Journal of International Marketing

Intellectual property rights are policies that assign and protect the rights to earn income from innovative and creative activity. These rights provide legal authority to control the dissemination and commercialization of new information and ideas and to enforce sanctions against their unauthorized use. Intellectual property rights play a critical role in global economic growth and development because they affect the profitability of industrial research and the rewards to creative activity. At the same time, intellectual property rights are controversial because their stronger international protection may come at the expense of higher prices and reduced availability of products, particularly in developing countries. Obviously, developing countries prefer a low level of protection.

Traditionally, intellectual property rights were of concern only to a few lawyers specializing in the field. But the enormous expansion in world trade in the 1980s elevated intellectual property rights to new prominence in international trade policy. At the same time, new and emerging technologies have made traditional protection of intellectual property rights inadequate. For these reasons, the topic of international protection of intellectual property rights should be an important subject of concern among international business and marketing scholars.

This article provides an overview of intellectual property rights and their international protection. The conflict between the industrialized and developing countries on the level of protection is highlighted. Issues and controversies that affect the field today are examined. Finally, ideas are advanced for further research on the subject.

During the last two decades, foreign market entry has received extensive attention among international business scholars. Central among recent attempts to explain the sequence of operational modes used by foreign investors is the (Uppsala) internationalization model (Johanson and Vahlne 1977). The aim of the present study is to address the question of why some companies follow while others deviate from the ‘traditional’ establishment chain proposed in the Uppsala model. In an explanatory analysis on the sequence of operational modes used by a number of Finnish companies with sales or manufacturing subsidiaries in Germany, hypotheses based on the Uppsala internationalization model, industrial economics, and internalization theory received limited support. A separate analysis focusing on only manufacturing subsidiaries indicated that other factors, such as existing market network relationships, top management changes, and product characteristics, all have an important influence on the choice of local manufacturing as some firms’ first operational mode abroad. Implications of these results for future theory building are discussed.

Data collected from highly competitive markets in the Philippines were used to investigate how country-of-origin (CO) information influenced the prices set for a wide range of products. The data permitted direct comparisons between prices for the same product produced by the same company, but in different countries, and sold in adjacent markets. Imported products produced in more industrialized countries were found to command price premiums over the same product, produced by the same company in less industrialized countries. However, imports from all countries commanded significant price premiums over domestically produced products. Consistent with previous research, branding was found to moderate the effect of CO information on price. Finally, CO information had a stronger impact on price when product risk was high than when it was low.

International marketing blunders represent avoidable mistakes made by companies in foreign markets. While there exists a well-developed literature of blunders committed abroad by firms from the United States, very few such tales have been reported from other countries. This article is a collection of new cases, compiled from a variety of sources and featuring numerous companies operating in various parts of the world. A framework for analyzing international marketing blunders is offered, along with managerial implications.

Previous approaches to portfolio analysis in international markets focused on the country as the basic portfolio unit and relied on an assessment of market attractiveness and competitive strength to determine how to allocate resources. This article proposes an approach to international portfolio analysis based on an examination of the interconnectedness of geographic markets and product businesses. This enables management to identify strategic portfolio units (SPUs) based on market interconnectedness, as well as competitive strength, and market attractiveness. SPUs incorporating market interconnectedness enable management to establish directions for future growth and determine how expansion or retraction of the portfolio in a given direction impacts other portfolio units. Opportunities to leverage core competencies across portfolio units in international markets and to reconfigure portfolio units and operations so as to achieve greater synergies can also be identified.