A Consumer Centric Approach to Product Standardisation for International Markets

Despite more than 50 years of debate on product standardisation versus adaptation and the effective way to tackle this issue, a consensus is yet to be achieved. Some academics conceptualise standardisation-adaption as two mutually-exclusive orientations (Levitt 1984; Buzzell 1968; Turner 1986; Ohmae 1986), however, other authors (Jain 1989; Quelch & Hoff 1986; Schilke et al. 2009) favour a continuum approach and suggest that only the appropriate degree of standardisation-adaptation really matters. Nevertheless, few of these studies have specified what the appropriate degree of standardisation-adaptation is and which conditions favourably materialise this appropriate degree of standardisation-adaptation. Consequently, companies typically prefer supply-centric attributes (e.g. cost savings and scale economies) for product standardisation because these attributes are deemed more straightforward and functional as compared with demandor customer-centric attributes (e.g. product preferences or category attitudes).