Founded in 1932, Danish toymaker Lego has managed to expand its business to more than 130 countries worldwide. Among those, China seems to be a particularly fertile ground for the company. Although China only represented 1% of global sales until recently, Lego is penetrating the market rapidly, believing that the future there will be bright. […]
Atlanta-based U.S. fast-food chain Chick-Fil-A currently offers food at 2,700 restaurants in nearly every U.S. state, as well as a few select stores in Canada and Puerto Rico. Now the company is looking to grab a bigger bite of the global market. Chick-Fil-A has had failed attempts in international markets. From 1996 to 2001, Chick-Fil-A […]
What do Apple, BASF and McDonald’s have in common? Apparently nothing. They are three companies from three fundamentally different industries, each with different business models, and yet they have something in common. They all have a global presence and engage in global arbitrage. And now they are all suffering from an area that has been […]
Caterpillar, a leading American manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, has been in China since the 1980s when it launched technology transfer agreements with Chinese manufacturers. Later, it opened manufacturing facilities, distribution centers, and corporate offices in more than a dozen cities around the country, employing a local workforce of about 20,000. One would think […]
As several news outlets, including the New York Times and the German Bild Zeitung have reported, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has recently made a horrible mistake in Germany. On November 9, KFC sent a push notification through its app promoting the addition of cheese to its menu of fried chicken in remembrance of Kristallnacht: “Gedenktag […]
Global media had a lot of fun with what happened in the summer of 2022: The US-based pizza giant Domino’s announced that it would say arrivederci to Italy after seven years in the country. Domino’s, which has operations in approximately 90 international markets and about 12,000 stores worldwide had always had eyes on Italy. In 2015, it […]
When Netflix launched in India in 2016, the future seemed bright. With 200 million households having TV sets, India was and is a large market with a strong movie culture. It seemed to be ripe for Netflix’s combination of global hits and local productions. As it did in other markets, Netflix launched by serving a […]
A few weeks ago, the news came down hard, but not unexpected – Ford would close its manufacturing operation in Brazil. To add insult to injury, the news came in the year in which the Detroit, US-based manufacturer was supposed to celebrate its 100th anniversary in the land of samba, feijoada, and cachaca. In 1921, […]
A warning at the beginning: This post includes language that some may find offensive. And it might hold some surprises. The first surprise may be that Amazon only recently – during the second half of 2020 – opened a national site in Sweden. In fact, the first one in Europe’s Nordic countries. The second surprise […]
“Wo gehobelt wird, da fliegen Späne” is an old German proverb that would roughly translate into the English “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”. Granted, coordinating and controlling activities across geographical and cultural distances in multinational companies that have tens or hundreds of thousands of employees globally, is not an easy task. A […]
After a golden age of expansion in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, the last decade hasn’t exactly been the best for sandwich chain Subway. A few years ago, Subway had approximately 42,000 restaurants in 111 countries globally, and proudly proclaimed itself the world’s largest fast food chain. In recent years, Subway experienced challenges in […]
In 1997, Nike was going through a public relations nightmare. The Council on American Islamic Relations had spotted a suspicious logo, stitched on to the heel of Nike’s new sneaker, the Air Bakin’. When read from right to left, as is the practice in Arabic, the logo that was intended to look like flames bore a […]