A new beginning

Citation

Cadogan, J.W. (2014), "A new beginning", International Marketing Review, Vol. 31 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMR-01-2014-0012

A new beginning

Article Type: Editorial From: International Marketing Review, Volume 31, Issue 1.

Welcome to the first issue of 2014, and the beginning of a new editorial structure at IMR. Jeryl Whitelock, my co-editor for the past six years, has stepped down from her role with the journal, and I have taken up the role of Editor-in-Chief. I am sad to see Jeryl leave – she's been an inspiration to me, and I will miss her academic integrity, her organizational skills, and her wonderful warmth. Jeryl has been hugely instrumental in ensuring that the journal has moved from strength to strength, and has provided enormous support for me personally over the years as I learnt the “editorial ropes”. Jeryl's careful stewardship of the journal is inspirational, and I intend to continue pushing the journal in the direction in which she has steered it.

Now, looking to the future, I have decided to inject IMR with with a new boost of energy, and bring about a journal with the following characteristics:

1. IMR will remain a journal that has, as its core remit, the goal of publishing research that pushes back the boundaries of international marketing knowledge. IMR will continue to do this by publishing novel research ideas, and by publishing papers that add substance to, question the basic assumptions of, reframe, or otherwise shape what we think we know within the international marketing field. IMR will continue to be pluralistic, publishing papers that are conceptual, quantitative-empirical, or qualitative-empirical.

2. IMR will be a journal that recognizes great papers and great research ideas, and works hard with authors to nurture those ideas through to publication.

3. IMR will be a journal that is proactive in developing the research agenda in international marketing, by identifying critical research issues, and promoting research within those areas.

4. IMR will be a journal that is comfortable exploring, and that fosters the exploration of, the interfaces and overlaps between international marketing and other business disciplines. Where no interfaces or overlaps exist, IMR will be a journal that is ready to create them.

Over the past few weeks and months, I have been putting together a team of associate editors, to join me in ensuring that IMR achieves these goals. In this respect, I have recruited associate editors who are vibrant, enthusiastic scholars, people who care about the discipline, who are motivated by the idea of, and are excited to be involved in, advancing knowledge in international marketing.

In alphabetic order, the associate editors are:

Assistant Professor Nathaniel Boso – Leeds University, UK

Professor George Christodoulides – Birkbeck, University of London, UK

Associate Professor Mark Cleveland – University of Western Ontario, Canada

Professor Anne-Marie Doherty – University of Strathclyde, UK

Associate Professor Susan Freeman – Adelaide University, Australia

Associate Professor Aviv Shoham – University of Haifa, Israel

Assistant Professor Christina Sichtmann – University of Vienna, Austria

Professor Carlos Sousa – Durham University, UK

Please join me in welcoming the new team into office.

The papers in this issue

Four papers are published in this issue. The first, by Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp, is an article titled “How global brands create firm value: The 4V Model”. The paper explores the issue of what is a global brand, presents a typology of valued brands, and explores four sources of value for global brands. Steenkamp then elaborates on different value delivery issues (such as who to deliver value to, what is delivered, and how it is delivered), before looking at the issue of brand value outcomes (and the tricky matter of assessing brand value). The paper also highlights many important areas where future research efforts are needed. Overall, this work provides a go-to paper for those who are interested in the domain of international branding, fusing many stands of research into a coherent whole, and providing an indispensable resource for scholars and practitioners alike.

The second paper in this issue (The influence of national culture on the use of rewards alignment to improve sales collaboration) is by Peter Magnusson, Robert Peterson and Stanford Westjohn, and focuses on the relationships that the sales function has with other functional areas within the firm (sales collaboration). Based on a study of nearly 3,000 “sales leaders” (e.g. VPs of sales and sales managers), from businesses in 26 countries, the authors find that there is a positive relationship between the extent to which sales compensation rewards are aligned with business objectives and sales collaboration, and that sales collaboration is a strong predictor of sales performance. Crucially, they also find that the positive relationship between rewards alignment and sales collaboration is stronger in countries higher in individualism and masculinity, while individualism and masculinity both appear to drive down collaboration directly. The paper concludes by presenting insight for sales strategy at the global level.

Itzhak Gnizy's paper (Uncovering the influence of the international marketing function in international firms) provides something of a unique angle into the issue of the drivers of international marketing success by explicitly recognizing that the international marketing function is nested within the firm and is not independent of the general marketing function. Accordingly, Gnizy looks at both the international marketing function and the general marketing function as separate entities, and examines how their interactions with each other might shape the influence of the international marketing function (in terms of whether this function is involved in decision making for the firm, for instance). In turn, the model examines how international marketing's influence drives the firm's international strategic orientations and its international performance. The mixed findings (based on data obtained from a sample of Israeli businesses) are intriguing, and provide much inspiration for future research, particularly in terms of modelling variables at lower levels of abstraction and teasing apart quite complex relationships.

The final paper is by Niki Hynes, Barbara Caemmerer, Emeline Martin, and Eliot Masters (Use, abuse or contribute! A framework for classifying how companies engage with country image). In this study, the country image construct is viewed from the lens of the organization, with a specific focus on the way in which companies use country image in their marketing communications, and the alignment between the values underpinning the country image and the firm's values and products. Using interview data gathered in 56 companies from New Zealand and Switzerland (together with analysis of the company websites), the authors explore the ways that country image is used by businesses, and present a typology based on the extent to which country image is used and adopted as a guiding philosophy by the businesses. The study provides a launch pad for further research into this managerially relevant topic, with the issue of identifying the performance implications of adopting different approaches to the use of country of origin image not least among them.

John W. Cadogan