INTERNATIONAL MARKETING KNOWLEDGE AND INTERNATIONAL
ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE CONTEMPORARY MULTI SPEED GLOBAL
ECONOMY
- SPECIAL ISSUE: INTERNATIONAL MARKETING REVIEW
Guest Editors: Kevin Ibeh, David Crick and Hamid Etemad
International entrepreneurial firms, in their various manifestations as born
global (BG) firms, international new ventures (INVs), rapidly internationalizing
firms, micro multinationals and similar, have contributed significantly to global
economic growth over the past few decades. They do so by deploying
innovative strategies to explore and effectuate opportunities in national and
international markets (Kalinic, Sarasvathy & Forza, 2014), and by disrupting
the dynamics of competition in various industries (Sundqvist, Kyläheiko,
Kuivalainen & Cadogan, 2012). Their role is likely to be even more crucial as
the contemporary multi-speed global economy (i.e. the post-financial crisis
world of markedly diverging economic growth outcomes) continues to offer a
kaleidoscope of opportunity-risk profiles across countries and sectors (El Erin,
2014; Reuters, 2014; Spicer and Singh, 2015).
Although the past two decades of research have generated a significant stock
of knowledge and literature base on the international entrepreneurship
phenomenon, including influential winners of the prestigious Journal of
International Business Studies’ article of the Decade award (e.g. Oviatt and
McDougall, 1994; Knight and Cavusgil, 2004), relatively little is known about
how international entrepreneurial firms leverage international marketing
knowledge in ‘the discovery, evaluation, enactment, and exploitation of
opportunities across national borders’ (Oviatt & McDougall 2005, p. 540). Not
enough also is known in respect of how these firms develop their respective
international marketing strategy (Aspelund, Madsen, and Moen, 2007) and
manage customer and brand relationships, and marketing mix elements in
overseas markets. This relative neglect of the marketing underpinnings of
international entrepreneurship (Styles & Seymour, 2006; Aspelund, Madsen,
and Moen, 2007; Zou, Xu and Shi, 2015) is surprising given the wellestablished marketing-entrepreneurship nexus (Carson et al., 1995; Gilmore
et al., 2013).
The purpose of this special issue is to avail researchers of a platform to share
important insights on how resource-constrained international entrepreneurial
firms leverage international marketing knowledge and strategies to identify,
evaluate, enact, and take advantage of growth opportunities, while mitigating
risks in the highly competitive, multi speed global markets. A related aim is to
improve understanding of how international entrepreneurial firms utilize
overseas opportunities in marketing their way out of recessionary pressures in
growth-challenged domestic markets and achieving growth in third markets.
The guest editors will welcome rigorous contributions, including conceptual
and theoretical papers, state-of-the-art reviews, empirical studies, and
insightful case studies, which address the above-mentioned aims or respond
to the following or proximate questions:
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How do international entrepreneurs capitalise upon their knowledge of
buyer behaviour and market conditions in contemporary international
markets, including variations thereof, to create, co-create and
exchange value internationally?
How might extant theories and theory building at the interface of
marketing and international entrepreneurship further illuminate the
behaviour of individual consumers world-wide?
How can inter-organisational and interpersonal collaborations,
including alliances, value chains, networks and associated social
capital, be leveraged for greater value creation and customer
satisfaction in international markets?
How do international entrepreneurial firms formulate and implement
marketing strategies for enhanced performance in contemporary
international markets?
What core trade-offs, if any, do international entrepreneurial firms need
to consider when developing their marketing strategy? What contextual
variables, for example, may influence the most appropriate managerial
orientation?
How and why do the nature and configuration of marketing capabilities
and strategies shift as INVs and BG firms develop and grow? What
impact has this shift on performance?
What role do dynamic marketing capabilities play in enabling
international entrepreneurial firms to achieve evolutionary fitness?
How are insights from established marketing concepts such as
customer orientation, segmentation, targeting and positioning, productservice innovation being leveraged to enhance growth and
performance outcomes among international entrepreneurial firms?
How do international entrepreneurial firms select entry modes? Which
market entry modes, including digital channels, have been
preponderantly favoured? Why and what are the boundary conditions?
To what extent do they learn from suboptimal entry mode choices or
replicate past mode choices?
How do the Internet-enabled experiences of entrepreneurial founders
impact their firms’ orientation, strategy, capabilities and performance
during internationalization? How do they impact the organizational
form?
What do we know about the marketing activities of the so-called bornto-flip companies, i.e. start-ups essentially created for acquisition or
venture capital attraction?
What major marketing challenges do international entrepreneurial firms
face in contemporary international markets, e.g. in building brands and
ensuring consistent brand image and positioning across overseas
markets or mitigating severe service recovery in developing versus
advanced economies? Do particular types of international
entrepreneurs experience these challenges more acutely than others?
How might these be systematically addressed?
 How do institutional environments influence the ability of international
entrepreneurial firms to create value at the national, international, and
global levels?
 What contribution might a marketing mindset, marketing capabilities,
and marketing knowledge make toward addressing some of the world's
major socio-economic challenges, including poverty alleviation,
sustainability, and geo-political tensions?
 What lessons might be learnt from international entrepreneurial firms
operating in ‘fragile’ economies or bottom-of-the-pyramid markets?
 How are local policies impacting entrepreneurial marketing strategies at
local and global levels?
 How could internationally- and marketing-oriented entrepreneurial firms
deal with policy and contextual differences world-wide?
 How might advocacy advertising and corporate communications be
integrated into entrepreneurial marketing to combat adverse contextual
settings?
 What are the current and emerging methodological challenges that
need to be addressed to advance knowledge at the interface between
international entrepreneurship and marketing?
 How would the concept of co-creation be successfully operationalised
in diverse international markets?
 What new methods are required, and what techniques can be used, to
uncover true relationships between incipient opportunities and
exploitation, and to minimize invalid conclusions?
TIMELINE and SUBMISSION
All submissions should be made using ScholarOne Manuscripts, the online
submission and peer review system, by November 30, 2016. Registration and
access is available at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/imrev. For specific
questions about this special thematic issue, contact one of the guest editors:
Kevin Ibeh (k.ibeh@bbk.ac,uk), David Crick (dcrick@uottawa.ca) or Hamid
Etemad (hamid.etemad@mcgill.ca).
Expected publication: 2018
RERERENCES
Aspelund, A., Madsen, T.K. and Moen, Ø. (2007), ‘A review of the foundation,
international marketing strategies and performance of international new
ventures’, European Journal of Marketing, 41: 1423–1448.
Barakat, L.L., Ramsey, J.R., Lorenz, M.P. and Gosling, M. (2015), Severe
service failure recovery revisited: Evidence of its determinants in
an emerging market context, International Journal of Research in Marketing
32 113–116
Bartley J.M., Brenton, P., Cali, M., Hoppe, M. and Piermartini, R. (2015), The
role of trade in ending poverty, Geneva, World Trade Organization.
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/06/24708511/role-tradeending-poverty
Carson, D., Cromie, S., McGowan, P. & Hill, J. (1995), Marketing and
entrepreneurship in SMEs, London, Prentice Hall.
Cefis, E. and Marsili, O. (2011), Born to flip. Exit decisions of entrepreneurial
firms in high-tech and low-tech industries, Journal of Evolutionary
Economics, 21:473–498
Coviello, N. (2015) Re-thinking research on born globals, Journal of
International Business Studies, 46: 17–26
El-Erian, M. (2014), ‘Global economy – a year of divergence looms’
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/09/global-economy-a-yearof-divergence-looms
Gilmore, A., Mcauley, A., Gallagher, D. & Carson, D. (2013),
‘Entrepreneurship and Marketing Interface Research – A Synopsis and
Evaluation’, Entrepreneurial Marketing: Global Perspectives, Emerald
Publishing.
Hennart, J-F. and Slangen, A-H.L (2015), Yes, we really do need more entry
mode studies! A commentary on Shaver, Journal of International Business
Studies, 46: 114-122.
Kalinic, I., Sarasvathy, S. D. & Forza, C. (2014), ‘Expect the unexpected’:
implications of effectual logic on the internationalization process’,
International Business Review, 23: 635-647.
Knight, G. & Cavusgil, S. T. (2004), ‘Innovation, organizational capabilities,
and the born-global firm’, Journal of International Business Studies, 35(2):
124–141.
Oviatt, B.M. and McDougall, P.P. (1994), ‘Toward a theory of international
new ventures’, Journal of International Business Studies, 25(1): 45-64.
Oviatt, B. and McDougall, P. (2005), ‘Defining international entrepreneurship
and modeling the speed of internationalization’, Entrepreneurship Theory &
Practice, 29: 537–554.
Reuters (2014), Fitch: ‘Global Economy Faces Multi-speed Recovery, Multiple
Risks’,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/30/fitch-global-economyfaces-multi-speed-r-idUSFit76720020140930.
Spicer, J. and Singh, R.K. (2015), ‘Mind the gap in multi-speed world
economy after oil plunge’. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/01/11/ukglobal-economy-oil-idUKKBN0KK0B920150111
Styles, C. & Seymour, R. G. (2006), ‘Opportunities for marketing researchers
in international entrepreneurship’, International Marketing Review, 23(2):
126-145.
Sundqvist, S., Kyläheiko, K., Kuivalainen, O., & Cadogan, J. W. (2012),
‘Kirznerian and Schumpeterian entrepreneurial-oriented behavior in
turbulent export markets’, International Marketing Review, 29(2): 203-219.
Zou, S., Xu, H. and Shi, L. H. (2015), ‘Entrepreneurship in International
Marketing’, in S. Zou , H. Xu , L. H. Shi (ed.) Advances in International
Marketing, 25: iii, Emerald Publishing.
Kevin Ibeh is Professor of Marketing and International Business and
Assistant Dean/HoD of Management at Birkbeck, University of London. His
research has mainly sought to advance knowledge of how non-dominant
firms, including SMEs, might be effectively guided to leverage growth
opportunities in international markets. Professor Ibeh’s work has appeared in
the Journal of World Business, British Journal of Management, International
Business Review, Journal of Business Research, Management International
Review, European Journal of Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management,
Journal of Business Ethics, Small Business Economics among others, and he
currently serves on the editorial board/review team of several international
journals.
David Crick is the Paul Desmarais Chair of International Entrepreneurship
and Marketing at the University of Ottawa. His current research interests
involve work at the Marketing/International Entrepreneurship interface and
particularly work that addresses a more effective public/private sector
interaction. He is on the editorial boards of several journals and his work has
been presented at various international conferences and published in journals
including: the European Journal of Marketing, International Business Review,
International Marketing Review, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of
Marketing Management, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise
Development, Journal of Small Business Management, Qualitative Market
Research: An International Journal, and Small Business Economics.
Hamid Etemad is a Professor of Marketing and International Business at the
Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University. His research and
publications span a wide range from economic development and electronic
marketing to international entrepreneurship and rapidly-growing smaller firms.
He has published widely in scholarly journals and has edited six volumes of
books and 13 special issues of scholarly journals, including the Canadian
Journal of Administrative Sciences, Global Focus, International Marketing
Review (two issues), Small Business Economics, Journal of International
Management, Journal of International Entrepreneurship and Management
International Review, among others. He is the current Editor-in-Chief of the
Journal of International Entrepreneurship; the Series Editor of the McGill
International Entrepreneurship Series of books published by Edward Elgar
Publishing and is also a member editorial boards of six scholarly journals.