Mark Delaney looks at the future trends that will influence how we design for international markets
More than twenty years ago Theodore Levitt provocatively declared in the Harvard Business Review that a global market for products and services had emerged. While Levitt did not explicitly discuss branding, managers of multi-national corporations interpreted his ideas to mean that they should standardise their products and packaging to a lowest common denominator positioning which could be applied across cultures.
While this approach may be economically tempting, in reality it proved to be nearly impossible to achieve. To be successful companies and brands must use design to compete internationally and create a clear understanding of their own particular culture and of how to turn it into an international asset.
For example, we can all appreciate the German values of quality engineering by looking at the cars produced by Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz. Meanwhile Ford has struggled to define itself within the market with a range of well engineered, but globally anonymous looking cars which have failed to excite consumers.
In this age of global communication the barriers between cultures are being lowered. Increasingly, individuals are becoming more global in their outlook and may not follow the traditions laid down by their culture.
For instance, Chinese tradition dictates that black is an 'unhappy' colour. But that has not stopped Chinese consumers from buying VCRs and DVD players in the typical black casings. In this case the consumers have ignored their tradition in favour of modern technology.
Conversely, Italian consumers are accustomed to making coffee using traditional stove-top coffee pots. Any attempt to replace this traditional method with new technology-driven solutions has been met with fierce resistance from the consumer.
In his book The Next Global Stage: Challenges and Opportunities in our Borderless World Japanese management consultant Kenichi Ohmae argues that the power of nation states is declining because their fixation upon borders is not in line with today’s trans-national world. He describes how the traditional nation state promised much, but has actually delivered very little, and in today’s world of near instant communications the nation state is irrelevant and instrumental in holding back human development through the artificial compartmentalisation of skills and markets.
In its day the concept of a national centralised government was progressive and forward looking, in contrast the regional level was seen as parochial and inward looking. Limited areas bred limited horizons – thinking in small units could never think big. But this has changed, thanks largely to technological advances, in the 21st century the opposite is true. Now it is the state itself which is anti progressive and introspective. It is the various regions of the state, though admittedly not every region, which are outward mobile and work within a truly global and borderless perspective.
Technology and economics are enforcing a new scale upon traditional geopolitical organization where regions (even across borders) can become more important than the state itself. For example in the first nine months of 2004 the per capita disposable income for urban people in Shanghai was 12,575 yuan (US$1,520). While in the rural areas surrounding Shanghai this dropped dramatically to 6,019 yuan (US$727). So while it may be tempting to view China as a single market there are massive differences between regions. In terms of product tastes many Shanghai residents will have more in common with consumers from the West than their fellow countrymen from the countryside.