Editorial

Citation

Leventhal, R.C. (2011), "Editorial", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 28 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm.2011.07728caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Consumer Marketing, Volume 28, Issue 3

The growing complexity of being able to engage in the marketing of products in various countries, other than your country of origin, is one of the many major challenges facing a company today. Marketers have a hard time in agreeing upon what might be the best strategy. Even though differences in cultures can be identified, marketers do not agree on how such differences should be treated. For many marketers, there appears to be three current strategies that are used to gain a share of the international marketplace. These strategies include: adapting a current marketing strategy to a specific culture; standardizing your marketing strategy across various cultures, and developing marketing strategies to try and influence the culture. What must be done is to ascertain what specific marketing strategy works best for that particular market. To do less would be tantamount to failure.

Wu explores the automobile purchase patterns of Chinese Americans by examining factors driving an intriguing phenomenon – most Chinese Americans prefer Japanese or European brands of automobiles over US brands. The author examines the following factors as it pertains to this situation: country image, informational influence, collectivism/individualism, and brand loyalty. A reliable and safe automobile is the most important factor that affects the Chinese-American’s auto purchase decision. Media advertising and sales people have only marginal influence. Thus, it may be best to improve interpersonal influence.

Hansen, Mukherjee and Thomsen investigate the effect of anxiety on information during food choice and test a key moderator of the effect of anxiety on search, namely attitude towards nutritional claims. Providers of healthy food should communicate extended health information for consumers who might be skeptical about nutritional claims since this skepticism towards the type of condensed information will in fact motivate and extended information search on the part of the consumer.

Jin and Kang attempt to accurately predict Chinese consumers’ purchase intentions toward a US brand. The authors propose a composite model incorporating two behavioral intention models, Lee’s model and a decomposed Ajzen’s model. Among the proposed direct paths to purchase intention (PI), attitude toward the US brand apparel was the most important in explaining contemporary Chinese consumers’ purchase intentions, followed by external perceived behavioral control (PBC) and subjective norm (SN).

Dagger and Raciti test a framework for investigating the match/mismatch between consumers’ product category and country image perceptions. The authors study whether consumers will perceive all products emanating from a particular country favorably simply because consumers associate favorable attributes with that country or whether this effect is specific to particular categories. The authors provide a guideline that can be applied by marketers to determine the effect of product and country matches in relevant domestic or international markets.

Bandyopadhyay, Wongtada and Rice examine the strength of consumers’ preference for products made in their own country versus those made in another country and their effects on consumers’ evaluations of, and intention to buy, foreign made products. This study involves the Thai market, and measures the ethnocentrism (a general attitude) and country-specific attitudes toward three product categories (cars, radios, and pens) with American associations. The authors reveal that the Thai consumers’ evaluations of US products vary at different levels of consumer ethnocentrism and country-specific attitudes. These findings may be of value to help a company position its offerings appropriately in Thailand.

Kubacki, Siemieniako and Rundle-Thiele examine the concept of binge drinking. This phenomenon has typically been viewed as the consumption of five or more standard drinks or units in a single drinking session. Research on binge drinking is US centric and for the most part quantitative. The author used qualitative methods to gain richer insights into binge drinking. Three distinct types of binge drinking were identified in this study. This research then details how each type of binge drinking can be distinguished through different attitudes and drinking behaviors. In addition, the results of this research suggest that rather than thinking of binge drinking as one thing, binge drinking should be thought of as different types, involving different behaviors and attitudes.

In this issue of the JCM you will also find our case section as well as our book review section.

Richard C. Leventhal