Journal of International Marketing

This article focuses on the impact of digital platforms on international marketing. It describes the evolution of social media and its influence on marketing. After identifying a typology of context for international marketing, the author identifies and describes five dimensions of value creation in marketing: access, affordability, acceptance, awareness, and activation. Finally, this article provides future implications for areas of research in social media and international marketing.

The rapid spread of the internet and internet-based technologies is reshaping how companies build and manage global brands. While specific platforms and technologies change rapidly, what does not change quickly are the underlying trends. This article identifies the implications of five core underlying digital trends for global brand building and management: (1) rise of digital global sales channels, (2) cocreation of global brand strategy, (3) global transparency of brand activities, (4) global connectivity among the brand’s consumers, and (5) the Internet of Things. For each trend, the author discusses key changes taking place in the marketplace and directions for future research.

Digital technologies and digital media are changing the environments in which firms interact with customers. However, the evolution of digital organizational forms, customer technology use, and the nature of customer journeys differ significantly across global markets. Drawing on observations of customer journeys across different international markets, the authors propose a framework to explain the observed differences in terms of the cross-cultural and socioeconomic factors that influence customer journeys. The authors put forth several propositions built on logical extensions of the extant research findings and identify areas for future academic research. In addition, they outline the managerial implications arising from the application of the framework for multinational firms seeking to market their products and services across global markets.

This article analyzes how political leaders communicate with their target audiences and examines whether they adopt a country-specific communication persona, or react to the global media-intensive environment by offering more universal communication. Politicians communicate through presentational (e.g., social media) and representational (e.g., press) outlets, and the compatibility between these outlets represents the leader’s effectiveness in transmitting the desired messages to the audience. The authors of this study suggest a theoretical framework that classifies public figures’ communication along two dimensions: universality (particular–universal) and media compatibility (low–high). The authors used language processing tools to study the sentiment, topic mixture, and use of pronouns by 61 global world leaders in more than 300,000 messages from the leaders’ Twitter accounts and press articles. The results show a high level of universality across political leaders in sentiment, topic mixture, and pronoun usage. The media compatibility is high, with Twitter being slightly more positive. Most leaders fall within the categories of Cosmopolitan Antagonist (high universality, low media compatibility) and Global Icon (high universality, high media compatibility). Overall, the sentiment of their communications is positive. Popular topics include diplomacy, economy, corruption, and the Arab world. No significant relationship was found between the sentiment or communication topics and country characteristics.

Over the past decade, the world has been contending with a growing set of challenges related to illicit traffic as advancements in technology, communications, and global integration facilitate the operation of black markets and greater organization of criminal activity. In this study, the dark web and associated dark net markets are introduced as an important context for scholars interested in international marketing. Furthermore, the scale, scope, and structure of the real-world drug trade is empirically analyzed as an example of the work possible within this dark world. The study concludes by highlighting key themes from the literature in international marketing scholarship and focuses on how they might be co-opted to contribute toward the understanding and countermarketing of illicit systems of exchange.