International and multinational perspectives depend on experience gained from direct contact with one or several other countries and cultures. For example, the marketing executive with a global perspective achieves that view throughout the world, even for areas where no direct prior experience exists. This becomes essential because managers who receive global responsibility for a product, a segment, a category, or some other project could not possibly have been exposed to all those countries before (Hennessey 231). The marketing executive must obviously think differently about the world to use this perspective.
The difference in perspective is emphasized by Sergey Frank, a marketing and sales troubleshooter for General Tire Co., a subsidiary of Continental A.G., who recently stated: First of all, let me make a distinction between internationalizing on the one hand and globalizing on the other. If I decide to take advantage of the newly integrated markets in Europe, then I've simply internationalized, not globalized. Globalization is being present-'most likely with manufacturing facilities?-in, say, North America, Europe, and the Far East . . . [This distinction is important] because I think it's partly responsible for the reluctance and hesitation that many smaller companies feel when it comes to the issue of global marketing. If they understand that it doesn't have to be so all?encompassing-'the kind of simultaneously, multinational involvement that the word "global" implies-'then they might be more comfortable with the concept (Kern and Keenan 52-53).
There are definitely a wide variety of types of knowledge that are necessary for a global perspective. Some of these include: economic knowledge, political knowledge, cultural knowledge, historic knowledge, geographic knowledge, and an understanding of global market knowledge. Hennessey emphasizes the importance of checking facts in order not to make an error.