What are the specific events and decisions that actually occur in the identification, design, and implementation of joint ventures involving Western enterprises and East European enterprises? To answer this question a case study research program is presented in this article. Detailed flow diagrams of the interactions of people, key events, and decisions involving two international joint ventures in Hungary are presented. The joint ventures examined include the start of a new fast food restaurant chain in Hungary (major participants: McDonaldâs and Babolna) and a large-scale retail furniture store (IKEA and Butarker). The decision processes described are similar in execution to the Bounded rationality model of decision making, for example, as predicted by the model some search occurred but was limited to collecting information to evaluate the idea of the joint venture; no search occurred to develop a pool of candidates for the proposed joint venture partners. The paper concludes with some strategic insights for guiding the identification and evaluation of joint venture opportunities in Eastem/Central Europe.
Coordinating international research projects is not really easy. But it becomes much easier if and only if - the coordinating executives have the appropriate personality and culture - the sub-contractors react like partners, put their heads together and show solidarity.
This paper is in three parts. The first part examines the problem of establishing a common basis of comparison between consumer attitudes and behaviour in different cultures. It discusses the various forces which contribute to cultural differences in consumer behaviour, and shows that altitudinal and behavioural factors are an inadequate basis for comparison. It concludes by putting forward the case for consumer motivations as a better basis for Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation, and by describing Young & Rubicam's 4C's system of consumer classification. Part 2 reviews the methodological implications of this approach, and reveals the intrinsic inadequacies of the the more familiar statistical approaches to international psychographic segmentation. It illustrates the many reasons why similar answers to similar questions in different cultures should not be treated as being equivalent, and which therefore render these statistical methods invalid. In their place it recommends a procedure which puts greater emphasis on achieving constant meaning of questions in all countries than on employing an identical questionnaire. Finally, using alcoholic drinks as an example, in Part 3 it demonstrates how, by following this approach, it is possible to create a robust framework for analysing cultural similarities and differences in a market, and thereby for co-ordinating the international marketing activities of a brand.
This paper presents a synthesis of the BBC World Service's experience over the past two or three years in conducting quantitative research in Eastern Europe. The focus is not on any one of the dozen or so surveys which we have done in the region, but rather on the state of the industry in the area. Firstly, there is an overview of the standards and approach to research in the area from a cautionary perspective. The lack of a research tradition in the region has specific causes and has left the area as a research vacuum which is now being filled with much research of variable quality. This is followed by a summary of the main problems encountered in commissioning research in that part of the world. Individual problems are described and analysed with proposals for solutions, or strategies for maximising quality. The information is perhaps most useful to those commissioning survey research in the region, but it is also intended to generate debate among practitioners, for whom the issues are probably familiar.