Problems and prospects for marketing at the micro level

In addition to the issues in the global economic crisis on the macro level, there are other force at work which are likely to have a significant impact on individual countries. It has been claimed that ‘the Third World’s obsession with the Western way of life has perverted development and is rapidly destroying good and bad in traditional cultures’ (Harrison, 1980). Earlier chapters have made reference to the development of global products and lifestyles and the multinational’s encouragement of these. It may well be that consumer tastes may converge even more in the future. But there are also some divergent tendencies in existence. The most extreme is perhaps the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism as a possible alternative to both Western capitalism and Eastern socialism. A more form of divergence may be witnessed through host countries’ attempts to control multinationals by insisisting on some form of ownership and deciding the production process to be used and the products to be produced.