Abstract:

As the world becomes a smaller place, and brands become increasingly global, it seems almost evident that we are living in a single continent rather than many. There seems no better benchmark to this phenomenon than youth across the world. Seemingly, they look the same, they dress similarly, the personalities seem to be congruent and their expressions of issues remain largely identifiable across the globe. They have given birth to global brands like Levi's, McDonald's, Nokia, Coke/Pepsi, Nike, and many others. They say that food is a very local differentiator, but youth today have blurred this dimension too with their adoption of global tastes and brands. Hence marketers can be led to believe that global strategies will succeed phenomenally well when addressing youth as a target group.However, this cannot be further away from truth, especially when dealing with youth in emerging markets of the world like India, China, Mexico and Brazil. On the one hand, each of these markets has been facing a deluge of western influences in the last decade, but on the other hand they have a very strong traditional backbone which is ingrained in the youth at a very early age and influences his/her thinking and behaviour.This has led to a clash of global and local cultures within the emerging markets. We have observed this clash with a keen interest. Through five different studies conducted in these markets, we have been able to gauge the extent of the clash.