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The globalization of markets is one of the most important developments in the last half century. One straightforward measure is the value of global exports. Between 1913 and 1950, export volume grew by 50 percent (at constant prices), while the export volume increased 2,900 percent between 1950 and 2014. The sum of world exports and imports as share of world GDP was around 20 percent in 1950 vs 60 percent in 2011[1]. Since the end of the Second World War (approximately), trade grew three times as fast as GDP.
Trade growth actually underestimates the globalization of the marketplace as at the same time, companies expanded their global reach through foreign direct investment (FDI). At first, investments by multinational corporations were overwhelmingly directed toward other developed countries, but since the 1980s, emerging markets like China, India and Latin America were the recipient of much FDI. Most recently, firms from China, India and other emerging markets have started to expand internationally as well (Kumar and Steenkamp, 2013). Globalization has generated enormous value for companies. One measure is the value of brands. According to Millward Brown (2018), the value of the world’s 100 most valuable global brands increased from $1.4 trillion in 2006 (the first year that Millward Brown published its BrandZ report) to a record $4.4 trillion in 2018.
Yet, despite all these accomplishments, concerns are growing that global integration is stalling (Hu and Spence, 2017). If this were to be the case, the implications are profound. In this paper, I will discuss processes and developments that have undermined the seemingly inexorable march toward ever more globally integrated markets. I will add a historical perspective that shows globalization has been reversed in the past. Next, I will discuss implications for two important marketing phenomena that are intrinsically tied to globalization – the appeal of global consumer culture (GCC) (Alden et al., 1999) and consumer preference for global brands (Steenkamp, 2014, 2017).
Is global integration stalling?
Anybody born after the Second World War, which presumably includes most readers of this paper, may be excused if they regard globalization as a unidirectional process toward ever-greater economic integration of the marketplace. Yet, if we adopt a bird’s-eye perspective to the passage of time, we observe that global integration is...