ABSTRACT
After reminding readers of the different attitudes that practitioners might adopt in relation to the seminal debate within international business (IB) between upstream standardisation pressures and downstream adaptation preferences, the chapter begins with a series of analyses speaking to various strategic but above all attitudinal factors determining cross-border business development professionals’ room to manoeuvre. Rooted in real-life storytelling, this first section highlights the experience of international marketing in an integration-oriented “push” company as opposed to a responsiveness-oriented “pull” culture. It includes a categorisation of frequent international marketing mistakes, justified by the fact that learners benefit as much from examples of errors committed as they do from prescriptions of idealised behaviour. The second section offers a more traditional “4 Ps” filter but one that has been modified to focus on the specifically international determinants of a marketing mix. The chapter concludes with a deeper look at international advertising, highlighting the fundamental debate between promotions aimed at signalling a company’s insider status in a foreign setting as opposed to an otherness strategy highlighting positive national stereotyping.
