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Spontaneity and international marketing performance

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journal contribution
posted on 2016-04-01, 15:46 authored by Anne SouchonAnne Souchon, Paul Hughes, Andrew M. Farrell, Ekaterina Nemkova, Joao Oliveira
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to ascertain how today’s international marketers can perform better on the global scene by harnessing spontaneity. Design/methodology/approach - We draw on contingency theory to develop a model of the spontaneity–international marketing performance relationship, and identify three potential moderators, namely strategic planning, centralization, and market dynamism. We test the model via structural equation modeling with survey data from 197 UK exporters. Findings - The results indicate that spontaneity is beneficial to exporters in terms of enhancing profit performance. In addition, greater centralization and strategic planning strengthen the positive effects of spontaneity. However, market dynamism mitigates the positive effect of spontaneity on export performance (when customer needs are volatile, spontaneous decisions do not function as well in terms of ensuring success). Practical implications – Learning to be spontaneous when making export decisions appears to result in favorable outcomes for the export function. To harness spontaneity, export managers should look to develop company heuristics (including centralization and strategic planning). Finally, if operating in dynamic export market environments, the role of spontaneity is weaker, so more conventional decision-making approaches should be adopted. Originality/value - The international marketing environment typically requires decisions to be flexible and fast. In this context, spontaneity could enable accelerated and responsive decisionmaking, allowing international marketers to realize superior performance. Yet, there is a lack of research on decision-making spontaneity and its potential for international marketing performance enhancement.

History

School

  • Business and Economics

Department

  • Business

Published in

International Marketing Review

Volume

33

Issue

5

Pages

671 - 690

Citation

SOUCHON, A.L. ... et al, 2016. Spontaneity and international marketing performance. International Marketing Review, 33 (5), pp. 671-690.

Publisher

© Emerald

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2016-03-20

Publication date

2016-09-12

Notes

This paper was published in the journal International Marketing Review and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1108/IMR-06-2014-0199.

ISSN

1758-6763

Language

  • en