Towards A Qualitative Model of Cross-Cultural Marketing

This study sought to develop a testable qualitative model of Cross-Cultural Marketing Leadership (CCML) for Western multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating across national boundaries of emerging economies, and comprised primarily of Asian marketing teams virtually representing a cultural foil to the marketing leadership. The composition of the leadership and teams were thus somewhat bipolar. A multi-perspective, qualitative research design was adopted for this exploratory pilot study, using a stratified and balanced, pyramidal sample pool of 40 practitioners. This comprised at the apex, Marketing Directors (SD: n=6), in the middle, Sales Managers (SM: n=14), and at the bottom, Sales Persons (SP: n=20). The sample pool was derived from Western MNEs operating in emerging Asian economies. The study was based on in-depth analysis of interview questionnaire responses using the sophisticated textual software Leximancer 4.5 developed by The University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia). Key findings were: (1) Passive-avoidant marketing (PAM) styles are counter-productive and best avoided altogether; (2) Contingent-reward-based marketing (CRM) incentives were effective across cultural barriers in motivating the sales force; and, (3) a composite and effective Cross-Cultural Marketing Leadership (CCML) model could have the best, cumulative and synergistic ‘augmentation’ effect, precipitating ‘exceptional performance’ by Asian sales teams.