Emerging trends for marketing in Asia

Citation

Fam, K.-S., Run, E.C.d. and Shukla, P. (2013), "Emerging trends for marketing in Asia", Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 25 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/APJML.00825aaa.001

Emerging trends for marketing in Asia

Article Type:

Guest editorial

From:

Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Volume 25, Issue 1

Asia is a continent of paradoxes. It has some of the fastest growing economies of the world, the largest populace, and some of the wealthiest as well as the poorest societies in the world. It also possesses rich web of cultural complexities. Since the days of the Silk Route, Asia has always fascinated historians, merchants, philosophers and rulers from other parts of the world. Recently however, increasing household income, higher education and an expanding mid-to-high income class with smaller families, globalization, westernization influences and plus the loosening of regulations on foreign direct and indirect investments by most Asian governments have spurred the influx of global businesses into the Asian market. This creates an interesting situation in Asia in the realm of business. Contradiction abounds, from that of a traditional business marketing effort such as relationship marketing to the specialized mass marketing of mega businesses.

Given this growing attractiveness of the Asian region, we invited submission to a special issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics focusing on Emerging trends for marketing in Asia. The interest among academic community was overwhelming. We received numerous enquiries as we launched the special issue which turned into 18 papers being sent to review and among these, we accepted nine papers after rigorous double blind review process. The papers submitted ranged from sales to relationship marketing, international and cross-cultural marketing, branding and services issues in Asia, retail marketing, business education reform in Asia, strategic marketing and need for adaptation among others. Each paper was sent to two reviewers having subject and regional expertise to assess the relevance and rigour. We earnestly thank all the reviewers for helping us in this review process in a timely fashion.

With the complexity of interwoven cultural web of multiple communities within a single nation, Asian countries create enormous challenges for firms to develop likeable advertisements which could work across sub-regions of Asia. Using the dimensions of ethicality and likability, Massey, Waller, Wang and Lanasier, study four diverse cultural groups in Indonesia and offer interesting findings relating to conservative and permissive groups. The study highlights the importance of social awareness when marketing in Asia and provides interesting implications for researchers and managers.

The paper by Moschis, Ong, Abessi, Yamashita, and Mathur addresses a very contentious issue among the academic community regarding the reliability and validity of scales developed in Western markets in Eastern markets. Using a context of two Asian countries, the team of researchers empirically analyse reliability of the measures of self-esteem, life satisfaction, and materialism. They ask very pertinent questions including, do mixed-item scales that are found reliable in individualistic countries also produce acceptable reliabilities in collectivistic countries, where consumers tend to show higher acquiescence? Do such scales produce lower reliabilities when administered to older adults, who are likely to experience cognitive declines? Do alternative scale formats that avoid declarative forms (e.g. interrogative) reduce mixed-items bias effects? Is there a strong bias in scales for which responses are sensitive to religious beliefs? The research raises some important issues around applicability, relevance and challenges our assumptions significantly.

In today’s competitive environment, many companies resort to endless sales promotions to gain market share and retain existing customers. However, consumer susceptibility to sales promotion will differ from market to market. McNeill, and Weng and de Run articles deal with this issue from marketer and consumer perspective, respectively. Using observations and in-depth interviews with managers, McNeill offers a guide to retailers and manufacturers implementing sales promotion strategies in Singapore and Malaysia, highlighting the importance of channel choices and country and industry appropriateness of various sales promotion tools. The paper identifies key preferences for different sales promotion techniques in the two nationally similar yet ethnically diverse countries under study, as well offering a framework for application of these techniques in the retail environment. On the other hand, Weng and de Run tackles this issue by looking at importance of personal value and moderating influence of the type of sale promotion on behavioural intentions of Malaysian consumers on various types of consumer products. The results provide some interesting conclusions relating to collectivist markets and personal value influences as well as preference for types of sales promotions.

While companies keep spending millions on building brands in emerging markets of Asia, Shamim and Butt provide interesting insights regarding the influence of brand experience on a customer’s brand attitude, brand credibility and customer-based brand equity in a relatively understudied country context of Pakistan. The study reports several interrelationships between branding constructs which can help researchers and managers alike.

With the significant economic growth, the urge among the young people in Asia to get a qualification from developed Western market is also rising substantially. Many Asian countries top the list of student studying overseas. Taiwan has a high number of students aspiring to study overseas. How do they make the choice of their destination? The paper by Muthaly, Lobo, and Jen-Yuan explores this issue using three specific constructs namely, potential benefits, quality of information and country characteristics. The findings offer stimulating discussion on how academic institutions can position themselves in such prospective markets.

Gaining successful entry into fast growing Asian markets is a highly debated topic. While earlier studies of market entry success factors have mostly focused on large emerging markets such as China or India, limited attention has been given to smaller emerging markets. Using the context of Thailand as a market, Perks, Hogan and Shukla look at the effects of firm, country and cultural factors on successful market entry strategies for multi-national enterprises. The results show why and how smaller emerging markets differ from larger markets and thus need re-evaluation of strategy.

While managers spend millions on developing advertise which are likable, what can cause an advertisement to be disliked by consumers? In a multi-country empirical study, Fam, Waller, de Run and He offer some interesting insights about attributes which can lead to disliking of an advertisement. Fam et al. identify seven attributes namely style, meaningless, character, exaggeration, irresponsive, violent and hard-sell as the most dislike causing attributes. The study also highlights the strength of relationship between the dislike causing attributes and purchase intentions.

Focusing on cultural assimilation process Shergill, Sekhon and Zhao ask an interesting question about what do parents’ think about the influence of their own teenage family members in their family purchase decisions. The authors compare two groups of consumers namely, Chinese immigrant families in New Zealand, and in Chinese families living in China and show how cultural assimilation influences family purchase decision making process. The study can be quite useful for managers in customizing their marketing communications and sales promotions strategies.

Overall, the authors of the accepted papers tackle marketing issues involving countries like China, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, and Indonesia making this a truly Asian marketing related special issue.

We thank all authors who submitted manuscripts to our special issue and commend the referees for assisting us in the review process. In addition we are grateful to Professor Ian Phau for entrusting us with this issue on Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics.

Kim-Shyan Fam, Ernest Cyril de Run, Paurav Shukla Guest Editors