Crossing Borders: Globalization as Myth and Charter in American Transnational Consumer Marketing

In this article, I explore the strategic practices and cultural theories of marketing managers in three U.S.‐based transnational corporations (TNCs) as seek to meaningfully direct their products across national borders. While cultural anthropologists have lately focused on local adaptation and appropriation of TNCs' products to local meanings, the reverse process by which TNCs co‐opt local meanings to a universalizing evolutionary paradigm—in what they have come to regard as a consumption‐led new global order—has not been examined. Globalization is explored as a key cultural concept driving marketing managers' practices—the myth and charter behind large TNC border crossings. [consumer marketing, globalization, transnational corporations, United States]