Glocation and Greentailing – these two terms are not directly related to each other but both are popular trends in retail that refer to understanding and satisfying society and customers’ needs. Glocation and Greentailing appear in business as answers to preserve local identity and customs and to promote an eco-life style.

Over the past quarter century, the notion of glocalism has had various connotations. In the 1980s, President Akio Morita of Sony, one of the world’s most successful multinational companies, used this term to de­scribe a corporate strategy and enclosed it in one phrase, “think global, act local.”

According to the Uri Savir and Walter Veltroni organizators of First Glocal Forum in Rome in May 2002, glocalism is said to be a solution for those seeking a balance between global forces and local needs, interests and identities.  

Representatives of CERFE, an Italian economic and social science research organization, where Savir and Veltroni provide as advisors, describe glocalism as: “a social process that is especially evident in cities where it consists of the concurrent drives toward globalization and localization.”

Glocalism is also seen as “diffused social action…that can be interpreted as a kind of ideal and cultural movement oriented towards linking the benefits of globalization to local situations, and toward governing globalization also through local situations.”

Next to glocalism, the “mega-city” syndrome is defined. According to Thomas Hoog, vice chair of Hill&Knowlton (international communications consultancy company), “by the year 2015 there will be twenty-five mega-cities, nineteen of them in developing countries, and fifteen of them in Asia.

In addition to these mega-cities, there will be fifty-nine cities with populations greater than five million. Those crowded, polluted, urban centers will by and large not have the well-developed infrastructures that have sustained today’s major cities.” Big cities are like magnets with high paying jobs and self-development opportunities.

But on the other hand, cities are subject to growing disproportionate income and harshly strained infrastructures. There is need for institutional change and social adaptation to preserve local identity and customs. Providing the opportunities to act locally around the world is a way to achieve greater efficiencies, to optimize supply chains and to tailor products to local needs.

Similar to glocalism, green retailing is also progressively more popular term. It is an answer for increasing societal awareness to environmental problems such as pollution.  In practice, it means that retailers sell eco-products and adopt a number of environmentally friendly actions to preserve resources and eliminate waste in order to protect the environment.

What is going follow that customer’s consciousness about eco-friendly shopping and green lifestyle increase as an answer for new trend. Greentailing philosophy has got great influence for consumer decision making who became an essential part of the threat of global warming and increasing concern about impact that business have on the environment.

From the moment of identifying customer own needs to the moment of making purchasing decision, customer is affected by green retailing in many ways starting from eco- friendly packaging, paper bags, catchwords and ending on the totally new approach to doing business where the products and entire supplier chain are adopted to eco-rules.

Big corporations like Wal-Mart, Tesco and eBay have adopted the greentailing strategy in order to develop their business practices. In April 2010, eBay ran a campaign encouraging customers to buy products made from eco-friendly materials, or products that require less energy. During the campaign they collaborated with Team Earth and Cooler Inc. to reduce their carbon footprint.

The profits generated from the campaign were given to environmental and nonprofit organizations such as the Make it Right Foundation. Authors Neil Z. Stern and Willard N. Ander in their book Winning at Retail: Developing a Sustained Model for Retail Success, Greentailing and Other Revolutions in Retail suggest that the increasing popularity of green retailing is just an answer for customer’s needs and their tastes change.

The same authors explain that retail is nothing more than seeking what consumers want and satisfying their needs in order to stay innovative and competitive on local and world markets. Glocalism and Greentailing are answers for these needs.

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About the author

Barbara Lapinska
Designer and eco-friendly oriented biology M.A with passion for fashion and journalism. Why I want to share my enthusiasm with others? Because doing what I love and having opportunity to inspire others makes me extremely pleased and gives me positive energy.

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