Factors influencing relationships between countries

Discuss about the Impact of Globalization in Relationship of Countries for Globalization.

Globalization refers to the movement of people, products, and information across the notational boundaries. Globalization affects all the four aspects of our lives such as social-cultural, economic, social and political life. The paper aims at understanding the impact globalization has on the relationship between different countries. According to Vivek and Ghate (2016, p. 334) globalization is defined as the intensification of the link in social relations that shapes occurrences in different areas. The concept of globalization is not new. Many countries have been able to open their trade markets for continuous job opportunities globally. The paper explains the impact of globalization on the relationship between countries across the globe. Below are some factors influencing the relationships between the countries.

Globalizations have led to countries developing different ways of reaching out to consumers of products across the globe. Countries are obliged to accepting other countries cultures and using marketing strategies that would accommodate all the different cultures in the world. The advertising strategies changes as per the targeted nations to attract the people’s culture, customs and beliefs. For examples, countries such as Saudi Arabia do no expose the faces of women. Hence the global products targeting such countries have to put this into consideration and respect the culture of the country (Badinger 2009, p. 903). Globalization has eased the situations for countries to learn different cultures and increase the relations regarding trading and cultural acceptance. Companies consider factors such as power distance, masculinity or femininity, individualism and uncertainty avoidance. These factors differ in countries, and they help shape cultures of different individuals, their beliefs and values used to create advertisements that appeal to the specific group. Uncertainty avoidance refers to the degree to which individuals are threatened by different situations and have beliefs and institutions helping them avoid uncertain situations. Power distance refers to people’s perception of power when forming interpersonal relationships. The degree to which different cultures define sex roles and individualism is defined as masculinity or femininity (Das & DiRienzo 2009, p. 42).

These factors contribute to the understanding of the consumer’s behavior in different countries. Globalization has led to easy access to this information and different countries accommodating each other culture without discrimination and being respectful between countries. It also leads to the development of global chain value. Different parts of a product can be manufactured in different countries across the globe.

Cultural acceptance and marketing strategies

Globalization has led to the exposure of countries to the global markets. It has led to increase in a lot of changes such as the global value chains. The process of producing products has become more scattered and has affected operations across the world. Several players are involved in contributing to different steps of productions of products (Bertelsmann-Scott, 2017). The labor division has enabled countries at the lower level of economic development to be involved in the global value chain activities at certain steps which strengthen and advances their economic positions. Increased participation between countries in activities of the global value chain leads to economic benefits of countries as it enhances productivity, diversification, and sophistication. The global value chain participation enables countries to gain economic benefits (Ghemawat & Altman 2016, p. 31).

It has also led to the impact of free trade agreements between countries. Globalization has led to easy access of products by the consumers. The free trade agreements and formation of economic unions is an important factor for access of products by consumers from different countries. The consumers also have varieties of products to choose from and the flexibility in prices as well. The signing of free trade agreements between countries led to the access of these products and it is brought about by globalization. The agreement led to low pricing as countries lifted trade barriers (Stephenson 2012, p. 8). The financial barriers led to high pricing of commodities from different countries and would limit the supplies of goods and services in different countries. With the signing of these trade agreements, all the barriers were lifted making it easy to access products and services from different countries and at a lower price. The agreements led to promoting fair competition and increase the investment opportunity for countries and expand trade (African Economic Outlook 2014, p. 29). 

For countries, it was an opportunity to grow and economically and increase the investment rates. It allows exchange of products between the countries and builds the relationship and economic development and growth for the countries involved. The elimination of trade barriers between countries led to increased investment opportunities and guidelines and procedures put in place to solve problems arising with the regulation of trade (Jha & Varkkey 2017, p. 50). There are more options for purchasing products. Though it has also led to loss of jobs as manufacturing companies face a lot of competition and reduction in sales and cannot sustain high number of employment rates leading to layoffs. Many people have lost their jobs due to globalization and at the same time the cost of products have reduced (Ando, Mitsuyo, & Fukunari 2011, p.32) The pricing in the market has become competitive. People losing their jobs are in a position to use their labor on industries that the country is more competitive pricing in the global market as there are more job opportunity coming up due to increased market share and demand for products leading to increased need to manufacture more products and needing more workforce. The free trade market has created low prices for consumer hence becoming beneficial to most countries as they have the choice to select the product of their preference. Globalization also creates awareness of different products and consumers have the moral basis to choose the products from (Solt 2009, p.236).

Impact on the global value chain and economic development

Globalization has led to flooding of the culture of different regions and countries with new ideas and beliefs. The realities of people of different countries are increasingly being altered. Globalization has led to access to different cultures and beliefs (Dawe 2012, p. 304). The people’s perceptions of different customs are changing, and different countries are borrowing from each other. The people’s ways of life are integrated into the global networks of relationships. The cultural systems such as families are adopting the need to borrow from different cultures globally. Values, competencies, morals, and skills are some of the cultural aspects people feel the need to borrow from other cultures across the globe.

Globalization may lead to the extinction of cultural identity (Kisidi 2013, p. 8). Different countries have cultural environments and ways of performing different activities. But with the introduction of different companies from different countries in the market, they may establish a culture different from the country they are positioned in leading to people adopting their culture and abandoning their own. For example, the Americans take their coffee in the morning while the Japanese prefer taking coffee in the afternoon. When an American coffee shop is set up in Japan, and they maintain their culture, some Japanese are more likely to adopt the American culture and abandon their leading to cultural identity loss due to globalization. The consumers are exposed to different cultures due to globalization. Some of which are appealing to them and they integrate them into their own cultural beliefs (Sorokin 2010, p. 24).

Globalization has also led to the political influence on relations between the countries. Political globalization is defined as the accumulation of power in a single international government. Globalization has led to evolving of many international organizations such as the United Nations. Organizations such as United Nations work towards achieving the development goals of the global nations and also ensuring peace between the nations. With the interactions of different countries, there is need to regulate the relations and achieve different goals necessary to maintain peace as different countries have different interests when interacting with other countries (Petruchak & Shevchenko 2016, p. 330). United Nations ensures countries come together to achieve global peace. Delegations from different nations come together to form different rules and policies to reduce and regulate conflicts of interests. The regulations benefit developing countries more as with the globalization; they face a high risk of being invaded and taken advantage of by the developed countries interfering with their peace and stability (Prempeh 2013, p. 200)

Free trade agreements and access to products

Political globalization also benefits and improves the relationship between countries as if forms a platform to solve some of the issues faced by different countries (Gaur 2015, p. 112). The help of other countries assists in solving global issues such as poverty, organized crime, education and environmental disasters. The able or developed countries and international organizations provide resources that are both human and financial to assist the affected countries to improve on the issues affecting them. For example, problems such as poverty alleviation where the affected countries are provided with resources to reduce and improve their situations.

Political globalization can also be demeaning to some countries. The developed countries acquire more power leading to having the upper hand in decision making, and their interests considered more than the underdeveloped nations who do not have a big say when it comes to decision making (Gail 2016, p. 51). With the help the developed countries provide to the developing countries, the developing countries tend to favor the developed country providing help to them leading to lack of fairness to when decisions are made. The developed countries influence others on implementation of different actions.

With the difference in ways of governing such as communism, capitalization, and democracy, different countries have a different preference in the way of governing which may lead to the conflict of ideologies. It causes conflicts in the global decision making and relations between the countries (Das, N 2013, p. 111). 

Another impact of globalization on country relations is the internationalization of crimes. Globalization has led to the increase in crimes such as women, children, and drug trafficking. These social crimes have become difficult to control due to easy access of people from different nations in different countries. The crimes are globalized. Globalization has seen an increase in these crimes and controlling them becoming more difficult for different countries. The easy access of countries and lack of strict regulations for people moving in and out of different countries has led to rising in drug and people trafficking (Eddy & Vivarelli 2016, p. 10).

Another social impact of globalization is the increase in the use of the internet. It has led to increase in cybercrime and immoral usage of the platform (Naomi & Tomohiko 2015, p.59) The internet has no regulations put in place to govern the usage leading to anyone posting anything they want, and this has led to a lot of immorality. Globalization also affects religion. There is a lot of information and opinions shared by different religions online leading to a lot of influence in different countries religions. They present information that harm values and beliefs of different people as they have access to the opinion of other people from different religions. It makes it difficult for countries striving to maintain their religious values and beliefs. These differences lead to loss of influence on the people’s behavior (Badinger & Nindl 2014, p. 1432). 

Globalization and cultural identity

Conclusion

In conclusion, globalization has led to both positive and negative impact on the relations between the countries. The lifting of trading and financial barriers has led to easy access to products in the market and at a competitive price. There is an abundance of options for products for consumers at lower prices and easy access to products too. On the manufacturers’ sides, there is also a wide market, and with good marketing strategy they can gain profits and expand the business. The easy access of information also enables consumers to make decisions on the products to purchase, and the information is also helpful to the manufactures in determining the marketing strategies as they can determine the cultural influences of the consumers of different nations. It has led to economic growth and development of some countries. Through the global value chain, countries can access products that they do not have the capacity and resources to produce.

Globalization has also helped countries deal with some of the political and social issues affecting them. For example, receiving support regarding human resources and finances so as to handle issues affecting them. These are problems such as, alleviation of poverty, improvement in the value of education, fighting social crimes such as drug trafficking and also human trafficking.  

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