strategies that address multiple, if not all, national markets at the same time. Examples of such global strategies include global rollouts of new products, centralized production of standardized products, and global-theme advertising. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, several forces, some interrelated, resulted in greater global integration. These forces have been categorized in different ways but generally fall into five categories: technological, buyer behavior, competitive, cost, and regulatory. Each industry is affected differently by the forces of global integration, but virtually all industries are affected in some way by these forces.

Keywords: global integration; global strategy; global marketing; global rollout; global-theme advertising; standardization; market liberalization