Executive Summaries

Multinational firms exposure to highly diverse markets in many countries enables them to develop a storehouse of knowledge from vastly varied contexts. In turn, this knowledge provides the potential to outperform their domestic competitors by creating superior value. Thus, a source of potentially valuable knowledge in multinational enterprises is foreign marketing knowledgethat is, knowledge from one country unit that may offer value and competitive advantage to marketing managers in other country units. In this article, Roth, Jayachandran, Dakhli, and Colton build on marketing and management knowledge transfer research to further understand both the conditions under which one subsidiary uses external knowledge from another subsidiary and the outcomes of such use in the subsidiary's market. Using the theory of value creation and appropriation and field interviews with headquarter and subsidiary marketing managers, the authors develop a theoretical framework to delineate the conditions that influence the use of marketing knowledge generated in one country unit for marketing decisions in another subsidiary. Their model integrates prior research on the conditions that affect knowledge transfer and use in multinational firms with insights from depth interviews. The model is based on grounded theory methodology and emphasizes that the mere availability of marketing knowledge developed in other country units does not facilitate its use. Roth, Jayachandran, Dakhli, and Colton develop a model and research propositions of the enabling, motivating, and perceiving conditions that affect subsidiary use of foreign marketing knowledge. They also examine strategic outcomes of foreign market knowledge use, including effects on marketing program effectiveness and efficiency, organization identification, and intellectual capital in subsidiaries of multinational enterprises. They conclude with implications of the study for managers and academics.

SUBSIDIARY USE OF FOREIGN MARKETING KNOWLEDGE

Martin S. Roth, Satish Jayachandran, Mourad Dakhli, and Deborah A. Colton

Journal of International Marketing 2009, American Marketing Association Vol. 17, No. 1, 2009, p. v ISSN 1069-031X (print) 1547-7215 (electronic)

Executive Summaries

PACKAGE DESIGN AS A COMMUNICATIONS VEHICLE IN CROSS-CULTURAL VALUES SHOPPING

Yonca Limon, Lynn R. Kahle, and Ulrich R. Orth

International marketing managers have the choice of offering globally standardized or locally differentiated packages. This decision depends on local preferences and on how consumers form their purchase intentions on the basis of package design. To improve the efficiency of package decisions, firms need to understand consumers decision-making processes and, in particular, whether consumer response to brand packages is influenced more by cultural or individual characteristics. This research tests a universal model across cultural groups. The finding that consumers infer brand values (i.e., internal, external, and fun and enjoyment values) from packages and form their purchase intentions on the basis of those values has several important practical implications. First, the study underscores the communicative power of packages and suggests that package design should be at the forefront of marketing managers branding strategies. Second, given that consumers infer brand values in brand packages, international marketing managers should use the concept of brand values for strategic planning. Third, the results highlight the role of brand values in forming consumer purchase intentions. In particular, the finding that the influence of brand values on purchase intention varies across cultures suggests that brand managers should adapt rather than standardize their brand meaning to specific cultural groups. Firms should create package designs to transfer brand meaning to target groups that hold a specific set of personal values. For example, whereas internal brand values may drive purchases in one culture, fun and enjoyment brand values may drive purchases in another. Brand managers must learn the value compositions of target audiences and should differentiate brands with respect to those values. Creating brand designs that match those values will elicit the responses desired in a specific culture.

Journal of International Marketing 2009, American Marketing Association Vol. 17, No. 1, 2009, p. vi ISSN 1069-031X (print) 1547-7215 (electronic)

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Executive Summaries

At the turn of the millennium, the locus of global economic growth has increasingly shifted toward developing economies in Asia, Africa, and South America. However, even as companies venture into these areas, their managers have encountered an unfamiliar retail format: tens of thousands of scattered, unsophisticated, small retail outlets. Retailing concepts developed in the context of developed economies are often not applicable in the small retailer context. Lenartowicz and Balasubramanian study the practices and performance of these small retailers. First, they synthesize key findings about small retailers from the existing literature. This synthesis informs managers about the macro issues they must consider when managing the small retail sector. Second, they provide a complementary micro perspective into the decision-making processes and performance of small retailers in a specific market: the So Paulo urban area in Brazil. Lenartowicz and Balasubramanian qualitatively analyze small retailer decision making through observational studies and interviews and establish how the retailers employ heuristics in their inventory decisions in a technologyimpoverished environment. Next, they analyze a unique data set that includes information about the opening product inventory, reorders, and closing inventory across four weeks for 2547 retail outlets in the market. The data also include information on business type (covering six types of retail outlets), location, offered credit terms, the number of carried brands, and the identity of the salesperson for each store. The authors examine how distributor-related and supplyside variables, in conjunction with the quality of decision making, drive inventory turnover, a key measure of performance in the small retailer context. The findings yield several managerial insights. First, with the revealed knowledge about how small retailers make ordering decisions, managers can influence these decisions more effectively to enhance the overall efficiency of the supply chain. Second, managers can optimally design supplyside policies to have the desired impact on retail and channel performance. For example, the findings suggest that superior credit terms offered to retailers, at least in the studied context, do not enhance retail performance. Accordingly, managers can redesign credit policies to reinvigorate their role as a driver of retail performance. Likewise, in line with the studys findings, managers can fine-tune training and policies related to the sales force to enhance its effect on retail performance. Overall, the findings yield insights into how small retailers in developing economies function and how they can be better managed.

PRACTICES AND PERFORMANCE OF SMALL RETAIL STORES IN DEVELOPING ECONOMIES

Tomasz Lenartowicz and Sridhar Balasubramanian

Journal of International Marketing 2009, American Marketing Association Vol. 17, No. 1, 2009, p. vii ISSN 1069-031X (print) 1547-7215 (electronic)

Executive Summaries

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CONJOINING INTERNATIONAL MARKETING AND RELATIONSHIP MARKETING: EXPLORING CONSUMERS CROSS-BORDER SERVICE RELATIONSHIPS
Edwin J. Nijssen and Hester van Herk

Research on international marketing constructs, such as consumer ethnocentrism and country-of-origin effects, typically focuses on consumers initial evaluations of foreign products but ignores consumers emerging cross-border exchange relationships with foreign service providers. This seems to be at odds with the observation that cross-border shopping has evolved into a significant and worldwide phenomenon. With the world changing and cross-border shopping increasingly becoming a structural phenomenon, research attention should shift toward studying the influence of international marketing constructs on the development of these new exchange relationships and their dynamics. Nijssen and Van Herk address this issue and call for new research that conjoins the international and relationship marketing literature streams. They provide an illustrative example using survey data and develop a research agenda that identifies several avenues for further research. The empirical test involves a study of German consumers who regularly cross the GermanDutch border to attend to their bank accounts with a foreign (i.e., Dutch) bank. It shows that loyalty to the foreign financial service provider may be explained using substantive relational antecedents but that international marketing antecedents complement the picture. In particular, positive beliefs about the foreign industry and negative feelings of consumer ethnocentrism influence the value and loyalty constructs. This finding confirms that international context matters for the evolution of the relationship, and it illustrates the ambivalent feelings consumers experience in the exchange process. Nijssen and Van Herk suggest five avenues for further research. First, researchers should try to better understand the dynamics of cross-border exchange relationships. They should try to model positive and negative emotions simultaneously to discern how consumers emotions evolve and adjust marketing efforts accordingly. Second, new constructs should be developed to capture more effectively the positive attitudes that consumers may develop over time and that may affect the cross-border exchange relationship. Third, researchers should extend their work by modeling contextual effects. In addition to drawing on country-of-origin theory, researchers could adapt institutional theory to increase understanding of why consumers prefer transactional rather than relational exchanges in certain cross-border situations. Fourth, researchers could explore differences in the dynamics of the exchange relationship of people with both low and high levels of ethnocentrism. These groups may have different motivations for engaging with a foreign provider and may travel different trajectories. Fifth, research could focus on the extent to which a less or more positive productcountry image in the service industry contributes to the development of ongoing relationships with foreign providers.

Journal of International Marketing 2009, American Marketing Association Vol. 17, No. 1, 2009, p. viii ISSN 1069-031X (print) 1547-7215 (electronic)

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Executive Summaries

Although globalization continues to intensify across industries and economies, it is unclear whether consumer attitudes and behaviors worldwide are likewise globalizing. As global forces progressively permeate across national frontiers, some authors have argued that a homogeneous global consumer culture will eventually emerge. Others have countered that individual consumers are increasingly motivated to resist global forces and that the entrenchment of localized differences promotes greater heterogeneity of behaviors. Still others have argued that under globalization, the cultural fragmentation of the individual consumer means that behaviors are simultaneously becoming similar and dissimilar, within and across countries. Successful marketing is largely contingent on implementing a consumer-oriented strategy that considers the attitudes and values of targeted consumers. Thus, international marketers need to understand how and which consumer attitudes and associated behaviors are similar and different across countries. To this end, Cleveland, Laroche, and Papadopoulos conduct a cross-cultural study, focusing on three attitudinal dispositions linked to globalization cosmopolitanism (COS), consumer ethnocentrism (CET), and materialism (MAT)as well as the potential demographic precursors and behavioral outcomes of these key constructs. After validating these dispositional measures across the eight-country samples (Canada, Mexico, Chile, South Korea, India, Sweden, Hungary, and Greece), the authors show that the links to the various demographic predictors (sex, age, income, and education) differ considerably across country samples. The roles of COS, CET, and MAT on consumer behavior vary substantially across the range of product categories considered. For example, whereas COS is positively linked to behaviors associated with electronic media and communication products, CET is negatively linked to such behaviors. Although the authors find common patterns of relationships across two or more country samples, many discrepancies also are evidenced. Cleveland, Laroche, and Papadopoulos advise international marketers to recognize the following when defining the target market and designing the marketing strategy (in particular, communication appeals): (1) the situations that increase the feelings of traditional culture affiliation and attendant consumer ethnocentric dispositions (e.g., the consumption of foods and other culturally laden products), (2) the contexts favoring the emergence of cosmopolitan dispositions (e.g., product categories that appeal to universal human values), and (3) when and where consumption is driven by material values (e.g., socially visible products). In summary, the findings imply that globalization has made uneven inroads on consumer attitudes and behaviors.

COSMOPOLITANISM, CONSUMER ETHNOCENTRISM, AND MATERIALISM: AN EIGHT-COUNTRY STUDY OF ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOMES
Mark Cleveland, Michel Laroche, and Nicolas Papadopoulos

Journal of International Marketing 2009, American Marketing Association Vol. 17, No. 1, 2009, p. ix ISSN 1069-031X (print) 1547-7215 (electronic)

Executive Summaries

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