Académique Documents
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Administrative diff.
Geographic diff.
Economic diff.
idiosyncratic tastes
Electrical standards:
plugs&outlets
voltage
Climate
Income levels
home as culture-bound
(e.g. fridge sizes depend on
cooking habits,shopping habits,
life style etc)
Environmental regulations
Protectionism (tariffs)
Variation:
Electrolux (500 companies, 15,000 varieties by late 90s)
Focus: reduce need for variation
focus on geographic area, products, vertical stages: Indesit and regional
focus, Haier and focus on compact products
Externalization: reduce internal burden via joint ventures, alliances...
Haier partners with Michael Jemal to adapt to the USmarket
Design to reduce the cost of variation
Indesit, one basic platform for each category of products
Innovation: going beyond...
Whirlpool, innovation for everyone and everywhere, e.g. innovative
front-loading washer ( a world washer)
Cultural arbitrage: Tokyo's Benihana, "the Japanese Steakhouse" one outlet in Japan, more than 100 worldwide.
Adminstrative arbitrage: exploiting tax differentials.
Geographic arbitrage: transportation as geographic arbitrage.
Sophisticated logistic services. Round-the-clock programming.
Economic arbitrage: exploiting cheap labor. Capital cost arbitraging.
Aggregation
Regions:
Regions:
Phase 4
(overlapping with phase 3) promotion with global cars with crossregional economies. Reducing the number of major platfroms from 11
to 6.
Phase 5
2000s: consolidation of regions with plants receiving near-global
mandate.
E.g.: pick up truck engines and transmission produced in Japan and
assembled in Latin America.
Phase 6
towards a global network with mutual supply to optimize production
and supply at the global level. Still organized around regional nodes.
Phase 4
(overlapping with phase 3) promotion with global cars with cross-
Adaptation
Aggregation
Arbitrage
Variation
Regions
Cultural
Focus
Other country
groupings
Administrative
Externalization
Design
Innovation
Economic
P&G
IBM
TataCS