Comparative Marketing: The First Twenty five Years
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* It has been fifteen years since Cox [1965]and Shapiro [1965]provided the first reviews of the then emerging field of comparative marketing.2This research and teaching area really started developing in the early 1950s; and most of its now out-of-print texts and books of readings by Bartels [1963], Carson [1967], Sommers and Kernan[1968], and Boddewyn [1969] were written in the 1960s. It is time to have another look at this field which now celebrates its silver anniversary and which remains most relevant for marketing theory and practice. The 1965 Cox and Shapiro reviews were extensive, perceptive, and almost prophetic. Since they remain largely valid and well worth re-reading, several of their leading questions are used here.3 Comparative marketing (CM) is about the systematic detection, identification, classification, measurement, and interpretation of similarities and differences among entire national systems or parts thereof [Boddewyn, 1969, p. 2; Jaffe, 1976 and 1980].4 Cox and Shapiro saw in comparative marketing the potential for enriching our understanding of what marketing is all about (the marketing theory question par excellence) and of what forms it assumes in different national environments. Itwould also help refine marketing concepts, models, hypotheses, and theories [Windand Douglas, 1980]. Such knowledge would have obvious international-marketing-management implications for the growing number of U.S. firms going abroad-a point also stressed by a contemporary MarketingScience Institute study urging the grouping of countries in terms of similarities [Lianderet al., 1967]. Thus, conceptual frameworks, models, and theories developed in one setting assume a general character if found applicable in a variety of environments. Alternatively, they may be invalidated for being "culture-specific" and have to be modified to distinguish between what Cox [1965] has called universals discovered everywhere, limited generalizations found among particular countries only, and specific differences unique to some nations. [See also Boddewyn, 1966 and 1969]. For international marketing managers, comparative studies help identify common market segments which invite similar strategies or warn against such an approach because of significant differences. The following sections analyze key issues, problems, and achievements in CMresearch and present majorfindings and conclusions. Itwas not possible to go into details in view of the vastness of the literature; nor are all relevant studies considered here since some of them were already analyzed in previous reviews.
THEFIELD
Businessat BaruchCollege,City *JeanJ. Boddewynis Professorof Marketing/International
Universityof New York.His Ph.D.is fromthe Universityof Washington. Recent research inter-
ests havecenteredon international relations,externalaffairs,MNCdibusiness-government vestment, and advertising regulation.
Journal of International Business Studies, Spring/Summer 1981 61
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