Book Description

The international marketing literature has grown exponentially in recent years in order to offer sufficient support to corporate and public policy-makers confronting today's turbulent global business conditions. However, according to some of the most recent and outstanding critical assessments of international marketing as a field of study, several promising research avenues are still open to further academic research in this scientific discipline. Accordingly, this volume is conceived as a deep exploration of the evolving nature of the international marketing discipline attending to the diverse sources of emerging opportunities and challenges currently confronting this field of research in the earliest years of this century. The papers in this volume approach this issue from different perspectives. Special consideration is given to firms' export behavior and performance as perhaps still the most relevant, but not the only international marketing strategy among SMEs in both developed and emerging economies. However, strategic internationalization processes in different sectoral contexts (manufacturing, hi-tech and service sectors, and also retailing) are also widely considered in this volume. Of course, the evolving nature of firms' internal capabilities and of shifting environmental forces, which become crucial issues mostly from the international marketers' perspective, are also outlined. Finally, more specific attention is devoted to the increased impact associated with the so-called information technology revolution (especially, the Internet) on business internationalization and international marketing policies and practices. Whereas the primary target readers of this volume are surely scholars and students generally interested in international business/marketing or even international entrepreneurship disciplines, both practitioners and policy-makers in this field should also find relevant insights into their current and future activities. Book jacket.