Not every firm can achieve a glocalization strategy. There are some indispensable requirements that the firm must respect.
The first requirement deals with the brand image. This brand image must be the same at a global scale, in order to make consumers come despite the lack of authenticity at a local scale. Thus McDonald’s match perfectly this first requirement : when someone goes eating in a McDonald’s restaurant, he expects to eat typical American food made by a typical American restaurant, at least according to him (whereas McDonald’s food is actually adapted to his own national culture and thus is no genuine American food). Therefore, the two Chinese brands that tried to compete with McDonald’s by offering the same range of products, Ronghua Chicken and Xiangfei Roast Chicken, failed, because they didn’t have this image of being typical American food.
The second requirement deals with the attractiveness of the firm and the product. To set up a glocalization strategy, your firm and product must be global and attractive on the one hand worldwide, and on the other hand also in the targeted country. Even if you adapt your product to the countries, the local culture must not be hostile to this kind of product. That’s the reason why McDonald’s was successful, especially in Asian markets : worldwide, going to McDonald’s give the feeling to be modern and part of the globalized world. That is one of the reasons of the success of McDonald’s, especially in Asian markets.
By the way, let’s pay attention to the benefits of glocalization for McDonald’s.
The first one is quite funny. A McDonald’s consumer in his own country will be a McDonald’s consumer in a foreign country using the meal differences between the countries as an excuse, in order to taste it.
But actually, the most important benefit comes from the anchoring of the firm in the host country. By adapting the local culture, McDonald’s takes a important place in the cultural and food scene of the country. Therefore there can’t be any risk for McDonald’s to fail if it settled good in the targeted country. By having the feeling to eat genuine foreign food (what they were looking for), consumers actually eat what they are used to eating.
As a result, McDonald’s is present in every country in the world, what its competitors never succeeded in achieving.
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