International Marketing: Global Integration and Strategy

Abstract

World markets enter the 21st century having been irreversibly changed in the final decades of the last millennium. While markets for goods and services have, since the beginning of commercial history, been primarily local in their scope, from production to consumption — with minor streams of trade in raw materials and finished goods all along — they have become increasingly integrated globally in the latter half of the 20th century. This process of ‘globalization of markets’¹ has had far-reaching effects on the conduct of business in general, and practice of marketing in particular. For business, it has meant a tighter coordination and coordination of value-added activities around the world.