Special Issue Coeditors: Donald R. Lehmann and Kelly Hewett
Global marketing is being shaped in dramatic new ways with changes ushered in by internet, social, and mobile technologies. New forms of data and advances in computing power are reshaping firms. The proliferation of data and difficulty in generating insights to compete globally heightens the importance of methodological innovations. Furthermore, such data and methodological advances are increasingly important as understanding customer experience and engagement has grown in importance, especially in global contexts. In addition, marketing research in international contexts continue to pose particular challenges due to differences in data availability and reliability, acceptability of different data collection methods, and respondent tendencies in terms of their responses to primary data collection via surveys or experiments and the use of online, mobile or other means of collecting data. Therefore, the Journal of International Marketing is planning a special issue on data and methods for developing new insights in global marketing.
Types of Papers
This Special Issue will highlight scholarship that examines the importance of Data and Methods for developing insights in global marketing research. Manuscripts can focus on:
- Comparing different methods to evaluate insights from global marketing data, including both the approaches to data collection and methods for analyzing data from different markets;
- Presenting new methods to draw insights from cross-cultural or cross-national marketing data;
- Highlighting the advantage of and/or challenges posed by underutilized methods in a global marketing context;
- Assessing measurement issues in international marketing; or
- Demonstrating the need for different types of data and methods to generate insights in markets that differ in significant ways, such as emerging or bottom-of-the-pyramid versus developed markets;
- Evaluating methods commonly used in international research; or
- Demonstrating the usefulness of methods developed in emerging markets for established markets.
Papers that address a real-world global marketing question are of particular interest. While methodological insights that guide managerial practice are valuable, the use of theory in explaining the insights will also be important. That is, there is a preference for papers that examine methodological issues in the context of a well-grounded conceptual story that is substantive in nature and relevant for international marketing/business scholars, practitioners at senior- and mid-level international marketing positions, or other societal stakeholders.
We also welcome papers with an international marketing focus that showcase methods popular in other disciplines such as computer science, sociology, and engineering. The Special Issue editors are happy to address questions from authors about the fit of the topic with their research focus.
Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:
- Measurement Equivalence:
a. Secondary data: Comparability of definition and operationalization of constructs across markets/cultures
b. Primary Data: Cross-national comparability of measures gathered via an online, telephone or written instrument administered as part of a survey or experiment, and their interpretations - Causal Inference in International Marketing: Natural and field experiments to determine the causal effects of marketing-mix strategies (e.g., advertising, promotion) in international contexts.
- Sampling Equivalence: Establishing the need and showing how to establish sampling equivalence when analyzing cross-national data to generate practical global marketing insights
- Online Marketing in International Contexts: Web scraping to understand reaction and response on the web to offline and online advertising and other marketing communications in cross-cultural settings
- Customer- or Marketer-Generated Content in Social Media: Advances in tools for gathering or analyzing social media content in cross-cultural settings
- Understanding the Customer Experience in a Global Context: Methods for tracking the customer journey with cross-border or global customer interactions or touchpoints
- Highlighting particular challenges or advantages in using methods commonly used in international marketing research
- Investigating implications of using different approaches for data collection or analysis across markets
These topics should be seen as suggestions. Any papers that advance understanding of and implications of different methodological approaches in international marketing contexts are welcome.
Inquiries can be directed to the special issue coeditors:
- Donald R. Lehmann (drl2@columbia.edu)
- Kelly Hewett (khewett@utk.edu)