Standardization of international marketing strategy by firms from a developing country

A major debate in the international marketing literature deals with the globalization of markets and the extent to which a company’s international marketing strategy can be standardized (Buzzell, 1968; Cavusgil et al., 1993; Douglas and Wind, 1987; Hill and Still, 1984; Jain, 1989; Levitt, 1983; Sorenson and Wiechmann, 1975). Significant progress has been made with respect to the extent to which international marketing strategy can be standardized across national borders (Cavusgil et al., 1993; Jain, 1989). However, almost all previous research has been conducted from a US-firm perspective. Even though a few studies dealt with this debate in the context of less developed economies, the issues studied were viewed from the perspective of US firms’ operating activities in those economies (e.g. Grosse and Zinn, 1990; Hill and Still, 1984; Kacker, 1972). A major gap in the literature is whether our current knowledge can be generalized to foreign companies in other nations, especially the developing world. Firms from developing countries assume an increasingly important role in international competition, since many of the fastest growing economies in the world can be found in these nations. In addition, since developing countries are often culturally different from developed countries, they provide a suitable context to assess the generalizability of the existing knowledge in the standardization literature. Consequently, it is of interest to researchers and practitioners of international marketing to know the perspective of firms from developing countries regarding the standardization and adaptation of marketing strategy. Another void in the literature is that previous studies implicitly assume that standardization concepts are unidimensional at either the overall marketing programme level or the 4-P level (e.g. Akaah, 1991; Boddewyn et al., 1986;