Business Case Studies & Business Publications

Hilton China

Chen, Ming-Jer, Ye...

Case

Hilton China

Chen, Ming-Jer; Yemen, Gerry

S-0324 | Published March 16, 2020 | 7 pages Case

Collection: Darden School of Business

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How do brands travel? As firms expand globally, they must manage how their products and services are perceived across borders, peoples, and cultures. This can be thorny when what a firm offers has no immediate interpretation by an international audience, like selling ice cream to a nation that consumes little dairy. It can be even worse when a company's key products are likely to elicit negative reactions in their new market, like McDonald's hamburgers in India. Using the case of Hilton hotels' decision to enter the Chinese hospitality market, the case offers students a chance to work through the challenges and trade-offs when brands expand into markets culturally, politically, and economically different from what they are used to.

•To understand the strategic dilemmas firms face and blind spots they ignore when introducing their brands across cultural contexts and national borders •To recognize factors that influence how products and services are perceived by a foreign audience experiencing it for the first time •To provide heuristic guidelines for deciding how much localization is needed for the firm to succeed in different markets and the appropriate strategic choices that best align with the choice