Barbie Growing Pains as the American Girl Goes Global...

Xiao-Hu WANG April 8, 2011 4-page paper: Case study of Global Marketing Barbie: Growing Pains as the American Girl Goes Global 1. Describe Mattel’s global marketing strategy for Barbie and assess its success. Does management demonstrate that it understands and embraces the needs to â€Å"think global and act local†? Mattels success should be attributed to its representation of American culture, and its Curated Consumption of its products, for example: when parents buy a Barbie doll to the children, it is easily acceptable price position and start , but after purchase it, the parents are bound to face follow-up to buy other clothing products linked to the Barbie doll, thereby it is enable to expand business ; in the aspects of global†¦show more content†¦How important is culture in dictating children’s toy preferences? Will cultural differences result in failure for Mattel as the company faces new competitors in the Middle East? We think Mattel lost in the Middle East, not only because of marketing strategy factors, but also the differences between the cultural values and the region represented by their products which is too large, or even it’s inacceptable. According to the Mattel’s Barbie, when further American culture his product represents, in a situation where in the area of the Middle East has generally hostile to the United States, as well as the differences in religious belief, its cultural values representative product is much harder purchased by local consumers, which can obviously be proved that the culture has an important influence to the product and the Marketing. As the article mentioned, some people in the Middle East even regard the Barbie as the same level of bomb, they worry about these products would influence the children’s cultural values. People in the Middle East believe generally Koran; the scriptures teach the people diligence, honesty, etc†¦ in addition to Barbie’s blonde hair is out of tune with his body, the Cadillac’s car and handsome boyfriend with the suit and tie is more contrary to their concept of the Koran, could also foresee the resistance