Brittany Langevin
MKTG 445
The World Is Flat: Part 1
1. Describe five of the flatteners and how they have affected your life. What flatteners do you
believe do not apply to Global Marketing? Please support your answer.
Flattener # 4: Uploading
The ability for people to be able to upload material through the internet has profoundly
changed the world. Never before had people been able to reach an audience as large and as
quickly as they could after the introduction of the internet and programs such as YouTube,
online schooling, shopping and more. Uploading allows anyone to be a consumer, student,
journalist, or movie-maker and that was a profound thing especially for individuals in developing
nations where only a few years before their whole world was comprised of the city in which
they lived.
Uploading has most affected my life by allowing me to continue my education online. When I
had my daughter my junior year of college I was able to continue my education completely
online. This allowed me to be a young mother and get my degree easily which was not the case
when my mother had my brother which caused her to never obtain her degree. The options
were endless, but luckily my school had its own online program and I will be receiving my degree
on time. Not to mention I had an internship which was completely online and that was the way
we did our business. It was very interesting being able to make money by uploading.
Flattener # 6: Offshoring
Offshoring involves the movement of taking business operations out of the home country and
into a foreign country in order to take advantage of lower working costs or other incentives such
as labor pool, natural resources, or more favorable government regulations. Companies over the
last few decades have chosen to move manufacturing operations to countries where labor is
cheaper such as Mexico or China. Other businesses have taken advantage of high skilled or
educated labor that will work for less such as the case with many tech industry corporations
opening operations in India.
Offshoring has affected me most by providing me with the ability to purchase non-essential
products at a low price that once were too expensive for me to afford. For example, it was once
very expensive to own simple things that are now considered everyday objects like TVs, iPhones,
Laptops, iPads and more. Now companies are finding ways to lower costs by offshoring
operations for the various components that make up these objects and prices are dropping.
Allowing almost anyone to afford these objects.
Flattener # 7: Supply-Chaining
Supply chaining is basically the effort of organizations to align themselves in a manner that
makes it more effective to move raw goods into completed products and then move finished
products to consumers. The idea of supply-chaining was largely founded by Wal-Mart and has
since been adopted by organizations around the globe. In the highly competitive global market
we experience today, it is important for all companies to make efforts to manage costs by
increasing efficiency. The goal of supply-chaining is to help increase efficiency while
concurrently lowering costs.
The supply-chaining has directly affected me through the retail industry in which I work. Many
of the companies I have worked for have emulated Wal-Mart’s supply chain, to some degree, in
order to remain competitive. The idea of just-in-time inventory was introduced to almost every
company that I was a part of and it affected how I did my job along with how I had to manage
others. The stores I work in, as part of the supply chain, have also been forced to become more
efficient. This translates to fewer labors, more well-organized practices, and greater efficiency. It
also, at times, translates to increased pressure and almost always an amplified workload.
Flattener # 9: In-Forming
Informing is the capability people have to obtain information and knowledge quickly and easily
via the internet and World Wide Web. Long gone are the days where people need to go to the
