| dc.description.abstract | Despite nearly eight decades of debate on the topic of international marketing
strategy standardisation/adaptation, the subject of strategic migration has yet to
be explored. It is this deficit that has spurred the authors to study this
phenomenon. As such, this study explores the process of strategic migration
within a firm’s international marketing strategy, with the purpose of
investigating, describing and assessing the factors that initiate and influence it.
In order to achieve this, three research questions were asked: To what degree
do firms migrate between international marketing strategies within the
framework of standardisation and adaptation? How does the process of
strategic migration transpire? Why do firms undertake the process to migrate
from a standardised to an adapted international marketing strategy, or vice
versa?
This study takes an abductive research approach using a number of
transdisciplinary theoretical concepts, including Strategic Change,
Standardisation/Adaptation, and Factors Affecting Standardisation/Adaptation,
to create a theoretical framework. The empirical part of this study undertakes
an in-depth investigation of a single-case company, MalacoLeaf, where the
strategic migration of one of its key strategic brands is described in terms of the
content, process and context of strategic migration.
In confronting theoretical propositions against the empirical research findings,
this study discovered that in terms of the content, solely the product
components of the firm’s international marketing strategy underwent migration
from a standardised to an adapted strategy. In addition, the study found that the
process of strategic migration must be seen as a chain of interrelated events
with different factors influencing the process at different stages. This study also
found that, in terms of context, it was not a single factor that initiated or
influenced the firm to migrate strategies but a combination of multiple factors.
Based on this study’s findings, the authors present a conceptualisation of the
process of strategic migration, showing the interrelationship of multifarious
factors which can impact a firm’s decision to migrate strategies. These findings
have proven to be very insightful and can serve as a foundation and strong
incentive for subsequent research on the subject of strategic migration. | swe |
