Today Dr. Van Wood gave us a wonderful lecture about the influence of Globalization on international business.
To some extent, gigantic corporations reduce the difference among life styles in different nations. It is even observed that these companies are actually defining the live of people worldwide. Disney, Mc Donals, and Hollywood have been integrated into every nation’s culture system. For example, when a person talks about Harry Potter, he or she might find chatters around with the same interest, and their conversations would proceed smoothly.
However, the differences between nations are far from being extinct. Some giant enterprises had not removed the regional differences, instead, their products and ideas had in fact reinforced the cultural diversity. Some corporations succeed in the marketing not by adapting the local markets to their products but by fit their products to local customs. For instance, after succeeding in Chinese market with its chickens, KFC then featured several items of local tastes, and these products are quite merited by Chinese consumers. And when consumers found the tendency of being dominated by multinational companies, they would respond with efforts to maintain the cultural identities. Sometimes people bolstering national industries, and sometimes they embed cultural symbols into people’s minds.
To summarize, I think although the power of multinational corporations reduce the regional difference, it is not strong enough to diminish the variety among different cultures, because many cultures have their own immune system against culture invasions.