Glocalization

Glocalisation (or glocalization), a portmanteau of globalisation and localisation, entails one, two or three of the following:

• The creation or distribution of products or services intended for a global or transregional market, but customized to suit local laws or culture.
• Using electronic communications technologies, such as the Internet, to provide local services on a global or transregional basis. Craigslist and Meetup are examples of web applications that have glocalized their approach.
• The establishment of local organisation structures, working with local cultures and needs, by businesses as they progress from national to multinational, or global businesses. As has been done by many organisations such as IBM.

The global and the local may be regarded as two sides of the same coin. A place may be better understood by recognising the dual nature of glocalization. Very often localization is a neglected process because globalization presents an omnipresent veneer. Yet, in many cases, local forces constantly strive to attenuate the impact of global processes. These forces are recognizable in efforts to prevent or modify the plans for the local construction of buildings for global corporate enterprises, such as for Wal-mart.

Glocalisation as a term, though originating in the 1980s from within Japanese business practices, was first popularized in the English-speaking world by the British sociologist Roland Robertson in the 1990s, and later developed by Zygmunt Bauman.

See also

• Internationalisation and localisation

External links

• Glocalisation of Bulgarian fashion in 2005 by Lubomir Stoykov
• Article on OECD report