Guilherme D Pires

Improving expatriate adjustment and effectiveness in ethnically diverse countries: marketing insights

Purpose – Sets out to argue that training and adjustment strategies based on immersion in a foreign culture, in order to reduce expatriate culture shock, can be improved by training that addresses how to use related ethnic networks within the host country. Design/methodology/approach – A framework used for the examination of the cultural adjustment process of long‐term migrants is used to draw implications for the adjustment process of expatriates. The components of analysis include the U‐curve, social learning theory, and oral deprivation. How long‐term arrivals overcome their culture shock is extended to a discussion of expatriates, their problems, and the need for further areas of training. Findings – Significant similarities in the adjustment problems of the two groups point to similar processes in operation and the potential to apply similar solutions to ease the expatriate adjustment process. Research limitation/implications – The study draws from findings in one discipline area and argues by analogy to the field of international human resource management. Implications of this extension include a widening of expatriate training to include greater awareness of host country ethnic networks and how they can be a useful adjustment resource. Practical implications – Expatriate worker failure is common and costly. While there is considerable emphasis on the technical competency of expatriates, social competency is critical but often neglected. Measures to reduce such social failure that focus on reducing the culture shock encountered, need to be examined carefully. This paper has suggested one approach drawing from an analogous situation. Originality/value – The paper links specific elements of the marketing literature dealing with arrivals from a different culture with the expatriate adjustment problem of international human resource management.

Identifying and reaching an ethnic market: methodological issues

The potential for segmenting and targeting consumers, using ethnicity as a segmenting variable, is widely recognised in the marketing literature. However, attention to the problems of identifying and reaching a single, often relatively small, ethnic group, as opposed to some aggregate of groups, has been minimal. This paper proposes a framework for ethnic marketing research that is currently lacking. A method for conducting exploratory qualitative research of an ethnic group, for which little published information is available, is discussed with particular attention given to the sampling process. The proposed methodology, involving a symbiosis of symbolic interaction with phenomenological description, yields rich information about the group.

Marketing services to ethnic consumers in culturally diverse markets: issues and implications

Ethnic consumers arriving in an ethnically diverse nation such as Australia are likely to have a limited knowledge of the marketplace. Combined with possible communication difficulties, constrained decision making may result when selecting both products and suppliers. Services are significantly different from tangible products to warrant a distinct marketing literature but within it marketing to ethnic consumers is not distinguished. This paper argues that the marketing of services to ethnic consumers in culturally diverse markets requires this focus. A review of the literature identifies service selection difficulties that are likely to be endemic to minority ethnic groups residing in a culturally diverse society. The task of inexperienced ethnic consumers in selecting a service provider is used to identify potential constraints in the decision‐making process, to explain how membership of an ethnic group can reduce selection difficulties and to discuss how group recommendation influences an individual’s behaviour and vice versa.

Ethnic marketing ethics

Culture plays an important role in defining ethics standards because dissimilar cultures socialize their people differently, according to what is acceptable behaviour. The potential significance of ethnic groups for marketing justifies inquiry into the moral judgments, standards, and rules of conduct exercised in marketing decisions and situations arising from decisions whether or not to focus on individual ethnic groups within an economy. Identifying and targeting ethnic groups for marketing purposes are tasks fraught with many ethical difficulties. In a multicultural society consisting of a dominant group and many diverse, minority groups defined by ethnicity, these problems can be expected to increase substantially. Consequently, marketers may include minority ethnic consumers in their mainstream marketing programs. In itself, this has ethical consequences. Alternatively, if marketers seek to target individual minority ethnic groups within the same economy a further set of ethical consequences needs to be considered. This paper reviews the concepts of ethnicity and ethnic groups and their relevance for marketing strategy within an economy where there is a dominant group and also significant minority ethnic groups. The ethical consequences for minority communities arising from the use of non-ethnic, mainstream marketing programs are examined. An alternative approach, ethnic marketing, is also examined and its ethical consequences in terms of other groups within the one country appraised. The ethical dilemma and tradeoffs facing marketers within advanced, culturally diverse countries are then considered.

Domestic Cross Cultural Marketing in Australia: A Critique of the Segmentation Rationale

While individual ethnic groups are of potential marketing relevance in culturally diverse societies such as Australia, multicultural marketing has tended to aggregate across ethnic groups. This approach is questioned in this paper as ethnicity and culture are characteristics of individual ethnic groups and, the strategic aggregation of ethnic groups for segmentation purposes may be weakened by ethnicity and differing rates of acculturation. No justification is found in the marketing literature for the use of aggregation approaches in culturally diverse societies.

A decision-making framework for adoption of e-procurement

While the calculation of savings in staff time, possible with adoption of electronic procurement, may be relatively easy, the estimation of the overall business value of changes to procurement practice is difficult. In addition to internal process and staff issues that attend the introduction of any new information system, the management of supply chain relationships is important in procurement. The large number of factors involved in inter-organisational systems makes the adoption of e-procurement a complex decision. We present a generic framework for establishing the business case for a particular solution for a particular firm that blends and extends traditional marketing and information systems perspectives.

A research framework for examining customer participation in value co-creation: applying the service dominant logic to the provision of living support services to oncology day-care patients

Quality of life is a concern that extends to various specialist areas, such as the provision of oncology and associated ancillary services, and the living support services (LSS) provided to patients. Bringing together healthcare and marketing research, this paper develops a research framework that applies the principles of the service-dominant logic (S-D L) to an examination of the importance of consumers’ participation in the value co-creation process and, ultimately, its effect on perceived quality of LSS by oncology day-care consumers. The proposed framework is amenable to application in multiple service settings involving vulnerable consumers, such as those related to diabetes and obesity.

Marketing issues in healthcare research

How marketing knowledge is applied to the healthcare sector is examined to identify where this knowledge is being used and can be used better. Social marketing, market segmentation, new technologies and consumer empowerment are discussed. Relevance is first established before considering how social marketing is being applied. Limitations and problems are discussed, of which one is the failure to target effectively. Healthcare sector segmentation is considered in terms of ethnicity, given the need to often distinguish and target minority groups. The continuing growth in availability and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) opens the sector to an array of marketing applications with significant strategic considerations for competing businesses. While the use of ICT has implications for consumer empowerment, understanding of the links and interactions between the marketing activities of business using ICT and the empowerment of consumers of healthcare, is another area in need of further research.

The interaction of foreign direct investment with electronic commerce in less developed countries

This paper argues that the international growth of e-commerce (whether business–business, business–consumer or consumer–business) can increase a critical technology infrastructure gap that disadvantages less-developed countries (LDCs) in their future e-commerce participation. This gap is linked to the type as well as the volume of foreign direct investment (FDI) which economies at different levels of development attract. The macro technical, legal and socio-economic problems that entwine FDI inflow and e-commerce growth in LDCs, reducing e-commerce attractiveness and also making FDI less attractive, are classified. Governments must recognise this interdependence, pin-point the types of macro constraints operating in their particular economy that curb FDI in e-commerce attracting investment and prioritise the desirability and incentives offered to the various types of FDI infrastructure.

The Marketing Relevance of Cultural Diversity: A Framework for Understanding Ethnicity and Acculturation.

There is a conceptual challenge in establishing a basis for identifying, comparing and aggregating ethnic groups for marketing purposes. Ethnic group boundaries need to be established before any consideration about their marketing relevance can be made. To this effect, this paper presents a framework for examining the importance of ethnicity, involving three dimensions: ethnic origin, ethnic identity and ethnic intensity. The purpose of the framework is to provide a conceptual understanding of how these dimensions develop within the acculturation process, particularly in a culturally diverse society. The relevant literature on ethnicity and acculturation is reviewed as a basis for developing a construct for ethnicity, and relating it to acculturation. The conclusion advocates the need for a dynamic framework for assessing the marketing relevance of ethnic groups and the need for further research using such a framework.