The Impact of Globalization on Individual Customers: Implications for Marketing

One of the chief attributes of globalization is de-territorialization-the severance of social, political, and cultural practices from their native places. We explain how globalization creates de-territorialization and discuss the marketing implications of this phenomenon. Most research on globalization, particularly in the business discipline, has largely ignored the impact of globalization on the identity of those affected by it. Deterritorialization can have a destabilizing effect on people's identity, often prompting them to embrace beliefs and behaviours that will help them "re-territorialize" and thereby restore some sense of identity. This territorialization-deterritorialization dialectic has interesting implications for marketing researchers as well as practitioners. While limited research on the topic suggests that globalization often results in the divergence of cultural values across economically comparable societies, the precise mechanism of this divergence remains largely unexplained, and thus provides interesting research prospects. De-territorialization provides new opportunities for marketers to target re-territorializing consumers by offering ethnic products and services that would foster consumers' sense of identity.Globalization has been an issue of much debate, controversy, and discussion among scholars and policy makers for over three decades. Often viewed-and sometimes equated-with other related topics such as internationalization, universalization, liberalization, westernization, and deterritorialization (Scholte 2000), the discourse and debate over globalization continues to generate considerable friction and intrigue. Of the various categorizations and depictions of globalization, the deterritorialization perspective has maximum bearing on consumer identity and view of the self. Identity and self image, in turn, significantly shape consumer behavior (Sirgy 1982). Consequently, one would expect the deterritorialization phenomenon to be of considerable interest to marketing scholars. Yet, discussion on deterritorialization and its impact on consumers' mindset and behaviors has been largely absent from marketing discourse except for a few exceptions (cf. Amould and Price 2000; Kale 2004).This paper is based on the premise that deterritorialization, a key outcome of globalization, in conjunction with advances in communication and information technology, has brought about massive and irrevocable changes in the way consumers view and deal with their identity. Deterritorialization entails the severance of social and cultural practices from their place of origin (territory). Up until about forty years ago, most social and cultural practices were fully embedded in an identifiable territory, mostly defined in terms of physical boundaries such as a town, neighborhood, state, or country. Territorial identification and anchoring of rituals and practices provided humans with a sense of stability and location, thus serving as important markers of their individual identity. Globalization has blurred the links between people, places, rituals, and events, thus making many people unsure of themselves and their place in the world.Thanks to deterritorialization, people have been effectively deprived of their geographic isolation and territorial cohesion, thus creating a void in cultural and topical grounding. Furthermore, many cultural rituals are now severed from their physical origin. Consequently, the territorial markers of identity are fading away, forcing individuals to seek alternative measures to restore their identity. One approach to identity restoration is through selective consumption. Indeed, evidence continues to accumulate suggesting that the frequency of purchase and use of products providing the utility of reterritorialization is on the rise the world over (Amould and Price, 2000; Kale 2004; Yazicioglu, 2010).Such evidence runs counter to the ?uniformity through globalization' hypothesis prophesized by scholars such as Ted Levitt (1983) and, more recently, Tomas Friedman (2006), both of whom have argued that globalization makes consumers the world over more alike in their beliefs, preferences, aspirations, and behaviors. …