Title: Slogans as a strategy to strengthen business strongholds in the globalisation era: a case of Indonesian multinational companies

Authors: Iis Kurnia Nurhayati; Ratih Hasanah; Nia Kurniasih; Gartika Rahmasari

Addresses: Faculty of Communication and Business, Telkom University, Jl. Terusan Buah Batu 40257, Indonesia ' Faculty of Communication and Business, Telkom University, Jl. Terusan Buah Batu 40257, Indonesia ' Faculty of Art and Design, Institute Teknologi Bandung, Jl. Ganesa 10 Bandung, 40132, Indonesia ' Faculty of Management, University of BSI, Jl. Antapani Bandung, 40132, Indonesia

Abstract: Multinational companies have their own managerial complexity. They have to be able to implement a standardised global strategy, but on the other hand they also have to implement a local strategy that has been adapted with local cultures. Hence, it is interesting to analyse the linguistics features and positioning variation of their slogans since they communicate the organisation culture of the companies: what the slogans communicate and do not communicate. The data were taken from slogans of 20 most admired multinational companies in Indonesia based on Fortune magazine survey in 2014 that were analysed according to the linguistics and social sciences, especially the science of marketing communications using Halliday's Functional Grammar approach and the positioning variation of the slogans of the companies based on the needs of the community by using Maslow's Theory of Needs. The result of the study shows that the majority of the slogans are written in English clauses. Based on the mood system and transitivity, of these 20 slogans of multinational corporations in Indonesia, most of the slogans utilise declarative sentences with relational verbs.

Keywords: slogans; multinational companies; mood system; transitivity; positioning variation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2018.094096

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2018 Vol.21 No.1, pp.87 - 104

Received: 18 Jan 2017
Accepted: 14 Mar 2017
Published online: 16 Aug 2018 *

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