Global Marketing: Foreign Entry, Local Marketing, and Global Management

Citation

Pearce, R. (2003), "Global Marketing: Foreign Entry, Local Marketing, and Global Management", International Marketing Review, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 218-220. https://doi.org/10.1108/imr.2003.20.2.218.2

This textbook is most suitable for final‐year undergraduates or those sitting generalist postgraduate management courses as it assumes a prior knowledge of marketing, although not of the international dimension. It would be inappropriate for specialist postgraduate degrees in international marketing however. The title does not absolutely reflect content, for although the book examines globalisation issues in considerable detail, a significant proportion of the material relates to other forms of internationalisation.

The work is made up of 17 chapters, divided into four parts, with the latter three reflecting the author's remark that these are the three main “tasks” associated with a growing commitment to internationalisation. Part one addresses “Fundamentals”: global marketing; theoretical foundations; and cultural foundations. Part Two concentrates on “Foreign entry”: foreign entry research; export expansion; licensing; strategic alliances; and FDI. “Local marketing” is the theme for part three: local buyer behaviour; segmentation and positioning; local marketing in mature markets; local marketing in new growth markets; and local marketing in emerging markets. Finally, part four explores “global management”: global products; global services; global pricing; global distribution; global advertising; global promotion, e‐commerce and personal selling; and organizing for international marketing.

A characteristic of the book is that it employs a fairly atypical structuring of the material, aiming for a more pragmatic, “managerial” approach than some texts. The work would therefore be of interest to practitioners and would also contribute to a study of marketing management. In line with this approach, the author generally discusses external environmental issues within the context of their influence, for example, in sections on market entry, rather than in a linear fashion. This arguably makes it difficult for someone new to the subject to obtain an immediate overview of the complexities of the external environment, although its significance for management decision making becomes more readily apparent than in other works. The exception is a chapter on culture, which contains a rather brief, and hence hard to grasp, treatment of Hofstede's cultural dimensions. Research issues too are divided between chapters on market entry and buyer behaviour.

The weight of US and Japanese examples in the prose itself is considerable, although outside the main text there is a clear effort made to draw from wider geographical sources. The treatment of global segments would benefit from greater attention, and perhaps more could be said of non‐westernised views of buyer behaviour, although this issue is not ignored. The chapter on pricing arguably should clearly draw the reader's attention to the effects of the external environment on this aspect of the mix, bearing in mind the approach that the author has chosen to adopt. There is certainly more to say on the role and structure of advertising agencies than is covered here, and little explicit connection is made between globalised publicity and the use of Web sites. The important contemporary concept of integrated marketing communications is rather tacked on to the end of a chapter, and should surely have greater prominence within an international context. The work usefully employs separate discussions of markets at different stages of maturity, and the material on emergent economies is especially to be welcomed. However, sometimes these three chapters tend towards being lists of examples.

Overall, the book is clearly written, with appropriate definitions of key terms and concepts, and its coverage of the discipline is generally thorough and logical. Establishing theoretical foundations early on allows the managerial tone of the book to be set. Useful features are a separate chapter on international services marketing, lengthy case studies at the end of each part drawn from a variety of countries and product types, review questions that encourage Web‐based research (although these could be more numerous for, as the author says, “the Internet is inherently global”) and many brief “getting the picture” sections to provide contextualisation of theory.