Researching the global marketplace: Susan Douglas’ legacy

Citation

Craig, C.S. (2015), "Researching the global marketplace: Susan Douglas’ legacy", International Marketing Review, Vol. 32 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMR-01-2015-0016

Researching the global marketplace: Susan Douglas’ legacy

Article Type: Viewpoint From: International Marketing Review, Volume 32, Issue 2.

Susan Douglas was the Paganelli-Bull Professor of Marketing and International Business at New York University’s Stern School of Business. She had a remarkable career that spanned over four decades. I had the good fortune to work with her for 30 of those years. Susan was one of the leading scholars in the field of international marketing. Although she could be intimidating and never hesitated to speak her mind, she was a very warm and caring individual. Susan was first and foremost a dedicated scholar; she had a passion for research and discovery. She was happiest when she was working, attending conferences, or traveling and learning about cultures in different parts of the world. She was always thinking about new problems, new issues, and had new ideas. Most recently she had become interested in emerging markets and the types of challenges emerging market firms face as they expand into major markets around the globe.

Born in the UK, she received her bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Manchester. She came to America and enrolled in the PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania. One of the early influences on her research was Yoram (Jerry) Wind at Wharton where she received her PhD in 1969. Some of her earliest research looked at topics related to working women and fashion, but during the 1970s with Jerry Wind she began to consider issues related to cross-cultural methodology (Wind and Douglas, 1971), international market segmentation (Wind and Douglas, 1972), managerial decision making in international markets (Wind et al., 1973), and comparative research (Wind and Douglas, 1982). Much of this laid the foundation for her most widely cited article “The Myth of Globalization” (Douglas and Wind, 1987).

In 1971, she moved to France and began teaching at HEC. During that period she was also affiliated with the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management in Brussels. She developed extensive links with other marketing faculty in Europe, which led to her organizing a meeting of European marketing scholars. This first meeting led to a series of annual meetings which eventually led to the formation of the European Marketing Academy (EMAC). She continued to be active in EMAC and looked forward to attending its annual conference. Here she rekindled old friendships and was exposed to a wide range of scholars, who by virtue of their location in Europe were much more interested in cross-cultural issues than her US colleagues.

Recently, EMAC established the Susan P. Douglas Award for the best paper on international marketing presented at their annual conference to recognize her lasting contribution to the field. This is quite fitting as the vast majority of her work focussed on issues related to international marketing. This includes, two books, 32 papers in handbooks and monographs, 63 articles, and 44 conference proceedings. Her work focussed on three main areas: methodological issues involved in conducting international marketing research, cultural influences on consumer behavior, and global marketing strategy. These threads were intertwined and fed on each other as she explored meaning and logic in the phenomena around her. Research had to be rigorous and methodologically sound so that meaningful inferences could be made. She was also fascinated by the constant interplay between consumers and the firms that court them.

Her book, International Marketing Research, first published in 1983 attempted to provide guidelines into how international marketing research should be conducted. It has been widely cited and played a role in helping individuals design and execute sound research. Other methodological pieces include papers on improving instrument translation (Douglas and Craig, 2007), adapting scales for cross-national research (Douglas and Nijssen, 2003) and improving the conceptual foundation of international marketing research (Douglas and Craig, 2006). Susan strongly believed that unless rigorous methodologically sound work was carried out, the field of international marketing could not advance. At various times she was on the editorial boards of ten different journals. She was a tough minded, but fair reviewer. Papers that eventually made it by her were much improved for her input.

The theme of this Special Issue is multi-cultural marketplaces. Culture was a topic that long fascinated Susan. As she traveled extensively, lived and taught in other countries and conducted cross-cultural research, she was intrigued by the changing landscape and wanted to understand how it was changing and the implications for marketers. She looked at how changes in consumer behavior were reshaping cross-cultural research (Douglas and Craig, 1997), how this culture dynamic was requiring a new look at the design and execution of cross-cultural research (Craig and Douglas, 2006), the influence of American culture on other parts of the world (Craig et al., 2009), and how the consumer’s context helps shape beliefs and behaviors (Douglas and Craig, 2011a). A more thorough examination of the role of contextual factors can contribute to a better understanding of multi-cultural marketplaces and the opportunities for marketers. Her view was that context exists at four main levels, macro, meso, micro, and situational. In aggregate these include a multitude of factors including, economic, socio-cultural values, ethnic groupings, culture, market infrastructure, and the specific situation in which consumption takes place. She felt that it was critical for managers to consider the impact of the different levels when selecting country-markets and market segments. Further, examining different levels of aggregation provides greater understanding of the diversity of consumption patterns, both within and across countries. This is more critical as markets become even more diverse resulting in increased market fragmentation and segmentation.

In addition to a fascination with culture and its many manifestations, Susan was interested in the actions of firms that respond to and in some measure help shape culture. Her book, Global Marketing Strategy, took a different perspective on how global marketing strategy should be viewed. It provided a richer perspective and a more integrative view of the evolution of global marketing strategy. The shape of the book grew out of an earlier article (Douglas and Craig, 1989) that advanced the notion of global marketing strategy as an evolutionary process with three distinct stages, Initial Market Entry, Local Market Expansion, and Global Rationalization. Each phase has key drivers and strategic imperatives. Also, a key theme is that a particular approach does not work for all firms and depending on where a firm is in the process, the challenges are different. One of her last published papers (Douglas and Craig, 2011b) added a fourth phase. To deal with the increasing economic and cultural diversity of markets, she felt that firms need to develop and implement different strategies for different markets. She examined the difficulties involved in developing a coherent strategy in international markets in the face of heterogeneity. Her solution was to develop a “semiglobal” marketing strategy, which involves following different directions in different parts of the world, resulting in greater autonomy at the local level.

Susan was a perfectionist and never fully satisfied with her papers. Her exacting standards resulted in high-quality research that has been recognized in a number of ways. In 1977 she was awarded the Jours de France Gold Medal for Advertising Research. More recently she received five best article awards for papers appearing in the Journal of International Marketing. She received the S. Tamer Cavusgil Award for the “most significant contribution to the advancement of the practice of international marketing management” in 2000, 2001, 2006, and 2011 and the Hans B. Thorelli Award in 2007 for “the most significant and long-term contribution to international marketing theory or practice.” The Academy of International Business elected her a Fellow in 1991; in 2002 EMAC elected her a Fellow; and the American Marketing Associations Global SIG recognized her for “significant contributions to global marketing knowledge” in 2008.

Susan Douglas’ legacy and influence endure. The institutions she helped build, such as EMAC, continue to encourage scholarship and provide a meeting place for the dissemination of ideas and intellectual debate. Her articles and books continue to be cited and guide new generations of scholars. The many students who took her classes over the past four decades continue to benefit for the knowledge they gained. And most importantly, those who knew Susan personally have the fond memories of her energy, intellectual curiosity, and warmth.

C. Samuel Craig - Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, New York, USA

References

Craig, C.S. and Douglas, S.P. (2006), “Beyond national culture: implications of cultural dynamics for consumer research”, International Marketing Review, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 322-342

Craig, C.S., Douglas, S.P. and Bennett, A. (2009), “Contextual and cultural factors underlying Americanization”, International Marketing Review, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 90-109

Douglas, S.P. and Craig, C.S. (1989), “Evolution of global marketing strategy-scale, scope and synergy”, Columbia Journal of World Business, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 47-59

Douglas, S.P. and Craig, C.S. (1997), “The changing dynamic of consumer behavior: implications for cross-cultural research”, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 379-395

Douglas, S.P. and Craig, C.S. (2006), “On improving the conceptual foundations of international marketing research”, Journal of International Marketing, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 1-22

Douglas, S.P. and Craig, C.S. (2007), “Collaborative and iterative translation: an alternative approach to back translation”, Journal of International Marketing, Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 30-43

Douglas, S.P. and Craig, C.S. (2011a), “The role of context in assessing international marketing opportunities”, International Marketing Review, Vol. 28 No. 2, pp. 150-162

Douglas, S.P. and Craig, C.S. (2011b), “Convergence and divergence: developing a semiglobal marketing strategy”, Journal of International Marketing, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 82-101

Douglas, S.P. and Nijssen, E.J. (2003), “On the use of ‘borrowed’ scales in cross-national research: a cautionary note”, International Marketing Review, Vol. 20 No. 6, pp. 621-642

Douglas, S.P. and Wind, Y. (1987), “The myth of globalization”, Columbia Journal of World Business, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 19-29

Wind, Y. and Douglas, S.P. (1971), “On the meaning of comparison: a methodology for cross-cultural studies”, Quarterly Journal of Management, Vol. 2 No. 4, pp. 105-123

Wind, Y. and Douglas, S.P. (1972), “International market segmentation”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 17-25

Wind, Y. and Douglas, S.P. (1982), “Comparative consumer research: the next frontier?”, Management Decision, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 24-35

Wind, Y., Douglas, S.P. and Perlmutter, H.V. (1973), “Guidelines for developing international marketing strategies”, The Journal of Marketing, Vol. 14 No. 4, pp. 14-23