What differentiates successful strategic marketing among manufacturers in an emerging vs developed market?

Emerging markets present strategists with a unique set of challenges that result from a business environment that is quite different from that which characterises developed markets. Yet, little is known about marketing’s contribution to successful strategic decision making in emerging markets. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine the usage of conventional strategic marketing practice, as it relates to developed markets, within groups of higher- and lower- performing manufacturers in the emerging market of India, comparing it against that of their counterparts in the developed market of the USA.

The study is based on separate web-hosted questionnaire surveys conducted in India and the USA, yielding samples of 71 and 84 self-reported manufacturing companies, respectively. Data analyses were conducted using independent-sample t-tests and logistic multiple regression, and sought to compare and contrast successful strategic marketing decision making in each country.

The results confirm that conventional strategic marketing plays a vital role in facilitating the competitive success of manufacturers in India. However, they also suggest that differences in the strategic environments faced by manufacturers in both countries necessitate quite different priorities for success at each stage of the strategic marketing decision-making process.

Due to relatively low response rates, the extent to which the study samples are representative of the population under scrutiny remains unknown. Also, differences in the respondents’ interpretation of certain questions and some of the marketing vocabulary and terminology used cannot be ruled out.

The research highlights the important contribution that conventional strategic marketing makes to the achievement of competitive success of manufacturers in India. However, it also identifies several specific practices that differentiate higher firm performance in the two countries, drawing into question the direct applicability of the conventional model of strategic marketing within an emerging market.

As far as is known for the first time, the applicability of the conventional model of successful strategic marketing within an emerging market is assessed. As a result, a new model is forwarded.