Subsidiary use of Foreign Marketing Knowledge

Abstract

A source of potentially valuable knowledge in multinational enterprises is foreign marketing knowledge—that is, knowledge from one country unit that may offer value and competitive advantage to marketing managers in other country units. This article builds on marketing and management knowledge transfer research to further understand both the conditions under which one subsidiary uses external knowledge from another subsidiary and the outcomes of such use in the subsidiary's market. Using the theory of value creation and appropriation and field interviews with headquarter and subsidiary marketing managers, the authors develop a model and research propositions of the enabling, motivating, and perceiving conditions that affect foreign marketing knowledge use and subsequent effects on marketing program effectiveness and efficiency, organization identification, and intellectual capital in subsidiaries of multinational enterprises.

Knowledge-intensive business services: does dual embeddedness matter?

“…As a result, although the knowledge residing in the The Service Industries Journal local environment is a core competitive advantage of foreign subsidiaries, absorbing such knowledge is not an easy task. Unlike information, market knowledge is highly tacit and context-specific (Roth, Jayachandran, Dakhli, & Colton, 2009); thus, it should be acquired through social and professional interactions (Porter, 1990). In other words, the more integrated subsidiaries are in their local environment, the easier they can acquire this contextspecific knowledge (Andersson et al, 2005;Sternberg & Arndt, 2001).…”

Effect of exporter’s incentives on foreign distributor’s role performance

“…Extant literature (e.g., Blattberg & Neslin, 1990;Coughlan, Anderson, & Stern, 2006;Gilliland, 2003;Roth, Jayachandran, Dakhli, & Colton, 2009) and our field research suggest that typical LPIs include the following:…”

International Firms Market Orientation and Use of Knowledge: Implications for Market Information Systems

“…More precisely, Roth et al [36] propose that effective transfer of knowledge within an international firm is contingent on subsidiary's marketing experience and speed of changes of customers' preferences and technology. A lack of experience in marketing a certain product motivates managers to use market knowledge created elsewhere on the corporation, while such knowledge may reduce uncertainty stemming from changes pertaining to customers and technology.…”

“…The design is, for example, complicated as the use of information is due to the use situation as illustrated in this article. In addition, dynamic market conditions seem to drive the extent of information usage [36] and greater dynamism means that benefits of building systems tend to exceed the costs. In other circumstances, such as those in stable markets, costs may be too high to motivate design of advanced information systems.…”