Joanna Nowicka-Jakubczyk
EMBA XVII edition
Whirlpool Corporation’s Global Strategy - Case Report
As many American based companies, Whirlpool Corporation after building strong position and success in North America, decided to “go international” and start its global expansion. The main Whirlpool’s objective was becoming the world market leader in home appliances, in what CEO of Whirlpool – David Whitwam strongly believed.
Whitwam’s “go global” strategy plan was based on: * entering different markets, European, Asian, South American in parallel; * acquisitions of competitive appliance companies, i.e Philips, Indian companies; * creating joint ventures in targeted markets, like China; * new investments, mainly in South America.
Despite great initial enthusiasm and proofs, that their strategy was successful, in the mid-1990s, serious problems had occurred in Whirlpool’s international operations, for instance significantly decreased profitability, also on home market, reported losses in Europe and Asia, failures in joint ventures, and last but not least in general lack of truly integrated strategy and company.

To respond to a question, what happened, why Whirlpool faced so many problems on its way to be an international leader, we need at first give answer to a question, was their strategy assumptions correct?
In formulating and development of global strategy, in my opinion Whirlpool made some general assumptions for industry development, which might be, and for sure were in some points incorrect or wrongly identified from the beginning. Within assumptions Whirlpool made, I would indicate : * European market becomes more “American”, * low saturation level for Indian and Chinese markets, * to be competitive you need to be global, * need for global integration of the company, as a key success factor of ‘going