Introduction and Rationale Research interest in the global and strategic marketing field has been stimulated significantly over the past two decades by the increasing globalization of economic systems and accelerating pace of competition worldwide. The establishment and development of global business operations involves international marketing strategy decisions that can bring substantial economic benefits for both national economies and individual companies. A large number of conceptual propositions and empirical works have examined how firms can derive sustainable competitive advantage from their global and strategic marketing activities and cross-border collaborations. The Special Session aims to uncover and debate on some important empirical, methodological, and theoretical research challenges within the broad domain of global marketing and strategy. Further, it sets to highlight emerging trends and concepts in the field to critically evaluate their potential impact on existing theory development and management practice. Emphasis will be placed on comparing contributions from leading international scholars to stimulate research synergy and collaboration. Specifically, the Special Session will provide a strong base for establishing, maintaining, and developing a dialogue among marketing academics who have interests in the global marketing and strategy phenomena. All panel members specialize in the topic and have published extensively in well-recognized academic journals. All contributors hold a highly international profile and are affiliated to different research institutions. The proposed topic cover important and timely issues in global and strategic marketing which are outlined below.

This study investigates an under-developed research area, sports partnership management, to deepen the understanding of the strategic implications derived from a sports club’s partnerships. A relationship perspective to the portfolio framework is employed by considering the complexity of a partnership as the managerial input variable, and the value impact of the partnership as the output variable. It adopts a longitudinal single case study design, allowing aspects of both exploration and explanation through evidence from multiple sources within the organization. The data collection entails a three-phase empirical research process, collecting data from different sources within a professional sports club. Based on a dataset containing two waves of contract data collected in Phase 2 coupled with interviews in Phase 1 and discussions in Phase 3, this research provides three meaningful applications of a partnership portfolio framework. Theoretically, this research provides insights into enhancing the rigor of the operationalization of a portfolio analysis by paying particular attention to the validity of the portfolio framework and its measurement issues. Practically, the study offers a framework for analyzing its partnership portfolio that provides insights into the current status of the portfolio and ways to build, sustain and/or improve the management of their partnerships.

This paper presents a way of classifying qualitative online consumer reviews (OCRs) in terms of functional and emotional dimensions and measures the direct and indirect impact of both volume and valence of OCRs on product sales. Utilizing four million online postings across 342 mobile games for thirty months, the authors use text analysis and word classification and identify 74 representative words to describe the various levels of functional OCRs consisting of product quality, product innovativeness, price acceptability, and product simplicity, and emotional OCRs including anger, fear, shame, love, contentment, and happiness. They combine the resulting OCR volumes with weekly sales, resulting in 1,835 observations for analysis with hierarchical Bayesian methods. Results suggest that the volume and valence of aggregated functional OCRs and the valence of aggregated emotional OCRs have the positive effects on sales. The volume and valence of functional OCR subcategories have mixed effects on sales and the link is moderated by the share of emotional OCR subcategories. Further, a sales forecasting model which includes 13 variables of OCR subcategories shows the best predictive validity.

Food trucks are not a new idea but the significant growth in the variety of foods served and the number of trucks operating means this retail option is becoming more important. The growth of this segment can be explained by McNair’s (1958) wheel of retailing theory which indicates that growth in retailing happens when new types of retailers with low startup costs, low capital and low prices enter the market – exactly what is occurring with food trucks entering the mature food retailing market. There has been limited academic research regarding the food truck industry. To better understand this retail segment and the factors influencing it, we conducted in-depth discussions with nine food truck owner/operators in the Midwest and Gulf Coast regions of the United States. The discussions with the food truck owner/operators indicated three critical areas: marketing, growth strategy, and legal issues. Technology was found to be vital to this retail segment with social media being used to promote the business and many vendors mentioned that apps like Square (which enables credit card payments) help them get additional sales when customers lack cash. These apps also helped the owner/operators manage some of the legal/regulatory issues associated with operating within different municipalities. Our in-depth discussions with the nine food truck vendors provided insight into the food truck business and helped refine our understanding of critical concerns of this growing industry.

This research was conducted to examine procedures in regain management (RM) by professional service firms (PSF) on the basis of an explorative, qualitative research approach for the first time. The authors tried to solve the following research questions: How are endangered and disaffected clients identified, segmented and reasons analysed in PSFs? How can customer reacquisition dialogues be initiated and timed and which reacquisition offers are to be addressed to clients? How should the success of customer reacquisition measures be evaluated? The results from interviews with 30 leading managers show deficits of the PSF in (1) disaffection analysis, (2) regain activities and (3) regain controlling. Optimization approaches are recognized with larger support by the owners, more in-depth client dialog, optimization of internal processes as well as provision of additional financial and personnel resources. The interviewees reported that the owners have not yet been sufficiently sensitized to the regain of customers and that their attitudes and behaviour significantly impact the success of regain management – a factor hardly considered previously.

This paper develops a conceptual model of international social media marketing strategy that describes how culture shapes consumers’ use of social media around the world. Drawing from cultural psychology, marketing, and computer information systems, we use Kietzmann et al.’s (2011) functional building blocks of social media to organize social media functions, then explicate how various dimensions of culture affect the way such social media functions are used across cultures. By delineating these complex relationships, our model and the propositions that stem from it offer directions for future research and advance understanding of cross-cultural differences with implications for businesses that provide social media or capitalize on social media for global reach in the international marketplace.

In recent years, there has been increased attention on the portrayal of women in the media. Photoshopped images of unrealistic female forms have been perceived to have negative impacts on the self-esteem of those exposed (Groesz 2002). Based on the idea that seeing unrealistic body images can put undue pressure on women and impact their self-esteem, some governments have gone as far to propose and or pass legislation that ban or require disclosures on such images in advertising. For example, multiple attempts have been made to pass the Truth in Advertising Act in the U.S., which would severely restrict the ability to digitally alter ad (Navamanikkamm 2017). Meanwhile. France passed a law in 2017 mandating that if a model’s physical person has been digitally altered in an ad it must include a disclaimer indicating that the ad has been retouched (Lubitz 2015). Recently, Israel out of concern about eating disorders at a societal level, passed legislation requiring a disclaimer in any ad whether a model is photoshopped to look thinner. The Israeli law also mandates that a threshold body mass index be met for a model to be included in an ad. With the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority also banning some campaigns due to exaggerated retouching, it is clear that photoshopping of models in advertising is under scrutiny (Sweney 2017). Several companies have also taken a stand on photoshopping of ads. These include Aerie Lingerie, CVS Drugstores, Dove, and Britain’s ASOS, all of whom has committed to having realistic images in their ads and reducing or eliminating retouching (Horwath 2016; Zillman 2017; Bomey 2018). In spite of the increased attention being paid to photoshopping of ads by regulators, companies, and some in the public, research on the topic has been relatively sparse. This paper aims to summarize what is known about the societal and managerial implications of digital retouching and offers future research directions designed to make advances in these areas. To this end, this paper begins by reviewing work in three areas related to photoshopping of ads. The first topic addressed is whether edited images of unrealistic standards have a negative impact on the viewer. Secondly, we examine what is known about the implications of including disclosures and disclaimers on the consumers psyche, (i.e. do these warnings negate the implied negative consequence of the edited images). Finally, the impact such disclosure labels have on ad effectiveness and purchase intention is considered. To ensure the full scope of pertinent material was covered, articles were targeted via databases such as ABI/ Inform, Business Source Premier, EBSCO and Google Scholar. Because of the paucity of articles, no time limitations were placed on the search. A variety of combinations of relevant search terms were used (e.g., retouching, advertising, body image, women, photoshop etc.). As key articles were identified, the sources they cited were also reviewed in relation to the purpose stated above. Our review of the literature finds a virtually universal consensus finds that idealized imagery, often characterized by very thin or “ideal” models is directly correlated to an increased risk of body dissatisfaction (Groesz 2002). Several of these studies draw on social comparison theory (Gulas 2000; Myers 2009) is commonly used as a theoretical explanation underlying this effect, with experimental studies being used to provide empirical evidence. Prior studies have tested several types of disclaimers. These studies have generally found that disclaimer do not mitigate the negative impact that the exposure to idealized image has on the consumer (Cragg 2017) Based on this research, apparently, women feel social pressure to live up to idealized images even if a disclaimer is included in the ad. However, it should be noted that only a limited number of studies have tested this effect, and additional types of disclaimers from different sources need to be tested before drawing firm conclusions. As for advertisement effectiveness, specifically product attitude and purchases intent, studies have found that advertisements using “normally attractive models” in comparison to “highly attractive models” tend to produce better results (Tsai and Chang 2007). Notably, the presence of a disclaimer does not appear to either increase or decrease the effectiveness of ad based on the extant research (Semaan, Gould and Kocher 2012; Schirmer et al., 2018). The literature does raise some questions about the needed prominence of a disclaimer to have an impact, suggesting that often times “fine print messages” are largely unnoticed in relation to a more prominent alternative (Black & Watson 2013). Notably, there is some evidence that including a “retouch-free” versus a “retouched” disclaimer does increase attitudes toward the brand and purchase intention (Cornelis and Peter 2017). The literature reviewed has limitations such as uncorroborated studies, limited sample sizes, and narrowly focused demographics in some studies. While it has generally been established that highly attractive model usage and idealized retouched imagery has a negative effect on consumer body image, there is insufficient research on the implications of disclaimers and disclosers. It is suggested that additional research is needed on the effects of various disclaimer types directly related to various levels of image re-touching (as opposed to product warnings) on consumer buying behavior and ad effectiveness (see Schirmer et al., 2018). There is some evidence that consumers are accepting of minor photoshopping of ads, such as changing the background or “fixing” a blemish, but that more major retouching such as making a model appear to have different facial features, thinner legs, or larger breasts is viewed as problematic. As such, future experimental research should focus on different levels of retouching. There is also a clear need to test different wording of disclaimers as well as disclaimers from different sources (e.g. government vs. non-profit, vs. company itself). Future research should focus on a wide cross-section of women. It should also test multiple product categories, including those beauty related vs. not beauty related.

Introduction Despite the rise of digital media, TV remains the number one place children spend their media time (Moses, 2014). Past research has shown that less healthy food and beverages such as those containing high fat, sugar, and salt (HFSS) are prominent in TV commercials (e.g., Carter, Patterson, Donovan, Ewing, & Roberts, 2011). In these commercials, various persuasive techniques (e.g., taste/smell, convenience), which promote the purchase of the products, have been used (Hebden, King, & Kelly, 2011). Extensive studies have found that exposure to advertising for HFSS products, including confectionery, soft drinks, crisps or savory snacks, fast food, pre-sugared breakfast cereals, is associated with children‟s cognition, food consumption, and obesity (e.g., Harris, Bargh, & Brownell, 2009; Macklin, 1994; see also Moore, Wilkie, & Desrochers, 2017). Since younger children, especially those in the “perceptual stage” of development, may not understand the persuasive or selling intent of commercials (e.g., John, 1999), they may be vulnerable to this advertising. As a result, several countries such as UK and Ireland (Hawkes, Lobstein, & For the Polmark Consortium, 2011) have introduced restrictions or regulations for broadcasting food and beverage commercials for children. The commercials of HFSS food and beverage have sometimes introduced these products with healthier images and words / phrases like health and nutrition claims. Health claims refer to any representation that states, suggests, or implies that a relationship exists between a food (/beverage) or a constituent of that food (/beverage) and health. Nutrition claims mean any representation which states, suggests or implies that a food (/beverage) has particular nutritional properties including but not limited to the energy value and to the content of protein, fat and carbohydrates, as well as the content of vitamins and minerals (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United States & World Health Organization, 2013). Using health messages for HFSS food presents the risk of a biased image of the products (i.e., they are „healthy‟), which may result in unhealthy life styles and conditions. In recent years, there has been regulatory pressure on food advertisers to market their products responsibly (e.g., WHO regulations; Kraak et al., 2016). At the same time, the Children‟s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) emerged, in which several leading companies pledged to market their products to children responsibly (see editorial by Boyland & Harris, 2017). Therefore, we were interested in seeing if food and beverage advertising had changed in 2017. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to examine the relative frequency of food and beverage commercials targeting children with a focus on healthy aspects of the products, their health and nutrition claims, as well as other persuasive techniques. Method A total of twenty hours of programming targeting children was recorded on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Networks in the United States during the hours of 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. on two weekdays in September 2017. The advertisements were coded for product type (“food”, “beverage”, fast-food restaurant (“Restaurant: Quick-service/fast food restaurant”), and sit-down restaurant (“Restaurant: Sit-down restaurant”), food type (e.g., “confectionary”, “savory snacks”, “pre-prepared convenience foods”, “bread”, “fruits”, and “vegetables”) (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations & World Health Organization, 2016; Suzuki, 2018), and persuasive techniques (e.g., “health claims”, “nutrition claims”, “taste/smell/flavor”, “convenience”, “scientific information”, “celebrities/a well-known person”, and “eating /drinking behavior”) (e.g., Hebden et. al., 2011; Jenkin, Madhvani, Signal & Bowers, 2014; Kraak & Story, 2015; Warren, Wicks, Wicks, Fosu, & Chung, 2008). Food type can be classified into two categories; Less healthy (“confectionary”, “savory snacks”, “sweet bakery wares”, “other sweets/desserts”, “Sugared breakfast cereals”, “pre-prepared convenience foods”) or healthier categories related to other food categories (Ofcom, 2004; Nutrition Australia, 2013; Suzuki, 2018). Seven coders independently evaluated the advertisements, with two coders assigned to every programming block. They were trained for about three weeks to read the coding manual, practice coding and discuss the coding scheme, and revise their coding after receiving feedback of the trial coding. To check coding reliability, two independent coders evaluated the same programs. 94.3% agreement was achieved for product type. Results and discussion A total of 856 commercials appeared. Food and beverage advertisements represented 29.0% (N=248). On average, children were exposed to 12.4 food and beverage advertisements per hour. Of all the food, beverage and restaurant advertisements, “food” and fast-food commercials were frequently broadcasted; 40.7% (N=101) were for “food” commercials, and fast-food restaurant commercials accounted for 43.5% (N=108). 12.1% (N=30) “beverage” commercials and 3.6% (N=9) sit-down restaurant commercials were included. Food, beverage and restaurant commercials were more likely to appear on Nickelodeon (36.2%, N=129) than on the Cartoon network (28.4%, N=419) (χ2=5.43, df=1, p<.05). As for the appearances of product type, “food” advertisements frequently appeared on Nickelodeon (54.6%, N=65), whereas the programs of Cartoon network included a lot of fast food commercials (61.2%, N=79). In examining the appearances of “beverage”, “food”, “fast food”, and “others (except food, beverage, and restaurant)” between the channels, the results showed that the programs of Cartoon network were more likely to broadcast “fast food” commercials than those of Nickelodeon, whereas the programs of Nickelodeon were more likely to broadcast “food” commercials (χ2=38.23, df=3, p<.01)1. The majority of food types were “confectionary” (25.7%, N=26), “savory snacks” (16.8%, N=17), “breakfast cereals” (14.9%, N=15), and “pre-prepared convenience foods” (13.9%, N=14). In classifying various kinds of foods into two big categories related to health (healthier or less healthy) as above-mentioned, less healthy food accounted for 88.1% (N=89). No commercials were categorized into three of the healthier categories (bread, fruits, and vegetables). As persuasive techniques for consumers, “health claims”, and “nutrition claims” were low (8.9%). For example, grape juice produced by Welch‟s used the appeal “sugar free”. In the commercials with nutrition claims, there was no significant difference in the appearance between the “beverage” and “food” commercials (χ2=1.70, df=1, n.s.). The other persuasive techniques like “convenience” (75.8%, N=188), “taste/smell/flavor” (51.2%, N=127), and “eating/drinking behavior” (49.2%, N=122) were frequently used. In contrast, the rates of some techniques (e.g., “celebrities/a well-known person”, “scientific information”) were very low. As for the persuasive technique of “celebrities/a well-known person”, the category of product type was classified in only the “beverage” category. Thus, this study indicated that there were not many less-healthy food commercials that appealed to health and nutrition aspects of the products by using health and nutrition claims, or scientific information. In previous studies, the rate of health and nutrition claims varied between less than 10% to more than 30% (Jenkin et al., 2014). This may be due to the differences in the definitions of health and nutrition claims. Our study referred to the international standard definitions. Therefore, the findings regarding the rate of health and nutrition claims in this study can contribute to overall knowledge about the current spread of health and nutrition claims in “less healthy” food commercials of children‟s television programs. It may also be the case that food companies are acting more responsibly by limiting their persuasion techniques to those that relate to taste or convenience and not by misrepresenting the products as healthy. However, overall, the proportion of less healthy food commercials was high, and various persuasive techniques were used. At the same time, there were no commercials for fruits or vegetables presented during this time frame despite governmental regulations for eating these healthier foods. These findings suggest that more attention should be paid to the ways that certain foods are promoted (or are not promoted) among parents and policy-makers. As the sample used in this study was recorded only on weekdays and through the two kids' channels. It would be expected that the future study develop the analysis for the recorded commercials on weekends and on the other local channels. The sample used in this study was analyzed only on weekdays and through two children‟s channels. Future research might examine food and beverage advertising across different time frames and channels.

In terms of sustainability alone, consumers are faced with a staggering assortment of 463 different labels across 25 industry sectors, a number that is only expected to grow over time (Ecolabel Index 2016). Amid growing environmental concerns, research suggests that many consumers are unlikely to consider the consequences of their choices at the point of purchase, or if they attempt to do so, they generally do not have the information necessary to make more sustainable choices. Given the rise of ineffective green communication protocols and consumers’ concerns with environmental impacts associated with their purchases, this paper attempts to understand how the provision of sustainability labeling can influence comprehension and consumer decision-making. Utilizing the ambiguity theoretical framework (Einhorn and Hogarth 1985), we suggest that perceptions of sustainability will be influenced using an anchor comprising a plausible range based on consumers’ existing beliefs and internal points of reference (Broniarczyk and Alba 1994). That is, consumers revert to a pre-existing reference point, and the new information does not allow for much movement in perceptions. In an ambiguous situation in which consumers have limited knowledge of product sustainability, the perceived brand-based sustainability level is expected to allow consumers to establish an initial value of sustainability (Hogarth and Kunreuther 1992). Our findings suggest that providing environmental information can be a useful tool in assisting consumers in making sustainable decisions. Providing quantitative aggregated environmental impact information of products influences consumers’ perceived ambiguity, leading to evaluation of the brand. The perceived ambiguity derived from sustainability level provides an underlying mechanism in information processing. Given rising concerns about consumers ability to process sustainability information in an efficient manner, our findings suggest that one way to encourage consumers to better process the sustainability information is to mitigate perceived ambiguity. Enforcing disclosure initiatives that assess the environmental impact of products can provide benefit to firms—especially for product categories in which limited loyalty or differentiation exists. Sustainability disclosures appear to offer a mechanism that can help consumers make informed decisions. Furthermore, extrapolating the influence of disclosures on consumer evaluation and choice across the variety of product categories for which consumers routinely make purchases suggests the potential for dramatic increases in global sustainability.

Export Market Orientation (EMO)- one of the most important strategic orientations of exporting firms- has received much attention in the last two decades within organization and academia alike. EMO has become an emerging issue that benefits the integration of market orientation, internationalization, and export performance literature into coherence. After the introduction of this concept in international business (IB) literature, we observed a surge of research focusing on EMO incorporating scale development for measurement as well as empirical studies that investigate the antecedents to and consequences of EMO along with moderation and mediation. This review systematically examines EMO research, analyzing 31 articles published in 19 leading journals available between 1999 and 2017. What we can conclude from the review is that EMO research is still in its infancy. We attempted to identify some research gaps and suggest some future avenues of research.

About 35% of online social network users belong to more than one networking platform such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The interplay among these various social networking platforms implies that several sources may induce interrelationships among the platforms. To understand such relationships, the authors propose an integrated visit model that accommodates communicating activities across social network platforms and test the model using data from two social network games that have considerable overlap among network members. The model captures various sources of dependencies across network platforms, including coincidental visitation, correlated heterogeneity and experience spillover across network platforms. More important, the model discovers a new source of dependencies that stems from communications with common network members overlapping in different network platforms. The model finds that the spillover effects are asymmetric across networks. The simulation study provides managerial implications for organizations attempting to target valuable users and allocate resources across multiple network platforms.