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

Institutional Export Barriers on Exporters from Emerging Markets: Evidence from China

The emerging markets have become the increasingly important trading nations in the global economy. Given its significance to practitioners and policymakers, export barriers has been the popular topic in the international business studies. However, research about export barriers caused by the local institutions are under developed, though institutional voids and institutional inefficiency are reported as the major determinants for business development in emerging markets. This paper aims to fill in this gap by exploring the institutional export barriers in emerging markets. Based on existing studies on export barriers and institutional perspective, a conceptual framework is initially developed by separating formal and informal institutional export barriers. Then three specific institutional export barriers are identified, including government policy, weak legal system and informal and personal networks. In the meanwhile, this paper sheds light on how the institutional export barriers are developed and obstruct exporting in emerging markets

Utilizing Functional Genomics Screening to Identify Potentially Novel Drug Targets in Cancer Cell Spheroid Cultures

The identification of functional driver events in cancer is central to furthering our understanding of cancer biology and indispensable for the discovery of the next generation of novel drug targets. It is becoming apparent that more complex models of cancer are required to fully appreciate the contributing factors that drive tumorigenesis in vivo and increase the efficacy of novel therapies that make the transition from preclinical models to clinical trials. Here we present a methodology for generating uniform and reproducible tumor spheroids that can be subjected to siRNA functional screening. These spheroids display many characteristics that are found in solid tumors that are not present in traditional two-dimension culture. We show that several commonly used breast cancer cell lines are amenable to this protocol. Furthermore, we provide proof-of-principle data utilizing the breast cancer cell line BT474, confirming their dependency on amplification of the epidermal growth factor receptor HER2 and mutation of phosphatidylinositol-4,5-biphosphate 3-kinase (PIK3CA) when grown as tumor spheroids. Finally, we are able to further investigate and confirm the spatial impact of these dependencies using immunohistochemistry.Open Access fees were supported by Nexcelom Bioscience, LLCThis work was funded by Breast Cancer Now. RN is the recipient of a Breast Cancer Now Career Development Fellowship (2011MaySF01

Antecedents and outcomes of consumer environmentally friendly attitudes and behaviour

With the intensification of problems relating to the environment, a growing number of consumers are becoming more ecologically conscious in their preferences and purchases of goods. This paper presents the results of a study conducted among 500 Cypriot consumers, focusing on the factors that shape consumer environmental attitudes and behaviour, as well as on the resulting outcomes. The findings confirmed that both the inward and outward environmental attitudes of a consumer are positively influenced by his/her degree of collectivism, long-term orientation, political involvement, deontology, and law obedience, but have no connection with liberalism. The adoption of an inward environmental attitude was also found to be conducive to green purchasing behaviour that ultimately leads to high product satisfaction. On the other hand, an outward environmental attitude facilitates the adoption of a general environmental behaviour, which is responsible for greater satisfaction with life. The findings of the study have important implications for shaping effective company offerings to consumers in target markets, as well as formulating appropriate policies at the governmental level to enhance environmental sensitivity among citizens

Economic liberalization and the antecedents of top management teams: evidence from Turkish 'big' business

There has been an increased interest in the last two decades in top management teams (TMTs) of business firms. Much of the research, however, has been US-based and concerned primarily with TMT effects on organizational outcomes. The present study aims to expand this literature by examining the antecedents of top team composition in the context of macro-level economic change in a late-industrializing country. The post-1980 trade and market reforms in Turkey provided the empirical setting. Drawing upon the literatures on TMT and chief executive characteristics together with punctuated equilibrium models of change and institutional theory, the article develops the argument that which firm-level factors affect which attributes of TMT formations varies across the early and late stages of economic liberalization. Results of the empirical investigation of 71 of the largest industrial firms in Turkey broadly supported the hypotheses derived from this premise. In the early stages of economic liberalization the average age and average organizational tenure of TMTs were related to the export orientation of firms, whereas in later stages, firm performance became a major predictor of these team attributes. Educational background characteristics of teams appeared to be under stronger institutional pressures, altering in different ways in the face of macro-level change

Ad Hoc Reviewers-Journal of Macromarketing Volume 33, Number 4, December 2013

[No abstract available

Analyzing stage and duration of Anglo-Chinese business-to-business relationships

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Industrial Marketing Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2010 Elsevier B.V.The manuscript reports on a study aimed at analyzing a series of relational variables derived from the Western industrial buyer–seller relationship and Chinese guanxi literature. The findings based on data collected from over 200 Taiwanese trading firms reveal that buyer's perceptions of organizational trust, communication, cooperation, social bonding and the saving of face are higher in Anglo-Chinese relationships that venture beyond the short-term. It is also found that cooperation, social bonding and performance are greater in those b2b relationships surveyed that are relatively more mature than in emerging states. The findings also reveal that relationship duration and stage have a significant moderating effect on various Inter-organizational and Interpersonal–Outcome relationships. Several managerial implications are extracted to help Western firms better manage their international relations, as well as help new exporting firms penetrate such well-established guanxi networks

The ‘T-Shaped Buyer’: a transactional perspective on supply chain relationships

This paper challenges the normative view of interdependent buyer-seller relationships and provides a more holistic perspective of the contextual reality that shapes buyer behaviour. By proposing an innovative qualitative methodology, which focusses on boundary-spanning, pre-sales interactions, the research penetrates complex and commercially sensitive buyer-seller relationships. The longitudinal research design uses web-based diaries and follow-up interviews to explore conditions of power based interdependence between buyers and sellers. The ensuing data is mapped using qualitative content analysis and the results are aggregated graphically for assessment. Using this approach the study develops a nuanced view of the dominant patterns of buyer behaviour, and challenges the opinion that a search for competitive advantage will strengthen cooperative relationships in conditions of power based interdependence. The paper introduces the metaphor of the 'T-Shaped Buyer' to explain the empirical findings and, while acknowledging the contextual limits of the study, suggests that this metaphor may cause both academics and practitioners to reflect on normative thinking