Coca-Globalization: Glocalization Kelley Omran About the Author: - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Coca-Globalization: “Glocalization”

Kelley Omran

About the Author: Robert J. Foster

• B.A. in Anthropology from the University of

Chicago in 1979

• M.A. in Anthropology at Columbia University in

1982

• PhD in Anthropology at the University of Chicago

in 1988

• Currently a Professor of Anthropology and Visual

and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester in New York

• Research interests: Political economy, material

culture, globalization, corporations, commercial media, and mobile phones

Coca-Cola’s Globalization

• Economic and cultural

globalization:

• Makes the world smaller
• Corporations have

hypermobility and placelessness and are unanchored to any locality, and have the ability to search the world for cheap labor and raw materials

• Coca-Cola: among the first

consumer-oriented, brand-invested multinational symbol of corporate global culture

• While multinational, it is also a

nationalistic icon of the United States

Relationship between the global & the local

• Roland Robertson argued that globalization and

localization aren’t opposites, but rather we should pay attention to the “way in which homogenizing and heterogenizing tendencies are mutually implicative” (page 34) → glocalization

• Disembedding and reembedding: the consumer

item leaves its local context and is inserted into new and different localized contexts, in order to become part of a commodity network

• Global culture: organized diversity, Local culture:

diversity through a translocal framework How did The Coca-Cola Company attempt to localize a distinctively American drink in foreign contexts?

Coca-Cola’s Journey Towards Globalization

• 1906: opened a plant in Havana
• 1926: Coca-Cola President Robert Woodruff established a foreign

department

• Company technicians found a way to condense syrup into a more easily shipped

powdered concentrate without sugar → saved resources and money

• 1927: replaced the foreign department with The Coca-Cola Export

Corporation because they were planning to build facilities worldwide to manufacture concentrate

• 1930: more than 60 bottling plants operated in 28 different countries
• Period of World War II: operations in South America, Australia, Asia,

Canada, and Europe → war accelerated Coca-Cola’s transition into a multinational business

Utopian Internationalism

1971 Coca-Cola Ad: “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke”

The Franchise System

• 1950: Coca-Cola Export Company’s goal: make

Coca-Cola an integral part of people’s everyday lives, to weave the product into the “pattern and customs of every land”

• ⅓ of profits came from foreign business
• Results:
• Deliberate localization and imperial conquest
• Ran campaigns emphasizing that the whole

process, including production and distribution, is done from the country that they are being promoted towards

• Bottling partnerships
• 1955 Fanta Orange in Italy
• Transition from glass bottles to cans to plastic

bottles

1950s “The Drink of Friendship” ad campaign

“If U.S. origin companies can become multi-local, and can integrate around the globe economically without people feeling that they are being culturally assaulted, they will be successful” - Friedman, page 58

More History

• By 1972, 75% of Coca-Cola’s

earnings are from abroad

• In the end of the 20th century, it

increased to 80%, at $3 billion

• → Showed importance of

Coca-Cola’s overseas operations. Moved Export’s headquarters from NY to ATl in 1972

• Changed leadership: Roberto

Goizueta

Roberto Goizueta

• New CEO of The Coca-Cola Company in May 1980
• Increased control over how products were bottled/marketed around the world
• $13 million in Philippine bottler, the San Miguel Brewery → success, huge lead over their

rival, Pepsi

• “Coca-colonized” the international bottling system
• “People around the world are today connected to each other by brand-name

consumer products as much as by anything else” page 63

• Convergence of consciousness → how Coca-Cola succeeds universally
• Global expansion of soft-drink consumption: Places with insufficient/poor

quality drinking water = higher demand → war against tap water, or transformation of tap water from an end product to an ingredient

Trust and Anti-Trust

• Trust
• Peru: Inca-Kola was acquired by

The Coca-Cola Company

• Germany: Where Fanta

Wildberries were conceived, developed, and produced

• Anti-Trust
• Belgium: scare about

contaminated cans of Coca-Cola → largest product recall in company history

128 Years of Coca-Cola’s History

Discussion Questions

Does Coca-Cola have an obligation to be socially ethical considering their globalized platform? What are the benefits and downfalls of a company utilizing glocalization vs. just localization?