Search results

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the influence that nation-states can have on the engagement of international marketing activities. The purpose of this study is to understand the influence of the institutional response to the COVID-19 pandemic on international marketing activities and to highlight the need to formally incorporate institutional economics into the study of international marketing phenomena.

The paper uses institutional economics as the environmental element of the general theory of competitive rationality to present a foundation for understanding how state actions influence marketing and international marketing activities. Data are presented and empirically tested, demonstrating the heterogeneity of government influence on personal and economic freedoms during the pandemic, both of which influenced international marketing activities. To broaden the implications of this work, we also provide anecdotal illustrations unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate the breadth of nation-state influence on international marketing activities.

Heterogeneity in nation-state formal and informal institutional elements influence international marketing activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, other incidents, unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrate the importance of contextualizing international marketing activities under a holistic institutional framework.

The paper employs the general theory of competitive rationality along with institutional economics to provide a theoretical foundation to better understand the differential impact on international marketing as a result of formal and informal institutional influences. This general framework can be employed to provide a holistic understanding of both international and cross-national marketing activities.

The education system worldwide is regulated through the dominant paradigm of planning and enactment, but the representations of curricula and lesson plans underpinning the paradigm are poorly correlated to classroom practice. This paper aims to understand how despite this the paradigm remains dominant and explores the implications of its continued success for the current educational practice.

Bateson's concept of the economy of flexibility is applied to the education. Genetic control is mapped onto the formal specification of learning activities, while somatic control is mapped onto teachers' improvisatory practice. The conflicting regulatory messages generated within the dominant paradigm are discussed in terms of Bateson's double bind theory.

The success of the dominant paradigm is comprehensible when conceived of as an economy of flexibility. However, the analysis indicates that this success is dependent on two conditions: that sufficient flexibility is maintained in classroom practice, and that there should be a weak but reliable channel whereby innovations in classroom can filter through to the level of planning. Current developments in educational technology and management practice threaten both these conditions, by increasing the ability of managers to monitor educational activities, and by providing technocratic solutions to pedagogic questions. Flexibility is squeezed out of the system, and the contradictions of the dominant paradigm are increasingly enforced to place teachers in a double bind.

The analysis provides a model for relating the problems experienced by teachers in their practice to changes in technology, policy and institutional organisation.

Although a great deal of research has focused on global marketing strategy development and implementation, little research has focused on the global marketing managers charged with the responsibilities of developing and implementing such strategy. The aim of this paper is to develop a model that identifies a set of soft skills that have the ability to increase the effectiveness of global marketing managers in making the tactical adaptations necessary to develop and implement global marketing strategy in an increasingly complex and dynamic marketplace.

A conceptual model is developed with coinciding propositions.

The model developed theorizes that the ability of global marketing managers to make tactical adaptations to the firm's global marketing strategy (and thus enhance performance) is driven by the soft skills of tacit knowledge, experience, learning, unlearning, intuition, self‐confidence, flexibility, prioritization of problems, working under pressure and ambiguity tolerance.

The model highlights the specific soft skills that firms can work to foster in their global marketing managers and educators can work to incorporate within a curriculum. Through the development of these soft skills within a firm's global marketing managers, the firm can achieve a competitive position within the marketplace.

This study is one of the first to conceptualize a specific set of soft skills that enhance a global marketing manager's ability to make tactical adaptations to the firm's global marketing strategy by which the firm can be more competitive. As such, this study provides for a better understanding of how soft skills relate to the development and implementation of global marketing strategy and how firms can be more competitive by not only employing unique human capital, but by developing global marketing managers who are more effective at adapting to constantly changing global market conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the marketing “processes” of governing multiple export relationships under the theoretical framework of governance value analysis (GVA). Specifically, this work examines the internal exchange attributes of transaction-specific investments and psychic distance on the adaptation/standardization of relational behavior and detailed contracting and how process adaptation/standardization influences new product outcomes and jointly created value in the focal export relationship.

A survey was conducted of 151 US manufacturers regarding their relationship with their primary foreign buyers. Data were analyzed with partial least squares estimation.

The results indicate that high levels of transaction-specific investments lead to the adaptation of relational behaviors whereas high levels of psychic distance lead to less adaptation of detailed contracting. The adaptation of relational behaviors and detailed contracting reflect differential direct effects on export performance. Furthermore, the results indicate that there is a significant positive interaction effect between the adaptation of relational behavior and detailed contracting on jointly created value in the focal export relationship.

The findings of the study reveal that adaptation of the marketing process related to relationship governance strategies can play an important role in the export marketing process, but managers must proceed with caution in balancing relational behavior and detailed contract adaptation. The results also point to the importance of understanding the underlying source of uncertainty and adapting appropriate aspects of governance for enhancing jointly created value in the export relationship.

The value of this research lies in its goal to highlight the issue of marketing process adaptation across multiple export relationships. Less attention has been paid to the marketing “processes” of governing multiple export relationships in the international marketing strategy literature relative to “program” standardization/adaptation. This is one of the first empirical studies on marketing process adaptation of governance employing the theoretical framework of GVA.

Social media is a product that is co-created by consumers and multinational enterprises, that partially manage the customer experience and that has garnered significant attention in the field of international marketing. However, international marketing scholars have yet to address the societal costs of the use of social media, even as academics in other disciplines and business leaders are raising alarm that social media has created a digital ecosystem that may harm individuals within the global market. The objective of this research is to examine the generalizability of the relationship between the use of social media and the prevalence of depression across countries.

Employing social cohesion theory and the social network approach of the strength of ties, this work examines the relationship between the use of social media and time spent on social media at the country level and the prevalence of depression. The authors examine this issue within a 28-country, eight-year, unbalanced panel dataset, accounting for cultural, economic and structural factors.

The authors find that as more people within a country use social media, the prevalence of depression in that country increases. However, the authors also find that as the average time spent on social media in a country increases the deleterious relationship between the use of social media and the prevalence of depression diminishes.

Answering the calls in the international marketing literature for a greater understanding of the externalities (i.e. consumer well-being effects) of marketing activities of multinational companies, this study demonstrates the varying relationships of the use of and time spent on social media and the prevalence of depression at the population level, across a wide variety of countries, thus also contributing to the effort to improving generalizations from multi-country comparisons in international research.

The purpose of the paper is to explore coherence across key disciplines of knowledge management (KM) for a general model as a way to address performance dissatisfaction in the field.

Research employed an evidence‐based meta‐analysis (287 aspects of literature), triangulated through an exploratory survey (91 global respondents), to gather data on the drivers for KM. The paper attempts to demonstrate self‐similarity across six key KM disciplines using fractal theory as a data analysis tool.

Appear to demonstrate self‐affinity between key disciplines in the field of KM. This provides a strong signpost for future research in the field when attempting to address practitioner dissatisfaction in performance.

The paper cannot determine importance, or value of the factors discussed. The meta‐analysis allows us to determine the existence of the identified functions and enablers. Limited representation of literature from outside the Northern Hemisphere will not allow for an assertion as to validity outside of this area. Findings could not determine whether factors were stable through time. While outliers in the data provide signposts for further research, it could be attributed to situated variance.

This paper could influence future research and practice through support for the development of general models for the field. It signposts affinity between disciplines, which could direct theorists and practitioners to explore solutions outside of their situated discipline through a shared understanding.

The fractal theory data analysis approach appears to be unusual if not unique in the field of KM. The evidence‐based meta‐analysis provides depth and rigour with the results triangulated against an exploratory survey, which offers a richness of findings that speaks directly to the needs of the field.

The extant international service marketing literature focuses heavily on the impact of globalization on the outward process of the internationalization of service firms. The purpose of this paper is to propose scholars examine international service marketing from a different perspective, that of the globalization of domestic markets and the existence of global segments throughout the world.

The paper uses resource‐advantage theory and a congruence approach to suggest that the alignment of resources with consumer needs in the globalized domestic market leads to competitive advantage for the firm.

It can be argued that this alignment will lead to the replication of the competitive advantage across global segments in expansion to new markets.

The paper provides two significant contributions to the literature: a new perspective for considering the globalization of services that incorporates the challenges of operating in globalized markets; and develops seven propositions that can serve as a foundation for a stream of research on the globalization of services.

International advertising standardization/adaptation has been a dominant area in the international marketing literature. In this chapter, we explore the evolution of thought related to international advertising standardization/adaptation beginning in the 1920s. Through a stage theory historical analysis, we decompose thought in international advertising standardization/adaptation into three unique stages: (1) practitioner evolution, (2) scholarly initiation and (3) conceptual and empirical refinement. Given this approach, we contend that the factors considered in earlier stages were necessary for later development. Further and more importantly, we argue that, for the evolution of thought in relation to international advertising standardization/adaptation to evolve, researchers must begin to engage in a number of acts central to building a unified foundation. We propose a series of issues that need to be addressed in order to advance our understanding of international advertising standardization/adaptation.

There is conjecture that small and mid‐cap companies in highly speculative industries use frequent and repetitive disclosure to promote price volatility and heighten market interest. Excessive disclosure could indicate instances of self‐promotion or poor disclosure practices, and these habits could mislead investors. The purpose of this paper is to quantitatively investigate the impact of firm disclosure on price volatility in the Australian stock market.

This paper considers the effect of information disclosure on the daily stock price volatility of 340 Metals & Mining industry entities listed on the Australian Securities Exchange over the period 2005‐2007 using regression analysis.

The results indicate the number of disclosures, the number of price and non‐price sensitive disclosures and the number of disclosures by category has a significant influence on daily price volatility. Moreover, the volatility impact of disclosure is greater for small and mid‐sized firms than large firms.

Price volatility is calculated using daily data; intra‐day stock prices could provide measures that are more accurate. There is also no attempt to allow for asymmetry in disclosure; categorizing news as “good” or “bad” would allow better insights.

There is support for the conjecture that disclosure could serve as a self‐promotion tool through fabricated and repetitive announcements. Inadvertent poor disclosure practice could also result in excessive price volatility. Disclosure practice requires ongoing consideration by regulatory bodies.

This analysis complements basic work by the Australian regulator to establish a quantitative link between disclosure practice and price volatility.

This study examines the process of establishing a viable brand in a new foreign market through successful market entry governance by utilizing various types of branding alliances to transfer corporate brands. Drawing from corporate illustrations and building upon Ghosh and John's (1999) governance value analysis (GVA) model, a decision model for managers is developed providing theory-based guidance for market entry strategies. Relational governance can be considered as a continuum ranging from strong relational (i.e., joint ventures, co-branding) to weak relational (i.e., joint promotion, marketing alliance) forms. Firms should organize their market entry strategy based upon brand equity resources, specific investments made by the partner, and environmental uncertainty (market volatility and cultural distance), so as to transfer the desired brand image and associations into local markets by maximizing the level of value created and value claimed. This study contributes to the international marketing literature by providing a theoretically strong decision model, supported by corporate examples, of how firms enter markets using various types of brand alliances. It also advances the practice of international marketing in regard to branding by providing insights as to how managers in the global marketplace can effectively transfer brand images and build global brand equity, minimizing firm costs while maximizing the value created and claimed from the brand.