Standardisation vs. Adaptation - International Marketing in Service Firms

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 8 von 10 P, Jönköping International Business School (-), course: International Marketing, language: English, abstract: 1 Introduction

Within the course International Marketing, the third project deals with academic research in international marketing and internationalisation. We have chosen to focus on the inter-national dimension of standardisation versus adaptation in service marketing.

We will mainly discuss four typologies of services by McLoughlin & Fitzsimmons (1996), Lovelock (1983), Välikangas & Lehtinen (1990), and Clark & Rajaratnam (1999) and their implications for the standardisation versus adaptation trade-off. However, we will first give an overview about earlier research done within this field.

Some services were international in scope long before the term ¿scientific management¿ was ever invented or the first marketing course was taught. Shipping was an essential in-gredient in opening up early trade routes, with banking and insurance following and then facilitating them. In time, large companies emerged to operate international marine freight and passenger services, developing a network of agents in different ports to represent them. As more and more organisations offer services in foreign markets - often around the world - and as international trade in services increases, important questions are being raised concerning the design and implementation of international service marketing strategies. Research on internationalisation of services has been more limited than for manufactured goods and has tended to focus on methods of entry into foreign markets (see Vandermerwe & Chadwick, 1989; Johansson, 1990; Ikechi & Sivakumar, 1998). But there are other issues, as well; international strategies, scale and diversity, etc. Not all services are the same. Globalisation has different implications for different types of services and is affected by the nature of the process involved in creating and delivering a given service. (Lovelock, 1999) Grönroos (1999) also noted that most of the literature on internationalisation, international marketing and export strategies is geared to the needs of the manufacturing sector. However, it is a fact that international marketing of services is becoming a considerable part of total service marketing. Hence, it is not only of interest for service companies, but also for manufacturing companies. [...]