GLOBAL BRANDING AND SEGMENTATION: ARE THEY INTERDEPENDENT?

To get some insight into the issue of global branding and segmentation, we will look at an example of a multinational company that has several global brands. Colgate‐Palmolive is truly global in scope, with subsidiaries in 55 countries and an official presence in 120. The company's product mix includes several global brands and equities (Figure 1) including the two parent brands, Colgate Toothpaste and Palmolive Soap. The former is sold in 53 countries and the latter in 43. C‐P's early experience in global branding was similar to that of many other packaged goods companies that expanded their sales base in the early twentieth century. Basically, they took the key products that were successful in the United States and Europe and began to move them out across the developing countries. In many cases, the success of these brands appears to be due to the order‐of‐entry phenomenon. They often were the first entries into a country. They literally created the category and their names became synonymous with it. But were these truly “global” brands?