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PurposeThe aim of this paper is to investigate bank choice/selection criteria in a range of cultural and country economic scenarios. More specifically, the purpose of this study is to understand international consumers' selection criteria of banks using the USA, Taiwan, and Ghana as illustrations.Design/methodology/approachFollowing a literature review, the paper adopts the classical multi‐step scale development process which demanded that thorough attention be paid to every step of the process. The study employed exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to assess the reliability of the results.FindingsThe study reveals three key dimensions/factors/strategies that are consistent across all three economies. The paper concludes that open and liberalized business climate appear to explain consumers' decisions.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is based on the college student cohort and thus the results do not represent the public. This poses generalizability questions without further replications and validations. This study did not examine whether there were consumers' switching behaviors involving banks.Practical implicationsInsights derived from this study will provide bank managers and advertising executives with the building blocks for understanding consumers' choice criteria of banks in industrialized, newly industrialized and liberalized developing economies.Originality/valueA comprehensive validated scale measuring international consumers' selection of banks is proposed. In view of the scarce stream of empirical studies dealing with consumers' selection of banks in liberalized developing nations, this research comes at an opportune time, as several governments in these economies are encouraging bank savings, channeling college students' loans through bank accounts and proactively attracting global banks to establish branches in their countries. This study complements the extant literature dealing with consumers' selection of banks. Finally, a cross‐national and cross‐cultural dataset of consumers' choice criteria of banks have been put forward that would enhance further appreciation of the subject of banks selection in varying economies.

This exploratory research article is concerned with students' selection of retail banks in the UnitedStates and Ghana. It is a comparative cross-national study aimed at revealing the factors determining retail bank selection among students in different environmental settings. The key objective is to establish if there are any significant differences and/or similarities in students' selection of retail banks in developed and developing economies. A similar data-collection method was employed in the United States and Ghana to facilitate constructive comparison. The results identified four key factors-convenience, competence, recommendation by parents, and free banking and/or no bank charges-to be consistent across the two economies. The recommendation of the study is that in the context of an open and liberalized market environment, retail bank marketing strategies should be standardized irrespective of the national development stage. It concludes that retail bank managers particularly in developing countries should learn to provide consistent and good customer care.

Joint action, a key element of relational exchanges, has largely been ignored in the international channel literature, and not much is known about the determinants of joint action in cross-border exchanges. In view of this, the authors investigate the role of interchannel communication in motivating buyers for joint action in cross-border channel exchange relationships. The authors also propose and examine the moderating effect of psychic distance, a crucial aspect of crossborder exchanges. They use partial least squares to analyze survey data collected from Taiwanese importers, and the findings reveal that trust and satisfaction fully mediate the relationships between frequent and bidirectional communication and joint action. The authors also confirm the detrimental moderating impact of psychic distance on the relationships between communication facets and relational mediators (trust and satisfaction). However, psychic distance does not hinder the relationships between the relational mediators and joint action. The research provides insights into two underresearched areas-namely, joint action and intercultural communication-and advances theoretical understanding on how to encourage joint action in psychically distinct buyers and sellers.

PurposeSets out to nvestigate the adoption of and application of the market orientation concept within the small business sector using Michigan, USA, as a study setting.Design/methodology/approachFollowing a literature review, a pilot study involving face‐to‐face interviews with owner‐managers, and covert and overt observation of small businesses' marketing practices, was undertaken. The main thrust of the research involved a postal survey based on an adapted market orientation construct. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses are employed to assess the reliability of the results.FindingsReveals four dimensions/factors/strategies underpinning market orientation in the study setting. The paper concludes that the size of the business does not moderate the importance ascribed to, and the application of, the marketing concept (i.e. market orientation).Research limitations/implicationsFuture research should be directed at assessing the congruence between owner‐managers' purported marketing practices and consumers' perceptions of their actions. There is the need to develop normative guidelines concerning small businesses' best practice in market orientation.Practical implicationsInsights derived from this study will provide owner‐managers with the building‐blocks for understanding their firm's market orientation capabilities, an important facet in dealing with upstream (suppliers) and downstream (customers) business relationships.Originality/valueThis study responds to a suggestion for marketing scholars to adapt/adopt existing models, constructs, frameworks, definitions, and also to an assertion that the age‐old adage that what does not get measured does not get managed and, as a result, empirical evidence explaining the appreciation and the employment of an extant market orientation construct in the small business environment has been put forward.