Richard Lee is Associate Professor of Marketing and Research Associate at the Ehrenberg Bass Institute. He is also Associate Director of the Australian Centre for Asian Business at the University of South Australia and a management committee member of the China Business Network SA (CBNSA). Richard’s work has appeared in leading marketing journals including European Journal of Marketing, Journal of International Marketing, International Marketing Review, and Annals of Tourism Research, among others. Richard has led a special issue in International Business Review on marketing to ethnic consumers in international markets.
Miklosik, Andrej and Nina Evans (2020), “Impact of Big Data and Machine Learning on Digital Transformation in Marketing: A Literature Review,” IEEE Access, 8, 101284–92.
Arora, Arun, Peter Dahlstrom, Eric Hazan, Hamza Khan, and Rock Khanna (2020), “Reimagining Marketing in the Next Normal,” McKinsey & Company (July 19), https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/reimagining-marketing-in-the-next-normal.
V. Kumar (VK) is Regents’ Professor, Richard and Susan Lenny Distinguished Chair, and Professor of Marketing; and Executive Director, Center for Excellence in Brand & Customer Management, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University.
VK is also honored as Chang Jiang Scholar, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China; Senior Fellow, Indian School of Business, India; and Fellow, Hagler Institute for Advanced Study, Texas A&M University.
Michael C. Christofi is a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the School of Management and Economics at Cyprus University of Technology. His research interests lie at the interface of innovation, marketing, and entrepreneurship. His research has been published in premier publication outlets such as in British Journal of Management, Journal of World Business, Journal of Business Research, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, International Journal of Human Resource Management, International Business Review, Human Resource Management Review, European Management Review, and International Marketing Review, among others. He has also coauthored several book chapters and won various awards for his research work and academic service. Michael has served and serves as a guest-editor for 19 special issues at leading journals such as British Journal of Management, Technovation, Journal of Business Ethics, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior and Research, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, International Marketing Review, and European Management Journal, among others.
Meanwhile, international business scholars have asserted that the disruptions such as the pandemic will lead to a greater globalization of the world economy (Contractor 2021). As markets change, geographical boundaries become increasingly blurred; at the same time, advances in technology have begun to integrate markets. Consequently, MNEs can no longer rely on location as a competitive advantage as they compete globally. Similarly, with the emergence of a class of global consumers, firms with a wide selection of offerings that meet their global customers’ needs can lessen the impact of competition by differentiating their product offerings in terms of breadth and depth. However, differentiating products and services can be challenging due to evolving customers’ needs and habits during market disruptions (Knowles et al. 2020).
Anthony, Scott D. and Evan I. Schwartz (2017), “What the Best Transformational Leaders Do,” Harvard Business Review, 2–9.
In other words, transformation takes into consideration changes in the immediate business environment. While external or publicly available information like financial reports and news releases can provide useful insights into a company, deeper meaning of transformative changes is gleaned from more profound and impactful issues such as changes in society, emergence of new-age technologies, and availability of structured and unstructured data. Indeed, Kumar (2018) suggests that ongoing changes among consumers and markets, coupled with changes in the marketing departments/role/function (in organizations), would confluently lead to business transformations.
Due to recent market disruptive events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, transformations in marketing practice are becoming more common. However, research into transformative marketing practices of multinational enterprises (MNEs) is in its infancy (Miklosik and Evans 2020). Marketing is a fundamental element of a firm’s strategy that resides at the nexus between a firm and its market; it evolves along with the dynamism of the marketplace in which it operates (Wichmann et al. 2021). Transformations have led to ongoing and intensifying evolutions in the global marketplace, including shifts in consumers’ technology consumption (Arora et al. 2020). As a result, scholars have asserted that a digital customer orientation would be required for firms to create a digital ecosystem to serve consumers’ evolving needs effectively (Kopalle, Kumar, and Subramaniam 2020).
Papers targeting the special issue on the same theme should be submitted through the Journal of International Marketing submission system (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ama_jim) and will undergo the same review process as regularly submitted papers.
The deadline for the submissions of full papers for the special issue is May 1, 2023.
References
Country of origin is another potential stream to examine the efficacy of the transformative marketing approaches. For example, during the pandemic, Chinese restaurants encountered a sharp decline in business due to perceived origins of COVID-19 (Carman and Heil 2020). Thus, animosity toward MNEs brands from certain countries may influence globalization during market disruptions (Das et al. 2021). These issues naturally raise a question regarding which transformative marketing approaches are effective for MNEs’ sustainable competitive advantage in the wake of disruptive events.
Carman, Tim and Emily Heil (2020), “Amid Coronavirus Fears, Chinese Restaurants Report a Drop in Business,” The Washington Post (February 14), https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/amid-coronavirus-fears-chinese-restaurants-report-a-drop-in-business/2020/02/14/2c7d7efe-4e8f-11ea-bf44-f5043eb3918a_story.html.
Das, Gopal, Shailendra P. Jain, Durairaj Maheswaran, Rebecca J. Slotegraaf, and Raji Srinivasan (2021), “Pandemics and Marketing: Insights, Impacts, and Research Opportunities,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 49, 835–54.
Kelly Hewett is Associate Professor of Marketing, Reagan Professor of Business, and Haslam Family Faculty Research Fellow, Marketing Department, Haslam College of Business, University of Tennessee.