The last couple of years I have been the strong believer of globalization and specialization as the major Business trends. Internet has for me manifested the final realization of globalization and continuously consumers demand more and more customer specific products and services making the importance of specialization noticed.
Thinking back to when I was a child there where two types of milk. Now I’m astonished by all different milk types and surprised that I feel a need to buy the barista milk and that is not the light one. Globalization is for my generation something we take for granted from the things that we buy to the people we meet; work and socialize with; even affecting activates we do on our spare time and how we spend our vacations.
However since Al Gore made the world aware of global warming and the climate change I strongly believe that it will have an impact on the future of globalization in certain areas. Although most of us understood that there were issues concerning the environment before Al Gores “The innocent truth”. The majority like me thought that their actions would not make a difference.
It now seems that it is a common knowledge shared by all consumers to care about the environment and that it affects the consumer behavior of even the least green friends that I have. Several of my friends have changed to cars running on ethanol and even I’m thinking about doing the same. Going to dinner where the hostess says that they recently bought a fantastic soda machine, thinking of the pollution while transporting sparkling water. What a revival global warming must have been for the soda machine manufacturer!
If it affects my consumer behavior I’m sure it will effect how companies source products too . I believe that it will be even more important for companies to have local suppliers for things they can source locally. McDonald’s states very clear that they source cheese and meat locally. What has started in the food industry with; locally sourced products being a unique selling point will spread to other industries.
Maybe it is not the end of Globalization; maybe it just shows how important it is for companies to make sure their sourcing strategies are green and Glocal.
