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 […]
In 2009, Hjörtur Smárason walked into a McDonald’s restaurant in Iceland and ordered what turned out to be the last hamburger and fries ever served in the country. The global fast food giant that maintains almost 40,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries had failed and decided to leave the island state in the middle […]
Bad translations have long been the humor well that keeps on giving in International Business. Just think of German car maker Audi’s relatively recent rollout of the E-tron (French for excrement) brand for their electric cars. Nike is certainly no stranger to translation issues as it has blundered among Arabic speakers and devout muslims as […]
As recently reported, Lavazza, the iconic Italian coffee company has big plans for China. In 2020, while the COVID-19 pandemic was still raging in other countries, it opened its flagship store in Shanghai’s fashionable Jing’An district, and expanded to some twenty locations in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Hangzhou in 2021. Lavazza is clearly capitalizing on […]
Despite my obsession of learning from failures in international business, every once in a while, I must acknowledge companies that did an exceptionally good job at entering a foreign market. And today, it is IKEA’s turn to step in front of the curtain. More than a decade ago, the Swedish furniture and retail giant has […]
Trade wars, lawsuits, viruses – the last several weeks and months have clearly shown that even the mightiest global companies can easily been shaken by the external environment in global markets. Let’s take Amazon in India as an example. For years, the eCommerce behemoth has tried to break into the market. It created jobs, brought […]
In 2013, one of the most successful multinational Italian companies, privately held past maker Barilla, almost stumbled over the comments of its chairman, Guido Barilla. When interviewed on Radio24, a national radio station, he expanded on how Barilla is rooted in traditional family values and why they would therefore never show a homosexual couple in […]
Almost unnoticed to the global media, Swedish furniture giant IKEA opened its first store in India this month. With the 400,000 sq ft store, the global multinational is hoping to open the path to expansion in a market of 1.3 billion consumers that includes a growing and affluent middle class. More stores are planned for […]
In his latest book, Pankaj Ghemawat, celebrity professor at NYU and at IESE, describes – among many other things – how Coca Cola’s early international expansion followed a completely decentralized approach. As long as no major damage was done, everything was allowed and according to Professor Ghemawat, only two rules existed, “You can’t change the formula, […]
With almost 500 stores, India is an important foreign market to McDonald’s. Not too long ago, it was praised in India for its responsiveness to Indian tastes. After having had items such as the Maharaja Mac and the Aloo-Tikki Burger on its menus in India since the 1990s, the fast-food giant added more offerings to woo […]
There’s trouble in Austria’s market for sports equipment. Traditionally, the market has been dominated by a handful of domestic companies such as Gigasport, Hervis, and – one of the most established among them – the Intersport group. Within Intersport, which is less of a centrally owned and controlled company and more of a loosely controlled […]
For the longest time, French-based retail giant Carrefour made a good poster child for internationalization. With a presence in twice as many countries as British competitor Tesco, its expansion into foreign markets has been broader in scope and faster in speed than any other global retailer’s. Carrefour was one of the first grocers who saw […]