Search results

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the intersection of research into international marketing (IM) and the internet, seeking areas where knowledge is developing, and where further research is required.

The study utilizes an integrative review of the extant literature.

The study identifies the role of the internet as a tool for competitive advantage and internationalization. In considering these aspects of the internet within IM, the necessity for establishing a foreign market presence is also examined. Further, it is asserted that the internet’s influence on internationalization is largely through exporting of products and digital services.

The paper offers a new perspective on the issues emerging in the literature in terms of IM and the internet, and identifies new avenues for future research.

This study aims to examine how international small and medium-sized enterprises (ISMEs) improve adaptive marketing capabilities (AMCs) through exploration, exploitation and ambidexterity (EEA) and thereby increase exporting performance. In addition, the present study attempts to examine conditions under which EEA can more effectively improve AMCs.

The theoretical model was tested by using survey data collected from 119 ISMEs based in the U.S. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was deployed to analyze the data.

The results show that exploration increases ISMEs’ performance through improving AMCs while ambidexterity reduces ISMEs’ performance through weakening AMCs. However, the negative influence of ambidexterity on AMCs attenuates in a dissimilar host country where ISMEs can conveniently learn new information. Finally, when ISMEs pursue exploitation in an either similar or dissimilar host country, their AMCs do not improve.

We provide empirical evidence of SMEs increasing AMCs and firm performance via EEA within the context of exporting. However, we did not collect objective financial performance of ISMEs.

Our findings provide guidance for ISMEs’ marketing managers to build AMCs by learning something new. Moreover, the findings help ISMEs effectively identify and select the most appropriate international marketing strategy depending on the similarity between host and home countries.

Our findings contribute to the literature by explicating how ISMEs can heighten marketing capability to build competitive advantages in global markets through exploration. However, ISMEs should be cautious when pursuing ambidexterity, which may weaken AMCs and finally decrease firm performance. In addition, we identify external factors that influence effectiveness of EEA in building AMCs. By doing so, the findings help ISMEs understand how to increase AMCs so as to improve competencies in fast-changing global markets.

The purpose of this paper is to explore global brands, global consumer culture (GCC) and globalization, and offers a thesis in line with Steenkamp (2019) regarding the world’s continued move toward greater integration.

The study examines the three concepts articulated by Steenkamp (2019): global brands, GCC and globalization.

Globalization is often thought of as a necessary condition for the existence of global brands and GCC. However, global brands existed long before the transition toward an increasingly integrated world. Further, global branding is related to the development of GCC as an intermarket segment. The paper also highlights the absence of an operational definition for global brands and the overemphasis on consumer brands as the drivers of much of the research in global branding and GCC.

The paper offers a different perspective on the GCC phenomenon, and identifies new avenues for future research.

Disruptive external forces can bring businesses to a standstill and make their strategic plans obsolete overnight. COVID-19 exemplifies such a disruptive force, which has caused worldwide havoc and ongoing disruption in many sectors of the economy, while concurrently providing great opportunities for others. The goal in this study is to examine the experiences of firms that have been impacted by a prior disruptive force, offer five theoretical lenses for framing and examining such events, and provide a set of axioms based on the research findings.

The authors used a qualitative approach involving five short international marketing case studies of firms based in South Korea and Taiwan. These nations and firms were selected on the bases of their overall judicious navigation of the conditions presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors gathered information about these firms through primary sources of information (personal and remote interviews as well as other communications), which the authors augmented with information from secondary sources.

The results indicate that external forces can bring both opportunities and threats to firms' international marketing strategies. The authors found that two strategies help firms cope with managerial issues associated with both the demand and the supply sides in successful firms in these nations: (1) leveraging opportunities presented by the pandemic through the successive introductions of new product and (2) the expansion of both the domestic and international markets.

The research provides five theoretical lenses to articulate the impact of disruptive external forces on international marketing strategies.

The research offers thirteen demand and supply side axioms for marketing managers involved in international business (e.g. exporters, importers, MNCs) to cope with disruptive external forces, like COVID-19.

Disruptive external forces, such as the pandemic, have enormous impact on firms and consumers alike. This research aims to limit the negative impact of future disruptions by engaging in contingency planning and added resilience, through which firms may continue to function and, to a large extent, consumers are able to acquire the necessary goods and services to maintain their quality of life.

The authors attribute the quicker response of these firms to their agility in managing the market impacts related to COVID-19 and to their prior conditioning in their respective geopolitical spheres. The authors summarize the findings in a set of nine supply side and a set of four demand side axioms.

The purpose of this paper is to present a rejoinder. The rejoinder is written in response to the commentaries provided by Saeed Samiee and Jean‐Claude Usunier on the authors’ original research piece: “‘What? I thought Samsung was Japanese’: accurate or not, perceived country of origin matters”.

The rejoinder is organized into three separate sections. The first section identifies areas of agreement between the authors, and Samiee and Usunier. The second section responds directly to the empirical and conceptual criticisms levied by Samiee and Usunier and clarifies the authors’ contribution. The rejoinder concludes by identifying areas of future research that may help further advance the field.

In addition to responding directly to the criticism of the original study, perhaps more importantly, the authors note several areas of common ground. First, there is agreement that future country‐of‐origin (COO) research designs must be careful to not artificially expose subjects to country cues that the consumer otherwise may not have considered. Second, in a globalizing world, brand origin perception appears to be more important than “made in” labels.

The authors do not consider the COO field outdated or irrelevant, but rather that it is a vibrant field of considerable interest to both practitioners and researchers. There is much still to be learned, and the authors hope the original research study and the ensuing debate have sparked fresh ideas and will lead to a continued effort in this interesting research field.

Explores perceptions of exporting education in sporadic and regular exporting firms as a means of enhancing organizational knowledge to improve the firm’s long‐term competitive advantage in global markets. Export development and performance are dependent on the acquisition and utilization of relevant knowledge in exporting. An analysis of sporadic and regular exporting firms’ views toward formalized export education programs that contribute to long‐term organizational knowledge is the central focus of this study. Results indicate that sporadic and regular exporting firms, although similar in many respects, vary significantly with regard to export planning activity, educational attainment of employees, export proportion of sales, and exporting experience. In addition, sporadic exporters are less interested in formal export education programs and are more reliant on the government as a source of exporting knowledge and information. The types of information offered through such sources frequently do not lead to a sustainable competitive advantage in exporting and make only a limited contribution to organizational learning. A discriminant model correctly classifies 86 per cent of exporting firms into sporadic and regular groups. Discusses conclusions and managerial implications.

The authors critically examine the paper by Samiee (2019, this issue) “International marketing and the Internet: A research overview and the path forward” and offer an appraisal of its merits as well as thoughts for further development of research on advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) in international marketing.

This paper approaches its purpose via a reflexive review of Samiee's paper and continues by offering a content analysis of a broader body of literature which includes internationally oriented papers in international business (IB), international marketing (IM), general management, marketing and strategy (GMS) as well as information systems (IS). The underpinning question is whether and which particular ICT concepts have successfully been adopted in the IM literature and what the inclusion or exclusion of these phenomena may imply for future research.

The Internet and internationalization implications of the technology have been studied excessively in the domain; however, newer developments such as dimensions of Industry 4.0 or advanced manufacturing, have not yet been widely considered in IB and marketing work. The ramifications for future research are significant in that the understudied modern industrial organization of the contemporary firm in the digital world needs much concerted research focus to be adequately understood.

This paper and the literature review is limited to “international” studies. While this is an appropriate limitation for the purposes of this IM-oriented review, some work in the GMS domain as well as the IS domain will have significant ramification for international firms and IM thinking, despite these papers limited to noninternational firms.

The notion of advanced ICTs, builds on the underpinning Internet technology, and has transformative effects on the way in which (international) firms are organized, studied and performed. The pervasive shifts triggered by advanced ICTs and the reconfiguration of firms to platform providers and system integrators need to be well understood, in order to stay legitimate and as performant in contemporary markets.

Rather than looking at only IM papers, this paper reviews Internet/advanced ICT papers in multiple related fields. Significant novelty in this area comes from IS, by including this discipline in the review, the authors see real diffusion of novel thinking and potential research areas for IM scholars at the interface of ICT and IM.

The purpose of this paper is to address the apparent controversy surrounding the relevance of country of origin (CO) and brand origin (BO) lines of research, with particular reference to an article authored by Magnusson, Westjohn, and Zdravkovic (MWZ) whose research findings assert that CO matters, irrespective of whether customers can actually recall origins of brands.

Drawing on the extant literature from academic and business publications, the paper offers evidence regarding the relative unimportance of origin‐related attributes in most purchasing situations. In this context, the paper examines the atheoretic nature of CO research combined with a general lack of realistic managerial relevance, consumers’ impoverished CO and BO knowledge base, and the challenges of using CO as a positioning tool in marketing strategy. Finally, the paper examines some critical research issues regarding MWZ's contribution.

Country of origin research is not as relevant in customer choice process as some scholars believe and is generally void of meaningful managerial guidelines.

This is a commentary about an International Marketing Review article.

The relationship between cultural and social elements in Japan and the presence and maintenance of trade barriers is examined. The European Community and the US had $23 billion and $60 billion deficits with Japan in 1988, respectively. In particular, the US has experienced a trade deficit with Japan since 1969. Understanding the social and cultural influences is the first step in unravelling the hidden barriers – buyer behaviour, channel relationships, oligopolistic competition, government procurement, regulation and standards, custom valuation codes, intellectual property rights, and industrial targeting. Visible tariff and non‐tariff barriers are also discussed. Strategies for bypassing these barriers are discussed and several examples of how European and American companies have overcome them are offered.

The international market for services grew to $1.2 trillion in 1995 and has been growing at double‐digit rates. The USA possesses the lion’s share of the world’s services exports and stands to gain significantly from lower barriers to trade in services. However, despite the significant progress already made, numerous barriers remain and many countries have not joined the multilateral negotiations for eliminating or lowering existing barriers. This study examines the history of market access and trends, the obstacles to the international marketing of services, and key issues including classification methods and economic, regulatory, and cultural impediments, and offers directions for future research.