Factors Influencing Arab-Origin Brands to Go Global: An Extended Abstract

As the needs of consumers around the world have become irrevocably homogenized as earlier predicted by Theodore Levitt in his classical article “The Globalization of Markets” (Levitt 1983), local successful brands have no choice but to go global. With globalization and the progressive removal of barriers to trade, an increasing number of companies developed international activities and managed to successfully globalize their brand names like Apple, Samsung, Toyota, Vodafone, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds to name a few. Popular list of 100 global brands (such as Interbrand) demonstrated that all leading brands originate from the developed world. According to Interbrand (Julien and Arnould 2008), the best brands maintain a high degree of consistency in visual, verbal, auditory, and tactile identity across their global markets.