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This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/EUM0000000004715. When citing the article, please cite: Jeryl M. Whitelock, (1987), “Global Marketing and the Case for International Product Standardisation”, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 21 Iss: 9, pp. 32 - 44.

Levitt's theory of globalisation has attracted a great deal of attention among both academics and practitioners. The view that a single product can be offered worldwide offers significant benefits for international marketers, whatever their size or industry. A review of empirical findings in the literature, however, suggests that this theory should be adopted with caution. The author has studied a specific group of three products manufactured by UK companies and exported to other countries in Europe. Despite the often cited term, European market, which implies a likeness between all European countries and, hence, an opportunity for product standardisation, the findings suggest that modifications in many product aspects are necessary for export success. Further, the degree of modification required varies from market to market.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the 29 years of research published in International Marketing Review (IMR) since its inception.

A brief editorial history of the journal is chronicled, and its output is discussed. Special attention is focused upon journal content, authorship analysis, and methodological issues.

The authors find: IMR publishes articles that often focus on export and global marketing, with consumer behavior and branding being the fastest growing content areas; IMR's frequent contributors consist of world renowned experts in international marketing and business and have become more diverse; and the authors of IMR use a wide variety of data collection and analysis methods.

The authors conclude that IMR exhibits the characteristics of a mature and leading journal in the field of international business. To assist IMR in maintaining its significant impact on marketing scholarship, the paper outlines some possible directions for the future.

This article analyzes the 29 years of research published in International Marketing Review (IMR) since its inception. To assist IMR in maintaining its significant impact on marketing scholarship, it also outlines some possible directions for the future.

The debate on whether international advertising can, or should, be standardised has a long history, particularly in the American literature. The Single European Market after 1992 implies an opportunity for standardisation so far unparalleled. The subject of study is the European policies for television advertising of four multinational corporations of different nationalities through interviews with the advertising agency account executives for each company in Greece. The findings suggest that the issue of standardisation is of little importance in itself and that the aim of all companies is the most effective campaign for each local market.

The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of the implementation of international advertising strategies by first introducing a framework of four options that multinational enterprises (MNEs) can use to implement such strategies and second by drawing on contingency theory to develop and test hypotheses relating to how environmental factors and company characteristics affect such implementation.

Hypotheses are tested using web‐survey data obtained from 182 Latin American managers based in the Mercosur trading bloc.

Findings show that the choice of implementation process option is contingent on the environmental factor, cultural homogeneity and the company characteristics subsidiary size and MNE country‐of‐origin, yet not on regional economic integration.

This exploratory study contributes to advertising theory by offering an alternative approach to the consideration of the international advertising standardization question that focuses on the implementation of strategies rather than on their development. The findings further confirm the theory of regional multinationals in the context of international advertising decisions.

The study presents practitioners with four distinct approaches to implementing their international advertising strategies as well as with clear guidelines as to how managers should implement those strategies depending on the specific benefits of standardization they want to achieve.

To the knowledge of the authors, this study is the first to specifically address the implementation of international advertising strategies.

1992 was the year of the Single European Market. By 31 December 1992, agreement should have been reached on some 286 directives, which aimed to dismantle physical, technical and fiscal barriers to trade. In so doing, it was expected that community businesses would become more integrated, allowing them to compete on more equal terms as Eurobusinesses with the global players of the US and Japan. It was predicted that greater intra‐Community competition would be a necessary precursor of this outcome, and that this will lead to industries restructuring through mergers and joint ventures to increase market share and economies of scale by reaching a “minimum efficient size”. Examines the trends in cross‐border mergers/acquisitions and joint ventures for the period 1986 to 1989 and concludes that, for both small and large firms, such activity has increased. Further, an analysis of EC material on the subject reveals that firms′ reasons for such developments appear to have become more market‐oriented over time.