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Although international franchising has occurred in East Asia over the past 20 years, surprisingly very little academic research has been undertaken to understand key dynamics of this marketing phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to examine franchise resources, which is a key construct in the internationalization of retail franchising.

A multiple case study approach has been adopted to generate rich data designed to aid understanding of the complexities inherent within such an international marketing relationship. The data were drawn from five US food service retail franchises, which are household brands across East Asia, operating in Singapore.

This study presents several interesting findings for the retail franchise industry. First, consistent with resource scarcity theory, international franchising relationship begins with a high degree of franchise dependency on the local franchisees. Next, international franchisors will be well served to select their overseas franchisees with strong financial resources to engage in rapid expansion, good contacts to secure early stores in prime retail locations and well‐proven local knowledge to modify the concept to suit particular market needs.

Findings from this study have important managerial implications for international retail franchisors on how to effectively select franchisees to successfully launch and manage their brands in East Asia.

This empirical study has made a major contribution in adding to the limited body of empirical knowledge on franchisee selection in international retail franchising, particularly in East Asia. It is hoped that this paper will encourage more academics to investigate why certain international retail franchise concepts perform relatively better in East Asia than others.

The purpose of this study is to present the Generation X and Generation Y customers’ expectations of utility retail stores in an Asian setting of Pakistan Research studies that advocate a cross-generational perspective to retail service quality have been limited.

Sketching through a naturalistic paradigm, data for this exploratory study is collected from 80 retail shoppers through face-to-face interviews. The data is noted, coded and presented through the genre of service marketing mix theory.

There are significant differences with regards to variety of products offered and time consumed during shopping have been found between generational cohorts belonging to Generation X and Generation Y customers. However, there are a few similarities noted between the two types of customers that challenge the traditional perspective of retail service marketing mix theory.

The study is an original contribution towards explaining the retail service quality construct from cross-generational marketing perspective. Pragmatically, the utility stores have never been the subject matter for service quality studies in countries such as Pakistan.

The growth of Asian enterprises has been a much commented on feature of the small business population. While academic research has sought to identify the key success factors for this entrepreneurial minority, little study has been undertaken of the role female Asian entrepreneurs and Asian women working in “family” businesses play. This article features interview evidence gathered from both Asian women entrepreneurs in their own right and Asian women working in family enterprises, and seeks to provide a clearer picture of the roles, responsibilities and relationships of these two groups. In addition, the study is methodologically novel in so far as the researcher (an Asian female from a “typical” family business background) has taken care to observe the cultural proprieties often noted within this particular group. Hence, the data are arguably more authentic than previous studies undertaken by “distant” researchers.

Considers the interest shown by European retailers in the markets of South East Asia and places this interest within the wider context of East Asian markets. European retailers’ interest in the region has been a feature of recent developments in international retailing. Charts the growing interest in the region and the relative attractions of different markets and critically evaluates the assumptions that are made about East Asian markets and suggests that a far more rigorous set of criteria should be employed when evaluating markets in the region. Evaluates the implications of the recent financial and economic crises on European retail investment in the region.

International investors have shown considerable recent interest regarding property investment in China via both direct and indirect property. The purpose of this paper is to assess the significance and performance of the China commercial property market compared to six developed and emerging commercial property markets in Asia.

This paper analyses the performance of commercial property in China over 1998‐2007 for both direct and indirect property. Risk‐adjusted performance analysis is used to assess the added value of China commercial property in a pan‐Asia portfolio, with the portfolio diversification benefits of China commercial property also assessed. Sub‐period analyses are also used to assess the dynamics of China commercial property.

This paper finds that China commercial property has shown significantly enhanced performance and diversification benefits in recent years. In a pan‐Asia property fund context, there are clear diversification benefits provided by China commercial property, with these benefits also being evident in the other Asian property markets. The findings highlight the benefits of a pan‐Asia property investment strategy by international property investors, as well as the key benefits and added‐value of including China commercial property in this pan‐Asia property investment strategy.

Previous empirical research into the China commercial property markets has been very limited. This paper rigorously assesses the role of China commercial property in a pan‐Asia property portfolio context. Given the increasing interest by the leading international property investors regarding investing in China commercial property, this research enables more informed and practical investment decision‐making regarding the role of both direct and indirect China commercial property as part of a pan‐Asia institutional property investment strategy.

This paper investigates the importance of cultural factors within ethnic minority‐owned firms’ business practices. In doing so, it provides a contribution to the growing body of knowledge at the marketing/entrepreneurship interface and reports specifically on an empirical investigation into the retail marketing practices within a sample of Asian‐owned small firms operating in the UK. The findings from 20 in‐depth personal interviews provide an insight into the practices of ethnic minority‐owned retail businesses indicating that factors associated with key decision makers together with cultural networks, balanced against resource constraints, had a major impact on firms’ operations. Strategies used by the firms in order to enable them to survive in a competitive environment are identified and these contribute to knowledge by questioning the relevance of “break‐out theory” to ethnic minority‐owned firms.

The purpose of this paper is to address the globalisation/culture issue by comparing two Asian countries in which there has been limited prior research regarding their respective supermarket industries, namely, Singapore and Malaysia.

The research design adopted a case-study approach, with two general cases (the New Singaporean and Malaysian supermarket retail industries), made up of two embedded cases each (retailers and manufacturers operating within each country).

The overall finding is that despite prior assumptions that suitability is reliant on product type or country choice, there are a number of sales promotion techniques that are inherently suited to the supermarket industry as a whole. The majority of these “inherently suitable” techniques are price-based and the conclusion is then that these techniques can be used globally. Value-added techniques, on the other hand, should be localised to fit with the market in which they are being applied.

Tools best suited to the grocery product sales environment appear to be price-based or linked to price reductions (i.e. price discounting and discount-linked point-of-purchase (P-O-P) or end-of-aisle (E-O-A) displays combination and volume offers), suggesting that those tools which are inherently suitable to the industry are likely to meet retailers' shorter-term objectives rather than manufacturers' longer-term ones. The difficulty faced by manufacturers, then, is aligning their sales promotion objectives with the tools that are best able to achieve results in the supermarket environment.

Globalisation of the supermarket industry has also meant that marketers continue to need a better understanding of cross-cultural issues and their effect and national culture frameworks can be used to develop marketing theories which are suited to a particular region. The current research identifies preferences for different sales promotion techniques in the two nationally similar, yet ethnically diverse, countries under study, as well as examining application of these techniques in the retail environment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine differences between Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their preferences in the appearance of and interaction with salespeople.

A total of 171 female Hispanic and 153 Asian female retail consumers in a midwestern city, who immigrated to the USA, were surveyed. Salesperson‐customer interaction and preference for salespeople with a similar ethnic appearance were assessed.

Findings from F‐tests indicated that in this study Asians have a significantly greater preference for a salesperson similar in appearance to themselves and Hispanics have significantly greater preference for salespeople who offer attentive service.

Retailers will benefit by understanding and capitalizing on differences which will encourage customer loyalty to their retail stores.

Extending the observable characteristics facet of the buyer‐seller similarity model, the research results suggest that buyers from different ethnic groups will assess salesperson characteristics differently.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the success factors behind four globally recognised Malaysian high fashion brands. The three main sub‐objectives are: to map the process of high fashion internationalisation onto the general retail internationalisation literature; to engage fashion within the more general marketing and branding literature; to open up a qualitative line of inquiry in internationalisation research, from an Asian business perspective.

The research design is qualitative, using a case study approach. The paper reports part of a wider study that entailed 32 depth interviews with leading practitioners in four countries, in addition to secondary and informal data sources.

The chosen case studies achieved their international success through a high degree of cultural assimilation obtained within locations of intense industrial concentration. Knowledge of education, location, language, networks and management systems were important to sustain world class standards of creative design, branding, quality management and marketing communication. For many Asian fashion brands, recognition in key European and American markets enhances the domestic prestige of the brand.

The research generates contextualised insights that are not statistically generalisable.

The study offers first hand insights into high fashion branding and retail internationalisation from four of the most celebrated Asian designers.

The study responds to a need, highlighted in the literature, for more research into the internationalisation strategies of high fashion retail brands.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the desired benefits affecting consumer’s attitude and attitude’s consequent influence on behavioral intentions toward pop-up retail, an experiential marketing practice emerging in Taiwan, and to explore the effect of individual differences (consumer innovativeness and materialism) on desired benefits and the moderating effect of cultural values (independent self/interdependent self-construal).

A survey containing modified scales, distributed to college students from various majors in ten Taiwanese universities, produced 902 useable responses. Structural equation modeling was employed to investigate the hypothesized relationships.

Hedonic benefits and a new utilitarian benefits variable (self-enhancement (SE)) influenced Taiwanese consumers’ attitude toward pop-up retail, and attitude affected patronage intentions. Consumer innovativeness and materialism affected desired benefits. Interdependent self-construal moderated the relationship between materialism and the perceived utilitarian benefit of SE.

Respondents from one narrow, but appropriate, demographic group in one non-western society were examined. Comparison across demographic groups and non-western and western societies would reveal the prevalence of SE associated with pop-up retail acceptance.

Pop-up shop design that emphasizes hedonic experience and social status of consumers could lead to successful experiential marketing in Taiwan and perhaps other Chinese societies.

This appears to be the first empirical study in English examining consumer acceptance of pop-up retail in a non-western society. It verifies the importance of the perceived utilitarian benefit (self-enhancement), absent in previous pop-up retail studies, and the impact of individual differences and cultural values on Taiwanese consumer behavior.