With today's market converging towards forming a dynamic and global arena for selling and buying products, sensible marketing has become the catchphrase for success. What to sell? When to sell? Where to sell? All these questions loom large over every market-based decision-making process. Even though the market is shrinking, there exist differences between any two given markets. These subtle differences can, in effect, make or break a marketing effort. A market is like a living, breathing entity with a mind of its own; each market reacting in a different way to a marketing effort. So is there a definite way, a strategy, for a firm to go about the marketing process? Is there a tried and tested way of understanding and penetrating a market? Study of multinational diffusion models is precisely the way to go about answering the previous question. This chapter is a compilation of the various studies in the field pf global diffusion that tries to explain the phenomenon. This review attempts to encapsulate the past studies and the current studies in the field of multinational diffusion models and finally draws conclusions about the future of multinational diffusion models.

The literature on cross national diffusion models is gaining increased importance today due to the needs of present day managers. New product sales growth in a given nation or society is affected by many factors (Rogers 1995), and of these, sociocontagion (word of mouth) has been found to be the most important factor that characterizes the diffusion process (Bass 1969, Moore 1995). Hence, it is interesting and perhaps challenging to analyze what would happen if a new product diffuses in parallel in two neighboring but culturally different countries. Not only will we expect the diffusion process in the two countries to be different, but we will also expect some interaction among them, especially if the two societies mingle with each other. There are two streams of research in cross national diffusion. The first type focuses on exploring the differences between diffusion processes in two countries and finding out whether those differences can be attributed to social and cultural difference between the countries involved. Examples of this type of research are found in Takada and Jain (1991), Gatigon et al. (1989), Helsen et al. (1993), and Kumar et al. (1998). These studies did find some relationship between the cultural differences of the countries studies and the differences in the diffusion process. The second stream of research focuses on modeling explicitly the interaction between the diffusion processes in two countries. The interaction is typically captured through lead-lag effect (Eliashberg and Helsen 1996, Kalish et al. 1995), where the sales process in the lead country (i.e., the country where the product was first introduced) is modeled to affect the sales process in the lag country (i.e., the country where the product was introduced a few years later. Another method to study the interaction among the diffusion processes in two countries was suggested by Putsis et al. (1997), who used a "mixing model" to empirically explore the existence of such interactions. These studies basically observed that, when a new product is introduced early in one country and with a time lag in subsequent countries, the consumers in the lag countries learn about the product from the lead country adopters, resulting in a faster diffusion rate in the lag countries. Ganesh and Kumar (1996) formulized this effect as the learning effect to be influenced by country-specific factors (cultural similarity, economic similarity, and time lag elapsed between the lead and the lag countries) and product specific factors (continuous vs. discontinuous innovation and the presence or absence of a standardized technology). A careful analysis of the extant literature on the second stream of research would reveal that neither the learning effect model nor the mixing model can be modified to accommodate the other model. Our contribution to the literature exactly addresses this point. In this paper, an alternative framework is proposed that has two unique features. First the framework is flexible enough to not only account for the lead country affecting the lag countries and vice versa, but also to accommodate the simultaneous interaction among countries in explaining the diffusion processes in the countries concerned. Using multiple product categories and a variety of new product introduction situations, we empirically demonstrate the flexibility and efficiency of our proposed framework. We found strong evidence of all types of interaction, namely, lead lag, lag lead, and simultaneous, which evidence suggests that one cannot afford to omit any of the interactions. The second unique feature of our paper is the estimation procedure that we used. Because statistical estimation of a dynamic process that includes lead-lag, lag-lead, and simultaneous types of causality within a single framework is not straightforward, we suggest and iterative estimation procedure for the estimation. This new procedure not only proved to be flexible in accommodating difference types of interaction, but also converged rather quickly in all of the cases that we empirically tested. Noting that the statistical properties of these estimators are not generally available, we carried out a simulation exercise that clearly revealed the efficiency of the proposed estimation procedure. After analyzing the interaction, we went further and showed that the magnitude of the cross-national influences is affected by certain country-specific and product specific factors. The flexibility of the proposed method over the existing methods is demonstrated through obtaining superior forecasts with the proposed method. Several interesting insights for managers concerned with formulating international marketing strategies are offered.

The primary purpose of this article is to shed more light on the more complex challenges of global market segmentation (GMS). To provide a complete understanding, we discuss some of the well-known issues in segmenting foreign markets and move on to state the various properties of global target markets. We conclude that companies can implement GMS most effectively by first gaining a full understanding of both local and global concerns.

To compete effectively in the global marketplace, marketing managers require insight into how a product gets adopted in different countries. For example, can international marketers identify specific cultural traits that may help them to forecast how quickly a new product will be adopted in a particular country or in a group of somehow related countries? Similarly, can they identify factors that suggest why the adoption process differs among countries? Although these diffusion-related questions address critical issues for international marketing managers, only a few studies have explored cross-national diffusion. To help fill this gap, V. Kumar, Jaishankar Ganesh, and Raj Echambadi present the results of a study that replicates and extends the findings of three previously published studies of cross-national diffusion. Their research aims to replicate four findings from the previous studies: the role of country-specific effects in explaining differences in diffusion parameters, the presence of a lead-lag effect, the use of cultural variables to explain systematically the diffusion patterns across countries, and the merit of country segmentation schemes based on diffusion parameters. They extend the previous research by integrating cross-sectional and time lag variables into a single framework, and they demonstrate how managers can apply this integrated framework for forecasting the diffusion of new products. They replicate the findings from the previous studies by using annual sales data for five product categories (VCRs, microwave ovens, cellular phones, home computers, and CD players) in the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. The product categories and time periods covered differ from the ones in the previous studies; some overlap exists among the countries in this study and the ones in the previous studies. The findings in this study suggest that country-specific characteristics (for example, cosmopolitanism, mobility, percentage of women in the labor force) are useful for identifying the differences in diffusion patterns across countries and innovations. This study also suggests that the lead-lag effect helps to explain differences in diffusion across countries. Factors that this study identifies as possibly influencing the clustering of countries with similar diffusion patterns include timing of entry, geographical proximity, and cultural or economic similarity.

The extant literature on the choice of entry modes into international markets has assumed that the mode of entry is a single stage rational analytic decision by the manager. A contingency framework for the mode of entry decision which accommodates alternative decision strategies is presented. As a part of the contingency framework, a strategy-rational analytic-used by past researchers and an alternative strategy of decision making-cybernetic-are discussed. Each decision strategy has its own merits and disadvantages. An outcome of the cybernetic strategy is a hierarchical model for the mode of entry decision. Implications of the alternative strategies for the mode of entry decision are also provided.

Recent studies on cross-national diffusion have observed that when a new product innovation is introduced early in one country (the lead country) and with a time subsequent countries (the lag countries); the consumers are the lag countries learn about the product from the lead country adopters, resulting in a faster diffusion rate in lag countries. This study attempts to examine the relationship between lead and lag countries and to systematically capture the learning effect that takes place between the two social systems. In particular, this research examines the diffusion of retail point-of-sale scanners in countries that belong to the European Union, the Unites States, and Japan. It offers interesting insights for formulating efficient international marketing strategies.

This study develops a logit choice model of factors that can contribute to developing a competitive advantage for exporting by a small business. The data used in the study are from 142 small businesses in the gulf coast region of the United States. Among various factors, international training, level of preparation to enter foreign markets and as active promotional strategy are found to be significant predictors of obtaining a competitive advantage for exporting. Within the active promotional strategy, additional analysis revealed the use of letter campaigns and international salesman to be the most effective strategies for consistent exporting by small businesses. The predictive validity, evaluated by the U-method, of the proposed framework was high and managerial inferences are drawn for small businesses to obtain a competitive advantage for exporting to foreign markets.

The authors address the issue of portfolio management in the context of an international marketing problem. Screening, identification, and selection characterize the three stages in the evaluation of potential foreign markets. The proposed methodology is used for identifying potential foreign markets. This article contributes to the existing literature in four ways: (a) it integrates the past research on international market evaluation into a comprehensive framework, (b) it fills a gap in this area, by offering a flexible, cost efficient methodology that is easy to comprehend and adopt, (c) it simultaneously considers the objectives of the firm, its resource constraints, and expansion strategies while identifying potential foreign markets, and (d) it introduces a multicriteria methodology for solving problems of multiobjective decision models, to the international marketing managers.

Understanding the effectiveness of various marketing efforts in the international marketplace is a growing need for United States businesses. Unfortunately, many businesses, especially small ones are not consistently successful in exporting their products. Although many factors can contribute to exporting on a consistent basis, this study analyzes the various international marketing methods utilized by small businesses and determines which methods, especially direct marketing, can significantly contribute to consistent exporting of products. The data used in the study are provided by small businesses in the United States., and a logit choice model is formulated. Among various marketing methods, direct marketing is found to be a significant predictor of exporting on a consistent basis, in addition to such factors as prior experience and extent of preparation to enter foreign markets. Further analysis revealed that among the direct marketing approaches, both the letter and salesman campaigns were found to be more effective than the phone campaign. Therefore, direct marketing efforts may be targeted toward more efficient approaches, such as developing contracts through mail and salesmen.