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The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of the implementation of international advertising strategies by first introducing a framework of four options that multinational enterprises (MNEs) can use to implement such strategies and second by drawing on contingency theory to develop and test hypotheses relating to how environmental factors and company characteristics affect such implementation.

Hypotheses are tested using web‐survey data obtained from 182 Latin American managers based in the Mercosur trading bloc.

Findings show that the choice of implementation process option is contingent on the environmental factor, cultural homogeneity and the company characteristics subsidiary size and MNE country‐of‐origin, yet not on regional economic integration.

This exploratory study contributes to advertising theory by offering an alternative approach to the consideration of the international advertising standardization question that focuses on the implementation of strategies rather than on their development. The findings further confirm the theory of regional multinationals in the context of international advertising decisions.

The study presents practitioners with four distinct approaches to implementing their international advertising strategies as well as with clear guidelines as to how managers should implement those strategies depending on the specific benefits of standardization they want to achieve.

To the knowledge of the authors, this study is the first to specifically address the implementation of international advertising strategies.

First, this paper aims to uncover how much marketing research based on data gathered in Latin America has been published in high quality business and marketing academic journals over the past decade. Second, it seeks to present recommendations on best practice in conducting and publishing such research derived from a Delphi study of authors who succeeded in doing so.

The paper undertakes a systematic review of the literature to identify the relevant published papers coupled with a Delphi study of the authors of those papers.

Over the last decade only 22 papers were published in high quality journals in the marketing area based on data gathered in Latin America. The reasons for this scarcity explored in the Delphi study derive both from the way in which high quality journals operate as well as from how authors conducting research in that area of the world design their studies and subsequently present them in manuscripts submitted to journals. Key recommendations include: focusing on novelty rather than replications, ensuring that studies have implications beyond Latin America, and positioning the research appropriately.

The main implication is that research conducted in Latin America is publishable in high quality journals if approached in the appropriate manner.

This is, to the authors' knowledge, the first study to analyse the challenges involved in conducting and publishing marketing research based on data gathered in Latin America in high quality journals as well as the first to present solutions to those challenges.

The purpose of this study is to investigate Chilean consumers’ online purchase behaviour with a specific focus on the influence of perceived risk and trust. Studies of this nature have been conducted quite extensively in developed countries and in cross‐cultural comparative studies most noticeably comparing the USA with Asian countries. However, examining consumers’ perceived risk and trust with online purchasing in a Latin American context is very limited. While not a cross‐cultural study, this gap is addressed in the literature with an empirical study conducted in Chile. Moreover, it aims to address calls to investigate consumers’ post adoption acceptance of a technology to gain insights into which factors are most influential in explaining continuance behaviour.

The paper tests a model of the influence perceptions of risk and trust on consumers’ attitudes and intentions to continue purchasing on the internet. An online survey method is used. The sample consists of 176 Chilean consumers who purchase online. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The analysis reveals that perceived risk online had an inverse relationship with consumers’ attitude and that attitude has a positive influence on intentions to continue purchasing. Of the trust factors examined, trust in third party assurances and a cultural environment of trust have the strongest positive influence on intentions to continue purchasing online, whereas trust in online vendors and a propensity to trust were both insignificant.

In a Latin American context, for marketers in domestic and global companies these results identify which trust beliefs have the most effect on consumer continuance behaviour towards purchasing online. Additionally, this research shows that consumers in a Latin American country, recognized as a collectivist, high risk avoidance culture, are willing to continue making purchases online despite the risks involved.

The study and its results is one of few available that investigates consumers’ perceptions of risk and trust for online purchasing in a Latin American country. The value of the findings provides an insight into the specific trust factors that influence post adoption behaviour; that is Chilean consumers’ continued purchasing online. The findings add value not only to the literature on the Latin American population's e‐commerce behaviour, but also have managerial implications for domestic and global companies considering offering online retailing for consumers in this region where internet penetration rates are very high, but local e‐commerce availability is low.

This paper's objectives are first to analyse the patterns of research on international brands and branding so far, secondly to provide a definition for international branding based on these previous studies in the field, and finally to suggest fruitful paths for future research in this area.

Content analysis of academic papers published in major marketing, advertising and international business journals.

The field of international branding is broad and has developed in the course of the last 30 years in different directions and with different understandings of what the term refers to. This paper gives an overview of these directions, of the different understandings of the term found in the literature, proposes a definition of international branding, and finally suggests paths for future research.

As with all literature reviews, this paper is limited to analysing works in a selection of the top academic journals in the field. However, a careful choice of the most important journals has been made, providing a good reflection of the knowledge in the area.

This appears to be the first literature review in the field of international branding and also the first to discuss the different interpretations of the term international branding that have developed over time. The authors also believe it is the first to offer a definition of the term in itself as well as in relation to international marketing.

The purpose of this study is to test the viability of comparative advertising in Chile.

Data were collected via controlled experimentation. The study employed a 3 (comparative advertising intensity: noncomparative, indirect comparative, and direct comparative)×2 (product category involvement: low, high)×2 (sponsor brand's relative market share: market leader, other brand) between‐subjects factorial design.

The results suggest that direct and indirect comparative advertisements are not more effective than noncomparative advertisements in Chile. Additionally, data do not support the idea that the effect of comparative advertising intensity is moderated by the product category involvement and/or by the sponsor brand's relative market share. Since comparative advertising was not shown to be more effective than noncomparative advertising, the authors hypothesize that it is due to cultural biases and the novelty of comparative advertising in Latin America, as expressed through negative message believability.

While experimental research is not sufficient to establish the generalized non‐superiority of comparative advertising in the region, the results support the idea that comparative advertising might not be more effective than noncomparative advertising for many marketing campaigns in Latin America.

Several recent studies have investigated international differences in advertising practices. Most of these address advertising in general, leaving the transferability of comparative advertising practices largely unexplored (White Nye et al.). Analyzing the case of Latin America is highly relevant due to the limited development that exists with respect to comparative advertising in the region.

Previous research warns against low-fit extensions as prone to causing negative spillover and, through it, harming the parent brand equity. Using the theory of schema-triggered affect and the link formation hypothesis, the purpose of this paper is to develop and tests predictions as to how negative spillover from low-fit extensions can be actively managed through repeated ad exposure.

A controlled experiment assesses the response of US consumers to the Dutch Heineken brand, a top 100 global brand, following sequential and repeated exposure to print ads depicting extensions for either Heineken wheat beer (i.e. a high-fit extension) or Heineken pretzels (i.e. a low-fit extension). Analytical methods include multiple regression, ANOVA, and t-tests.

The findings show that repeated ad exposure has a positive moderating effect on the magnitude of spillover from extension to brand. Second, the findings also show that repeated ad exposure changes the valence of spillover from low-fit extension to brand from negative to positive. In combination, the findings suggest that low-fit brand extensions can, when carefully managed, be a viable strategic option for market growth that is especially relevant for global brands.

This research shows that repeated ad exposure can change the valence of spillover from low-fit extensions to the parent brand from negative to positive. Future research should extend the work by considering other brands and alternative tools that managers can use to make low-fit extensions a viable strategic choice.

This study finds, in contrast to previous research, that managers should indeed consider low-fit brand extensions as a viable strategic option for brand growth. This is possible because the findings show that repeated ad exposure can be used to control potential negative spillover from a low-fit extension to parent brand. This conclusion is particularly relevant for global brands, i.e. brands for which the opportunity costs of limiting global expansion and the financial investment necessary to establish a new brand with global appeal are substantial.

This paper differs from other spillover studies by manipulating repeated ad exposure, a mechanism which the authors theoretically link to spillover and which managers can also directly influence. In doing so, this paper offers a theoretical explanation and an empirical test of how negative spillover from low-fit extensions can be managed.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of international commitment of entrepreneurial firms from an emerging economy to their foreign operations. Specifically, it intends to help bridge an existing gap in the literature by focusing on the international commitment of established small entrepreneurial firms, a topic that has been largely overlooked; investigating small‐firm commitment to foreign investments whereas most studies focus on exporting; combining the different research streams that studied international commitment; and using the resource‐based view (RBV) to explore the interplay between resource allocation and commitment in the foreign investments of small entrepreneurial firms.

The study adopts an abductive approach to theory development and uses the case method of investigation. Three case studies were developed from primary and secondary sources. A total of 153 pieces of documentation were used to reconstruct past events, in addition to the interviews and information from company sites, permitting triangulation. Pattern‐matching logic was employed as case development progressed, continuously comparing with the theoretical background used in the study.

The interplay between resource availability, goal congruence, entrepreneur's desire to internationalize and family attitude seem to have a combined impact on the arousal and initial development of international commitment. The relative importance of managerial over financial resources in the early stages and the impact of preparatory activities on the speed and scope of internationalization seem to be specific manifestations of commitment among emerging market firms. As to the outcomes of commitment, performance appears both as an outcome and an antecedent, and, knowledge acquisition and opportunity development seem to increase pari passu with international commitment of emerging market firms.

The findings can be useful to emerging market firms by pointing out the potential negative impact of low international commitment on a firm's internationalization process. Since most firms from emerging markets cannot count on previous internationalization knowledge accumulated by other firms in their (domestic) institutional environment to be used as guides to international expansion, this type of research can provide some guidelines to help their internationalization efforts.

While certain results agreed with the extant literature, new findings generated a set of theoretical propositions regarding international commitment of late‐internationalizing entrepreneurial firms from an emerging Latin American market.