THINK GLOBAL ACT LOCAL
A1 Essay
Due Date: 25th March 2022
Module: Global Marketing - TH60035E
, This essay will evaluate the value of standardisation and adaptation for international
hospitality organisations. The essay will firstly consider the importance of micro and
macro environment and its influence on global service industries’ products and
services. Secondly, it will evaluate the culture and consumer behaviour and its
impact on the global marketing plan. To conclude it will analyse how the marketing
mix can adapt to globalised service business’s products and services through the
evaluation of standardisation and adaptation. In order to relate to practice few of the
cases study utilised are InterContinental, McDonald, and Disneyland Paris.
According to Chon, et al. (2020) international hospitality businesses are greatly
impacted by their surroundings. The microenvironment within the hospitality
industry includes all the people and organisations which interact directly with the
business for the daily operations (Kotler, et al., 2018). Those can be analysed through
the theoretical framework of Porter’s (2008) five forces. As emerged from a South
Africa case study (Mhlanga, O., 2018) strong competition, the threat of substitute
products/services, and customer bargaining power have a significant negative impact
on restaurant performances. On the other hand, this greatly varies in Indonesia,
where from Widodo, Sri’s (2019) case study has emerged that similar restaurants
have low competitiveness which positively influences restaurant performances.
Conversely, the macroenvironment includes all the external forces that can be
grouped into Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental
(PESTLE) (Bowie, et al., 2016). Those even though they cannot be directly
controlled by the business, they influence it vastly. A growing trend that is
increasingly affecting businesses involves Environmental issues. To stay
competitive for example, McDonald’s now offers over 80% of their packaging made
of fibre, created from renewable and recycled sources. In addition, more than 99%
of these packaging is sourced from deforestation-free supply chain, and they aim to
have 100% of the packaging from recycled sources and additionally recycle them
straight after their usage in their restaurants by 2025 (McDonald’s, 2022). According
to Statista 2022, three-quarters of their latest survey respondents around the world
have stated that environmentally friendly attributes are important to the consumers.
In addition, Kenny, K. (2021) vice president of sustainability at McDonald’s have
emphasised that sustainability is now the prime focus of all leading global industries.
In the light of the above mentioned, it is understandable that micro and macro
environments directly influence hospitality businesses and vary depending on the
