|
Companies can choose between entering the global competition or remaining restrict to their local positions. However, it must be emphasized that the survival of those who opt for a strictly local strategy is limited. Not only because of the eventual saturation of their markets but mainly because such companies do not get in touch with new and important technologies and knowledge. Thus determining the variables that help managers to better understand and exploit opportunities abroad is important.
Although the relationship between marketing strategies and performance has been well documented with a variety of approaches, broader studies on the antecedents of the marketing performance of subsidiaries operating abroad are meager. Papers limit themselves to the discussion of the relationship between performance and another variable. They do not integrate the different dimensions. The main goal of this research is to fulfill this gap.
The role of subsidiaries gained importance as a source of knowledge, and local embeddedness became relevant for companies to better understand and exploit local opportunities. Within the field of international marketing, the debate over the extent of standardization or adaptation has occupied a significant part of past research. Other issues that have long been studied are the relationship between marketing performance and the decision on the level of centralization, and subsidiary autonomy.
Based on a selection and review of previous literature on the concepts and theories described in articles published in top-tier peer-reviewed academic journals, 15 propositions were elicited and different existing models integrated. Although it represents a high volume of relationships, theory corroborates all of them. The disregard of any of the propositions without the proper application of statistical tests may represent a loss of reliability and power to the proposed model.
P13: the greater the knowledge flow between the parent company and its subsidiaries (and within subsidiaries), the better the subsidiary can respond to environmental opportunities (local responsiveness);
P14: the standardizing/adapting decision exerts influence on the ability of the subsidiary to respond to environmental opportunities;
P15: the greater the ability (skill and speed) of the subsidiary to respond to environmental opportunities, the better its marketing performance.
|
