[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 59 (Monday, May 9, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E910-E911]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              THE INTERWOVEN VALUES OF FREEDOM AND MARKETS

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DONALD A. MANZULLO

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                          Monday, May 9, 2005

  Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Speaker, in today's times, we often find that the 
principle values and activities of the United States are under attack. 
Too few defenses are offered against such attacks, even if they 
question the very fundamentals of how we live and work. It is therefore 
helpful and encouraging to see when someone takes this responsibility 
seriously. Here are some thoughts of Professor Michael R. Czinkota of 
Georgetown University who professes his belief on how to advance the 
cause of freedom.

                 On Freedom and International Marketing

                        (By Michael R. Czinkota)


                          The Issue of Freedom

       You may ask what freedom has to do with international 
     marketing. Freedom is about options. If there is no 
     alternative, there is no freedom. A true alternative provides 
     the opportunity to make a decision, to exercise virtue. In 
     the blaze of the klieg lights, it is easy to make the 
     ``right'' decision. That's not an exercise in virtue, because 
     real alternatives are effectively removed. The true selection 
     among alternatives takes place in the darkness of night when 
     nobody is looking.
       The focus and aim of international marketing is on crossing 
     borders. The goal is to provide more than one choice for 
     customers, letting them pick from a selection of options in 
     order to maximize their satisfaction. International marketing 
     does so in all comers of the globe, the glamorous ones as 
     well as in the small and remote ones where the efforts are 
     not seen by others. By operating both in the limelight and 
     also well outside of it, international marketing offers the 
     freedom to exercise virtue both to the seller and the buyer--
     be it in decisions of supplying or purchasing, pricing or 
     selecting.
       Another key dimension of freedom is not to confine, 
     allowing people to go outside of the box. As a concept, 
     freedom knows no international boundaries. But national 
     borders usually are the box where business and government 
     find their limits. Such borders are a mere point of 
     transition for international marketing. The discipline 
     thrives on understanding of how to successfully cross 
     national borders, on coping with the differences once the 
     crossing is done, and on profitably reconciling any 
     conflicts.
       International marketing contains the freedom of almost 
     unlimited growth potential. Activities confined to domestic 
     borders may well run into limits of expansion. International 
     market opportunities relax these limits quickly. Instead of 
     restrictions, the international marketing paradigm encourages 
     the stripping away of restraints; instead of limitations, 
     there is the encounter of opportunity.
       Freedom also means not being forced to do something one 
     does not want to do (Hayek, 1971). There are economic 
     migration pressures that force people to move from their 
     rural homes into urban areas or from their developing 
     countries into industrialized ones. Industrialized nations, 
     in turn, speak about immigration pressure. For both sides, 
     little if any freedom is involved here. Most individuals who 
     do the moving would much rather stay home but cannot afford 
     to do so due to economic exigencies. The recipient countries 
     might not want to welcome the migrants but do so in response 
     to political and humanitarian pressures. International 
     marketing may have been part of what triggered some of these 
     migrations, but it also can be instrumental in stemming the 
     tide. It can provide the economic opportunity for individuals 
     at home so that they need not migrate. Thus, it lets 
     individuals become productive contributors to the global 
     economy free from pressures to shift locations.
       When the long-standing rivalry between socialism and market 
     orientation was resolved, market forces and the recognition 
     of demand and supply directly affected human rights and the 
     extent of freedom. With all humility and gratefulness we can 
     conclude: Markets were right! In country after country, 
     market forces have demonstrated typically greater efficiency 
     and effectiveness in their ability to satisfy the needs of 
     people.
       International marketing has been instrumental in 
     stimulating these newly emerging market forces. In spite of 
     complaints about the slowness of change, the insufficiency of 
     wealth redistribution, and the inequities inherent in 
     societal upheavals, a large majority of participants 
     in market-oriented changes are now better off than they 
     were before. Without the transition provided by 
     international marketing, these changes would not have come 
     about that swiftly.

[[Page E911]]

                          The Cost of Freedom

       One keeps healing about the large segment of the world 
     population that is poor and therefore supposedly excluded 
     from any international marketing efforts; the World Bank's 
     former president called them the 3 billion $2-a-day poor 
     (Wolfensohn, 2001). By contrast, international marketers see 
     them as an attractive $6 billion-a-day opportunity for 
     valuable exchanges!
       What's more is that international marketing provides the 
     opportunity to acquire resources without the deployment of 
     force. Why fight if you can trade? Countries that have been 
     historic enemies such as France, England and Germany are now 
     all united in their close collaboration through international 
     marketing. (Farmer, 1987) The field is, therefore, at the 
     very least contributing to freedom from war while providing 
     additional choices for consumption.
       But the cost of freedom is rising. Terms like free trade or 
     free choice are misleading since they all come with a price, 
     which international marketers pay in terms of preparing their 
     shipments, scrutinizing their customers, and conforming to 
     government regulations.
       We all are paying a higher price due to global terrorism. 
     As freedom suffers, so does international marketing. In most 
     instances, terrorism is not an outgrowth of choice but rather 
     the lack of it. Terrorists may succeed in reducing the 
     freedom of others but not in increasing their own. Who is 
     typically most affected by terrorist acts? Attacks aimed at 
     businesses, such as the infamous bombings of U.S. franchises 
     abroad, do not bring big corporations to their knees. The 
     local participants, the local employees, the local investors, 
     and the local customers are affected most. Who can protect 
     themselves against such attacks and who can afford to protect 
     targets? Only the more wealthy countries and companies can. 
     They have the choice of where to place their funds, with whom 
     to trade, and whether to hold the enemy at bay through a 
     security bubble created by changing business forn1ats via 
     exporting or franchising. The poor players do not have 
     choices. The local firms, the nations with economies in 
     development, and the poor customers continue to be exposed to 
     further acts of terrorism with very limited indigenous 
     ability to influence events.
       But international marketing can enable the disenfranchised 
     to develop alternatives. Multinational firms can invest in 
     the world's poorest markets and increase their own revenue 
     while reducing poverty. With support from shareholders and 
     the benefit of good governance, international marketers can, 
     and should, continue in their role as social change agents. 
     The discipline has value maximization at its heart. If it is 
     worthwhile to fulfill the needs of large segments of people, 
     even at low margins, then it will be done. International 
     marketers after all have as their key desire the creation of 
     new customers and suppliers and they are delighted when, in 
     fulfillment of their aims, they can bring about freedom from 
     extremes of hunger, sickness, and intolerance.


                           Value and Freedom

       In a global setting, freedom can take on many dimensions. 
     Privileges and obligations that are near and dear to some may 
     well be cheap and easily disposed of by others. The views of 
     one society may differ from views held in other regions of 
     the world. Such differences then account for 
     misunderstandings, surprises, and long-term conflicts.
       There are two value dimensions at work here, both of them 
     highly relevant to international marketing. One may be 
     circumscribed as the freedom and values of a market economy. 
     To make them work governmental, managerial, and corporate 
     virtue, vision, and veracity are required. Unless the world 
     can believe in what institutions and their leaders say and 
     do, it will be difficult to forge a global commitment between 
     those doing the marketing and the ones being marketed to. It 
     is therefore of vital interest to the proponents of freedom 
     and international marketing to ensure that corruption, 
     bribery, lack of transparency, and poor governance are 
     exposed for their negative effects in any setting or society. 
     The main remedy will be the collaboration of the global 
     policy community in agreeing on what constitutes 
     transgressions and swift punishment of the culprits involved, 
     so that market forces can work free from distortion.
       A second and even more crucial issue is the value system we 
     use in making choices. Some years ago, the Mars Climate 
     Orbiter mission failed spectacularly as a result of the use 
     of different values by the mission navigation teams. One team 
     was using metric units and the other used the English system 
     of measurement. This mistake caused the orbiter to get too 
     close to the atmosphere, where it was destroyed (``NASA's 
     Metric Confusion,'' 1999).
       There are major differences among what people value around 
     the world. Contrasts include togetherness next to 
     individuality, cooperation next to competition, modesty next 
     to assertiveness, and self-effacement next to self-
     actualization. Often, global differences in value systems 
     keep us apart and result in spectacularly destructive 
     differences. How we value a life, for example, can be crucial 
     in terms of how we treat individuals. What value we place on 
     family, work, leisure time, or progress has a substantial 
     effect on how we see and evaluate each other.
       Cultural studies tell us that there are major differences 
     between and even within nations. International marketing, 
     through its linkages via goods, services, ideas, and 
     communications, can achieve important assimilations of value 
     systems. On the consumer side, new products offer 
     international appeal and encourage similar activities around 
     the world: many of us wear denim, dance the same dances, and 
     eat pizza and sushi (Marquardt & Reynolds, 1994). It has been 
     claimed that local product offerings help define people and 
     provide identity and that it is the local idiosyncrasies that 
     make people beautiful (Johansson, 2004). Some even offer the 
     persistence of the specific breakfast habits of the English 
     and the French as evidence of local immutability in the face 
     of globalization (de Mooij, 1998). Yet, we should remember 
     that values are learned, not genetically implanted. As life's 
     experiences grow more international and more similar, so do 
     values. Therefore, every time international marketing forges 
     a new linkage in thinking, new progress is made in shaping a 
     greater global commonality in values. It may well be that 
     international marketing's ability to align global values 
     which makes it easier for countries, companies, and 
     individuals to build bridges between them, may eventually 
     become the field's greatest gift to the world.


                          A joined occurrence

       How do freedom and international marketing match with 
     today's discontent so forcefully expressed by the 
     disgruntlement of the anti-globalists? Many claim that never 
     before in history has there been so much evidence about such 
     strong opposition to globalization and to Americans as 
     harbingers of international marketing.
       Perhaps those making such claims are sadly mistaken. In 
     looking at other ``globalizers'' in world history, such as 
     the Vikings, the Mongols, the Tatars, and the Romans, there 
     probably was both intellectual and physical opposition (or do 
     we really believe that everybody enjoyed Genghis Khan?). But 
     protest was never allowed to become very vocal, or to engage 
     in repeated, large demonstrations or widespread 
     pamphleteering. Due to rather harsh policies of dealing with 
     the opposition, very few records of such resistance are 
     available today. Consequently, comparisons with past events 
     are difficult to make and are likely to be highly inaccurate.
       Today's news is good. The nations, institutions and 
     individuals around the world are increasingly accepting 
     freedom as the key foundation of the good life. We are 
     discovering that international marketing, both as a 
     discipline and as an activity is very closely interwoven with 
     freedom--some even call it essential. It is the freedom 
     Thomas Aquinas saw as the means to human excellence and 
     happiness (Weigel, 2001) which international marketing helps 
     us reach. In reciprocal causality, freedom causes and 
     facilitates international marketing, while international 
     marketing is a key support of the cause of freedom. A 
     productive symbiosis at work!

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