Museums Going Global? Lights and Shadows of Leveraging a Museum Brand Internationally

Not only economists and managers have discussed global brands. The debate involves other disciplines as well, given that these strategies impact on society and culture, other than on pure economics and business administration.
New theories and global movements have been created, which start from and/or concern exactly global branding.
The term globalization indicates the phenomenon of progressive growth of relationships and exchange worldwide within different fields and its first effect is a strong economical and cultural convergence across countries (Wikipedia).
And brands are one of the visible expressions of globalization.
However, it must be pointed out that, in each brand, there is a cultural reference that suggests a specific origin, even for global brands. The sociologist George Ritzer, starting from this concept and from some fundamental elements of Max Weber’s work, develops his “McDonaldization” thesis. McDonaldization represents a profound process of global change with far-reaching consequences, which involves social institutions and it’s based on models, which require the universal reproducibility of principles such as efficiency, calculability, control and predictability. The meaning of McDonaldization, from a managerial perspective, is similar to the concept of hyper-rationalization, which facilitates the permeability of the system of production in different contexts, other than the native one.
McDonaldization is considered of being part of a wider process, called “Americanization” and defined by Ritzer as a propagation of American ideas and of American social, industrial and cultural models in the world: this phenomenon acts automatically, without restrains from other opposite forces, such as competing processes or braking local powers.
The Canadian journalist Naomi Klein’s work, “No Logo”, shares some veins of the McDonaldization theory, but focuses more on the exploitative side of global branding.
According to Klein, western society and capitalist economy conceal themselves behind global brands; these “hidden” elements would not hesitate to apply politics of economical and individual exploitation, worthy of a regime, towards the developing countries. With her book, Naomi Klein explains and analyzes the reasons of a new contestation, which has been the basis of a strong global movement, giving a detailed denounce of the contradictions of the new global economy. Indeed, according to her, the consequences of this global strategies imply some harmful losses, such as the public space and the freedom of expression, behind the glittering universes, presented by these brands.
Without raising the issues of the morality of these strategies, of the consumer good and of the brand, many voices criticize the excessive power and homogenization effects of global brands. However, it is a fact that, nowadays, a number of social processes have become more and more independent of geographical distance and this has logically led to new means of consumption and new worldwide known symbolic universes. Within this scenario, the global brands and their universes have unsurprisingly had a great chance of growing and developing, in an expected, if not almost natural way. One may criticize them for their power, seeing them as a factor of homogenization, but by now global brands seem considerably embedded in our economy, society and culture and are even moving to unthinkable and apparently unrelated worlds, like museums.
In summary, it is not possible to claim that global brands have substituted local brands. Today, both type of brands (global and local) seem to have reached a balance. Sometimes the common ground between the two types seem to be represented by the expansion at a global level of brands that are imaginatively construed as local. “L’Occitane en Provence”, for instance, clearly shows in its brand name the exact region of France where the products come from (Provence, in the South of France). The brand even recalls the ancient province of Occitanie. Thus, it would seem a quite local brand. Still, the personal care products branded “L’Occitane en Provence” can be found in many countries around the world. As the website states, “We have stores in over 70 countries around the world. From New York City to Paris to Tokyo to Dubai, we are committed to bringing the fragrances and textures of Provence to you” (www.loccitane.com). It is a case of a global brand which leverages its local roots. Roots which are hyper-real in a post-modern sense: they are played as local even though the product seems industrialized and thus born global.