FDI, service intensity, and international marketing agility

Abstract

This paper aims to provide a nuanced understanding of international marketing agility by connecting organizational capability literature with that of standardization and adaptation. The focus of the research is to clarify whether managing the tension between product standardization and service customization generates an extra premium in international markets. Two disaggregated Chinese datasets, the Annual Survey of Industrial Enterprises (ASIE) and the China Customs Database, are used for developing an econometric model. Export quality improvement is the outcome variable in reflecting the effect of international marketing agility on performance. This study makes three theoretical contributions by (1) clarifying the concept of international marketing agility as an organizational capability generated by manufacturing standardization and service customization; (2) investigating the influence of upstream FDI intensity for export quality while taking into account the industry contexts; and (3) obtaining an enhanced understanding of the service intensity of manufacturing firms on export quality.