Editorial

Citation

Akbar, Y.H. (2008), "Editorial", International Journal of Emerging Markets, Vol. 3 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijoem.2008.30103daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Emerging Markets, Volume 3, Issue 4

Welcome to Vol. 3, Issue 4 of IJoEM! The final issue of Vol. 3 presents our first Executive interview by Jamie Anderson of ESMT in Berlin. He interviewed Gurdeep Singh of Hutchinson Essar Telecom in India on the challenges of providing a mobile telecoms network in rural India.

The key outcome of the interview is that if companies wish to serve the very poorest people in the world, they need to consider a new approach – one that deals with both affordability and availability. In the specific context of telecoms, service providers need to view these consumers not in terms of a legal requirement for universal service provision. By recognizing that there are profits to be made by serving a large, yet low-income population, Hutchinson Essar were able to adjust their business model to be successful.

In developed economies, considerable focus in recent years has been on corporate social responsibility and cause-related marketing efforts of companies. Chattananon et al. examine a similar phenomenon, for the first time, in Thailand. Furthermore, it is rare that research considering those participating in or benefiting from cause-related marketing programs has been undertaken. The authors find that in the Thai context, cause-related marketing has a positive impact on those who benefit from the support of such causes and who may become consumers of the products offered by the company. Marketers who want to build a good image among such groups could consider implementing a relevant cause-related marketing program rather than using conventional product advertising or public relations.

Following on from previous issues, we examine an African economy – Eritrea and the role played by export support policies on the behavior of export companies. Tesform and Lutz argue that a fundamental factor that creates difficulties in assessing the role of export services is the lack of a straightforward causal relationship between a specific export support activity and changes in actual trade patterns. Worryingly they find that small enterprises in Eritrea have less access to export support services than larger firms. This can be considered as a major failure of the policy of the Eritrean government as in the modern entrepreneurial export economy small firms play a crucial role. The implications for emerging market countries are clear: if they wish to enhance the export competitiveness of their companies, they need to focus resources on helping SMEs in their nascent export initiatives.

From Africa to the leading emerging market: China. Using broad consumption data from 1986 to 2004, Deng and Jin examine the nature of consumption sensitivity in China. On a conceptual level, it has been argued that western theories of consumption behavior have been unable to explain the behavior of people in emerging markets such as China – especially in periods of significant transition such as the process currently taking place in China. The authors find several explanations for the excess sensitivity of Chinese consumers. First, the shift from planned to market economy has led to an enhanced degree of uncertainty forcing consumers to save more than in previous periods. Second liquidity constraints and substitution and income effects from interest rate changes have also contributed to excess sensitivity. The authors argue that the Chinese government needs to undertake several policy changes including providing greater social and economic stability and encouraging the liberalization of credit markets.

Staying in Asia, Stringer and Tuang look at B2B markets in Vietnam. Emerging markets provide a challenging context for the development of trust-based and committed cross-border relationships; underdeveloped and poorly resourced legal institutions and an uncertain business environment necessitate such relationships between business partners to effectively cope with external instabilities. Their paper focuses on foreign supplier – incumbent industrial distributor relations in Vietnam. Their empirical work examines five industrial distributors in the country. They found that Trust and commitment is context-dependent, where the narrative of a “good relationship” was contextually bound by the individual distributors’ various experiences in Vietnam. This paper allows researchers and practitioners to gain an understanding of the business environment and to build a contextual picture of the challenges faced by distributors operating in Vietnam. Of course, the findings have broader implications for other Asian emerging markets given the importance of cultural values associated with trust in Confucian cultures.

Our final paper takes us back to Africa and is a fascinating case study of Nollywood – Nigeria’s (and increasingly Africa’s) film industry. Following in the footsteps of Bollywood in India, Nollywood is making rapid inroads into the film industry in Africa. Unlike the former, Nollywood movies are made on extremely meager budgets and resource constraints. The industry produces over 600 films a year making Nigeria (in terms of numbers) one of the largest film producing nations in the world. English language films (Nollywood) have become a dominant media form all over the African continent. The paper examines how a technological innovation such as VHS is being used in ways never imagined or intended by the innovators. Consequently, the emergence and proliferation of inexpensive VHS video tape recorders have led to the growth of video-based movie production in several African countries, especially Nigeria. This is similar to the rapid growth of low-cost mobile telephones in the Hutchinson Essar interview in the issue and provides this issue with a fitting and balanced number of papers.

Fruitful reading!

Yusaf H. Akbar