Editorial

Citation

Whitelock, J.M. and Cadogan, J.W. (2013), "Editorial", International Marketing Review, Vol. 30 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/imr.2013.03630eaa.001

Editorial

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Marketing Review, Volume 30, Issue 5.

In this issue of International Marketing Review, the first paper looks at acculturation issues within the context of Mexican immigrants within the USA. Jiménez, Hadjimarcou, Barua and Michie focus on adverts that rely on exaggerated claims to generate positive consumer response (known as puffery), and show that Mexican consumers generally are more susceptible to adverts that are puffery laden, more so than non-Hispanic-American consumers. Non-Hispanic-American consumers, on the other hand, are more susceptible to adverts that contain less puffery. The authors also show that recent Mexican immigrants to America remain more highly responsive to puffery laden and also become as susceptible to non-puffery laden adverts as non-Hispanic-Americans. The findings also demonstrate the acculturation process, showing the differences between recent immigrants, and first and second generation Mexican immigrants to America, in terms of the way they respond to non-puffery and puffery laden messages: susceptibility of immigrants to puffery appears to diminish in first and second generation consumers, bringing them into line with non-Hispanic-Americans. The study has strong practical implications for global companies, and adds to the growing standardization debate.

The second paper, by Lengler, Sousa and Marques, deals with the issue of the form of the relationship between dimensions of market orientation and export success. Adopting a disaggregated approach to the study of market orientation, the authors examine the individual relationships that customer and competitor orientation have with export performance. Their study of 197 Brazilian exporting companies indicates that customer orientation is a driver of export sales, and that customer orientation's positive relationship with export sales success is stronger in magnitude in firms with higher levels of customer orientation. The results also indicate that customer orientation has no direct relationship with export profits, and that customer orientation's route to enhanced profits is entirely through enhanced export turnover. A competitor orientation, on the other hand, appears to have no export sales enhancing role – but does have a direct positive linear relationship with profits. Overall, the results demonstrate that disaggregated approaches to the examination of market orientation provide valuable insights into how this strategic orientation boosts export success.

Venaik and Brewer's paper extends arguments they presented in International Marketing Review in 2012 (Brewer and Venaik 2012), and looks in more detail at problems arising from studies that adopt aspects of national culture as variables. Their arguments are framed as a response to criticisms of their original 2012 paper by De Mooij (2013). The authors argue that popular measures of national culture (Hofstede and the Globe national culture scores) are not reflective of real, unidimensional cultural entities. Rather, the authors point out that the construction of the measures of facets of culture renders them irrelevant for most purposes. As a result, Venaik and Brewer contend that Hofstede's indexes and the Globe scores are not useful for researchers wishing to model culture at the individual or organizational level, since they do not characterize individuals, or segments of populations, within countries.

Also building on Brewer and Venaik (2012), McSweeney addresses additional problems with the national culture notions as proposed by Hofstede, the Globe studies, and others. McSweeney goes to the heart of the problem, pointing out that it is invalid to infer that cultural variables that potentially make some kind of sense at a national level exist in the same way, or make sense, at the level of individuals, organizations, groups of individuals, or other classifications. McSweeney explores this ecological fallacy, as it is known, explaining how it leads to false research findings, inferences, and managerial implications, debates the issue of whether culture can be a cause of behavior, and raises the idea that national culture is not a real entity. The paper is essential reading for international marketers and researchers, providing a strong warning message both to those undertaking “cultural marketing research” (reconsider your conceptual models if they contain cultural variables), and to practitioners (be careful making marketing decisions based national cultural criteria, since they may provide an invalid basis for decision making).

Jeryl M. Whitelock and John W. Cadogan