Development - Flows of globalisation

Brand loyalty

McDonald’s Corporation began spreading domestically throughout the United States from 1973 thus establishing its brand recognition. 

McDonald’s is able to create global recognition with its customers through heavy advertising and branding. It is said that its “golden arches” are recognised by more people than the “Christian cross”

McDonald’s also sponsors things such as the Olympics, portraying itself as a global influence in major sporting events, whilst also creating mass advertising. In addition to this, it spends around $950 million every year on advertising alone.

Its initial strategy began by advertising directly to the middle and upper class citizens, as can be seen in countries such as India and China. However, with its many bargain deals on several of its food items, McDonald’s began to cater to several people belonging to the lower class. 

 China was McDonald’s first global country in which it researched heavily before opening up restaurants. In fact, through globalisation and internationalisation, McDonald’s was able to develop marketing strategies, while at the same time customising them for different regions in accordance to the cultural and national variations in order to serve specific target markets. 

 The company conducts heavy research in regions where it desires to open locations based upon a few elements, including social, cultural, technological, political, and economic situations. 

Containerisation

The island state is located on one of the world’s busiest and most congested shipping, as vessels travelling between the Far East and Indian Ocean (on to India, the Gulf states and Europe via Suez) are forced to pass through the bottleneck of the Malacca Straits.

• The port is the ranked second busiest, behind Shanghai, transporting 32,240,000 containers in 2013. It the busiest in terms of transfers of containers between vessels (whereas Chinese ports like Shanghai focus more on goods using the port to enter/exit the country).
• Ships from Singapore sail to over 600 ports in 120 countries, meaning it is ideal for the transfer of containers, allowing the flow of products.
• About 1000 ships in the port at any one time
• At any one time, there are about 1,000 vessels in the Singapore port. 
• Every 2-3 minutes, a ship arrives or leaves Singapore.
• Vessels passing through the Singapore Strait are monitored by the Maritime and Port Authority's (MPA) Port Operations Control Centre, using the Vessel Traffic Information System (VTIS), which has the capability of handling up to 10,000 tracks at any one time.
• Annually, more than 130,000 ships call at Singapore.
• Today, there are more than 5,000 maritime establishments contributing about 7% to Singapore's gross domestic product, and employing more than 170,000 personnel.
• In today's interconnected world of commerce, more than 90% of the world's trade is carried by sea.

• The port itself has 6000 employees keeping it running 24/7.
• The port has berths for 52 ships to dock at once, and mega ships (like Emma Maersk, which carries 15,500 containers = these would stretch nearly 50miles end to end!) can be unloaded and loaded again ready to set sail in 15 hours. This is facilitated by huge cranes, 6 of which can be remote controlled by one operator at a time. This is only possible because of the standardised nature of containers.

UK Brain drain

Latest figures show that approximately 10% of Britain’s skilled labourers have left the UK in an attempt to gain work abroad. The leading countries for UK migrants to seek employment are Australia and the United States. The largest reasoning for the flow of labour from the United Kingdom is the greater job opportunities available. Following the 2008 economic crisis, many students migrated to Australia from the UK, due largely to the fact that unlike the US and UK, the Australian economy wasn’t terribly affected by the economic crash. Large amounts of unemployment, and the poorly recovering UK and US economies encouraged graduate students to seek employment elsewhere. 

A further reason for the loss of skilled labourers is the greater quality of life and higher paying jobs in these countries. Although the standard of living rates are high in the UK, many skilled labourers prefer to work abroad, especially in Australia due to factors such as climate rather than employment rates. Despite the strict Australian migration policy, the country welcomes skilled workers, with the United States too welcoming of skilled labourers, with the US migration services allowing approximately 140,000 skilled workers permanent visas. This welcoming attitude combined with the high average wages of the US and Australia (average being approximately 35% and 23% higher, respectively) results in the wide spread migration from the UK to these countries.

Transfer of skilled workers - EA

EA appoint workers and people in senior roles without bias based on location – EA was given a 100% rating in the Corporate Equality Index in 2014; as a result, appointed workers who live abroad have to migrate permanently to work, through both internal and international migration.

Internal Migration 

• Fraud Analysts who studied at University at Cornell (New York – East Coast) before working for EA in its Global HQ in Redwood City, CA (West Coast)

• Members of the Global Media Marketing team were transferred from the Origin Florida Branch (Origin are a subsidiary of EA) to San Francisco.

International Migration

• The current CEO of EA, Andrew Wilson, joined EA in 2000, working in the company’s Asian and European markets after initially working in Sydney. When he was appointed Executive Vice President of EA in 2011, he too moved to the EA HQ in Redwood City before being appointed CEO in 2013.

• EA’s COO, Peter Moore, is a Briton who used to be the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft, moving from his home in Liverpool to work for Microsoft in Seattle (NW USA). However, in 2007 he resigned from his post to work as COO for EA, moving to Redwood City. 

Unskilled workers - Morocco to Spain

Movement into Spain

In the 80s levels of undocumented migration began to grow as networks in the host countries began to develop in the 70s.

There are two Spanish cities bordering Morocco, Melilla and Ceuta. Migrants from all across Africa regularly attempt to climb over the fences bordering the cities.

In March 2014 about 500 people attempted to storm the fences at Melilla.

Illegal attempts to cross doubled in 2013, but most failed to get over the fences.

Often Spain is only the point of entry in Europe, and from there most migrants will attempt to move to France or even further to Germany or the UK.

From 2000 to 2007, immigrants in Spain from Morocco increased by 500,000 to 700,000.

10% of migrants into OECD (worldwide economic group including 34 countries) went to Spain from 2000 to 2005.

Demographics of Migrants

From the Maghreb countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya), approximately 70% of emigrating workers are classed as unskilled.

From Maghreb countries the proportion of female migrants is increasing, with gaps in the job market in Spain, such as working in the predominantly female domestic aid industry, encouraging migration from this demographic.

80% of female Moroccan immigrants are married, so appear to primarily migrate for purposes of family reunification.

Unskilled worker - Rural to urban China

Around 11% of the Chinese population are classified as rural-urban migrants, having moved from rural inner China to the urbanised and more industrial coastal regions for work. Most job opportunities in inner China are in the agricultural sector and do not require high skill levels or qualifications. 

As a result of rural-urban unskilled migration, the population in Chinese urban areas grew from 178 million (1978) to 540 million (2004). 

The urban areas offer a wider variety of job opportunities, better infrastructure and the prospect of higher wages. The size of the migration is so great that 40% of the total Chinese labour pool is made up of rural-urban migrants.

Place example: North Shaanxi region 

• Home to around 9,000 villages and just under 5 million people, the North Shaanxi region is one of the poorest in China. 
• 30% of the people in the region are classified as in poverty. This acts as a major push factor away from rural areas and towards the cities. 
• On average, 1 in 5 people in the region will move away during their lifetimes.
• The only areas without major problems with migration are those that require labour-intensive tasks that can’t be performed by machines, such as delivering animals on a farm. 
• This has led to a brain drain amongst the local population, as the future leaders of agriculture and industry in the region may not be the best the region can produce. Whilst the cities benefit from the arrival of more intelligent and able workers, those that opt to stay are more likely to live in poverty.

Airports - Chicago O'Hare

•  2nd largest airport in the world
• In 2014 it had a passenger volume of over 91 million, which seems to continue to grow
• Main attraction for the airport is that it is in a great location on the great circle because it is further north journeys are shorter which in turn saves fuel and time
• Airlines and some indirectly airports compete for conceiving passengers for minimum connect time, this requires waves to and from airports to maintain flows of passengers
• 4 pairs of runaways, 8 in total, to keep flow rates high of aircraft movement 
• Runway capacity is inefficient as traffic is a peaky diurnal pattern, which means its profile capacity is 75-80% across the day with 100% peaks
• Its main business is that small airplanes land at Chicago then the passengers are accumulated together to make a full aircraft capacity to make it financially viable for the route of a bigger aircraft to international locations. 
• Main american hull from east to west and from central America
• It attracts international links with Europe, Pacific Rim, Japan, Korea, Middle East
• Its in direct competition with Toronto airport for these routes
• It has a system of airports to maintain capacity
• Has two competing carrier networks United and American Airlines
• Its a hub for south west airlines which carry 118 million passengers to leisure and the sun
• Has two other business aviation airports: Chicago Executive and Du Page, this is for all the private planes
• Due to its busy nature it has started to decant some of its traffic to greater Chicago, Chicago Midway International Airport, Gary International 
• If there is ever a problem and activity is ever disrupted it is very hard to get back on schedule due to its sufficiently high activity, i.e. its resilience to disruption is not good

Refugees - Syria

3 million people have fled Syria since the start of the conflict. 

Lebanon – every fifth person is a Syrian refugee, thus emigration has caused a huge population surge. Thus there is an increased pressure on health and education services. Additionally, Lebanese communities are become increasingly myopic and frustrated causing tensions between the nationalities. Syrian children, after being deprived of education during the conflict, are less able than the Lebanese children thus acquire more attention from teachers causing tension between the students. 

Jordan – Syrian men are willing to work for less and in the process are being exploited. Jordanian men cannot afford a dowry so must delay marriage. Jordan suffers from a water scarcity, Syrian do not share the precious perception of water. 

Turkey – created high quality refugee camps, Turkish society has been the most accepting.