Revisiting international marketing strategy in a digital era: Opportunities, challenges, and research directions

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the opportunities and challenges facing firms in this new digital era concerning their international marketing strategy and examine how international marketing practices can be revisited in the light of these developments. Consideration is given to a range of relevant issues involved in the design and deployment of effective international marketing strategies using internet-enabled technologies. Such factors relate to internal company requirements, the external environmental situation, foreign market selection and entry, international marketing mix programs, and strategy implementation and control aspects. Design/methodology/approach: A conceptual paper identifies, structures and presents systematically factors influencing international marketing strategy, implementation and control using digital technologies. Findings: The authors point to the relevance and potentially important role that the deployment of online organizational resources and capabilities play in influencing foreign market selection and entry decisions and international marketing strategy choices, implementation and control. The authors thus explain how the use of digital technologies can facilitate the firm’s foreign market choices and the adoption of effective marketing programs, and offer insights into the adoption of digital tools in more effectively implementing and controlling the firm’s international marketing strategy. Originality/value: The originality and value of this conceptual study is reflected in the identification and discussion of factors comprising the organizing framework of an international marketing strategy using internet-enabled technologies and in the examination of fruitful avenues of future investigation as a result of the need to redesign international marketing strategies in a new digital era

The Role of Exporters’ Emotional Intelligence in Building Foreign Customer Relationships

Despite the critical importance of emotional intelligence in effectively interacting with other people, its role has been overlooked in scholarly research on cross-border interorganizational relationships. Drawing on Emotion Regulation Theory, we propose a model that conceptualizes links among exporters’ emotional intelligence, key behavioral dimensions characterizing the atmosphere of the relationship with import buyers, and the resulting relational performance. We test the model with data collected from 262 Greek exporters using structural equation modeling. The results indicate that higher levels of exporter emotional intelligence enhances communication and social bonding with the importer, while diminishing distance and conflict in their working relationship. Relational performance is positively influenced by communication and social bonding, but negatively affected by distance and conflict. The results also reveal the moderating effect of both opportunism and interpartner incompatibility on the association between the exporter’s emotional intelligence and the behavioral atmosphere of the relationship with import buyers

International Business as disciplinary tautology: an ontological perspective

The identity, legitimacy, and sustainability of international business (IB) as a research field are at stake. IB is being overtaken by the evolution of industries and technology, and critical voices challenge its distinctiveness and value. We identify IB’s ambiguous conceptual space, articulate the roots of the problem, and suggest a perspective for re-legitimizing the discipline. Specifically, we contend that redrawing legitimate knowledge boundaries for IB requires an ontological shift. In this respect, we promote a focus on the processual constitution of international entities across time and a reconceptualization of IB as the amalgamation of local and international forces. The perspective we advocate aims to counterbalance the disciplinary tautology suffered by current IB conceptualizations and to open up the discussion on boundary identification in the field

Importer and exporter capabilities, governance mechanisms, and environmental factors determining customer-perceived relationship value

Although value creation is the overarching goal of interfirm exchange relationships, there is little research on relationship value in business markets in general and in global business markets in particular. The current research draws on the theoretical perspectives of dynamic capabilities, relational contracting, industry structure view, and Uppsala model of internationalization and synthesizes their insights to develop a model of customer-perceived relationship value in importer-exporter relationships. A mail survey was used to collect data from 211 import distributors of industrial products. The study results indicate that exporter core offering and customer responsiveness capabilities, importer market-sensing and customer relationship management capabilities, relational governance, psychic distance, and environmental munificence are important determinants of relationship value, while contractual governance has no detectable effect. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed and future research directions are presented

Relationship Value: Drivers and Outcomes in International Marketing Channels

Collaborative business arrangements based on relationship marketing have become ubiquitous over the past decades. Yet research studies of relationship value in international marketing channels are scarce. Drawing on the relational view of competitive advantage, this study investigates the drivers of relationship value in exporter– importer relationships and its impact on customer loyalty. The study findings reveal that relationship-specific investments, knowledge sharing, complementary capabilities, and relational norms are powerful contributors of importer-perceived value in an overseas supplier relationship. Importantly, exporter cultural sensitivity weakens the negative effect of psychic distance on relationship value; when cultural sensitivity is low, psychic distance takes on greater importance in attenuating relationship value, whereas when cultural sensitivity is high psychic distance has no discernible effect. In addition, the results demonstrate that relationship value results in insensitivity to competitive offerings and future purchase expansion. Implications for international marketing theory and practice are discussed

Eco-friendly product development strategy: antecedents, outcomes, and contingent effects

Integrating sustainability aspects into product development has long been recognized as a strategic priority for practitioners. Yet the literature reports mixed results on the product development effectiveness outcomes of sustainable product development strategies, while scant research has investigated how companies integrate environmental aspects into product development. This study develops a model that integrates effectiveness-enhancing outcomes and organizational inputs of eco-friendly product development strategies. Using questionnaire responses from firms from multiple industries, supplemented with lagged primary product development performance data, we find that top management commitment and corporate environmental support policies can facilitate eco-friendly product development strategies, while environmental performance incentives do not. In turn, the adoption of such strategies has a positive effect on firms’ product development effectiveness. This effect weakens when business conditions are highly complex but tends to become stronger with increasing levels of munificence in the business environment. These findings have important implications for practitioners and researchers that are discussed

Resources and capabilities as drivers of hotel environmental marketing strategy: Implications for competitive advantage and performance

Building on the resource-based view, we develop a model of drivers and outcomes of environmentally friendly marketing strategies in the Greek hotel sector. Data collected from 152 hotels reveal that possessing sufficient physical and financial resources is instrumental in achieving effective green marketing strategies. In addition, shared vision and technology sensing/response capabilities help develop a sound environmentally friendly marketing strategy. In turn, the adoption of such a strategy is conducive to obtaining competitive advantage, which subsequently increases the potential to achieve superior market and financial performance. Furthermore, the study finds that the effect of environmental marketing strategy on competitive advantage is stronger in the case of intense competitive situations, while market dynamism has no moderating effect on this association. Several implications can be drawn from the study findings for both corporate and public policy makers and interesting directions for future research are provided

Business model innovation and export performance

Although business model innovation (BMI) is generally beneficial for firms, few studies have investigated whether and under what conditions BMI benefits materialize in foreign markets. This research applies two complementary theoretical perspectives to understand the role of BMI in helping firms achieve enhanced performance in export markets. We argue that the effectiveness of the two types of BMI (novelty- and efficiency-centered) is influenced by factors such as relational embeddedness, international experience, and competitive intensity. Using primary data from 263 managers and CEOs from 194 exporting firms, we find that novelty- and efficiency-centered BMI boosts performance by strengthening exporters’ differentiation and cost advantages, respectively. We also show that for firms operating in mildly competitive environments and in a narrow set of countries, novelty-centered BMI is more likely to lead to a differentiation advantage. At the same time, exporters can attain greater cost advantages from efficiency-centered BMI if they have established strong relationships with their export customers/buyers and have been internationally active for a long time. Managers might need to pay close attention to the level of competition, as it can have both positive and negative implications for advantage-driven export performance outcomes

Betrayal in international buyer-seller relationships: Its drivers and performance implications

Although betrayal is a common phenomenon in inter-organizational cross-border relationships, the pertinent literature has remained relatively silent as regards its examination. However, the effects of betrayal are both long-lasting and destructive, and therefore an in-depth investigation of the factors that are driving it, as well as its performance outcomes, is considered necessary. Using a sample of 262 exporters, we confirm that betrayal in their relationships with foreign buyers is significantly and positively affected by relational uncertainty, opportunism, inter-partner incompatibility, relational distance, and conflict. The harmful effect of most of these factors on betrayal becomes stronger in the case of high foreign environmental uncertainty and high foreign market dynamism. The importer's betrayal actions are in turn responsible for reducing relational performance. In fact, this negative association between importer's betrayal and relational performance is more evident in relationships characterized by low dependence levels and low degrees of tolerance by the exporter