Sir
Your post is very interesting. If you go to the basics of classical marketing of 4P’s one
P=Place is no more local or any region/country centric for survival and satisfying the stakeholders it is becoming global to get the maximum leverage.

Point No 1 Uniformity: Recently Vodafone in launching its product in the Vodafone Brand in India, Vodafone wants to bring its USP’s to all the Indian customers at a very affordable price fighting against existing players like Airtel, BSNL, Reliance. If you go by the statistics it has got 3.5-Million customer base( Hutch) in India 16-17% market share and catering the market thru 400000 retail outlets. The Indian telecom market is growing at an Approx CARG of 40%+(One of the fastest in the world). All the existing customers and the so-called potential customers wants excellent service and at a specific price point. Typically an India Telecom market like China is a very price elastic market. At US$25 you get a mobile handset and one year incoming free calls and some talk time free, in 7-8 months time they want to increase the share to 45% and get in to RMAG (Rural, Micro, Agricultural) segments and it may further drop the price US$20 for capturing the market share. Strategically it may kill many small players and as Vodafone has got huge reserves it can get the chunk of the big market of India which is an emerging market and the payback period may be in 5-6 years with full of uncertainties both political and market.
Is it really possible to adopt this practice in any small country with small population?
It is matter of pick and choose of countries. So here is not uniformity of the Brand but uniformity in technology and services of CDMA or GSM.

2. Statelessness: Sir I beg to differ here with you, firms generally will not get into areas where the political instability is there and govt is not investor friendly and more often Joint Ventures are requested for in countries like China, where technology has to be shared.
Products, which are manufactures in Israel, are not sold in the pan Islamic countries. So we find global political harmony in extremely necessary for effective and successful globaloney. We are in a semiglobalisation state as you rightly mention. So glabalmania is yet to come or even it may not come at all because of politcal differences, which continued for past thousands of years.

3.Industries will become more concentrated and consolidation will happen: New opportunities will come up and consolidations will come, and region specific maturity and concentration will come in.
China for example has done wonderful achievements and has become the manufacturing hub as you said in your AAA formula of globalization.
India will be the next destinations for sub US$ 3000 small car manufacturing hub, and also in forging business where Fiat, Renault, Nissan all global players will play along with Indian conglomerate. As India is still trying to consolidate its positions in IT & ITes sector.

4. Endless Growth: Perfectly right here the world is really flat, a limitless growth in all sectors not only the U.S, South Korea, China, Russia, Japan and of late Indian companies are going global and taking the advantages and unleashing the tremendous potential of R&D, production facilities, trained cheap manpower, financial strength, electronically enabled marketing, and global drop shipment by very smart logistic, supply chain companies. Dell and Wal-Mart are the classic examples. Telemedicine cannot be ignored in this case also.

5 Act Of Faith: Here it is also a big question mark, trust has to come it will take some considerable amount of time.

Dear Prof. Ghemawat,

Please consider these responses to the five dimensions of globaloney outlined by you:

1. Uniformity: It is difficult to imagine any organization being able to successfully follow the purest form of global strategy. Even Intel which has little competition in the microprocessor market has found it necessary to adapt - at the least in terms of pricing, to cater to different markets. Similarly, Microsoft which has a dominant position in the OS market has found it necessary to adapt its offerings to suit local needs.

2. Statelessness: This concept flies through the window in the light of the determinants of national competitive advantage as developed by Prof. Porter. Unless an organization has a strong presence in the home country, it is unlikely to make a dent in other countries. One may be tempted to cite the Indian software industry as an exception but one immediately realizes that the
software industry might not have flourished without the supportive conditions present in the home country (low-cost professionals, tax laws, competition between states to attract investments.)

3. Consolidation: While consolidation appears to be happening in a number of industries, the sustainability of such size and more
importantly, differences in culture, is open to question. The collapse of the Daimler-Chysler arrangement is a case in point.

4. Endless Growth: This is a myth easily explained by the failure of the world's largest corporation (by revenue) in several countries. Organic growth appears to be finite and at some stage, organizations may have to look at integrative growth or even at diversification if they wish to sustain the momentum. This brings into question the ability of an organization to synergise disparate businesses.

5. Act of faith: This may be true to the extent that a global market represents more opportunities (and more challenges too) and hence forces organizations to avoid a myopic view.

Looking at globalization as an opportunity to be exploited judiciously while being aware of the complexities involved is one thing. To swear by globalization is quite another.

Warm Regards

Absolutely yes !!!
In my opinion: each country its different, each city its different, each person its unique.
I think that the future of the globalization its just a "logistic goal". We must think in the customization way to get the right achievement, and the right success. Nothing new: Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning.

I agree. I have spent most of my career working internationally (or globally if you prefer). Technology may be the same but people, cultures and working practices are different. Even arranging meetings or communicating with people varies from country to country and in some instances from state to state and city to city.
Global companies have to adapt their marketing, working practices and sometimes products to the local markets. There is no - one size fits all - although many US executives would like to think otherwise.
Globalization is an opportunity but one to be considered carefully!

Dear Prof,

Your articles are highly informative and well deserved for appreciation.

But one lingering dubt in my mind , rather a challenge for well learned persons like you is about unlinking process of global connectivity in case of Economic disasters of one country from another. Take for example the SUBPRIME catostarphe of US affecting other countries such as INDIA, by losing jobs, stock market crash inflation etc, and a host of many problems of procuring basic needs of people who are not at all connected to mistakes of some one far away.How come Management , financial experts failed to forewarn common man ??
How to explain this to students of MBA.
I hope you have answer for this query.
Thanks
venugopala krishna
Hyderabad, India