Special issue on Data and Methodological Issues for New Insights in Global Marketing: A Commentary

Marketing products/services internationally implies a bold decision; one that has high-cost implications and significant performance consequences: Should we standardize or adapt our marketing strategy across borders? The dilemma is a seminal and, perhaps, the most enduring issue in international marketing scholarship. However, despite the voluminous work, an ontological assumption induces inconclusive conceptualizations and impedes further theoretical advancement. The author contends that a self-contained, atomistic representation of the standardization/adaptation decision is such an impediment. Namely, this work problematizes a portrayal of the decision as if it is taken following a ‘detached’, own judgement of broad environmental contingencies. In turn, the study builds on fit literature and promotes an alternative perspective; one that acknowledges relational imperatives for requisite theorizing. Hence, standardization/adaptation is framed as a co-constituted process towards relational fit with international marketing strategies being contingent on the role of significant ‘others.’

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Standardization and Adaptation as a Coconstituted Process: The Pursuit of Relational Fit in International Markets

Poulis

2024

“…This focus on attitudes has been put into question due to concerns with regard to ensuring measurement validity, evaluating a culture's distinctive features, and capturing a culture's true core (Kitayama 2002). Future research should therefore consider alternative approaches to account for cultural contingencies, such as personal values, given that the extant literature has suggested that values (vs. attitudes) are paramount when gauging a culture's core (e.g., Schwartz's human values; Gielens 2021; Schwartz 1999; Steenkamp 2001).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engaging Business Customers Through Online Experiences in Different Cultures

Weiger¹

2023

Engaging customers online through effective customer experience design is critical, as practitioners and researchers agree that engaged customers contribute value to firms. However, in the multinational business-to-business (B2B) context—due to its complex decision-making processes, which involve various stakeholders—global marketers face challenges in their attempts to localize (versus standardize) the online experience across their regional websites to meet customer needs, which vary across cultures. Although standardization entails cost benefits, localization provides more culturally relevant customer experiences. Accordingly, to help global marketers solve this dilemma, this study examines how culture shapes the effectiveness of online customer experiences with regard to driving psychological and behavioral customer engagement in a B2B context. The study draws on survey and observed data collected from the business customers of a multinational firm who were located in 79 countries to demonstrate why global marketers should finetune such experiences in accordance with between-country cultural differences. The results show that different cultural factors can enhance or hamper engagement responses to cognitive and social online customer experiences and thus have actionable practical implications for prioritizing distinct localization strategies.

“…Although we have highlighted three possible approaches to methodologically advance extant literature on well-being and grand challenges in the field of international marketing, there are certainly more methods to enhance rigor in international marketing studies. For more insights, we refer to a recent JIM special issue on Data and Methodological Issues for New Insights in Global Marketing (Hewett and Lehmann 2021) and the commentary by Gielens (2021).…”

Section: Methodological Advancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Well-Being in a Global World—Future Directions for Research in International Marketing: An Editorial

Grinstein¹,

Riefler²,

Hewett³

2022

In late 2020, the first year of the global COVID pandemic outbreak, we issued a call for papers on well-being in a global world. Our underlying motivation was to induce further advancement of research relating to well-being issues and grand societal challenges in the context of international marketing. This call was more than successful in attracting interesting, relevant, and rigorous manuscripts in a number that allowed us to publish two JIM special issues. The first special issue appeared in June 2022 (Vol. 30, No. 2) and featured articles focusing on well-being relating to COVID-19 in different countries and contexts. In this second special issue, we present a compilation of articles relating to more general topics of well-being in a global context and discuss future research opportunities in this space.