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This chapter examines the impact of consumer ethnocentrism and country of origin of a low involvement product on consumer brand perception and purchase behavior in a transitional market setting of Central and Eastern Europe. Data were collected from 317 respondents from an urban population in three large cities in Romania. The results show that country of origin has a significant impact on the consumers' perception of the Danish beer brand Tuborg. The results show statistically significant associations between consumer ethnocentrism taxation and buying Romanian products as well as between demographic characteristics and brand perception.

This chapter reports the results of an exploratory qualitative investigation into buying behaviors and growth challenges within the solar energy industry in Ghana. It is premised on the understanding that African firms may experience “liabilities of localness” when marketing renewable energy products developed in the West. That is, customers doubt their capabilities to produce and install these products. Thus, market-driven growth of the solar energy sector in Ghana requires firm-level capability development through institutional support that promotes effective cross-border inter-firm collaborations as well as trust-building relationships with local customers. The results of the study confirm these observations. They show that Ghanaian consumers tend to evaluate the capabilities of foreign solar energy providers as superior to those of local firms. However, collaborations between local and foreign firms have enhanced their credibility. Firms rely mainly on word-of-mouth recommendations to attract new customers and see customer price consciousness as a major growth constraint.

The study aims at theoretically developing and empirically testing a model for how exporting is embedded in international networking around the entrepreneur and co-marketing alliances. The sample consists of 58,161 entrepreneurs in 76 countries, which have been surveyed through the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. The analysis of the data is done through hierarchical linear models. The results show that both networking and co-marketing alliances are promoting the export intensity of the firm. Furthermore, attributes of the firms and entrepreneurs shape the interpersonal networking and the inter-organisational relations. These findings contribute to the extant literature, such as that networking impacts export performance and that co-marketing alliances are a significant factor to take into consideration in future exporting endeavours.

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