This book is the product of the research, teaching, and writing work associated with the International Marketing Management course on the MBA at the Harvard Business School, which I ran for six years. It is a unique benefit of working at HBS that one bridges the divide between academia and management practice, which is all too wide elsewhere in the field of marketing. I should therefore emphasize immediately the type of book this is intended to be (and the type of book it is not). This is not a textbook to aid students acquire a knowledge of the main issues in international marketing—a number of excellent such books already exist. It is rather a managerially focused book. This means the following:
It is organized as a set of essays addressing the key challenges facing managers in international marketing, rather than as an exposition of a conceptual framework of the subject.
Topics that are treated separately in marketing textbooks are sometimes therefore amalgamated into a single managerial issue. An example is Chapter 6, which addresses both customer management (or sales) and pricing, which in many cases are two facets of the same challenge in international business.
The aim of the book is insight, rather than comprehensive coverage. This applies both to the topics covered—where the focus is on the key challenges facing executives—and to the conclusions reached.
Of course, I hope the book will prove of value to MBA students as well as managers, dependent upon the extent to which their studies are managerially oriented. And of course, theoretical frameworks are introduced where relevant, since all the top managers I have met are thinking managers.
The spur to writing this book is the fact that managers and students have repeatedly asked me over the years to recommend a concise, managerially focused book on international marketing. The wider context in which the book is framed consists of two principal characteristics I have observed in international companies. The first is the rapid rate at which companies are globalizing—advances in network technology and the opening up of huge new labor markets are among the drivers of this trend. The result is that companies are globalizing far faster than markets, leading to an increased risk of mismanagement in addressing those markets. The second is an older pattern—the tolerance of lower managerial standards in international operations than are demanded in home market operations. More experienced multinationals are beginning to manage their executive talent and operations on a global basis, and so address this issue, but many nevertheless, for example, overestimate the potential sales in emerging markets, and of course global management systems can produce company-driven rather than market-driven decisions.
A host of people have contributed to the ideas in this book, and I am grateful to them all. The largest group is the many hundreds of MBA students I have taught at the Harvard Business School—the interaction of bright minds tackling managerial case studies never fails to uncover new insights, and ensures that the “teacher” is also learning. Also too numerous to mention are the many company executives who have willingly lent their time and experience to my research, including the writing of many case studies. In almost all cases, these thinking managers also demonstrated a wide-ranging curiosity to learn more about a field in which others regarded them as experts. Among my colleagues at Harvard Business School, two in particular merit my gratitude for their long-running contribution to all aspects of my work. These are John Quelch, one of the pioneers of the field of international marketing and still one of its pillars, and Kash Rangan, one of the most inspirational teachers I have ever met. Both have been unstinting in their mentoring, even though it is many years since they sat on my doctoral committee. As a one-time editor myself, I must also express my thanks to Tim Moore and Russ Hall at Prentice Hall, who have been exceptional in their ability to flex on secondary administrative requirements and concentrate on the important issues of the book, to the undoubted benefit of my work.
Finally, and most importantly, I wish to thank my family. My wife Megan is always a source of all the support I need, and then more. My children Kate and Thomas, who mastered reading during the time when I was writing this, were inspirational in their excitement that I was writing a book they could read. Maybe one day...