Ethnocentric
A company with an ethnocentric orientation typically believes that this market—its own—is superior to all others.
What is the home market?
A geocentric company strives to balance standardization and this type of market-specific adjustment.
What is localization (or adaptation)?
A company using a polycentric strategy typically adapts its products and promotions to match these in each country.
What are local cultures and preferences?
A common drawback of ethnocentric marketing is that it often ignores these important country-specific differences in foreign markets.
What are cultural or consumer preference differences?
Firms using a geocentric approach often build teams using talent from anywhere in the world, known as this type of staffing policy.
What is a global (or geocentric) staffing strategy?
In polycentric marketing, managers for foreign subsidiaries are usually hired from this talent pool.
Who are host-country nationals?
Under ethnocentric marketing, staffing decisions often prioritize sending these individuals abroad to manage foreign operations.
Who are home-country nationals (or parent-country nationals)?
Geocentric marketing aims to create these types of products—ones that maintain a consistent global identity while allowing for local customization.
What are globally integrated products (or “glocal” products)?
Because each foreign market operates independently under a polycentric approach, this potential drawback can occur across product lines or branding.
What is inconsistency (or lack of global standardization)?
Companies using an ethnocentric global strategy frequently rely on this type of global product approach, where products are sold internationally with minimal adaptation.
What is a standardized marketing strategy (or product standardization)?
One major challenge of a geocentric strategy is the complexity of coordinating worldwide operations while still empowering local markets, a problem often referred to as this management balancing act.
What is managing global–local integration?
A challenge of polycentric strategy is that highly autonomous local subsidiaries may struggle to share knowledge across the organization, reducing this valuable global business advantage.
What is organizational learning (or knowledge transfer)?
In ethnocentric marketing, decision-making authority is typically concentrated here, which can lead to slower or less effective responses to local market changes.
What is headquarters (or the home-country central office)?
In a geocentric marketing strategy, companies often build unified brand messages while still allowing regional variation. This approach is commonly summarized by this hybrid term.
What is “glocalization”?
Under a polycentric strategy, subsidiaries often design their own marketing mixes independently. This can lead to higher overall expenses due to duplicated efforts in this key business function.
What is marketing research and development?