From Standardization to Personalization: Rethinking International Branding and Pricing Strategies

The standardization–adaptation debate dominated international marketing strategies for numerous years through its advocacy of using one brand approach with minimal regional modifications. That template is fraying. Organizations now implement personalization strategies which range from simple message customization and journey planning to sophisticated behavior-based pricing and real-time promotional methods utilizing AI decision systems in data-rich environments and omnichannel distribution networks. This review considers studies from 2016 and onwards to demonstrate that the new frontier represents a multi-layered system which maintains worldwide brand unity through customized approaches to branding, distribution, promotional activities and pricing strategies. This paper combines data about customer interactions with AI strategic functions, omnichannel features, privacy management and algorithmic pricing to create a “coherence-with-choice” framework for managers as well as future research directions for scholars.