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Market orientation is often mentioned as a key factor for the success of domestic and international activities, but our knowledge about differences in degrees of market orientation remains limited for firms that have varying degrees of international activities. In particular, the literature is very sparse with regard to studies of newly established firms. Our study empirically explores this gap examining how different types of new ventures adopt two strategic components of market orientation – customer orientation and competitor orientation. Our empirical evidence is based on responses from CEOs of 249 Danish manufacturing firms that are categorized into four groups, depending on their degree of international operations within the first three years. We demonstrate that the most internationally oriented firms seem to be the most market oriented in general. They are significantly more competitor-oriented than domestically oriented firms, but the results regarding customer orientation are more mixed. Interestingly, we find indications that the strategic emphasis on customer orientation may be higher for firms with domestic operations than for those with limited international operations. We discuss implications for research and managers.

With the growth of the internet, more attention is being paid to new uses of the internet. This study examines loyalty to ‘virtual communities’ that internet users participate in. A research model is developed to describe the relationship between website evaluation factors and virtual community loyalty. Results are consistent with the predictions of the model.

This paper proposes a new theoretical framework to explain enterprise unionism and conducts the first systematic comparative study of union structure in nine Asian countries. Our framework emphasizes political dynamics and the role of the state in labor relations and argues that the initial period of the collective bargaining era constituted a critical juncture (state labor policy) that occurred in distinctive ways in different countries and that these differences played a central role in shaping the different union structures in the following decades. The nine countries are mainly divided into three groups, depending on the type of state labor policy: enforcement of enterprise unionism; centralization/laissez-faire (non-enterprise unionism); and dual unionism/gradual transition (middle-ground). Governmental data were used for the study. A clear correspondence between state labor policy and union structure in each of these groups was found. We believe that our framework significantly enhances our understanding of the Asian cases. Future research should explore the validity of the proposed framework through comparative studies of Latin American cases where enterprise unions have also been observed.

The theme of this issue of Advances in International Marketing is cross-cultural buyer behavior. In developing the call for papers for this issue, we intentionally defined buyer behavior in a broad sense in order to allow for papers on innovative and cutting edge issues in buyer behavior to be included. Additionally, we made a special point of publicizing the call in various parts of the world in order to ensure multiple perspectives.

The traditional Confucian management system is considered distinctly different from Western-based management. This study draws data from indigenous Taiwanese firms listed on its public stock market and examines the associations among various human resource (HR) systems and organizational performance. First, factor analysis is used to explore a wide range of HR practices. Then, cluster analysis is used to classify indigenous Taiwanese firms with regard to their HR practices. Indigenous Taiwanese firms were found to use various HR systems, ranging from traditional Confucian HR to high-involvement HR practices. Companies that used high-involvement HR systems were found to perform better than those using a traditional Confucian HR system.