---
title: "Integration–Responsiveness Grid for Small Exporters"
description: "Keep or change the product in each country? Score each element on standardisation cost and local demand, with McDonald's in India and a hypothetical SME."
url: "https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/blog/chuan-hoa-hay-thich-ung-dia-phuong"
lang: en-GB
author: "Lê Quốc Khôi"
date: 2026-11-03
updated: 2026-11-03
topics: ["Strategy & leadership"]
tags: ["Integration–responsiveness grid", "Localisation", "Internationalisation", "SME exporting"]
---

# Keep the product or change it abroad: the two-pressure grid

## Key takeaways

- The site's [integration–responsiveness grid](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/framework/integration-responsiveness-grid) sorts strategies abroad by two pressures: holding cost down through scale and sameness, or adapting to each market. Its origin is recorded as Prahalad and Doz (1987) and Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989); the description of the grid rests on the library's framework entry and has not been checked against the two books.
- McDonald's first restaurant in India opened in October 1996 with no beef or pork, yet its managing director in India said the service would be the same as in any McDonald's (Bryson, 1996; Zubrzycki, 1996). Its 2025 Form 10-K still describes a substantially uniform menu with geographic variations (McDonald's Corporation, 2026).
- The method for small firms is mine, not the authors': score each element (recipe or specification, packaging and label, price, sales channel, after-sales service) on two questions instead of placing the whole firm in one cell.
- The instant-coffee maker in Dak Lak is hypothetical, made up by me, and so is every figure attached to it.

Suppose you own a workshop in Dak Lak making instant white coffee, with 35 workers. Two messages arrive in the same week. A Vietnamese grocer in Sydney wants more of exactly what you already sell. An importer in Germany asks whether you have a less sweet version, a German label and a bigger pack. Do you keep the product or change it? This post uses the [integration–responsiveness grid](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/framework/integration-responsiveness-grid) to split that question by element, tests it against one documented case, then ties it to the [Ansoff matrix](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/framework/ansoff-matrix).

## What two questions does the integration–responsiveness grid ask?

How hard does your industry push you to standardise worldwide to hold cost down, and how hard do buyers in each country push you to change? According to the library's framework entry, the vertical axis is pressure for global integration, the horizontal axis is local responsiveness, and the recorded origin is Prahalad and Doz (1987) with Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989).

> **Figure:** [Integration–responsiveness grid](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/framework/integration-responsiveness-grid) (redrawn after Prahalad and Doz, 1987; Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1989, as presented in the library's framework)

According to the library, both pressures low is the international or export cell: sell the existing product abroad. High integration and low adaptation is a global strategy: one product for the world. High adaptation and low integration is multidomestic: a version per country. Both high is transnational, the hardest cell to coordinate. The library adds a pitfall: treating a position as fixed, when firms can move between cells as the industry changes. The two pressures pull in opposite directions, which is the [integration–responsiveness dilemma](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/glossary#integration-responsiveness-dilemma).

Yip (1989) remarks that multinationals are well practised at expanding and adapting abroad but less practised at integrating strategy across countries, because that runs against the accepted wisdom of tailoring to national markets (Yip, 1989). This rests on the opening of his article only.

## What did McDonald's change in India in 1996, and what did it keep?

It changed the menu and kept the way it served. An Associated Press report published on 12 October 1996 said the first Indian restaurant would open in a New Delhi shopping centre and would be the only McDonald's in the world with no beef. In place of the Big Mac came the Maharaja Mac, two mutton patties; strict vegetarians got rice-based vegetable patties; there was no pork either. AP gave the reasons: about 80 per cent of Indians are Hindu, and more than 110 million are Muslim. McDonald's had altered menus elsewhere, such as a Samurai pork burger in Thailand, but India went a step further, and the story guesses at volatility as the reason: Pizza Hut and KFC, who arrived earlier, had faced demonstrations and vandalism (Bryson, 1996).

The Christian Science Monitor adds two details. One is price: a lamb McBurger meal cost 39 rupees, a little over a dollar, which the article puts at around twice an Indian worker's daily wage. The other is what stayed constant: Vikram Bakshi, managing director in India, said customers would find the same quick, friendly service as in any McDonald's in the world (Zubrzycki, 1996).

Neither article reports results. The restaurant was crowded in its first days, but the animal-rights activist Maneka Gandhi said it was irrelevant whether the burgers were lamb or vegetable, because she called McDonald's the largest killer of cows in the world (Zubrzycki, 1996). Adapting the menu did not end this one person's opposition, and the source does not say whether it reduced opposition in general. A short profile sits in the [McDonald's in India case](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/case/mcdonalds-localisation).

Nearly three decades on, the 2025 Form 10-K still describes a substantially uniform menu with geographic variations to suit local tastes, and says about 95 per cent of its 45,356 restaurants at year-end 2025 were franchised (McDonald's Corporation, 2026). It does not say what the Indian menu looks like today.

My reading: a firm does not sit in one cell; its elements do. The Indian menu leans towards responsiveness and the service standard towards integration. Scale differs too: a chain of 19,400 restaurants in 1996 (Zubrzycki, 1996) absorbs an extra menu far more easily than a business of 35 people.

## How should a small firm score the two pressures, element by element?

Split the offer into five elements and ask two questions of each: what does a second version cost, and what do we lose if we do not change it? The elements are recipe or specification, packaging and label, price, sales channel, and after-sales service. The split and the two questions are my own, built from the grid's two axes and the McDonald's case; the original authors do not propose them.

Question one measures integration pressure: does a second version need another machine, a minimum batch, more storage, more people? Question two measures local demand: if we do not change it, are we blocked by law, ignored by buyers, or merely a little less attractive? The difference between blocked and less attractive matters because they justify different levels of investment.

| Cost of a second version | Local buyers' demand | Direction for that element |
|:--|:--|:--|
| High | Low | Keep the standard |
| Low | High | Adapt to the country |
| Low | Low | Keep the standard, no need to discuss |
| High | High | Hardest cell: pilot small, set the stopping condition first |

The last row corresponds to the transnational cell. For a small firm I treat it as a signal to choose: accept losing part of the market, or pay for the change in that market alone. Before scoring, the library also holds [Yip's four industry globalisation drivers](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/framework/yip-globalisation-drivers), for asking how strongly your industry pushes towards a global approach.

## What should the Dak Lak coffee maker change, and what should it keep?

Keep the recipe and the base price, change the label and pack size for Germany, and try the less sweet version only once the importer commits in advance. The example is entirely hypothetical: the workshop, the importer and every figure are mine.

> **Figure:** (compare) Hypothetical example: the workshop, minimum batch, sachet count and importer's requirements are invented by the author.

```json
{
  "type": "compare",
  "columns": ["Sydney: Vietnamese grocer", "Germany: importer for supermarkets"],
  "rows": [
    { "label": "Recipe", "cells": ["Keep as is; buyers know the taste", "High-high (demand is a guess): a less sweet version needs its own batch of at least 2 tonnes (assumed); the importer only says buyers might prefer it"] },
    { "label": "Packaging and label", "cells": ["Keep as is", "Low-high: a German label is a hard requirement (assumed); a bigger pack only needs a print run of at least 30,000 sachets, which the workshop can bear (assumed)"] },
    { "label": "Price", "cells": ["Keep the current export price list", "Keep the base price, add label and freight costs"] },
    { "label": "Sales channel", "cells": ["Keep: one small agent", "Through the importer, no channel of its own"] },
    { "label": "After-sales service", "cells": ["Unchanged, close to none", "The importer handles it; the workshop receives feedback"] }
  ]
}
```

For Sydney, all five elements stay as they are: you sit in the international or export cell, which is the right choice when buyers already know the product. For Germany, the label is compulsory and the pack cheap, so change them now. The recipe is the high-high row: both the cost and the demand are high.

For a high-high row, set the stopping condition first: run the less sweet batch only when the importer pre-orders the minimum quantity and pays a deposit. If it will not commit, keep the old recipe and sell through Asian supermarkets in Germany. The result: this workshop is in the international cell in Sydney and leans multidomestic in Germany, but on two elements only. The firm as a whole has not changed cell.

This suits a product whose elements can be changed independently. It does not suit one that is tightly coupled, for instance where a new recipe forces a new production line; then you must cost the cluster as one proposal. That is my inference, not checked against data on Vietnamese firms.

## How does the grid connect to the Ansoff matrix?

Ansoff treats market development as taking the existing product to new customers; the grid gives you a way to count how much of the product is still "existing". The post on the [Ansoff matrix](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/blog/ma-tran-ansoff-bon-huong-tang-truong) names this limit: whether new packaging or a new flavour counts as a new product, the matrix does not say, and you must define [market development](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/glossary#market-development-vs-penetration) for yourself.

My way of connecting them: each element you must change is something unproven, so the more you change, the closer the proposal comes to product development and market development at once. In the example, changing only label and pack stays close to market development; adding the less sweet version means asking for evidence as for a new product. That is my placement, not Ansoff's.

Three more posts sit alongside this one: [how to enter a foreign market](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/blog/phuong-thuc-tham-nhap-thi-truong), [born global or step by step](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/blog/born-global-hay-di-tung-buoc) and [Walmart in Germany](https://staging.khoi.co.uk/en/blog/walmart-o-duc-thich-nghi-sai). This one asks what is left: once in, how much do you keep the same?

## Going deeper: what does the post rest on, and what is unchecked?

This post has not been checked against the full text of Prahalad and Doz (1987) or Bartlett and Ghoshal (1989). The four cells, the two axes and the pitfall about fixed positions therefore come from the library's framework entry; how the authors name the cells or define the two pressures is not known here. That the international cell means export is the library's summary.

The five elements, the two questions and the four-row table are my tools and are in no source. The original grid was built for multinationals; the post cites no source that tests whether it works for small firms. Yip's four drivers come from the framework entry.

The post uses both 1996 articles, from AP and the Christian Science Monitor, in full, and the passages on the menu and franchising in the 2025 Form 10-K. The two articles are early-days reporting with no revenue or measured results. All three documents concern one very large, mostly franchised company, so they say nothing yet about small firms.

## Frequently asked questions

### Should a small firm pursue a transnational strategy?

Usually not. The site's library calls the transnational cell, where both pressures are high, the hardest to coordinate. On my reading, a business of a few dozen people can hardly hold standardised costs and adapt country by country at once; it is more sensible to pick one element to give up and measure the result. That is my inference, not the authors' conclusion.

### Does McDonald's in India prove that local adaptation pays?

The post's sources do not show that. The Christian Science Monitor describes a busy restaurant in the first days, but also quotes an activist who objected regardless of whether the burger was lamb or vegetable (Zubrzycki, 1996). Neither article has sales figures, and both were written in 1996.

### How does this grid differ from the Ansoff matrix?

Ansoff asks whether growth comes from existing or new products in existing or new markets. The integration–responsiveness grid asks a later question, once you have chosen a new market: keep the product or change it, and in which element. Use Ansoff to pick the direction, then the grid to count what is still unproven inside it.

### What do I score local demand on if I have no sales data in the target country?

Score it on what your partner tells you and what the law requires, and mark it plainly as a guess. The example below assumes an importer that requires a German label; that is a hard requirement, unlike an opinion about sweetness. For firmer ground, sell one small batch and record what buyers choose.

## References

- Bryson, D. (1996) *Mcd's Hopes India Won't Have A Cow: Hamburger Giant Brings Meatless Mac To New Delhi*. The Spokesman-Review. Available at: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1996/oct/12/mcds-hopes-india-wont-have-a-cow-hamburger-giant/ (Accessed: 2 November 2026).
- McDonald's Corporation (2026) *Annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025*. Washington, DC: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Available at: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/63908/000006390826000035/mcd-20251231.htm (Accessed: 2 November 2026).
- Yip, G.S. (1989) ‘Global strategy … in a world of nations?’, *Sloan Management Review*, 31(1), pp. 29–41. Available at: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/global-strategy-in-a-world-of-nations/.
- Zubrzycki, J. (1996) *To Curry Favor in India Debut, McDonald's Sells Maharaja Macs*. The Christian Science Monitor. Available at: https://www.csmonitor.com/1996/1017/101796.intl.intl.4.html (Accessed: 2 November 2026).

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