| Standardized product is defined as mass-produced product according to a certain criteria. Correspondingly, differentiated product (or, adapted product) is defined as improved product in order to be adapted to the tastes of different customers. After World War II in the global phase of marketing, standardized product had achieved vast success in the global marketing. At first, since 1960's Japanese enterprises began to occupy world market gradually, by producing simple and easy standardized product, such as motorcycle, photocopier, and electronic consuming product, etc. Then Japanese home appliance and automobile enterprises also exerted standardization strategy widely to produce and sell cheap but high-quality standardized product massively in world market, which earned a great reputation for Japanese enterprises. Since 1990's global IT industry developed rapidly. High-tech corporations in developed countries grasped the opportunity to provide all kinds of high-tech standardized IT products and build global service network, and eventually achieved success in the fierce market competition.This phenomenon does not conform to theories of marketing. According to theories of marketing, marketing should focus on customers to satisfy requirements of different customers. Because requirements of customers are different, enterprises should enforce differentiated marketing to develop and produce differentiated product to satisfy requirements of different customers. But standardized product has achieved success in global marketing indeed. How to regard this phenomenon? The first object of this article is to discuss this phenomenon theoretically. Standardized product has achieved success, and theories of marketing also possess powerful logicality and practicability. So there must be a unity between them. To what extent to achieve standardization and differentiation so as to satisfy customers' requirements is the second object. Standardized product has merits, and must have shortcomings, too. To analyze advantage and disadvantage of standardized product , and then give a positioning--market feature and product feature of standardized product--is the thirdobject of this article.The first section of this article is a review about evolution of global marketing after World War II, including mainly two phases: multinational phase and global phase. In multinational phase, American enterprises occupied a larger part of world market, and possessed important status. However, in global phase, Japanese enterprises began to rise unexpectedly and gradually made a lead in global competition. At the same time, some European enterprises also caught up with them. The enterprises producing standardized global products achieved great success.Then begins a theoretical analysis about this phenomenon.Standardization can cause economy of scale and lowered cost. Standardized product can maximize customer delivered value. Usually standardized product possesses uniform brand, which plays an important role in the era of brand competition. The globalization of markets makes it easy for standardized product to succeed in global marketing.The globalization of economy is the trend of world economy today, including the rapid development of international trade, the enormous volume and quickened speed of international capital flow, the swift and violent development of multinational corporations and the IT revolution which makes global markets integrated closely, etc. Multinational corporation is the main carrier of economy globalization, playing a key role in the development of economy globalization. Four kinds of variables propel corporations toward globalization: market driver, competition driver, cost driver and government driver. Among these, market factors are the strongest driver of global marketing. Globalization is a giant impetus of product standardization.Then follows a deep analysis of product standardization. Even standardized product cannot attain 100% standardization. It is same to service. We need to distinguis... |
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