A Comparative Case Study of Global Marketing and Ethnocentrism ...

Japan only prostitutes recline in such a manner. The public found the advertisement
extremely offensive (Herbig 125). Thorough market research, extensive knowledge
of the targeted customer and cultural norms is required to overcome ethnocentric
thinking in promotional marketing. It is the goal of this project to determine whether
or not the Internet, when used as a global marketing tool, follows these same lines of
global marketing mishaps due to ethnocentric thinking.
Today, the Internet is challenging the fundamental basis of traditional
marketing discipline. The Internet is transforming the practice of marketing as well as
the way marketers think about marketing. This change is not happening overnight and
it is not absolute, but the changes that are occurring are real and are not reversible.
The Internet as a Global Marketing Tool
Increasing access to advanced technologies such as the Internet has
significantly reduced the distances between the most remote parts of the world during
the 20 th century, allowing the catch phrase “global village” to appear in many
discourses. According to Richard Rorty, a consequence of this technological closeness
becomes that our awareness of the conceptual and cultural distances that divide us has
been augmented considerably (Rorty 9). Ed Clark, General Manager of the Internet
consulting firm, m5I, contends, based on his company’s experience, that although the
Internet may indeed be a global community it does not erase the cultural and linguistic
barriers, but rather it magnifies them (Clark brandchannel.com). Like non-Internet
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