As teachers of Global Marketing, we are often
privileged to teach in other cultures, visit different countries, or, at
the very least, have students from other cultures. One problem I
have encountered teaching in various parts of the world is most textbooks
and even a large portion of the academic literature reflects a Western
perspective. Authors are either from North America/Europe or have
been trained in these environments.
The problem is most of the world is not typical
of these cultures. I suggest a necessary research topic might be
to identify and question the assumptions of our texts and articles.
The most obvious assumption is consumers are
individualistic. This may be true for many in North American/Europe
but not for the majority of the world’s population. The majority
of our textbooks, for example, devote the majority of consumer behavior
space to psychology. If we were to reflect the world more accurately,
we might find more of an even balance between psychology (individualistic)
and sociology (collectivistic.)
Therefore to me the most important research
issue facing academic global marketers is:
1. identifying of the assumptions of marketing,
2. questioning the validity and universality
of these assumptions,
3. making our writings, especially in textbooks,
reflect a global reality rather than the Western culture.
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