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Although a great deal of research has focused on global marketing strategy development and implementation, little research has focused on the global marketing managers charged with the responsibilities of developing and implementing such strategy. The aim of this paper is to develop a model that identifies a set of soft skills that have the ability to increase the effectiveness of global marketing managers in making the tactical adaptations necessary to develop and implement global marketing strategy in an increasingly complex and dynamic marketplace.

A conceptual model is developed with coinciding propositions.

The model developed theorizes that the ability of global marketing managers to make tactical adaptations to the firm's global marketing strategy (and thus enhance performance) is driven by the soft skills of tacit knowledge, experience, learning, unlearning, intuition, self‐confidence, flexibility, prioritization of problems, working under pressure and ambiguity tolerance.

The model highlights the specific soft skills that firms can work to foster in their global marketing managers and educators can work to incorporate within a curriculum. Through the development of these soft skills within a firm's global marketing managers, the firm can achieve a competitive position within the marketplace.

This study is one of the first to conceptualize a specific set of soft skills that enhance a global marketing manager's ability to make tactical adaptations to the firm's global marketing strategy by which the firm can be more competitive. As such, this study provides for a better understanding of how soft skills relate to the development and implementation of global marketing strategy and how firms can be more competitive by not only employing unique human capital, but by developing global marketing managers who are more effective at adapting to constantly changing global market conditions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the means for enhancing the image and business legitimacy of a socially discredited industry – pawnbroking in pre-1949 China – are explored. Previous studies suggest companies operating within such industries cannot solely rely on hard marketing strategies “to maximize sales and profits as they do with soaps and shoes” (Davidson, 2003, p. 7). Instead, they must find soft strategies for improving company and industry image and legitimacy.

This research relies on qualitative analysis of historical data and documents.

Soft strategies deployed by Chinese pawnbrokers – such as interpretations, moral value advocacies and institutionalized arrangements – contributed substantially to improving pawnbroking’s image and business legitimacy.

Interconnections among ethical values, image, business legitimacy and select marketing strategies are clarified. The efficacy of historically analyzing previously implemented business strategies and their embedding contexts is discussed.

Strategies Chinese pawnbrokers used to mitigate their previously negative image and boost their business legitimacy suggest strategies current socially disapproved companies can use to improve their image and business legitimacy.

A historical analysis of pre-1949 Chinese pawnbroking can suggest soft marketing strategies for overcoming consumers’ negative company and industry impressions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the consumption patterns and attitudes towards soft drinks among Indian youth.

A questionnaire was used to investigate consumption patterns, attitudes, and socio-demographic profiles of college-attending respondents between the ages of 18 and 30. Cluster analysis and factor analysis were undertaken to obtain a better understanding of the attitudes among young consumers towards soft drinks. A logistic regression model was used as a predictor to distinguish between frequent and non-frequent soft drink consumers.

Indian youths preferred diet drinks and fruit juices more than regular soft drinks. Soft drinks were mostly consumed as distinct drinks (not as substitutes) and on specific occasions. Easy availability of soft drinks at the locations closure to consumers was a critical factor in determining consumers’ purchase and consumption level. Attitude towards the utility and nutritional dimensions of soft drinks had a positive and significant influence on the frequency of consumption.

To remain competitive, soft drinks’ companies need to focus more on healthy products and those that are refreshing and relaxing.

Regulating the availability of soft drinks in and around educational institutions will affect consumption of soft drinks and reduce diseases.

Only a few studies investigating consumption patterns and attitudes among Indian youth towards soft drinks. This study attempts to fill the gap.

This study examines how informal business networks achieve marketing goals in socially uncertain contexts. Drawing from multiple historical sources, Shangbangs, a type of business network that thrived in pre-1949 China, are analyzed.

The Critical Historical Research Method (CHRM) undergirds a study of Shangbangs’ historicity (i.e. their socio-historically embedded multiplicity, including organizational forms, activities and connotations.

As informal regional, professional, project-based, special-product-based or mixed marketing networks, Shangbangs relied on “flexible specialization” and coupled multiple business needs to market goods and services, business organizations, specific social values and, when necessary, to debrand business rivals.

This analysis extends theories about marketing networks by probing their subtypes, diverse marketing activities, multipronged channels and relationship building with social entities (including underground societies, business associations and guilds) in response to pre-1949 China’s market uncertainties. Substantiating an alternative approach to “flexible specialization” and marketing innovations within the pre-1949 Chinese economy shows how a parallel theoretical framework can complement western-based marketing theories.

This first comprehensive analysis of Shangbangs, an innovative historical Chinese marketing network outside the conventional market-corporate dichotomy, can inform theory building for marketing strategy-making and management conditioned by social contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test a new conceptualization of international marketing agility (IMA). Importantly, the empirical test includes agility’s drivers, outcomes and boundary conditions for its impact on international market performance.

The authors draw on the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities theories to develop a model and test it quantitatively via structural equation modeling with survey data from 195 Israeli exporters. In addition, the authors seek insights into the findings through post hoc in-depth interviews.

The results indicate that IMA enhances international market performance directly as well as indirectly through exporter’s new products advantage. Interestingly, while promotion adaptation strengthens the positive effect of IMA on new products advantage, product adaptation does not.

Managers need to develop and improve marketing planning and flexibility maintenance capabilities. Furthermore, while maintaining an emphasis on marketing planning, they need to guard against inertia by embracing outside views, a wider range of solutions and a greater awareness of others’ decision-making styles to develop flexibility maintenance capability and achieve superior IMA.

A new conceptualization and operationalization of agility specific to an international marketing context is tested empirically. The complementary role of marketing planning capability and flexibility maintenance capability is demonstrated. Importantly, the vital role of new products advantage as a mediator between agility and performance is examined and the moderating role of international marketing strategy adaptation is investigated.

This study aims to build a conceptual model based on socio-aesthetic value accentuation (SAVA), positional advantage and sales-network power as the bridging process for enhancing sales performance in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

A structural study methodology is adopted. In all, 200 owner– managers of SMEs were involved in the study and voluntarily spent time for an interview in the data collection process. To test the model and hypotheses, the authors used the analysis moment structure structural equation modeling (AMOS SEM structural model software to analyse 178 usable questionnaires.

The results demonstrate three strategic pathways to enhanced sales performance, namely, anchors on SAVA, positional advantage and sales-network power and are the basis of the separate contribution of our proposed strategic equilateral triangle model for conceptual bridging.

The rejection of the hypothesis provides a room for further research. The sample frame of Indonesian SMEs limits the generalisation power of SAVA concept, which then calls for replication to achieve a broader generalisation. The theoretical implication of the study relates to strengthening the applicability of the theory of service-dominant logic in marketing studies.

There are several practical managerial implications for SME entrepreneurs seeking to improve sales performance.

This pioneering study explains the role of SAVA – positional advantage and sales-network power to bridge innovation capability and enhanced marketing performance.

The authors discuss a dominant logic as the main idea behind a global marketing logic (GML) of an MNE and investigate how local stakeholders’ influence the feasibility of applying the GML in emerging markets. The aim of the paper is to enhance the understanding of the factors that influence the local stakeholders' acceptance of the MNEs' GML and the different activities of MNEs that may increase the acceptance.

The authors apply a qualitative case study method investigating three Swedish MNEs and their activities while implementing a GML in the big emerging markets. The authors study their relationships with business, political and social stakeholders.

The authors identify three persistent contents of the GML: (1) a consistent value chain role across markets, (2) standardized, premium products/services and promotion strategies, (3) a corporate brand-based identity. The development of trust, commitment, legitimacy and power within local stakeholders’ relationships influences the approval. The acceptance of the MNE's GML by local stakeholders strengthens its market position.

The authors extend the knowledge by investigating the nature of a GML and explain to what extent it may help MNEs to gain a competitive position. The authors also discuss how global and local activities may influence local stakeholders' acceptance. This study contributes towards a better understanding of how and to what extent a GML can be successful.

Real estate professionals are a vital resource to the property firms and the industry at large. Employees’ skills, knowledge and competence contribute in great measure to organization’s business performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the adequacy of core knowledge and soft skills possessed by professional employees within the Nigerian real estate practicing firms. It also assesses the performance of the employees and establishes the correlation among the soft skills possessed by employees.

Data for this study were elicited through the administration of questionnaires on principal partners/branch managers (the employers) of the practicing estate surveying and valuation firms in Lagos metropolis. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics, one-sample t-test and correlation analysis.

The result indicates that employees of estate firms in Nigeria demonstrate adequate knowledge in ten out of 21 core areas of real estate practice, while real estate agency has the highest mean, and inadequate knowledge in six others with least mean score in environmental impact assessment. The study also revealed that employees possess good listening and communication skills but are deficient in courteousness and writing skill, among others. It was also found that real estate employees were performing the best in inspection functions but below average in report writing and handling of transaction. The study also established a significant relationship among all the soft skills except communication skill and courteousness.

Further study that looks at the performance of real estate graduates working in other sectors/organizations other than estate companies is required to establish their competence level in global employment market. Further study is also needed to cover the views of the employees in Nigerian market as this study focuses on the views of the employers.

This study provides an important feedback for the policy makers in the design/review of curriculum for real estate education towards enhancing employability of the graduates. This study also serves as the research blueprint in giving attention to assessment of soft skills among real estate employees in Nigerian real estate industry.

Transnationalism and transnational concept are extensively researched in many social science areas; however, transnational management and transnational marketing is relatively a less explored research domain. Also, knowledge management for transnational education (TNE) marketing is not well-researched. Capacity building is an established research-stream, with a key focus on socio-economic and ecological development; however, prior research on capacity building from the context of TNE’s knowledge management and marketing is scarce. The purpose of this study is to analyse TNE marketing mix, to understand the influence of transnational stakeholders’ causal scope(s) on knowledge management in TNE to uphold their transnatioalisation processes through capacity building in TNEs’ marketing management.

An inductive constructivist method is followed.

Organisational learning from the context of transnational market and socio-economic competitive factors, based on analysing the transnational stakeholders’ causal scope(s) is imperative for proactive knowledge management capacity in TNE marketing. Following the analysis of transnational stakeholders’ causal scope(s) to learn about the cause and consequence of the transnational stakeholders’ relationships and interactions, an initial conceptual framework of knowledge management for TNE marketing is proposed. Practical insights from different TNE markets are developed in support of this novel knowledge management capacity building framework of TNE, and its generalisation perspectives and future research areas are discussed.

These insights will be useful for TNE administrators to better align their knowledge management perspectives and propositions with their transnational stakeholders to underpin TNE marketing. Academics will be able to use these insights as a basis for future research.

This study proposes a novel conceptual stakeholder-centred capacity building framework for TNE’s knowledge management to uphold TNE marketing and supports the framework, based on practical insights from three different transnational markets.

This paper aims to demonstrate how the integration of netnography and business analytics can support companies in the process of value creation from social big data by leveraging on customer relationship management and customer knowledge management (CKM).

This paper adopts the methodology of a single case study by using desk analysis, netnography and business analytics. The context of analysis has been identified into the case of Aurora Company, a well-known producer of fountain pens.

The case demonstrates how the integration of big data analytics and netnography is relevant for the development of a customer relationship management strategy. The results obtained have been categorized according to the three main categories of customer knowledge, such as knowledge for, from and about customer.

This paper presents implications for the advancement of the theory on CKM by demonstrating, as the acquisition, storage and management of data generated by customers on social media require the adoption of a cross-disciplinary approach resulting from the integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches. The framework is structured as methodological tool to detect knowledge in virtual community.

Practical implications arise for managers and entrepreneurs in terms of value creation from knowledge assets generated on social big data through the management of the customers’ relationship and data-driven innovation patterns.

This paper offers an original contribution of integration of well-established research streams. The focus on the knowledge under the perspectives of information assets for, from and about customers in the debate on value creation and management of big data is an element of value offered by this study in addition to the comprehension of strategies of social customer relationship management as actual initiative embraced by a company in the leveraging of innovation and tradition.