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.

Definition

1. 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.

2. Decentralizing Globalization by putting the power back into the hands of the people locally. It is also the interconnection between global issues and the local context and vice versa with a bottom up approach.

In the media

Thomas Friedman in “The World Is Flat” talks about how the Internet encourages glocalization, such as encouraging people to make websites in their native languages.

Television

Besides the usage of Internet, television and commercials have become useful strategies that global companies have used to help localize their products. Companies, such as McDonalds, have relied on television and commercials in not only the Western Hemisphere but in other parts of the world to attract a varying range of audiences in accordance to the demographic of the local area. For example, they have used mascots ranging anywhere from a male clown in the Western Hemisphere to attract younger audiences to an "attractive" female clown in Japan to attract older audiences.

However, McDonalds has faced challenges in adapting to the local customs when promoting its products through television in countries such as China. Programs and commercials air differently in China in comparison to Western Commercials. In other words, commercials are usually skipped over in countries such as China, so McDonalds advertises its products through newspapers and magazines.