Tünde Csapóné Riskó

From Domestic Marketing through International Marketing to Intercultural Marketing

Globalisation, IT development and strengthening of WTO-GATT have resulted in equalisation and internationalisation providing a favourable environment to international businesses. At the same time, social and socio-cultural differences draw up new challenges for international marketers and businessmen. In international business, the main question of marketing is to adapt to the specialities of the desired foreign market or to follow the standardised strategy. Cultural differences, specialities, are the main barriers to globalisation tendencies. Thus, international marketing strategy -if we are sensible to differentiation -has to be adapted from culture to culture. The essence of cross-culture marketing is studying the cultural features, differences of foreign markets, fitting, adapting to them or at least taking them into consideration when making a business decision (DANKO, 2000). The main aim of the present paper is to overview marketing concepts and to highlight the importance of the intercultural approach to marketing.

10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE JOURNAL APSTRACT: THE HISTORY OF AN OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL

The idea initiating the birth of the journal APSTRACT was initiated by Andras Nabradi, during a 2005 AGRIMBA1 executive board meeting held in Aberdeen, UK. AGRIMBA is an open international network of academics and professionals from universities and related institutions dealing with education and research in agribusiness (Csapo et al., 2010). Currently, the Network is especially active in Central and Eastern Europe (Heijman, 2015). The main objective of the Network is to set standards based on best practices for programmes it oversees and to accredit them on the basis of these standards. The International MBA Network was established in 1995, by founding members from Wageningen University, Scottish Agricultural College, the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, Warsaw Agricultural University, University College Cork and the University of Wolverhampton. Between 2000 and 2009, the following universities joined the Network: Humboldt University Berlin, the University of Debrecen, Arkansas State University, the Agricultural University of Ukraine, the Timiryazev Academy in Moscow, the University of Belgrade and the University of Zagreb (Heijman, 2015). The Universities of Belgorod (Russia) and Kazan (Russia) has also joined the network last year.

Is it Wo rth being socially Responsible

Several definitions for corporate social responsibility (CSR) exist and these vary greatly as to the activities it should cover and their motivators. Among the benefits of CSR are positive marketing/brand building, brand insurance and employee loyalty. Numerous arguments against CSR prevail, e.g. social responsibility is not a problem that belongs in the sphere of activities a corporation should be addressing or even that CSR distracts businesses from addressing the primary need to concentrate on sales. Thus, the strong economic question: is CSR worth it? In 2014, we carried out a representative survey in Hungary, in which the effects of responsible business practices on consumer purchase behaviour were studied. With our research results, we could show that there is a considerable gap between the apparent interest of consumers in CSR and the limited role of CSR in purchase behaviour.

Foreign Uncontrollable Elements of Marketing: Roots of Cultural Forces

Among the uncontrollable elements of international marketing cultural forces are in the focus of the present paper. In the globalised world it is not enough to be familiar “only” with the geographical, economic, legal, infrastructural, social, etc. environment of the partner country. We should not forget, that we, people are different. This difference originates from our culture. Practice often proves that geographical closeness of the foreign market does not always equal to cultural closeness. It may happen that our product, because of cultural reasons, can be more easily sold in a faraway country instead of in any of our neighbouring countries. But what do we mean by culture? How can we define it? How it is build up of? How it works? How can it cause so extreme differences and sometimes unexpected similarities between people? Building on the research of recognised scientists we are investigating the origin of cultural differences and similarities.