Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how headquarters’ managers perceive – cultural, administrative, geographic and economic (CAGE) – distance between countries and its influence on the strategy of international subsidiaries. Design/methodology/approach This study applies the transaction cost and behavioural theory and presents an exploratory and qualitative methodology approach through six semi-structured in-depth interviews to evaluate managers’ perceptions of distance between countries. Findings The research findings show that cultural and economic distances indeed have a major influence on subsidiary strategy and a smaller impact of administrative and geographic dimensions, which results into forced changes on the marketing-mix, i.e. product, price, design and brand, as well as on the level of autonomy granted to foreign subsidiaries. Research limitations/implications The limitation is related to the home country and the entry mode of foreign direct investment. The findings presented here reflect the nature and behaviour of Portuguese companies with subsidiaries. Practical implications The research provides recommendations for managers to be aware of the influence of more than one dimension of distance between countries to improve their decision-making of standardisation-adaptation strategy for foreign subsidiaries. Furthermore, the study stresses that managers’ perceptions may lead to the conclusion that proximity and knowledge of foreign markets does not make international business easier. Originality/value This empirical research not only tests the transaction cost theory and behavioural theory on managers’ decisions to invest abroad but also promotes organisational changes to achieve the suitable strategy for international subsidiaries. The study contributes to the area of international business by positing six research propositions concerning distance between countries to be tested in future studies.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to advance the theoretical development of the content marketing concept and its integration into high-tech marketing theory, in entrepreneurial contexts and from a business model innovation perspective. Design/methodology/approach The paper provides a conceptual overview of content marketing and business model innovation concerning high-tech entrepreneurs. Findings The high-tech entrepreneurial content marketing (HIT-ECM) framework has five delineating elements with a small high-tech firm as the focal point: adapting content marketing in the business model, customizing content and customer profiling, organizational learning and experimenting with the business model, building strategic networks and content marketing and the small high-tech firm’s business model innovation. The HIT-ECM framework considers how high-tech entrepreneurs capitalize on their capabilities and use innovative marketing strategies to sell their high-tech solutions under unpredictable conditions and limited resources. Practical implications From a managerial perspective, HIT-ECM poses five questions managers should ask themselves when they adopt content marketing and integrate it into their existing business models: how can content create value, how novel content development activities reflect on innovating the business model, how will content development reflect on the business model structure, who is involved and what are the revenue streams of content development. Originality/value This is an original paper that presents the HIT-ECM framework for high-tech entrepreneurs to use content marketing and capture customer value through every aspect of their business operations, as well as updating and innovating their business models.

Authors commonly agree that the identity of a brand is internally connected with staff and externally connected with the consumers and the rest of the stakeholders. Brand management studies are much focused on the external part, mainly on consumers. This research follows a different agenda exploring the brand identity dimensions by measuring the brand identity prism developed by Kapferer, both internally and externally. The measurement of brand identity is scarce in brand management literature. A reliable, valid and unique brand identity scale that empirically establishes the construct's dimensionality has yet to be developed in a highly consumer involvement context. This paper reports the findings of a research conducted at 235 engineering higher education students. Data were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis. Findings reveal that the brand identity prism is moderated by brand culture. This research also gave important insights regarding the theory proposed by Kapferer regarding the external brand identity.

As innovation is essential for the competitiveness of enterprises and economic

As innovation is essential for the competitiveness of enterprises and economic