International Marketing Research

International Marketing Research: Opportunities and Challenges in the 21st Century

Alex Rialp, , Josep Rialp,
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 INTERNATIONAL MARKETING
RESEARCH: OPPORTUNITIES
AND CHALLENGES IN
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THE 21ST CENTURY

Alex Rialp and Josep Rialp

INTRODUCTION: STATE-OF-THE-ART AND

OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR
INTERNATIONAL MARKETING RESEARCH
IN THE 21ST CENTURY

According to a recent and interesting revision of advances in international

marketing theory and practice, the international marketing literature has
grown exponentially in recent years in order to offer sufcient support to
corporate and public policy makers confronting todays hostile global busi-
ness conditions (Katsikeas, 2003a). In fact, some of the most relevant
academic journals in this eld (Journal of International Business Studies,
Journal of International Marketing, International Marketing Review, Inter-
national Business Review, Advances in International Marketing, among
others) can be considered highly stable and mature publications, with re-
search articles covering a wide range of topics within the international
marketing domain and usually authorized by leading contributors to other

International Marketing Research: Opportunities and Challenges in the 21st Century

Advances in International Marketing, Volume 17, 113
Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1474-7979/doi:10.1016/S1474-7979(06)17019-2
1
 2 ALEX RIALP AND JOSEP RIALP

high-ranking marketing journals (DuBois & Reeb, 2000; Malhotra, Wu, &
Whitelock, 2005).
However, according to some of the most outstanding critical assessments
carried recently on the conceptual foundations, research traditions or earlier
development, and future research agenda regarding the discipline of inter-
national marketing as a eld of study (Cavusgil, 1998; Czinkota &
Ronkainen, 2003; Katsikeas, 2003a, 2003b; Balabanis, Theodosiou, &
Katsikea, 2004; Cavusgil, Deligonul & Yaprak, 2005; Douglas & Craig,
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2006) some promising research avenues are still open to further academic
research in this discipline. For instance, Cavusgil (1998) proposes the fol-
lowing research agenda for international marketing: (1) mainstream mar-
keting management issues in the international context; (2) special challenges
in international marketing; (3) marketing engineering: performance in
international marketing; (4) dynamic analysis of rm expansion in interna-
tional markets; (5) interrm partnering in international markets; (6) inter-
nationalization process of rms; (7) government promotion of international
business activity; (8) marketings interface with other functions; (9) com-
parative studies of marketing executive behavior; and (10) research methods
in international marketing. As this same author brilliantly stands out, it is
essential that we begin an open and constructive dialogue about what is
important, how to go about adding to knowledge, and how to enhance best
practices in international marketing (Cavusgil, 1998, p. 112).
In their well-known international marketing manifesto, Czinkota and
Ronkainen (2003) postulate that the eld of international marketing has
already and can continue to make major contributions to the improvement
of society. Seven propositions in support of a lively debate for the sake of a
renaissance of this eld are provided and illuminated by these authors:
(1) remember the roots and purpose of the eld, (2) resist the temptations of
overspecialization, (3) work with a new paradigm and new methods, (4) look
to the World, (5) maintain the dialogue with all possible constituents,
(6) work also with those who place or show, and (7) profess expertise. Also,
in an effort to isolate still remaining problems and issues underlying
Czinkota and Ronkainens manifesto and suggest ways of pushing their
propositions deeper, Katsikeas (2003b) stands out the lack of attention
afforded to examining outcomes of rms international marketing activities
and the need of incorporating specic company performance issues in this eld.
Similarly, Cavusgil et al. (2005) take into account the fundamental
changes currently taking place in the business global environment and in the
business enterprise itself which compel international marketing scholars to
continuously re-examine the progress being made by the elds researchers
 International Marketing Research 3

in developing knowledge. By critically evaluating progress in international

marketing as a eld of study through ontological, thematic, and method-
ological perspectives, these authors come up with a portfolio of research
topics worthy of further scholarly attention.
In this way, further theory development and reframing in the eld be-
comes particularly a must (Rialp & Rialp, 2001). According to Axinn
and Matthyssens (2001a, 2001b), existing theory in internationalization is
insufcient to explain the currently observed behaviors of rms in the in-
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ternational business marketplace (i.e., the increased speed of internation-

alization, the limits of psychic distance, the range of foreign entry modes
accommodated by the rm, and so on). Accordingly, some new and chal-
lenging issues such as the increasing impact of the global economy, the
service economy, the new knowledge-based economy, the high technology
and connected knowledge/network economy, and the customer value-based
economy are not only changing the shape of international business be-
havior, but also casting doubt on the applicability of traditional interna-
tionalization theories.
Also, Douglas and Craig (2006) are of the opinion that international mar-
keting research plays a vital role as rms expand globally. Yet limited
attention, according to these authors, has been paid to the conceptual under-
pinnings of research needed to guide such a foreign expansion. Accordingly,
these authors develop rened conceptual frameworks that are indeed capable
to guide further research in the eld, also dealing with more appropriate
unit of analysis selection and constructs measurement. In a previous interna-
tional marketers-oriented work, these same authors (Craig & Douglas, 2001)
had already identied four key areas where progress at conducting interna-
tional marketing research had to be made. First, international marketing
research efforts need to be more closely aligned with market growth oppor-
tunities outside the industrialized nations. Second, international marketing
researchers must develop the capability to conduct and coordinate research
that spans diverse research environments. Third, they need to develop new and
more creative approaches to probe the cultural underpinnings of behavior.
Finally, technological advances, such as the Internet, need to be incorporated
into the research process in order to facilitate and expedite research conducted
across the globe.
Another traditional research sub-area in the eld, clearly demanding some
more renement and re-elaboration, both from the theoretical and empirical
standpoint, is, according to Balabanis et al. (2004), export marketing re-
search. For these authors, rapid technological, institutional, legislative,
economic, and attitudinal changes across the globe pose critical challenges
 4 ALEX RIALP AND JOSEP RIALP

(but also, new opportunities) for the future development of export marketing
research. This research should focus on the identication of the right export
marketing capabilities that rms should develop or acquire, the ability to
leverage or transfer them across international markets, and the ability of
constantly upgrading them. Also, of critical importance are the processes
currently used to develop such capability-based international (export) mar-
keting strategies and to manage relationships with international customers
and partners.
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In addition to this, entrepreneurship is becoming a growing phenomenon

in World markets. Therefore, a new and highly related eld of inquiry in
which further contributions from (international) marketing scholars as well
as those provided by traditional entrepreneurship researchers are expected
to widely increase in the years to come is referred to the emerging discipline
of international entrepreneurship (Etemad & Right, 2003; Styles & Seymour,
2006). In Styles and Seymours (2006, p. 126) own words: there is con-
siderable scope for marketing academics to contribute to the nascent eld of
international entrepreneurship which would, in turn, advance marketing
theory. In particular, some relevant analytic perspectives adopted in this
international entrepreneurship eld (basically the result of mixing entrepre-
neurship and international business/marketing disciplines), are currently
referred to the emergence and consolidation, both in traditional and high-
tech sectors, of the so-called born-global rms, global start-ups, and/or
international new ventures (Knight & Cavusgil, 1996; Madsen & Servais,
1997; Rialp, Rialp, & Knight, 2005; Rialp, Rialp, Urbano, & Vaillant, 2005)
as well as the interface of the Internet and rm entrepreneurial behavior in
international markets (Sinkovics & Bell, 2006).
With this general assessment of the current status of the international
marketing discipline in mind and, more in particular, taking into account
the diverse challenges and opportunities that can be associated with further
research in this still very promising eld of scientic inquiry, we describe
hereon the origin, structure, and contents of this Special Issue of Advances in
International Marketing.

THE SPECIAL ISSUE: ORIGIN, STRUCTURE AND

CONTENTS
The origin of this Special Issue of Advances in International Marketing is
found in an international conference of the Consortium for International
Marketing and Research (CIMaR) that took place in Barcelona, Spain on
 International Marketing Research 5

May 2831, 2005. Sponsored and co-organized by the Center for Interna-
tional Business Education and Research at Michigan State University
(E. Lansing, Michigan) and the Department of Business Economics at the
Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain), the conference featured
about 30 accepted papers and works in progress.
In addition to this meeting research outcomes, a subsequent call for pa-
pers for a Special Issue of Advances in International Marketing with the title
International Marketing Challenges in the 21st Century was launched
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in October, 2005 with the main objective of providing a new setting for
scholars and academics around the globe to exchange and/or share their
most current research interests and ideas related to this evolving and chal-
lenging scientic discipline of international marketing. In particular, given
some recent and important trends of change being present today in the
global business sphere (for example, consolidation of emerging sectors,
more rapid pace of technological change and business internationalization
processes, greater integration and interconnectedness of international econ-
omies and rms, converging buying behavior, recent but critical advances in
telecommunications and transportation facilities, among others), a critical
assessment and further explanatory research of the expected inuences, in
the form of both new research opportunities and challenges in the eld,
associated with these phenomena in the years to come had to be newly
approached.
Both conceptual as well as empirical papers were highly welcome for
publication consideration for this volume. Empirical papers might employ
quantitative and/or qualitative (e.g., case study) methodologies, but in any
case submissions for this special issue had to be of high and robust academic
rigor. For some CIMaR participants in the last meeting in Barcelona, this
meant an excellent opportunity to re-submit a revised version of their earlier
submissions (papers, research proposals, or works in progress), and/or any
other paper tting the publications philosophy and guidelines. Neverthe-
less, all other researchers in this eld were also kindly invited to submit their
papers for this special issue.
As a result of this call for papers, a considerable number of submissions
were received which were then submitted to a rigorous, double-blind review
process. Although there were several other papers that could have been inclu-
ded in this volume, reviewers evaluations (and corresponding contributors
revisions), space limitations, and other conditions, such as achieving enough
geographical dispersion of authors and appropriate balance among topics
covered by the different studies, led to our nal selection of the
15 papers presented in this volume which were delivered by more than
 6 ALEX RIALP AND JOSEP RIALP

30 contributors in the discipline of international marketing from all over the

World. In addition to the work of scholars from the United States, other
papers developed by researchers in many other countries in this eld are also
included. Most of these papers report on individual, rm, or institutional
behavior in a wide array of World economies ranging from Australia,
Denmark, Germany, or UK to Italy, Finland or Spain, and from Turkey to
Vietnam, among others. Accordingly, we believe that this collection repre-
sents a comprehensive treatment of the contemporary issues and problems
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being currently faced mostly by small- and medium-sized rms in different

type of sectors (including manufacturing industries and services) in both
developed and emerging, developing economies.
Thus, as regards to its structure and contents, apart from this introduc-
tory chapter, the special issue consists of 15, double peer-reviewed
manuscripts covering very relevant topics in contemporary international
marketing research, that we believe will become of very great interest not
only for both academics and practitioners, but also for policy makers in this
eld. The issue is structured in four different, but at the same time related,
sections which proceed from the more general issues of the export and
internationalization processes toward some more specic issues and applica-
tions both at the environmental and technological levels: (1) export be-
havior, development process, and performance (four chapters); (2) strategic
internationalization process in different sectoral settings (three chapters);
(3) environmental inuences and emerging markets for international mar-
keters (three chapters); and nally (4) business internationalization and in-
formation technologies (ve chapters). Hereon, we briey introduce the
15 selected chapters for this volume of Advances in International Marketing
according to the four different parts or sections in which they have been
assigned.

PART I: EXPORT BEHAVIOR, DEVELOPMENT

PROCESS, AND PERFORMANCE

In the opening piece of this volume, Jorma Larimo explores past and current
research related to rm export performance a topic in which many studies
have been conducted to date with mixed results. This new empirical paper
is aimed at analyzing (1) the impact of the selected rm, management, and
the export strategy-related variables on export performance; (2) the possi-
ble variation existing in the results depending on the different types of
measuring this export performance dimension; and (3) the similarities and
 International Marketing Research 7

differences in the results depending on the type of SME traditional ex-

porters vs. born international companies. The study is based on a survey
conducted among Finnish SMEs in early 2002. While none of the hypoth-
eses were fully supported by all of the six measures of export performance
being employed, this dimension was positively impacted by rm size, prod-
uct/service quality, international orientation, and market diversication
along ve measures. Additionally, the study indicates some similarities and
differences depending not only on the measure selected for export perform-
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ance, but also on the type of the exporting SME, and the operationalization
being used for the born international companies.
The second paper in this section, by Antonella Zucchella and Giada
Palamara, conceives that small rms can approach foreign markets and
reach high levels of export intensity combined with a broad geographic
scope in spite of their limited resources just by adopting a niche strategy.
Such a global niche approach also help explain, among other factors, why
and how new rms can become international or even global since their
inception. By means of applying case study analysis, this paper shows a
positive relation between niche strategy and high international performance,
in terms of export intensity, precocity, speed, and market scope. The
international expansion of such niche-oriented rms is based on a horizon-
tal microsegmentation of the global market: they move internationally
following global customers, regardless the psychic/geographical distance in
play, and compete mostly on a non-price basis.
Arstides Olivares and Sonia Suarez investigate, in the following contri-
bution of this section, the issue of entry timing in the export development
process of, in this case, Spanish manufacturing rms. This process is con-
ceived as a sequential path along the following export stages: (1) the pre-
engagement phase, where rms do not export; (2) the initial phase, where
rms export by means of an agent; and (3) the advanced phase, where rms
export via a sales subsidiary. This study is then focused on the type of
factors which can accelerate or decelerate the decision to entry in and/or
change across these phases. Event history analysis is applied to a data set
comprised by 1,478 rms in 2002. Results indicate that the development of
product or process innovations becomes the most signicant motivation for
an early entry in the initial and advanced phases of the export development
process. In addition, network ties, a broader scope of products, rm size,
and foreign ownership participation are also key factors in accelerating
entries in this process.
Finally, the paper ending this rst section focused on export behavior and
performance, authored by Trang T.M. Nguyen, Nigel Barrett and Tho
 8 ALEX RIALP AND JOSEP RIALP

D. Nguyen, examines the roles played by market and learning orientations in

relationship quality between exporters in transition economies and their for-
eign importers and subsequently, export performance. A random sample of
283 export rms in Vietnam provides enough evidence to support the hy-
pothesized main effects. The results further indicate that learning orientation
plays a role in building high-quality relationships for both new and mature
relationships. However, the impact of market orientation on relationship
quality is found only in the new relationship. In addition, rm ownership
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structure does not seem to moderate the relationships between learning ori-
entation, market orientation, relationship quality, and export performance.

PART II: STRATEGIC INTERNATIONALIZATION

PROCESS IN DIFFERENT SECTORAL SETTINGS

The following contributors, Calin Gurau and Ashok Ranchhod, examine how
the accelerated globalization of World markets in the last three decades has
dramatically increased the importance of internationalization models even
more, both from an academic and a practitioner perspective. Actually, such
internationalization process shows major implications for the strategic
orientation of small rms. However, these authors contextualize this phe-
nomenon in relation with the specic characteristics for various market
environments and industrial sectors, as for instance, high-tech ones. Ac-
cordingly, by means of a comparative analysis of the internationalization
processes of UK and US biotech SMEs, this study shows the impact of the
domestic market prole on this process, outlining also the similarities and
the differences that can be observed between these two countries.
Focusing on non-traditional economic activities, Esther Sanchez and Jose
Pla stand out that, despite the increasing importance of the service sector in
developed economies and the growth of foreign investments in this sector
during the last decade, few studies have undertaken to empirically analyze
the factors inuencing foreign entry mode choice in this context. For these
authors, the special characteristics of services increase the complexity of the
analysis and, thus, traditional explanations of international entry mode
choice in manufacturing sectors may need to be complemented by other
moderating inuences. Based on 174 entry decisions of service rms, their
results suggest the importance of including strategic variables and the spe-
cic nature of services to understand such a complex phenomenon, which is
not always associated just with efciency and value-based considerations
but also with strategic issues and industry characteristics.
 International Marketing Research 9

Also in the context of international market entry strategies for service

providers, Kannika Leelapanyalert and Pervez Ghauri acknowledge that
numerous studies have focused on retailing rms and their activities abroad;
however, these have not been able to fully identify the factors that inuence
the process of retail internationalization. Thus, their paper examines the
factors that inuence the foreign market entry process in retailing rms and
develops a conceptual model, which is then used to analyze two case studies:
the entry strategies followed by IKEA in China, and by Marks & Spencer
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(M&S) in Hong Kong. By fully examining these two business experiences,

the authors provide insights into the type of factors inuencing the foreign
market entry process and how other rms can manage it.

PART III: ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES AND

EMERGING MARKETS FOR INTERNATIONAL
MARKETERS

In the paper that introduces the third section of this volume, Michael
R. Mullen and Shirley Ye Sheng complement and extend a growing body of
work developing and using overall market opportunity indexes (OMOIs) to
rank the attractiveness of potential foreign markets. Assuming that rms in
most industries must look to expand into international markets to survive
and thrive, the index developed in this paper assesses countries market
potential beyond the traditional measures of market size and economic de-
velopment also by including political risk, economic freedom, telecommu-
nications as well as physical infrastructure and geographic distance.
Accordingly, the authors provide a current and detailed analysis of mar-
ket attractiveness and opportunity for the largest set of countries indexed
and ranked to date. The validity of the index is also assessed by comparing
the ranking of market opportunity to actual subsequent trade ows from the
US. The modied OMOI is shown to be a exible, valid, and fairly stable
tool for preliminary analysis of foreign market opportunity.
Acknowledging the popularity of country-of-origin research in interna-
tional marketing, but transferring it to new and unexplored context, Patrick
Lentz, Hartmut H. Holzmuller, and Eric Shrirrmann focus on the lack of
attention usually been paid to effects which stem from the declaration of a
products local origin. In this study, insights from country-of-origin research
as well as exploratory qualitative studies are used to model determinants of
preference for local products. Conjoint analysis and structural equations
results based on a sample of consumers from three neighboring cities in
 10 ALEX RIALP AND JOSEP RIALP

Germany conrm the importance of local origin for product preference as

well as of the mechanism of such city-of-origin effects.
Finally, Attila Yaprak, Bahattin Karademir, and Richard N. Osborn ap-
proach the issue of how do business groups function and evolve in emerging
markets by analyzing the case of Turkish business groups. According to
these authors, business groups have not received sufcient attention in the
international marketing literature, though they have become a signicant
phenomenon in the evolution and functioning of emerging markets. They
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also provide important local partnership opportunities to international

marketers. Accordingly, this paper provides a general overview of the
theories that explain how business groups function and evolve in these
markets with the aim of generating subsequent propositions from that
theory. Evidence on such business groups evolution in Turkey, which is
taken as an illustration of one emerging country market, is presented and
discussed in detail by these authors.

PART IV: BUSINESS INTERNATIONALIZATION AND

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES
The last section of this volume is more specically devoted to the high
degree of impact that the emergence and consolidation of the Internet,
among other information technologies, is currently having on small rm
internationalization and international marketing strategies, such as exporting.
In the paper introducing this last section, Per Servais, Tage Koed Madsen,
and Erik S. Rasmussen conceive e-business as a very important and rev-
olutionary business tool, also relevant for small- and medium-sized rms
(SMEs) aimed at internationalizing. With e-business and the Internet so-
lutions, borders between countries are becoming less relevant, and more
direct interaction between separate businesses becomes possible. In this
chapter, the authors unravel the use of the Internet by different types of
rms. First, a categorization of different local and international rms is
presented, and then the level of Internet usage by the so-called born global
rms as compared to the usage of this tool by other types of rms is analy-
zed. According to the results of this study, born globals make use of the
Internet to convey their market presence, but only to a limited extent they
sell their products electronically abroad. Instead, Internet help them support
already existing actions by also describing their products on web pages,
offering services related to their products, facilitating product development,
and building and maintaining relations to foreign customers. Thus, this
 International Marketing Research 11

article sheds some prior light on the key question of how small rms in
general, and born global rms in particular, will continue to adapt the
Internet technology in practice, though much more research on this issue is
expected by these authors.
In a similar vein, Stephen Chens chapter examines to what extent Inter-
net-based rms have indeed globalized and the key factors that have enabled
some rms to globalize more than others. Contrary to arguments that In-
ternet-based rms automatically benet from a global market, this study
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shows that most Internet rms serve regional markets. However, the author
nds a few notable exceptions. Interestingly, in these cases, a combination of
early-mover advantages, unique product, technology standards, and com-
plementary products and services seem to have created what this author
calls a winner-takes-all market in which a few rms dominate markets
worldwide.
The following paper is jointly authorized by Catherine N. Axinn, Dawn
R. Deeter-Schmelz, Brian T. Straley, and Ernest J. Zavoral Jr. Drawing from
seminal research on organizational buying behavior, these authors make use
of the exploratory case study approach to explore the impact of the Internet
and internationalization on todays industrial procurement processes. In
particular, by means of conducting several interviews with senior managers
of an industrial distributor, a number of key insights and implications for
future research regarding the impact of the Internet on buyersupplier in-
teractions and the importance of global sourcing are revealed in this chapter.
The following selected paper, co-authorized again by Tho D. Nguyen and
Nigel Barrett, starts from the assumption that the Internet is a crucial source
of information that can be transformed into knowledge. The authors of this
study develop an Internet-based knowledge internalization process in which
internationalizing rms in transition markets utilize the Internet to search
for information about foreign markets, to assess its relevance, and then to
internalize it for their internationalization purposes. It is also found that
such a process underlies international orientation and foreign sales intensity
which in turn, has a reciprocal effect on it. Further, learning orientation also
facilitates the Internet-based knowledge internalization process. According
to the authors, these ndings suggest that internationalizing rms should
promote and value this process in order to mitigate their common lack of
foreign market knowledge.
Finally, the research paper that closes this section and the volume, co-
authorized by Heidi Winklhofer, Kathryn Houghton, and Thomas Chesney, is
focused on the drivers and inhibitors determining how advanced websites of
SME exporters are. According to these authors opinion, despite the much
 12 ALEX RIALP AND JOSEP RIALP

publicized advantages of a website for SME exporters, the level of website

sophistication, as well as the factors which inhibit or stimulate exporting
SMEs to develop their website beyond a basic level of sophistication, are
still unknown. The literature is prone to discuss website establishment and
development simultaneously, splitting rms into adopters and non-adopters,
yet websites may be established and then neglected, or be continually de-
veloped. Accordingly, their paper introduces an instrument for measuring
website sophistication within an export marketing context, and proposes
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and empirically tests a model that depicts factors impacting on perceived

advantages of a website and its sophistication levels. The results of this
empirical study identify export diversity and environmental pressure as the
key determinants of perceived advantage of a website which in turn is a
good predictor of website sophistication. However, the rms internal re-
sources, i.e., information and communication technology (ICT) knowledge
and time, in conjunction with entrepreneurship orientation, also determine
small- and medium-sized exporting rms website sophistication level.
Once we have briey introduced the different research articles selected for
this Special Issue of Advances in International Marketing as a way of iden-
tifying and discussing emerging opportunities and challenges in this current
century for academics and practitioners in the international marketing eld,
we sincerely hope that you will enjoy reading and reecting on the work
presented in this volume, at least as much as we enjoyed composing it!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As the guest co-editors of this volume, we would like to especially ac-

knowledge the series editors of Advances in International Marketing,
S. Tamer Cavusgil and Kathy Waldie, from Michigan State University,
for the inspiration, continued guidance, and leadership they have always
provided to us as well as all of the authors and reviewers involved in this
volume for having played an excellent role contributing not only with their
precious time, but also with their great effort and talents.

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Elsevier.
 International Marketing Research 13

Axinn, C. N., & Matthyssens, P. (2001b). Limits of internationalization theories in an unlimited

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