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In almost every large business, there is a growing recognition of the importance of organisational agility in improving their marketing responsiveness and business survival. However, limited insights have been offered by scholars on multinational enterprises and their marketing agility in emerging markets context. The purpose of this paper is to examine the various manifestations of agility and the various strategies adopted to sustain agility by an emerging economy multinational enterprise (EMNE) which started in the late 1990s as a small firm operating within the fresh fruit and juice industry in Africa.

The authors utilised empirical qualitative data from an emerging African economy to develop a three-stage model of how agility manifests overtime.

The authors find that successful development and deployment of international marketing agility strategy adopted by an EMNE from emerging markets hinge on building relationships, being socially responsible and being innovative in standardisation and adaptation in response to, and in anticipation of, the rapidly changing business environment.

This research is based on data from one organisation. Future research can consider using multiple cases from different countries to further understand marketing agility in emerging markets and when such firms internalise into developed markets.

This paper extends research on standardisation/adaptation debate and research on agility, to address the gap on international marketing agility. Hitherto, there was no significant research on marketing agility in emerging markets which focused on highly perishable products such as fruits. This research provides unique insight into how marketing agility could be developed, deployed and sustained in emerging African markets.

Marketing agility has gained more attention from scholars and managers due to the current and emerging conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has changed the marketing landscape, resulting in a dramatic shift in consumer behavior in the worldwide lockdowns. Consumers sought an efficient response and reaction in real-time to their changing needs, concerns, and priorities. The shift in consumer behavior and demand forced service enterprises to develop dynamic marketing plans to adjust to the new normal that created unprecedented disruptions in their traditional business. As one of the most dynamic sectors of service marketing, tourism was challenged by the pandemic-related restrictions and contemporary competitive circumstances and faced the destructive, yet transformative impacts of the outbreak. The tourism enterprises all over world were compelled to implement innovations to adjust to the new customer preferences and needs for a sustainable change to develop dynamic marketing solutions. This chapter aims to review and analyze how the tourism enterprises gravitated to a new approach and implemented an agile marketing strategy focusing on the emerging customer priorities, based on analysis of the hotel websites. A functioning group of 4 and 5-star hotels located in Bodrum, Turkey, was selected and their website updates from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to the proliferation of the vaccines were examined considering the official data on inbound, domestic and outbound tourism. The findings provided an insight into the concept of agile in tourism marketing applied to a function characterized by the radically changing conditions that bring in new threats and opportunities.

This study aims to explore the impact of marketing agility on the business-to-business (B2B) firms’ capacity to address unexpected events such as the recent coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, examining how they reshape their strategies during the different stages of a crisis.

This study follows a theory-building approach and performs an in-depth exploratory multiple-case study in the context of 16 Italian firms operating in the B2B sector.

The study develops an event-sequence-based framework and illustrates how agile marketing strategies empower B2B firms to cope with a crisis across three crucial moments: the event phase, the response management phase and the investigation phase.

This paper contributes to a better understanding of marketing agility in the context of crisis management by showing the agile marketing strategies that B2B firms adopt during the different stages of a crisis. This work provides a useful foundation to assist managers in coping with market uncertainty. It suggests practical guidelines to make more informed strategic and operational marketing decisions, increasing a firm’s capacity to act in today’s fast-moving, complex times.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive analysis of international marketing (IM) studies within the context of banking and finance (B&F), articulating its significance and relevance in view of the growing influence of this topic in the global economy.

The systematic review methodology was applied for the purpose of identifying the relevant studies, as well as the key themes and dominant concepts. In establishing a quality benchmark for the review results, the final sample included articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals ranked 3, 4 and 4* in the ABS 2018 journal list, a common practice in existing systematic review studies.

Based on a systematic review of 66 studies, the results reveal that the topic has grown and continues to expand within the broader IM field over the past 35 years. From the proposed integrative framework, it is possible to identify the links between several IM subjects and B&F topics, highlighting a different intensity of studies and in-depth analysis among the various specific areas investigated.

The authors map and critically evaluate the extant IM research in B&F context for the purpose of increasing its coherence, scope and international dimension. Finally, the authors present a multidisciplinary, integrative framework that organizes the existing literature, provides the theoretical basis for scholars to further expand the boundaries of the domain and serves as a guiding tool for practitioners.

Supply chain agility (SCA) is the primary strategy for reducing impacts and quick recovery when supply chains experience a disruption risk, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This study will investigate how SCA can be achieved through supply chain information sharing (SCIS) under the different dependence relationships (DR) with suppliers or customers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this issue.

Based on information process and resource dependency theories, this study constructs and empirically tests a proposed model of the relationships amongst the three dimensions of SCIS and the two areas of SCA and the contingency effects of two types of DR on those relationships. Using a dataset collected from 400 manufacturers in China, the authors tested this theoretical model using multi-group and structural path analysis.

The results of the structural path and multi-group analyses show that (1) all dimensions of SCIS are positively correlated with both areas of SCA and (2) dependence on the supplier and dependence on the customer have completely different impacts on the relationship between SCIS and SCA.

This study can improve the understanding of the multidimensional concepts of SCIS and SCA and relationships between them under two different DR conditions in the Chinese manufacturing setting. It contributes to IS and the SCA literature and provides theoretically driven and empirical explanations for the diverse dynamics between the dependence on the supplier and customer.

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.

Drawing on a strategic agility perspective, the authors develop a theoretical framework and empirically examine how digital platform adoption and capability impact business performance via digital-enabled strategic agility in the context of professional service firms.

The authors propose and examine a conceptual framework based on survey data from 127 professional service firms in New Zealand.

This study reveals the impact of digital platform capability on the business performance of professional service firms that employ digital platform technologies. The results suggest that organizational innovation and managers' creative efficacy will be used as distal antecedents and contribute to digital platform capabilities. In addition, digital strategic agility can mediate the link between digital platform capabilities and business performance.

This study is one of the first to investigate when and how digital platforms empower professional service firms. This study reveals the role of digital strategic agility and digital platform capabilities in knowledge-intensive enterprises. This research advances the development of knowledge-based economy in the information age by applying and extending strategic agility to the uncertain and volatile business environment. The authors' new conceptualization provides a deeper understanding of how and why professional services business and organizations can adapt to the post-COVID era smoothly and successfully.

The purpose of this study is to advance the understanding of resource orchestration in inter-firm partnerships that appropriately configure and align strategic cross-firm supply chain resources and capabilities generating synergies to deliver superior performance.

Applying the resource orchestration logic, supported by the relational view of competitive advantage, the study draws from an empirical analysis of survey data from 152 top-level executives of US manufacturing firms to investigate the effect of leveraging and coherently combining cross-firm supply chain resources with capabilities on operational performance.

The study underscores the view that appropriately orchestrated combinations of key partnership resources and capabilities as mechanisms for marketing strategy implementation, enhance performance. Specifically, research results suggest that complementary inter-firm resources and lean align, and similarly idiosyncratic resources and agility align synergistically to deliver superior operational performance outcomes. The results also accent partnership responses to intense competition, enabling enhanced operational performance. The findings thus enrich the understanding of the resource orchestration logic and strategy, making important theoretical contributions.

As is typical in marketing and strategy research, the study research design has a cross-sectional framework, thus limiting insights on the resource orchestration dynamics that can otherwise be generated using a longitudinal design. Also, the resource orchestration stream is still nascent. Further research is needed to delineate the orchestration mechanisms that deliver on performance outcomes, especially in supply chains.

A key insight for supply chain and marketing managers is that close-knit inter-firm partnerships are critical for accessing idiosyncratic and complementary resources that can be configured and symbiotically aligned with market-facing agility and lean capabilities, respectively, to deliver market value. Proactive partnerships, especially in highly competitive and disruptive environments, enable mobilizing cross-firm resources and building appropriate matching combinations with capabilities to deliver on operational performance.

The study, guided by theory, advances the understanding of how key cross-firm resources and capabilities deliver performance gains. The key to competitive advantage and enhanced performance outcomes may lie in acquiring, leveraging and deploying appropriately matched resource-capability combinations. The present study investigates this proposition within the context of supply chain partnerships, focusing on cross-firm resources and capabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize strategic agility in entrepreneurial internationalization and highlight the role of marketing “under particular conditions” – those of early and fast internationalizers.

The study is based on in-depth case studies of four entrepreneurial internationalizers using an inductive approach. The role of marketing is studied along a set of four key business processes, i.e. sensing through selective customer/partner intimacy; business development through selective experimentation and testing; coordination and harmonization of multiple stakeholders; and creative extension of resources.

Strategic agility is a composite of flexibility and selective responsiveness. Marketing thought, mainly through customer and partner interaction, plays a prominent role in achieving strategic agility. Customer- and market-centric thinking needs to be built in a key set of business processes. Marketing’s contribution to strategic agility means an ability to cope with time, relationship and functional dependencies. Strategic agility helps improve the risk profile of the entrepreneurial internationalizer. Entrepreneurial internationalizers are particularly suited to compete on and benefit from strategic agility.

The findings show managers and entrepreneurs in early and fast internationalizing ventures a path to strategic agility which helps to overcome the many parallel challenges that come with firm foundation and internationalization.

Strategic agility is a novel explanation for entrepreneurial internationalization. The study explains the prominent role played by marketing in achieving strategic agility and growth. Strategic agility is reconceptualized in the context of the young and small internationalizing firm.

The aim of this paper is to conceptualize the notion of international marketing agility.

The approach adopted is to review and create a synopsis of the existing body of research on strategic agility and develop a conceptualization on how international marketing agility (IMA) should be analyzed.

International marketing agility is an emerging concept driven largely by rapid changes in global markets. There is a growing need for exporting SMEs and multinational enterprises to consider IMA as a means of building competitive advantage in foreign markets.

While the conceptual development presented in this paper is not exhaustive, our model highlights important research avenues in IMA that need exploring.

This article examines an emerging concept in international marketing that serves as a platform to cope with the changes taking place in this fast-changing global environment. A framework is proposed where we conceptualize IMA as a process triggered by agile logic (a nonconformist and open mental stance) and facilitated by agile learning (being able to search and interpret data), to cause agile actions (being able to commit, co-ordinate and respond quickly with flexibility to ever-changing conditions).