The global consumer: localization versus standardization in marketing

¶ … Management

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Part 2

What actions performed by the global consumer caused the current financial crises?

Beginning with the perception of loans as a financial instrument that aren't really meant to be paid back in full only continually refinanced, global consumers, especially in westernized nations, freely leveraged their homes and businesses to gain large sums of money. The global consumer then was provided the advertising and branding messages that specifically supported the continual accumulated of debt, surpassing the amount their assets could support as collateral. This was all accomplished through an intensive series of campaigns aimed at increasing trust in the concept of home equity credit lines, adjustable rate mortgages, and in general a misleading of the public with regard to risks and a violation of their trust. This attainment of increased trust with global consumers and the persuading of them to take on more debt that their assets could underwrite or support were often done online through combined marketing campaigns to promote self-efficacy of financing options (Berthon, Pitt, Cyr, Campbell, 2008). As a result global consumers saw their peer and referent groups experience exceptional spending power increases, this also led to entire neighbors and regions of the country experimenting at first and then aggressively adopting these highly risky borrowing practices. Allegorically speaking there are references to susceptibility and use of reference groups in consumer behavior (Clark, Goldsmith, 2006) which illustrate why global consumers chose to emulate one another despite the lack of financial stability of their decisions.

What long-term and lasting affects will the current financial crises have on the global consumer?

First, the current financial crises will serve to only fragment or balkanize the global consumer even more. The combined effects of this series of financial crises are distancing the haves and have-nots increasingly from each other, and with it, making the boundaries between segments even more distinct and contrasted. Ironically the global push to have homeowners and landowners borrow more than they could afford to pay back or even had collateral to support is leading to more fragmentation of markets than would have happened under more broader, and slow-moving socioeconomic trends. The interpersonal influence of consumers (Clark, Goldsmith, 2006) therefore is made more significant and starker in contrast to each other. These series of economic crises force an economic differentiation that is unseen before in modern economic history and will lead to even greater reluctance and even rebellion on the part of a the global consumer to be seen in comparable terms to anyone else. The reluctance of the global consumer to buy into any type of branding that portends to know their needs will be more suspect and not trusted than ever due to this economic crisis as well (Suh, Kwon, 2002). The economic crises are acts as a wedge that drives markets and entire nations apart.