International E-marketing

The internet, web and related information technologies have proven to be transformational. While these technologies have impacted all parts of the corporation, the marketing function has perhaps been most affected. E-marketing is now a significant part of every global corporation’s marketing arsenal. As international acceptance of the internet and web increases, the scope of international e-marketing now transitions from possibility to reality. International marketing scholars have followed the transformational impact of the internet/web closely. Several studies in the international e-marketing context have already emerged at the individual consumer (Callow and Lerman, 2003; Dou et al., 2003; Kucuk, 2002; Sing et al., 2004; Waller et al., 2005; papers by Sugai and Gong and McMillan, in this issue) and firm levels (Javalgi et al., 2004; Singh and Kundu, 2002; and papers by Kaynak et al. and Javalgi et al. in this issue). Recognizing the contribution of the work thus far, in this paper, we introduce the in international e-marketing. The IEMF should help the global marketing community shape scholarly inquiry in the domain of international e-marketing, classify current intellectual contributions in this area and delineate the gaps in the literature to focus future research. Moreover, the IEMF should help global e-marketing scholars address the question – “How is International E-Marketing different from International Marketing?” The IEMF is an extension of the framework first introduced in Krishnamurthy (2006) to the international context. An overview of IEMF The IEMF has seven components – actors (i.e. those who take e-marketing actions), spaces (i.e. online theaters of engagement), technology form factors (i.e. the idiosyncrasies of information technologies that affect the user experience), country-level cultural factors (i.e. the Hofstedian framework), access to information technologies (or the “digital divide”), actions and outcomes (behavioral outcomes at firm-level). We now briefly introduce the seven components. Actors Establishing an online presence makes one an international e-marketing actor axiomatically. Since web sites can be accessed across country lines, e-marketing actors exert influence in the country of their origin and across borders. Moreover, companies now routinely create country-level sites to deepen their presence within a country (e.g. Amazon.com has stores in the UK, Canada, France, Japan and Germany). This could create arbitrage opportunities that have not been fully studied, e.g. Amazon.co.uk frequently sells books at a lower delivered price than Amazon.com. Yet, it is not clear if consumers are taking advantage of this. Spaces The conceptualization of spaces is fairly new in the business/management/marketing literature. Rayport and Sviokla (1994) first used the term “marketspace” and distinguished it from a marketplace. An online space is a theater of engagement between the