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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the on‐going cultural turn in retail marketing by offering an overview of the interdisciplinary field of socio‐cultural retailing and discussing how this body of work can contribute conceptually, methodologically and substantively to the field of retail marketing.

This paper is based on a literature review of socio‐cultural retail studies in marketing, cultural geography, sociology, and anthropology. The literature is analysed in relation to the substantive, conceptual and methodological domains of retail marketing.

Drawing on the literature review, the authors argue that socio‐cultural retail studies can contribute to the field of retail marketing substantively, conceptually and methodologically, thus broadening its current scope and domains.

This paper provides an overview of an interdisciplinary field and identifies how it can contribute to the field of retail marketing. It is valuable for retailing researchers interested in socio‐cultural approaches to the study of contemporary retailing.

Purpose: This chapter aims to find the impact of cultural marketing on consumer buying behaviour and analyse the cultural factors affecting consumers’ buying behaviour. Cultural marketing aims to offer and promote a product, a message, or a service to a group of people who may be their potential purchasers and belong to the same culture or particular demographic.

Methodology: This study uses the published research for different countries viz. India, Canada, Germany, the UAE, the UK, the USA, Japan, etc., in the field of culture, cross-culture, and consumer buying behaviour considering various factors and their impact; but in particular, this study focussed on the cultural factors only and analysed their impact on the consumer behaviour of the different countries.

Findings: The study revealed that different countries have their own unique culture. Cultural factors have a positive relationship with consumers’ buying behaviour and exhibit that consumers behave differently towards the same product as per their perception developed by their culture.

Need of the study: Today, the world has become global, and to become a successful consumer oriented market service provider, marketers have to study the psychology of the customers to procure them. This study focusses on one of the essential factors, that is, culture and how cultural factors affect consumer buying behaviour. The study of culture is the gateway to attracting consumers in the market.

Practical implications: The study would help multinational companies in segmentation, targeting, and positioning and developing several marketing strategies for their products. Companies would be able to understand changes in consumer purchasing behaviours that arise from cultural differences, which helps them cater to the needs of their global consumers.

In business and management, cross-national and cross-cultural comparisons between countries have been a topic of interest for many decades. Not only do firms engage in business in different countries around the world but also within countries. The population has become more diversified over time, making cross-cultural comparisons within country boundaries increasingly relevant. In comparisons across cultural groups, measurement invariance (MI) is a prerequisite; however, in practice, MI is not always attained or even tested. Our study consists of three parts. First, we provide a bibliometric analysis of articles on cross-cultural and cross-national topics in marketing to provide insight into the connections between the articles and the main themes. Second, we code articles to assess whether researchers follow the recommended steps as outlined in the multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) approach. The results indicate that MI testing is incorporated in the toolbox of many empirical researchers in marketing and that articles often report the level of invariance. Yet, most studies find partial invariance, meaning that some items are not comparable across the cultural groups studied. Researchers understand that MI is required, but they often ignore noninvariant items, which may decrease the validity of cross-cultural comparisons made. Third, we analyze the dissemination of MI in the broader literature based on co-citations with Steenkamp and Baumgartner (1998), a widely cited article on MI in the field of marketing. We conclude by noting methodological developments in cross-cultural research to enable addressing noninvariance and providing suggestions to further advance our insight into cross-cultural differences and similarities.

The increased involvement of customers in their experience is a reality for all service organisations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the way organisations collaborate with customers to facilitate consumption of cultural experiences through the lens of co-production. Although organisations are typically an integral part of the co-production process, co-production is typically considered from a consumer angle. Aligned with the service ecosystem perspective and value-in-cultural context, this research aims to provide greater insight into the processes and resources that institutions apply to co-produce experiences with consumers and the drivers and inhibitors of such processes.

Case study research with three exemplar organisations, using in-depth interviews with key informants was used to investigate the processes organisations follow in co-producing the service experience with customers, as well as the drivers and inhibitors of organisational co-production of the service experience in the cultural sector.

The findings illuminate that cultural organisations are co-producing the service experience with their customers, as revealed through a number of key processes: inviting customers to actively participate in the experience, engaging customers and supporting customers in the co-production of the experience. Increasingly demanding consumers and a changing competitive landscape are strong external drivers of co-production. Visionary leadership and consumer-focussed employees are internal factors impelling organisations to co-produce experiences with consumers. A strong curatorial orientation, complex organisational structure, employee attitude and capability gaps and funding constraints are impediments towards organisations co-producing experiences with consumers.

This paper addresses a gap in Service-Dominant logic theory, arts/cultural marketing and broader services marketing literature by proposing a broadened conceptualisation of co-production of the service experience. This conceptualisation can be used as a platform to derive strategic imperatives for managers of service organisations. The findings highlight the key practices and resources that are central to organisations co-producing experience with customers. In this way, greater understanding of institutional logics and practices that underpin experience co-production emerges.

Self-esteem values, with the new art of living, in the minds of Indians, lead to establish faith among the spiritual organization. Later on, the spiritual organizations brand their names and market the products in their branded name. These brands, which are inspired by faith and created by Indian spiritual gurus, have even disrupted the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) market by being customer-centric instead of being geared by lucrative returns. It is in this context that this paper aims to find the cultural divergence factors that lead to change the consumption pattern of FMCG and how such brands of faith have been segmented in the Indian perspective by spiritual gurus. The research concludes that cultural divergence variables such as power distance, collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation influence the brands that are inspired by faith. Spiritual gurus in India are using sociocultural marketing activities such as social endorsement and cause-related marketing strategies for segmenting the markets.

The primary data were collected from the 1,678 customers of the Isha products. The respondents were selected based on the snowball sampling. The responses were collected from the followers who visited the foundation at least three times during the period of two years in Coimbatore and purchased Isha products worth more than Rs 500. The data were collected between the period August 2016 and April 2018. Of 1,678 responses, 1,465 responses were validated after coding. Of 1,465 responses that were validated, 1,126 responses were found reliable.

“Cause-related marketing” and “social group endorsement” activities of the firms tend to create a brand image. To find out which of the above activities highly influence the brands of faith, realistic-operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was carried out. ROC curves were drawn to assess the brands of faith centroid values with social group endorsement and cause-related marketing variables. ROC curves explored the precision of diagnostic tests and were used to find the best “cut-off” value for impressive and unimpressive cluster test results.

Cultural divergence variables such as power distance, collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation are influencing the brands of faith. The followers of the spiritual foundation have their own distinct culture, and their social affinity values increase the brands of faith. Social group endorsement and cause-related marketing are the marketing strategies suitable for spiritual foundation (to market their product/ service). Age, education and occupation are demographic values that influence the brands of faith. The spiritual foundations are segmenting their customers based on the occupational values, and they use the cause-related marketing strategies to increase the values of brands of faith.

As the cultural values related to the art of living have been recognized by society as the measure of social well-being, the spiritual leaders can enhance their brands of faith. The social media communication about cause-related marketing can create trust in society. On the other hand, societal marketing activities cannot target the entire society. Hence, it is to be stratified. While stratifying, the players of diversity markets have to target a group based on the values generated by the stakeholders in the foundation. The diversified markets created by the Indian spiritual gurus are providing cultural diversity.

The business value created by spiritual foundations is increasing the social values which are essential to uplift society. The author concludes that if business values and societal values are integrated by any group of people, it improves economic value to that society and they can use the social currency in the form of “brands of faith”.

The cultural values of a society are measured and compared with national and global index. The enumerate method is an original one.

Notes that methodological problems are hampering the growth of cross‐cultural marketing research and presents a review of methodological issues to address these problems. Organizes these issues around a six‐step framework which includes elements such as problem definition, the development of an approach and research design formulation. Notes that the marketing research problem can be defined by comparing the phenomenon or behaviour in separate cultural contexts and eliminating the influence of the self‐reference criterion. Discusses issues in data analysis such as treatment of outliers and standardization of data. Concludes with an interpretation of results and report presentation.

Based on an ensemble sample of multinational enterprises (MNEs), this study aims to explore the effect of the interactions between Chinese parent firms’ knowledge (including both technological and marketing knowledge), equity control and cultural distance on the business performance of their overseas branches under different subsidiary roles.

The study uses a data set compiled from 138 listed Chinese manufacturing enterprises and their 231 overseas subsidiaries to test the hypotheses regarding the interactive effects of transferred knowledge types and the subsidiary’s control mode.

The empirical results suggest that the moderating effects of equity control and cultural distance vary with the types of the parent firm’s knowledge and subsidiary roles. Specifically, equity control positively regulates the relationship between technological knowledge and subsidiary performance while negatively moderating the relationship between marketing knowledge and subsidiary performance. Cultural distance appears to negatively regulate the relationship between marketing knowledge and subsidiary performance. This binary relationship is shown to be more significant for the implementer subsidiaries.

Drawing on the literature on inter-firm governance and knowledge-induced innovation mechanisms, the authors develop a theoretical contingency framework to derive some managerial implications for inter-firm and infra-firm knowledge transfer in light of MNEs’ performance integrity.

The marketing strategies adopted with regard to cultural products can increase the chances of success for both cultural or tourism organisations and for visitors. However, a high level of tourists' satisfaction can be achieved if the marketing of culture base on a new philosophy which recognises people's emotions as fundamental in the process of creating the new value within the framework of the visitor's past, current and future experience. Managers have to learn how to provide a positive experience of cultural participation by promoting cultural attractions and arts in relation to people's emotions. Managers must be concerned with the question of whether or not the customers are satisfied with the cultural products. The main purpose of this article is to identify factors influencing the consumption of cultural products in Pomerania Voivodship in Poland and a role of experiences expected by tourists and visitors for marketing strategy; the study has examined people's motivations to visit a cultural attractions and their opinion about a level of satisfaction and image of the Region. Implications of the findings for destinations managers and researchers are: the marketing of culture must be based on a new philosophy which recognises a fundamental role of people's experiences and emotions in the process of visitors' decision making. The model for innovative change in marketing management has been suggested to show how to minimalize a gap between cultural offerings and satisfaction of tourists visiting cultural attractions.

The study examines the role of social media technologies (SMTs) as a driver of organization cultural intelligence (OCI) and new product development (NPD) capabilities, and how the complementary effects of these capabilities contribute to multinational corporations (MNCs)’ performance. Further, the study investigates the capability–performance relationship under conditions of high and low market and technological turbulence.

A quantitative survey method was implemented, with the data provided by senior marketing managers employed in MNC regional offices. The proposed model was tested using structural equation modeling and multi-group moderation analysis, and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The results indicate that SMTs support the development of OCI and NPD capabilities, which in turn contribute to MNC regional performance. A high level of technological turbulence only weakens the relationship between OCI and performance.

The results suggest that OCI contributes to MNCs’ performance, by deploying social media information and complementing the organization’s NPD capability under a specific environmental context.

The paper offers practical recommendations to MNCs on social media use when developing and launching new products in different regional markets. MNCs need to recruit culturally intelligent managers, who consider the level of market and technological turbulence when combining several types of capabilities.

Within the dynamic marketing capabilities literature, this is the first study to incorporate and reliably measure cultural intelligence capability. The research offers empirical evidence that OCI and NPD capabilities are necessary to achieve superior MNC performance and depend on the level of market and technological turbulence.

Cross-cultural research constitutes a pivotal topic for marketing; however, the literature indicates that there are a few studies analyzing social media reviews from a cross-cultural perspective using cultural proximity (supra-national level) as a proxy of culture. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify cross-cultural differences in service evaluations and specifically, in hotel appraisals among tourists from Central, Eastern (including Post-Soviet States), Northern and Southern Europe.

A quantitative approach has been taken by studying online user-generated ratings of hotels on Trip Advisor. In total, 1,055 reviews of five hotels in Greece were used for the study.

Multivariate analysis of variance and analysis of variances results confirm cultural differences in overall service evaluations and attributes (value, location, sleeping quality, rooms, cleanliness and service) of tourists from various European regions. Specifically, Eastern Europeans uploaded more reviews than any other European group, whereas Northern Europeans were more generous in their appraisals than Eastern, Southern and Central Europeans.

The results of the study could be used for segmentation purposes of the European tourism market and for recognizing, which aspects of their services need to be improved based on the segments they serve. Moreover, managers should encourage Northern and Eastern Europeans to upload their reviews as both groups are more generous in their evaluations. Moreover, the findings are useful to marketers of other services.

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that examines cross-cultural differences in hotel appraisals from a supra-national perspective including developed (Northern and Western Europe), developing (Southern Europe) and emerging tourism markets (Eastern Europe).