Avon International Strategy Case Study

Avon is the United States oldest beauty company which has grown from its humble beginnings as a perfume line being sold door-to-door into one of the largest brand of cosmetic products. It has expanded its products in 143 countries and with roughly around four million representatives world-wide. Their global strategy has faced mounting pressures from competitors, overseas economies, and governments to change and adapt to their strategy to maintaining growth. This article will discuss the changes in a corporation global strategy and why it is important to adapt and what can be learned from changing strategy as new technologies emerge and markets mature.

In most of international markets, the primary operating arrangement in each of these divisions was direct ownership by Avon of the foreign country subsidiary. Avon’s strategy was an international strategy in which they took their direct sales model that worked really well in their domestic market at the time and attempted to apply it in overseas markets. This strategy worked well in markets with competitors lacked the capability that Avon’s business model had. The strategy also worked well in countries that

The same can be said about a localization strategy. Localization may give a firm a competitive edge, but if it is simultaneously facing aggressive competitors, the company will also have to reduce its cost structure, and the only way to do that may be to shift toward a transnational strategy. This is what Procter & Gamble has been doing. Thus, as competition intensifies, international and localization strategies tend to become less viable, and managers need to direct their companies toward either a global standardization strategy or a transnational