Glocalization

Glocalization (a portmanteau of globalization and localization) is the adaptation of international products around the particularities of a local culture in which they are sold. The process allows integration of local markets into world markets.

The term first appeared in a late 1980s publication of the Harvard Business Review. At a 1997 conference on "Globalization and Indigenous Culture", sociologist Roland Robertson stated that glocalization "means the simultaneity – the co-presence – of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies."

McDonald's restaurants' menus adopted the practice and customized its menus to suit local tastes in various countries. This phenomenon is the relative inverse of Americanization and the suppressing of local preferences in favor of providing goods and media whose content has been dictated by foreign entities. Glocalization can also involve the use of culturally friendly media to encourage the acceptance of foreign products among a local audience.

Glocalization is the adaptation of globally marketed products and services to local markets. Various analogical descriptions have been proposed, including an octopus and its tentacles, a node in a network of social relations, and world encirclement.

The glocal strategy approach is different from the global strategy approach mainly due to the different outlooks on the standardization and local adaptations of products and business activities. Although the global strategy approach does recognize the need to localize products in the global community, glocal strategy stresses the importance of local adaptations in relation to the local marketplace. Also, while global strategy emphasizes standardization of global products, glocal strategy explains the balance that must exist between the standardization and local adaptation of business activities and products.

The concept comes from the Japanese word dochakuka, which means global localization. It originally referred to the adaptation of farming techniques to local conditions. It became a buzzword when Japanese business adopted it in the 1980s. The word stems from Manfred Lange, head of the German National Global Change Secretariat, who used "glocal" in reference to Heiner Benking's exhibit: Blackbox Nature: Rubics Cube of Ecology at an international science and policy conference.

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