Strategic Marketing in an International Marketplace

Worldwide, businesses are faced with tremendous external factors that can dramatically affect efforts toward marketplace success. Whether it is natural disasters, political instability, or financial collapse, the fragility of the global economy has been evidenced extensively over the past few years. The borderless marketplace and the rapidity at which change can impact worldwide economies has made it an imperative that we better recognize and understand the phenomena that enable the forces of globalization to wield almost instantaneous transformation, as these forces of globalization have led to an aggressive competitive arena.

Every organization, regardless of geographic location, operates in this dynamic environment. Doing business in the constantly changing, borderless marketplace is an imperative in a marketplace in which world trade approached US$7 trillion by the beginning of the 21st century. This is not a situation to be feared, since change provides the opportunity for emergence of new market positions. Recently, however, changes are occurring more frequently and more rapidly with the potential for more severe impact. Due to growing real-time access to knowledge about customers, suppliers, and competitors, the international environment is increasingly characterized by instantaneity. As such, the past has lost much of its value as a predictor of the future, and current models of consumer and firm behavior may no longer harness the reality of the 21st century operating environment.

This special issue of the International Marketing Review is focused on any international marketing topic that is of relevance in today’s ever-changing marketplace. As such, we are interested in international strategic issues related to:

    Emerging markets

    Market entry decisions

    Culture/subculture/ethnicity

    Sustainability

    Corporate governance

    Buying behavior

    Standardization vs. localization

as well as tactical issues related to the traditional 4 Ps of marketing:

    International product/service development

    International branding

    International advertising

    International channel management

    International pricing

    International supply chain

This international marketing research can engage in theory development or theory testing. The context of the research can be broad or narrow – we are not limiting to one particular domain or context. However, papers should have a clear international marketing focus on how the reality of the 21st century operating environment can be predicted and modeled to aid in our understanding and knowledge of consumer and firm behavior.

Submission details:

The deadline for submission is August 1, 2014. Authors should follow IMR’s submission guidelines and submit via ScholarOne:

http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/imrev. (Ensure you submit to the correct special issue in the drop-down menu)

All submissions will be subject to the double-blind peer review process at the International Marketing Review.

Questions related to this special issue can be directed to either/both guest editors.

About the special issue editors:

John B. Ford is Professor of Marketing and International Business in the College of Business and Public Administration, Old Dominion University (USA). He is currently a regular Visiting Professor at the School of Marketing, Curtin University, Perth, Australia and IESEG, the Catholic University of Lille, France. He has previously been a Visiting Professor at Henley Management College (UK), Cass Business School, City University of London (UK), Kent Business School, University of Kent (UK), University of Westminster (UK), Australian National University (Australia), Kitakyushu University (Japan), and Waikato University (New Zealand).

John is a Past President and a Distinguished Fellow of the Academy of Marketing Science (AMS), and he was awarded the Harold W. Berkman Service Award by the Academy of Marketing Science. John’s research focuses on international/cross-cultural advertising strategy, construct equivalence, and nonprofit competitiveness. He has published 75 academic articles in such journals as International Marketing Review, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of International Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Services Marketing, and Stanford Social Innovation Review to name a few. He currently serves on nine different editorial review boards.

Victoria Crittenden is Professor of Marketing and Chair of the Marketing Division at Babson College (USA). Additionally, she serves (or has served) as Visiting Global Scholar in the D.B.A. program at the Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University (USA), Visiting Ph.D. Faculty at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (Sweden), Visiting Ph.D. Faculty at Luleå University (Sweden), a core faculty member at the WU Executive Academy (Austria) and as visiting faculty at the University of Ulster in Belfast (N. Ireland), The American College of Greece MBA Program in Athens (Greece), and University Robert Schuman, IECS in Strasbourg (France).

Vicky is President, and a Distinguished Fellow, of the Academy of Marketing Science (AMS). She is the 2013 recipient of the Pearson Prentice Hall’s Solomon-Marshall-Stewart Award for Innovative Excellence in Marketing Education awarded by the Teaching & Learning Special Interest Group in the American Marketing Association and the AMS Lamb, Hair, McDaniel Outstanding Marketing Teacher Award in 2005. Vicky’s research has been published extensively in journals such as the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Marketing Letters, Sloan Management Review, Psychology & Marketing, Business Horizons, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Journal of Business Research, Business Strategy Review, Corporate Reputation Review, Journal of Public Affairs, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Strategic Marketing, Information and Management, Organizations and Markets in Emerging Economies, and International Journal of Production Economics. She served as founding co-editor of the AMS Review and serves currently on numerous editorial review boards.