You may ask what freedom has to do with international      marketing. Freedom is about options. If there is no alternative, there is no freedom. A true alternative provides the opportunity to make a decision, to exercise virtue. In the blaze of the klieg lights, it is easy to make the ``right'' decision. That's not an exercise in virtue, because  real alternatives are effectively removed. The true selection among alternatives takes place in the darkness of night when nobody is looking.

The focus and aim of international marketing is on crossing 
borders. The goal is to provide more than one choice for 
customers, letting them pick from a selection of options in 
order to maximize their satisfaction. International marketing does so in all comers of the globe, the glamorous ones as 
well as in the small and remote ones where the efforts are 
not seen by others. By operating both in the limelight and 
also well outside of it, international marketing offers the 
freedom to exercise virtue both to the seller and the buyer--
be it in decisions of supplying or purchasing, pricing or 
selecting.

Another key dimension of freedom is not to confine, 
allowing people to go outside of the box. As a concept, 
freedom knows no international boundaries. But national 
borders usually are the box where business and government find their limits. Such borders are a mere point of transition for international marketing. The discipline thrives on understanding of how to successfully cross national borders, on coping with the differences once the crossing is done, and on profitably reconciling any conflicts.

International marketing contains the freedom of almost 
unlimited growth potential. Activities confined to domestic 
borders may well run into limits of expansion. International 
market opportunities relax these limits quickly. Instead of 
restrictions, the international marketing paradigm encourages the stripping away of restraints; instead of limitations, there is the encounter of opportunity.

Freedom also means not being forced to do something one 
does not want to do (Hayek, 1971). There are economic 
migration pressures that force people to move from their 
rural homes into urban areas or from their developing 
countries into industrialized ones. Industrialized nations, 
in turn, speak about immigration pressure. For both sides, 
little if any freedom is involved here. Most individuals who 
do the moving would much rather stay home but cannot afford to do so due to economic exigencies. The recipient countries might not want to welcome the migrants but do so in response to political and humanitarian pressures. International marketing may have been part of what triggered some of these migrations, but it also can be instrumental in stemming the tide. It can provide the economic opportunity for individuals at home so that they need not migrate. Thus, it lets individuals become productive contributors to the global  economy free from pressures to shift locations. 

When the long-standing rivalry between socialism and market orientation was resolved, market forces and the recognition of demand and supply directly affected human rights and the extent of freedom. With all humility and gratefulness we can conclude: Markets were right! In country after country, market forces have demonstrated typically greater efficiency and effectiveness in their ability to satisfy the needs of people.

International marketing has been instrumental in     stimulating these newly emerging market forces. In spite of 
complaints about the slowness of change, the insufficiency of wealth redistribution, and the inequities inherent in societal upheavals, a large majority of participants in market-oriented changes are now better off than they were before. Without the transition provided by international marketing, these changes would not have come about that swiftly.

The Cost of Freedom

One keeps healing about the large segment of the world 
population that is poor and therefore supposedly excluded 
from any international marketing efforts; the World Bank's 
former president called them the 3 billion $2-a-day poor 
(Wolfensohn, 2001). By contrast, international marketers see them as an attractive $6 billion-a-day opportunity for 
valuable exchanges!

What's more is that international marketing provides the 
opportunity to acquire resources without the deployment of 
force. Why fight if you can trade? Countries that have been 
historic enemies such as France, England and Germany are now all united in their close collaboration through international marketing. (Farmer, 1987) The field is, therefore, at the very least contributing to freedom from war while providing additional choices for consumption.

But the cost of freedom is rising. Terms like free trade or 
free choice are misleading since they all come with a price, 
which international marketers pay in terms of preparing their shipments, scrutinizing their customers, and conforming to government regulations.

We all are paying a higher price due to global terrorism. 
As freedom suffers, so does international marketing. In most instances, terrorism is not an outgrowth of choice but rather the lack of it. Terrorists may succeed in reducing the 
freedom of others but not in increasing their own. Who is 
typically most affected by terrorist acts? Attacks aimed at 
businesses, such as the infamous bombings of U.S. franchises abroad, do not bring big corporations to their knees. The local participants, the local employees, the local investors, and the local customers are affected most. Who can protect themselves against such attacks and who can afford to protect targets? Only the more wealthy countries and companies can. They have the choice of where to place their funds, with whom to trade, and whether to hold the enemy at bay through a security bubble created by changing business forn1ats via exporting or franchising. The poor players do not have choices. The local firms, the nations with economies in development, and the poor customers continue to be exposed to further acts of terrorism with very limited indigenous ability to influence events.

But international marketing can enable the disenfranchised 
to develop alternatives. Multinational firms can invest in 
the world's poorest markets and increase their own revenue while reducing poverty. With support from shareholders and the benefit of good governance, international marketers can, and should, continue in their role as social change agents. 
The discipline has value maximization at its heart. If it is 
worthwhile to fulfill the needs of large segments of people, 
even at low margins, then it will be done. International 
marketers after all have as their key desire the creation of 
new customers and suppliers and they are delighted when, in fulfillment of their aims, they can bring about freedom from 
extremes of hunger, sickness, and intolerance.

Value and Freedom

In a global setting, freedom can take on many dimensions. 
Privileges and obligations that are near and dear to some may well be cheap and easily disposed of by others. The views of one society may differ from views held in other regions of the world. Such differences then account for 
misunderstandings, surprises, and long-term conflicts.

There are two value dimensions at work here, both of them 
highly relevant to international marketing. One may be 
circumscribed as the freedom and values of a market economy. To make them work governmental, managerial, and corporate virtue, vision, and veracity are required. Unless the world can believe in what institutions and their leaders say and do, it will be difficult to forge a global commitment between those doing the marketing and the ones being marketed to. It is therefore of vital interest to the proponents of freedom and international marketing to ensure that corruption, bribery, lack of transparency, and poor governance are exposed for their negative effects in any setting or society. The main remedy will be the collaboration of the global policy community in agreeing on what constitutes transgressions and swift punishment of the culprits involved, so that market forces can work free from distortion.

A second and even more crucial issue is the value system we use in making choices. Some years ago, the Mars Climate 
Orbiter mission failed spectacularly as a result of the use 
of different values by the mission navigation teams. One team was using metric units and the other used the English system of measurement. This mistake caused the orbiter to get too close to the atmosphere, where it was destroyed (``NASA's Metric Confusion,'' 1999).

There are major differences among what people value around the world. Contrasts include togetherness next to 
individuality, cooperation next to competition, modesty next to assertiveness, and self-effacement next to self-
actualization. Often, global differences in value systems 
keep us apart and result in spectacularly destructive 
differences. How we value a life, for example, can be crucial in terms of how we treat individuals. What value we place on family, work, leisure time, or progress has a substantial 
effect on how we see and evaluate each other.

Cultural studies tell us that there are major differences 
between and even within nations. International marketing, 
through its linkages via goods, services, ideas, and 
communications, can achieve important assimilations of value systems. On the consumer side, new products offer 
international appeal and encourage similar activities around the world: many of us wear denim, dance the same dances, and eat pizza and sushi (Marquardt & Reynolds, 1994). It has been claimed that local product offerings help define people and provide identity and that it is the local idiosyncrasies that make people beautiful (Johansson, 2004). Some even offer the persistence of the specific breakfast habits of the English and the French as evidence of local immutability in the face of globalization (de Mooij, 1998). Yet, we should remember that values are learned, not genetically implanted. As life's experiences grow more international and more similar, so do values. Therefore, every time international marketing forges a new linkage in thinking, new progress is made in shaping a greater global commonality in values. It may well be that international marketing's ability to align global values which makes it easier for countries, companies, and individuals to build bridges between them, may eventually become the field's greatest gift to the world.

A Joined Occurrence

How do freedom and international marketing match with 
today's discontent so forcefully expressed by the 
disgruntlement of the anti-globalists? Many claim that never before in history has there been so much evidence about such strong opposition to globalization and to Americans as 
harbingers of international marketing.

Perhaps those making such claims are sadly mistaken. In 
looking at other ``globalizers'' in world history, such as 
the Vikings, the Mongols, the Tatars, and the Romans, there probably was both intellectual and physical opposition (or do we really believe that everybody enjoyed Genghis Khan?). But protest was never allowed to become very vocal, or to engage in repeated, large demonstrations or widespread pamphleteering. Due to rather harsh policies of dealing with the opposition, very few records of such resistance are available today. Consequently, comparisons with past events are difficult to make and are likely to be highly inaccurate.

Today's news is good. The nations, institutions and 
individuals around the world are increasingly accepting 
freedom as the key foundation of the good life. We are 
discovering that international marketing, both as a 
discipline and as an activity is very closely interwoven with 
freedom--some even call it essential. It is the freedom 
Thomas Aquinas saw as the means to human excellence and happiness (Weigel, 2001) which international marketing helps us reach. In reciprocal causality, freedom causes and 
facilitates international marketing, while international 
marketing is a key support of the cause of freedom. A 
productive symbiosis at work!