دانلود رایگان مقاله هماهنگی فعالیت بازاریابی بین المللی

ABSTRACT

With this paper, we contribute to the literature of configuration and coordination in international firms. While previous literature emphasized that headquarters decide upon the configuration and coordination of their foreign subsidiaries, we suggest that the configuration–coordination decision takes place at the level of activities. With a focus on international marketing activities, our study on German firms from the automotive industry comes up with the following major findings: (1) With respect to configuration, firms tend to centralize the planning and the control of marketing activities, but to decentralize the implementation of marketing activities. (2) For the coordination of marketing activities, direct personal supervision and informal communication are preferred to other approaches, such as socialization or formal bureaucratic coordination. (3) When combining configuration and coordination of marketing activities, we identified distinct clusters. Firms that have a high decentralization of marketing activities and that use a high level of coordination yield better coordination results than firms from other configuration–coordination clusters.

5. Discussion

The field of international marketing is characterized by extensive research around the question of how to offer products and services abroad. Standardization and/or adaptation of various elements of product, pricing, distribution or communication policies have a very long research tradition. Numerous studies have been presented during the last decades, albeit with partially inconsistent results (Birnik & Bowman, 2007; Schmid & Kotulla, 2011; Tan & Sousa, 2013; Theodosiou & Leonidou, 2003; Waheeduzzaman & Dube, 2004). However, international firms do not only have to find a balance between standardization and adaptation of their marketing-mix, they also have to decide upon their marketing organization.