THE ROLE OF GLOBALIZATION IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF GLOBAL BRAND ENTITIES
INTRODUCTION
The International Monetary Fund defines globalization as the “growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through the increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions in goods and services and of international capital flows, and also through the more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology.” Globalization is about the flow of goods, services, and money across borders. Globalization is made possible by the increasing spread of market economies and is facilitated by the rapid spread of technology.
How much globalization is there? The statistics are staggering. Whereas only 7,000 companies had operations in more than one country in 1970, by 1998, more than 54,000 companies were operating in more than one country and on average were operating in a far larger number of countries. Those companies had spent billion in foreign direct investment (FDI, as it is called) in 1970—the amount that companies spend to build or buy operations in another country. By 1998, their spending had leapt to 4 billion and by 2000, over trillion. (FDI, it is important to note, does not include portfolio investments—the purchase of stocks in publicly traded companies.) The cross border flow of goods and services boomed as well. World trade totaled 1 billion in 1950. By 1998, it had reached .4 trillion. (Zonis, 2001)
The Attitude-to-Behavior Process: Implications for Consumer Behavior
Within any given product category, consumers typically can choose among a variety of specific brands. Presumably, consumers’ attitudes toward each brand (i.e., their summary evaluations) guide or influence this selection process. Indeed, such an assumption appears to be central to much advertising. Although a goal of advertising is often to increase sales, the manner in which this goal is pursued is often via social influence attempts directed at attitudes.
According to the model of attitude-behavior process, the critical concern with respect to the attitude-to behavior process is the extent to which the attitude influences one’s definition of the event that is occurring. Thus, in the context of a consumer making a purchase decision, the question becomes “What are the consumer’s immediate perceptions of the brand(s) under consideration?”
Does a previously formed summary evaluation of an attitude object bias one’s perceptions of the object in the immediate situation? A considerable literature indicates that attitudes are capable of biasing perceptions in this way.
Within the context of consumer behavior, normative knowledge may sometimes exert a greater impact on individual’s definitions than their own attitudes do. Regardless of one’s personal views, one’s knowledge regarding the consensual preferences of one’s friends, for example, may influence strongly the decision to purchase and serve a particular wine at a dinner party. Thus, normative information regarding appropriate behavior in a given situation may affect one’s definition of the situation. This definition of the situation may outweigh one’s perceptions of the attitude object itself in the individual’s construal of the event. This may be one reason why attitude–behavior consistency occurs only sometimes. (Fazio and Herr, 1993)
CHAPTER 1 The relationship between fashion and globalization
1.1 Globalization of the Fashion Culture
Industrial and commercial capital have promoted globalization by establishing two distinct types of international economic networks, which we call “producer-driven” and “buyer-driven” commodity chains.
Producer-driven commodity chains are those in which large, usually transnational manufacturers play the central roles in coordinating production networks (including their backward and forward linkages). This is characteristic of capital- and technology-intensive industries, such as automobiles, aircraft, computers, semiconductors, and heavy machinery.
Buyer-driven commodity chains refer to those industries in which large retailers, designers, and trading companies play the pivotal role in setting up decentralized production networks in a variety of exporting countries, typically located in the Third World. (Gereffi, 2000)
This pattern of trade-led industrialization has become common in labor-intensive, consumer goods industries such as garments, footwear, toys, house wares, consumer electronics, and a variety of handcrafted items (e.g., furniture, ornaments). Tiered networks of Third World contractors that make finished goods for foreign buyers generally carry out production. The large retailers or designers that order the goods supply the specifications.
The East Asian newly industrializing economies (NIEs) play significant intermediary roles in producer-driven and buyer-driven industries, as information brokers and producers of intermediate inputs in buyer-driven chains and as direct manufacturers of assorted inputs and low-cost finished goods in producer-driven chains. These changes have propelled East Asia to shift from being an export platform for goods sent to North America and Europe to become instead a major market for its own output. Even though interregional trade and investment ties between Asia, Europe, and the Americas are still strong, it is striking to see that North America and Europe are also developing newly integrated regional divisions of labor, with Central America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe and North Africa, respectively, being drawn more closely into the sourcing orbits for the lead economies of each region. Evidence in support of these assertions will focus on the structure and dynamics of regional divisions of labor in the apparel sector, which paradoxically combines some of most traditional and modern forms of economic organization in what is arguably the most global of all industries. (Gereffi, 2000)
J. Craik argued in The Face of Fashion, that although this new consumer culture alienated people, it also transformed consumption into a new idea of freedom and self-expression. Consumption was the only refuge for comfort and pleasure. Where production left a lack of connection between the products and society, consumption changed the consumer’s role with a new idealized form of participation: shopping. Fashion, like no other consumer industry, promises a sense of fantasy and imagination. Fashion is not unique to the culture of capitalism and in fact, as J. Craik argues, fashion is the “feminization of consumerism.” Fashion is a vehicle of conspicuous consumption and personhood identification, a modern technique of self-formation. Fashion, especially clothing, is the key to the modern consumer’s sense of identity. (Goldworm, 2002)
Pierre Bourdieu explored the social patterning of consumption and taste in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. In contrast to the liberal approach, in which consumption practices were both personal and trivialized as socially inconsequential, Bourdieu argued that class status was gained, lost, and reproduced in part through everyday acts of consumer behavior. Clothing like no other commodity, visually classified the consumer for the rest of society. Clothing made the human body culturally visible. People identified with the commodity; they saw a reflection of themselves through the use of these products. They defined themselves by the products they purchased. In the process, the meaning of self-expression was lost and reduced to a commodity; a system of signs used for making visible the categories of culture. It was a means of entering social relations and inserting an individual into the social order. Fashion “commodities are not just objects of economic exchange; they are goods to think with, goods to speak with. ” When an individual dresses, he/she was speaking to society, telling the audience exactly how he/she would like to be perceived. (Goldworm, 2002)
Even though clothing itself classifies individuals in society, keeping up with fashion trends segregates consumers into different classes. This behavior requires a certain leisurely lifestyle and Thorstein Veblen claimed in the Theory of the Leisure Class that, “this principle of novelty is another corollary under the law of conspicuous waste.” Constantly disposing of old fashions for new modes of dress separates consumers in society. Contemporary consciousness has been shaped by this constant spectacle of market-enforced planned obsolescence. Veblen asserted in his essay on Conspicuous Consumption that, “…the failure to consume in due quantity and quality becomes a mark of inferiority and demerit.” Conspicuous consumption of this sort thrives on the madness of cultural waste. Frivolity and material destruction become signs of social identity. How many commodities one can dispose of and replace with the “hip” and new defines the person. The ability of one to, not only buy the latest fashions, but to keep up with the changing seasons, ultimately confirms the individual’s social status or lack there of. (Goldworm, 2002)
1.2 Cultural and Global Identities
Globalization and the Construction of World Culture
Globalization means not merely uniformity but also conformity to the dominant, primarily American culture. This applies as much to food as it does to music and clothes. People around the world are expected to eat greasy McDonald hamburgers, drink Pepsi or coke, wear Levi jeans and gyrate to Michael Jackson music. If they have any spare time left, then the ubiquitous CNN is there to occupy it.
The English language plays a major role in this globalization campaign. France and Germany tried to promote their languages but have been largely unsuccessful. The American dollar, which has become the global currency, is also an important facilitator. (Bangash, 1998)
On the contrary, Eun, Gajendar, Kucharczyk, and Wible (2002) argue that Globalization is not just the spread of American or Western culture, but also the spread of all cultures to each other. However the effects of foreign companies entering the US market are not the same as the opposite situation and will not be explored here. Globalizing companies is not the same as localizing them for feel threatened by a company’s actions or effects within their country, a backlash may occur. For example, in some countries rumors circulated that Coke caused cancer, impotence, or sterilization and that it made one’s hair turn white.
Several studies address assimilation and find that cultures of the old and young conflict, which can cause people, especially young women, to develop eating disorders and mental and behavioral problems. Other studies show that the differences between collectivism and individualism cause stress among adolescents in both assimilation and acculturation environments. The concept and role of the self differ so much that there is conflict in the family unit and in society.
However, according to Elsevier Science, Ltd. (2001), Globalization involves expanding worldwide flows of material objects and symbols, and the proliferation of organizations and institutions of global reach that structure these flows. World culture refers to the cultural complex of foundational assumptions, forms of knowledge, and prescriptions for action that underlie globalize flows, organizations, and institutions. It encompasses webs of significance that span the globe, conceptions of world society and world order, and models and methods of organizing social life that are assumed to have worldwide significance or applicability.
Globalization and Cultural Differentiation
World culture is not only a homogenizing force; it also engenders and supports diversity and differentiation. Recognition of this feature of world culture was slow in coming; through the 1970’s, most analysis interpreted globalization as essentially equivalent to homogenizing Americanization. Five factors are important for understanding world culture’s promotion of heterogeneity; ironically, several of these are also important elements of world culture’s homogenizing capacity. The five factors are: 1. Success of the nation-state political form; 2. cultural relativism and the ideology of cultural authenticity; 3. Regionalism; 4. Consumerism as Adaptive Interpretation and 5. Creolization. (Elsevier Science Ltd., 2001)
Dimensions of World Culture
Most discussions of world culture focus on its expressive or normative dimensions. Expressive (popular) culture includes media products, consumable goods that assume iconic status as symbols of modernity or avant-gardism, foods and clothing styles originating in particular cultures that become world-wide fads, and so on.
Similarly, analysts decry some aspects of normative cultural globalization and praise others, often sharply disagreeing about the desirability of particular global norms and values and disagreeing as well about the extent to which a global normative consensus is emerging or even possible. (Elsevier Science Ltd., 2001)
For Tardieu (2000), The most directly perceived manifestation of globalization is that of cultural globalization. The definition of culture, in itself, generates ambiguities and conflicting opinions because of its complexity with regards to the discourses of social, political and economic theory. According to Held and McGraw, “culture” will be defined as a creative experience embracing “the specialized and professional discourses of the arts, the commodified output of the culture industries, the spontaneous and unorganized cultural expressions of everyday life and, of course, the complex interactions between all of them”
Moreover, Cultural goods generally refer to those consumer goods convey ideas, symbols, and ways of life. They inform or entertain, contribute to build collective identity and influence cultural practices. The result of individual or collective creativity – thus copyright-based -, cultural goods are reproduced and boosted by industrial processes and worldwide distribution. Books, magazines, multimedia products, software, records, films, videos, audio-visual programmes, crafts and fashion design constitute plural and diversified cultural offerings for citizens at large. (United Nations Educational, scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2000)
Contemporary cultural globalization is associated with several unprecedented developments: an increase in the volume and speed of cultural exchange with new global infrastructures allowing enormous capacity for cross-border penetration; a worldwide proliferation of internationally traded consumer brands; an acceleration of the movement of people from rural areas (agricultural lifestyles) to urban areas (urban lifestyles) more intimately linked with global fashion, foods, western values and entertainment; and a major geographical shift of global cultural interaction.
The homogenization of the world under the auspices of western popular culture is done vis-à-vis the increasing domination of national markets by giant media, entertainment, and information multi national corporations. Today, the large media industries, and the greater flow of individuals, are the key powerful agents of cultural diffusion ahead of the imperial states, networks of intellectuals and theocracies of the past. Until the 1970’s, large national telecommunication corporations and media entertainment conglomerates, engaged in quite separate sectors, were servicing domestic markets. After that, multi-national corporations were able to fully enjoy the deregulation of business around the world (entertainment, news and television) and aggressively entered previously closed markets. (Tardieu, 2000)
The stresses of adjusting to new cultural patterns take effect through the alteration of cultural artifacts and behaviors, which include one’s food consumption as well as one’s attitude towards food consumption.
Globalization has the potential to homogenize if the elders in a society do not teach their culture to the maturing generations. As Friedman wrote, “given the force and speed of globalization today, those cultures that are not robust enough to do so will be wiped out like any species that cannot adapt to changes in its environment.” (Eun, Gajendar, Kucharczyk, and Wible, 2002)
Foremost, ethical dilemmas, or tradeoffs, must be evaluated carefully with regard to artifacts, people, lifestyles, and places, which are interconnected through people’s experiences with products. An artifact is any artificially constructed physical or virtual entity that serves a human purpose. People are the stakeholders who are and will be impacted by the development, use, and expansion of an artifact. Lifestyle refers to the combination of behaviors, perceptions, and values that suggests a way of living for a person or group, usually connected to one or more artifacts. Place is the physical or virtual location of the production, distribution, use, and/or consumption of an artifact. Place value emerges through the emotional connection to an artifact developed through its use and influence. These relationships are shown by the diagrams in figures 1 and 2. (Eun, Gajendar, Kucharczyk, and Wible, 2002)
FIG. 1. Relationship between (A) globalization, (B) global brands, and (C) cultural identity. The three forces converge at (D) a place where design can be the mediator between these critical issues for sustainable globalization (lifestyle, place, people, and artifact). These issues are organized into a conceptual framework that can serve as a tool for companies seeking to globally expand their offerings meaningfully and responsibly. (Eun, Gajendar, Kucharczyk, and Wible, 2002)
FIG. 2. Close-up of Fig. 1, part D, relating lifestyle, place, people, and artifact, which are issues that become connected through design thinking, research, and methods. These ideas contribute to a holistic understanding of how to achieve sustainable globalization. This framework may be used as a tool to help a company in the culturally responsible expansion of a product, service, brand, or system. (Eun, Gajendar, Kucharczyk, and Wible, 2002)
1.3 Consumption and Modernity
Two opposing paradigms, the Eurocentric and the planetary, characterize the question of modernity. The first, from a Eurocentric horizon, formulates the phenomenon of modernity as exclusively European, developing in the Middle Ages and later on diffusing itself throughout the entire world. The second paradigm, from a planetary horizon, conceptualizes modernity as the culture of the center of the “world-system,” of the first world-system, through the incorporation of Amerindia, and as a result of the management of this “centrality.” In other words, European modernity is not an independent, autopoietic, self-referential system, but instead is part of a world-system: in fact, its center. Modernity, then, is planetary. It begins with the simultaneous constitution of Spain with reference to its “periphery” (first of all, properly speaking, Amerindia: the Caribbean, Mexico, and Peru). Simultaneously, Europe (as a diachrony that has its premodern antecedents: the Renaissance Italian cities and Portugal) will go on to constitute itself as center (as a super hegemonic power that from Spain passes to Holland, England, and France) over a growing periphery (Amerindia, Brazil, slave-supplying coasts of Africa, and Poland in the sixteenth century; the consolidation of Latin Amerindia, North America, the Caribbean, and eastern Europe in the seventeenth century; the Ottoman Empire, Russia, some Indian reigns, the Asian subcontinent, and the first penetration into continental Africa in the first half of the nineteenth century. Modernity, then, in this planetary paradigm is a phenomenon proper to the system “center-periphery.” Modernity is not a phenomenon of Europe as an independent system, but of Europe as center. This simple hypothesis absolutely changes the concept of modernity, its origin, development, and contemporary crisis, and thus, also the content of the belated modernity or post modernity. (Dussel, 1998)
REFERENCES
Bangash, Zafar (1998) McDonaldization of Culture: America’s pervasive Influence Globally” Available: www.muslimedia.com/archives/features98mcdonald.htm Accessed: April 10, 2003
Dussel, Enrique (1998) “Beyond Eurocentrism: The world-system and the Limits of Modernity” The Cultures of Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
Elsevier Science Ltd. (2001) “Globalization and World Culture” International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences
Eun, Sae-Yeon; Gajendar, Uday; Kucharczyk, Diane; Wible, Jean (2002) What is Design’s Role in Sustainable Globalization? Connecting to the Other without Losing Ourselves. Available at: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:E8F3sJxfZGsC:www.idsa.org/w atsnew/01ed_proceed/Gajendar.pdf+globalization+of+the+fashion+cultur . Accessed: April 9, 2003
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Gereffi, Gary (2000) “The Regional Dynamics of Global Trades: asian, American and European Models of Apparel Sourcing” The Dialectics of Globalization: Regional responses to World Economic Processes: Asia, Europe and Latin America in Comparative Perspectives Boulder, Co: Westview Press
Goldworm, Dawn (2002) Consumer Culture and Modern Identity Available: www.nyu.edu/projects/gallatin.writing/rationales/Dawngoldworm.htm Accessed: April 9, 2003
Tardieu, Jerry (2000) Fear of US Pop Culture Dominance Drives Anti Globalization Sentiment Available: www.ksg.harvard.edu/citizen/07feb00/tard0207.html Accessed: April 10, 2003
UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION (UNESCO) Culture, Trade and Globalization: What do we Understand by Cultural Goods and Services Available: www.unesco.org/culture/industries/trade/html_eng/question2.shtml Accessed: April 10, 2003
Zonis, Marvin (2001) “Globalization” National Strategy Forum Review Available: www.nationalstrategy.com/nsr/vlon3springo1/100301.htm Accessed: April 10, 2003
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