International Configuration and Coordination of Marketing Activities
Résumé
For a long time, international marketing literature has been dominated by questions of international standardisation and differentiation of products and services. This article focuses on the largely neglected question of how firms organize their marketing activities across countries. With our empirical study which differentiates between marketing planning, marketing implementation and marketing control we contribute to international configuration and coordination literature. Our findings indicate that firms show a preference for centralising their marketing planning and marketing control activities, whereas the implementation of their marketing activities is more decentralised. For the coordination of marketing activities, in management practice, direct personal supervision and informal communication are the preferred coordination mechanisms. However, we not only describe existing configuration-coordination profiles, but also identify effective, efficient and resource-supportive patterns. Our results show that marketing activities are best coordinated by applying superior levels of direct personal supervision and output coordination plus the superior use of socialisation and networks.
