This funny comic picture shows the power of brands on the global market and their try to be the market leader of the world. The five world best brands are: Coca Cola (Nr.1), Microsoft, IBM, General Electric and Intel (see here). Therefore, the company’s revenue as well as the brand’s strengths are taken into account. With the help of the globalisation, it is very easy for the world brands to expand their products all over the world.
As the brands expand more and more and overtake companies smaller unknown companies cannot survive on the market. Moreover, due to the power of the brand it doesn’t matter which price they want for their products because there are the market leader and nearly everyone will buy it.
In my opinion it is impossible to stop these companies of becoming more and more popular and powerful. Moreover, the many big companies produce for many no brand companies for example in the food industry. That’s why, it doesn’t matter which product you buy. Nevertheless, you buy a brand product and thus to support the brand to become more and more powerful.
The world of labour 
Yes, I agree that brands are very powerful in today’s world, but from your post I can’t see the connection to the labour market here…
Is the connection in the caricature – that multinational companies are able to exploit the labour force because of their global reach?
The connection to labour market is that the small companies get bankrupt and so the people get unemployed. The only way to have a secure work is only possible if you work for one of the best companies. So you don’t have a big choose for which company you want to work.
I can’t agree with you. First of all, in today’s economy the brand goods are not produced in the developed countries. As a rule the production has been outsourced to countries with lower labour costs (see on the label inside your clothes). So no jobs to be lost… Secondly, I believe that many people enjoy working for a famous company with good brands, it’s prestigious and a good motivator for the workers.
It is the fact that people want to work for a famous company but they are unconscious about costs and working conditions.They have been working for hours and they earn nearly nothing.Because big companies are building their factories in the undeveloped areas and by the way,they can find workers with low salaries and they can get stronger, more powerful and they can sweep money into their pocket.
Firstly, as SMEs frequently target specialized niches, their main competitive advantages are technological know-how, organizational flexibility and closer relationships with their customers. So they will target customers needs better than big companies. Larger competitors, apart from technological know-how, rely on the benefits arising from scale economies and of course marketing. Still it does not matter, that customers will buy brand products no matter what and due to the scale economics big companies can offer lower prices, which is good for customer.
Secondly, countries with a higher level of income (GDP per capita) have larger SME sectors in terms of their contribution to total employment and GDP (World Bank, WPS 3127). So the arguments, that because of the globalization people become unemployed and SME get bankrupt is totally wrong.
It’s not the point that all SME would get banckrupt but the percentage will increase. You have written that big companies can offer low prices. That’s good for the customer but is it also good for the SMEs? If the SME has no possibility to decrease the prices as it is done by the big companies (because they produce products in the low wages area for example). Then the consequence of it is,of course: bancruptcy. Of course, that’s true that small companies they have a better relationship to the customers. However, last year there was a documentation in Germany on TV about the problems of shops selling electronic products. These private shops would suffer under the big companies like Media Markt. Customers would just come to them to see the product and to get good information about the product. But finally, they will buy the product at Media Markt anyway because it’s cheaper. Thus these small shops don’t survive and people who were working there get unemployed. In my hometown I can see exact this development. Some years ago there was a real good store to buy electronic products but then Media Markt opened and this store started to decrease the number of working people. Finally, they had to close.
This situation is true, unfortunately but we all are a little bit guilty of that development. Finally everybody knows the big brands according to a very well instructed promotions who has been established for a long time influenced by enormous capital assets of that big company. So we prefer the well known name going to Mc Donalds and eating one Hamburger and drinking one Coca Cola inspite of going to one market selling fresh food or wholefood products because of the higher price.
Consequently the small shops perish in the future being displaced by big brand companies.
So we have to think about our own consumer behaviour according to protect the smaller unknown companies.
From my point of view the increasing power of well-known international brands is really significant. They have the power cause they can produce their products cheaper. The bigger the volume of production is the cheaper it is for company to produce the products. And most of the cases is then also cheaper to buy their products as some else’s. Of course, this is more about the food producing and selling companies, like Wal-mart, Tesco, Carrefour,… The prices of the products they offer are mostly lower than those of the smaller companies. But as I said before, it is due to the cheap production, distribution and marketing.
Well, I think there is not too much to do about stopping the big companies from being even bigger, cause the people mostly think about the price for which they can buy the special product. The cheaper wins.
I think it is not true that you are safe in your job if you work in the big name firms…actually i think you are at more risk of a job loss as the big firms have many many employees and therefore can afford to treat them as disposible and another worry is the current trend of setting up in other less developed countrys to reduce costs therefore closing factorys etc in home countries resulting in thousands of job losses.