(1) Israel is a "powerhouse of agricultural technology", says Abraham Goren

游客2023-12-03  28

问题     (1) Israel is a "powerhouse of agricultural technology", says Abraham Goren of Elbit Imaging (EI), an Israeli multinational. The country’s cows can produce as much as 37 liters of milk a day. In India, by contrast, cows yield just seven liters. Spotting an opportunity, EI is going into the Indian dairy business. It will import 10,000 cows and supply fortified and flavored milk to supermarkets and other buyers.
    (2) So will EI lap up India’s milk market? Not necessarily. As the Times of India points out, its cows will ruminate less than 100 miles from the headquarters of a formidable local producer—the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation, otherwise known as Amul. This Farmers’ Co-operative spans 2.6m members, collects 6.5m liters of milk a day, and boasts one of the longest-running and best-loved advertising campaigns in India. It has already shown "immense resilience" in the face of multinational competition, says Arindam Bhattacharya of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Its ice-cream business survived the arrival of Unilever; its chocolate milk has thrived despite Nestle.
    (3) Indeed, Amul is one of 50 firms—from China, India, Brazil, Russia and six other emerging economies—that BCG has anointed as "local dynamos". They are prospering in their home market, are fending off multinational rivals, and are not focused on expanding abroad. BCG discovered many of these firms while drawing up its "global challengers" list of multinationals from the developing world. The companies that were venturing abroad most eagerly, it discovered, were not necessarily the most successful at home.
    (4) Emerging economies are still prey to what Harvard’s Dani Rodrik has called "export fetishism". International success remains a firm’s proudest boast, and with good reason: economists have shown that exporters are typically bigger, more efficient and pay better than their more parochial rivals. "Exporters are better" was the crisp verdict of a recent review of the data.
    (5) Countries like India and Brazil were, after all, once secluded backwaters fenced off by high tariffs. Prominent firms idled along on government favors and captive markets. In that era, exporting was a truer test of a company’s worth. But as such countries have opened up, their home markets have become more trying places. Withstanding the onslaught of foreign firms on home soil may be as impressive a feat as beating them in global markets.
    (6) BCG describes some of the ways that feat has been accomplished. Of its 50 dynamos, 41 are in consumer businesses, where they can exploit a more intimate understanding of their compatriots’ tastes. It gives the example of Gol, a Brazilian budget airline, which bet that its cash-strapped customers would sacrifice convenience and speed for price. Many Gol planes therefore depart at odd hours and make several hops to out-of-the-way locations, rather than flying directly.
    (7) Similarly astute was India’s Titan Industries, which has increased its share of India’s wristwatch market despite the entry of foreign brands such as Timex and Swatch. It understood that Indians, who expect a good price even for old newspapers, do not throw their watches away lightly, and has over 700 after-sales centers that will replace straps and batteries.
    (8) Exporters tend to be more capital-intensive than their home-bound peers; they also rely more on skilled labor. Many local dynamos, conversely, take full advantage of the cheap workforce at their disposal. Focus Media, China’s biggest "out of home" advertising company, gets messages out on flat-panel displays in 85,000 locations around the country. Those displays could be linked and reprogrammed electronically, but that might fall foul of broadcast regulations. So instead the firm’s fleet of workers on bicycles replaces the displays’ discs and flash-cards by hand.
    (9) The list of multinationals resisted or repelled by these dynamos includes some of the world’s biggest names: eBay and Google in China; Wal-Mart in Mexico; SAP in Brazil. But Mr. Goren of EI is not too worried about Amul. The market is big enough for everybody, he insists. Nothing, then, is for either company to cry about. [br] Which of the following would the author most probably agree?

选项 A、Not all of the developing world’s most successful companies are globalizing.
B、Companies venturing abroad most eagerly are the most successful at home.
C、Local dynamos are the most successful firms all over the world.
D、Globalizing is not good for companies in emerging economies.

答案 A

解析 原文第3段最后一句提到最热心于海外经营的公司在本土并不一定是最成功的,而第5段最后一句也提到在本土抵抗外国企业的冲击是一项不逊于在全球市场将他们击败的高超本领。结合这两句可推断发展中国家中最成功的公司并不一定都是全球化的,A正确
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