MKT542 Pair Assignment - Article Review PDF

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####### FACULTY OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT BACHELOR ADMINISTRATION####### (HONS.) MARKETING KAMPUS PUNCAK ALAM####### CHANNEL MANAGEMENT (MKT542)####### PREPARED BY :####### NUR AIN MARSYITA BT AHMAD (2020976953)####### NURUL WAHIDA BT SURIA HIDAYAT (2020985151)####### GROUP : BA240 4C####### ASSIGN...

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FACULTY OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT BACHELOR ADMINISTRATION (HONS.) MARKETING KAMPUS PUNCAK ALAM CHANNEL MANAGEMENT (MKT542)

PREPARED BY: NUR AIN MARSYITA BT AHMAD (2020976953) NURUL WAHIDA BT SURIA HIDAYAT (2020985151) GROUP: BA240 4C

ASSIGNMENT 2: ARTICLE REVIEW “ARE THERE HONORABLE MERCHANTS IN INTERNATIONAL MARKETING CHANNEL?”

PREPARED FOR: PROFESOR MADYA DR ROZITA BINTI NAINA MOHAMED SUBMISSION DATE: 9 JULY 2021

TABLE OF CONTENT

NUMBER

TOPICS

1.

INTRODUCTION

2.

FINDINGS & DISCUSSIONS;

PAGES 1



State the overall purpose

2



What are the specific purposes?

2



What is the methodology?

4



Briefly describe the research methodology

4



What new ideas or information were communicated?

6



Why was it important to publish these ideas?

7



Have any ideas been overemphasized or underemphasized?

7



Should some sections of the manuscript be expanded, condensed

8

or omitted? 

What underlying assumptions does the author have?



Has the author been objective in their discussion?



What method did the authors use to reach conclusions?



What were the basic results or findings from the research?



Impressions of the usefulness of the article

8 9 10 11 12

3.

CONCLUSION

12

4.

REFERENCES

13

1) INTRODUCTION Are There “Honourable Merchants” in International Marketing Channels is an article written by George S. Spais who is an adjunct faculty member at the Hellenic Open and the Hellenic Police Academy, Officers’ School as well as his partner, Hans Ruediger Kaufmann is a full marketing professor in the School of Business of the University of Nicosia was published in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). It was published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. in 2015. Ethics is a topic that has received considerable attention in business and society during the last quarter century. One expanding area that seems to be of increasing interest is developing models that explain how ethical decisions are made. Since the initial exposure for marketing by Bartels (1967), numerous articles containing models of the ethical decision making process have appeared in marketing journals. Each published model has been purported to show what influenced ethical judgement. Channel is a passageway that allows certain processes to happen meanwhile for marketing, it is understood to be an exchange process. A marketing channel can be defined as a group of exchange relationships, which create customer value in acquiring, consuming and disposing of products and services. Very broadly, an international marketing channel can be viewed as the path in the structure of distribution through which products reach buyers and consumers and it also involves coordinating a firm's marketing activities in more than one nation. Effective international marketing strategy happens by choosing the right and suitable international marketing partnership. A properly designed distribution channel will help a company to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. However, a firm that deals with the international market must take adequate care when entering into agreements. They can either choose for direct or indirect channels based on their requirement and similarly can go for selective or intensive distribution depending on the need. The reason why we choose this article is because the authors will explain a little research that has been conducted since a few decades ago on “are there honourable merchants in international marketing channels?”. Even though the research on “honourable merchants'' has not yet received appropriate research attention, the author still writes up this article to answer that topic question based on a few key concepts such trust, honesty, ethics and competences. Thus, few sources and documents mentioned by the author in this article on the progress of international marketing literature is quite impressive.

1

Therefore, could marketing relationships in international marketing channels be predicted by international marketing managers’ behaviour that is reflected by honourable merchants and may we measure the progress of this research and understand the nature?

2) FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION



State the overall purpose of the article. What was the main theme of the article?

From our observation, the overall purpose and main theme of this article is clearly mentioned by the author on how international marketing managers’ behaviour is reflected by “honourable merchants” key concepts such ethics and trust as well as experiential learning key concepts like capability and competence towards marketing relationships in international marketing channels. According to the theory mentioned by the authors, globalization is linked as a way to compete in the global marketplace. Thus, many firms and businesses are enhancing in choosing marketing channel partnerships as one of their international marketing strategies. Apart from that, this article's purposes are also to measure the research theme in international marketing literature and understand the nature of this phenomenon.



What is the specific purpose of the article?

The specific purpose of the article comes to the focus of validating the salience of the “honourable merchants” that could be influenced by variables such trust, commitment, ethics and competence. To be more specific, it is all to evaluate the correlations using a series of models, which key concepts (trust and ethics) best explain to what extent the concept of the honourable merchant can explain relationships of international marketing managers. In this article, the authors justify and highlight their purpose based on Hunt–Vitell General Theory of Marketing Ethics as a framework for enriching current understanding of both long-term marketing relationships. As a general model of ethical decision making and behaviour in marketing, the Hunt–Vitell theory illustrates how ethical decisions and judgement are predicated not only upon estimations of potential benefits or outcomes using teleological criteria.

2

Besides, the authors did also assert that the precondition of effective relationships is also coming from international marketing manager’s characteristics, intentions and their competencies. However, there is a general theory by Hunt and Vitnell’s (1986) stating that marketing ethics international managers sometimes differ from intentions. It means, many situational constraints such industry, organizational and personal that exert control in particular marketing situations may result and lead in international marketing manager’s behaviours that are inconsistent with intentions and ethical judgement. In this context, international marketing managers may choose another alternative because of certain preferred consequences. Thus, a systematic analysis based on assessment of key concepts has been done where it reflects exporters’ marketing relationships in international marketing channels. Hence, a series of multiple linear regression analyses are being conducted to measure the progress of research themes in international marketing literature based on a forecasting analysis including the identification of the most satisfying relationship and predictive equation for each set of the independent variables. In addition, based on the author's statement, it is said key competences and capabilities are not yet considered as key concepts of honourable merchants that explain effective relationships in international marketing channels and besides, it is recommended to be central for educating, training and development of international marketing managers purposes. Nevertheless, they believe that marketing discipline needs to revisit ethics and honesty representing the norms of profitable-oriented behaviour of an international marketing manager and therefore Hunt and Vitell theories are suggested to be applied in their study. 3



What are the Research Design/ Methodology/ Approach being used?

The methodology being used by the authors to conduct their study is literature survey method as it facilitates their quantitative content analysis focusing on word frequencies. Furthermore, the authors also undertook regression analysis for conducting literature surveys that have been extended to the publication. For instance, evident in many studies across different disciplines. This type of methodology allows the authors to identify past patterns and developments of the academic debate, pointing to indications to bridge the existing key research gaps on the ethics agenda of marketing education and international marketing.



Briefly describe the research methodology

In order to satisfy the objective of the dissertation, a quantitative research was held. The authors targeted textual information sourced with primary focus on marketing relationships published in scholarly journals from 2003 to 2013 and conducted a prescriptive content analysis. The main characteristics of quantitative research is that the outcome of quantitative research is always in numerical form. For instance, the search that was based on key term international marketing resulted in 1,335 hits but after being customized, altogether articles published being identified is just 327 across 90 scholarly journals. Aside from that, the authors also presented the allocation of the number of articles and journals by year and in order to deepen their understanding, they computed a trend analysis to see whether there will be an increase or decrease in the number of journal articles and scholarly journals for 2014,2015 and 2016. This is done as the result of this initial exploratory work could be compared. A numerical output is usually easy to read and understand as well as easy to deduce conclusion from the numerical outcome rather than a detailed result.

4

Moreover, the second characteristic of quantitative research that is being applied by the authors in this article is large sample size. This can be seen in the fact that they thought that it is more desirable to conduct international marketing literature based on a globally integrated list of international rankings as the present article was especially prepared for the AMA Global Marketing SIG Conference on Honourable Merchants. This is done to ensure its reliability.

5



What new ideas or information were communicated in the article?

This article was related to the topic “Evaluating Channel Member Performance” under chapter 14 (Marketing Channels-Cengage Learning,2011, p. 393) which gives us new ideas of how international marketing managers can approach their knowledge in providing corrective actions to improve the channel member performance criteria.

Firstly, channel members play a very important role to manufacturers because they provide the only access to the company’s final markets. Following, the article tells us about how international marketing managers’ behavior reflected by “honorable merchants” towards the relationships in international marketing channels, and this was communicated with channel member performance audit which they will be periodically evaluated in terms of attitudes to maintain inventory, customer service and technical support capabilities and general growth prospect by the members. The examples of performance are under behavior-based measures such as number of customer complaints, employee incentive plans and selling skills.

Another new idea can be related in the topic “Motivating the Channel Member” under chapter 9 (Marketing Channels-Cengage Learning,2011, p. 257) which explains to us that motivation management are very important in marketing channels, and it will help international marketing managers’ to beware of their behavior in controlling the leadership power and understand the basic approaches to keep good relationships with channel members.

From this chapter, we can see that it is related to the article of how international marketing managers can approach motivating their channel members by learning about their problems and offering support to them. Thus, there are some basic principles provided for building successful channel partnerships which marketing managers can use as guidelines to reflect with their “honorable merchants” behavior in international marketing channels: 

Both partners should gain a win-win outcome from the relationship.



Each party should be treated with respect and made the best decision together.



Both partners should be honest in establishing expectations and delivering promises.



Each side should take time to understand and appreciate the other partner’s culture.



Lines of communication should be kept open.

Undoubtedly, these new ideas help us to know about the reputation of channel members and if they are satisfied with their work environment so a good result for the both company and manufacturers will be accomplished in both sales performance and marketing channels. 6

Therefore, it will help international marketing managers to realize about their “honorable merchants” behavior and control them to build good relationships with other channel members.



Why was it important to publish these ideas?

This is because it related with two research questions that had been discussed in the article: 

Could marketing relationships in international marketing channels be predicted by international marketing managers’ behavior reflected by “honorable merchants’” key concepts and experiential learning key concepts?



Can we measure the progress of this research theme in the international marketing literature and understand the nature of this phenomenon?

These questions can be answered by using the ideas based on how manufacturers evaluate the channel member performance audit and it would provide specific guidelines to create a sustainable international relationships and correspond education of international managers in marketing channels. Thus, it gives us clear description on how “honorable merchants” and experiential learning key concepts reflect international marketing managers’ behavior and relationships, so we can adapt the ideas and evaluate to both international marketing manager and channel members so their relationships with each other will be strengthened and the company’s sales performance and marketing channels will be more advanced in the future.



Have any ideas been overemphasized or underemphasized?

One idea that has been overemphasized is the authors keep repeating that the international marketing channel is always depending on the international marketing manager’s ethics. Even though there are various scholars stating that many kinds of situational constraints may result in behaviours of international marketing managers that are inconsistent with intentions and ethical judgements, the authors keep denying those facts and stating that it is one of profitability-oriented behaviour that needs to be revisited. Further, international marketing managers might not have the competences to disentangle the often-competing priorities confronting individuals, companies or organizations and governments. After actual behaviour happens, there will be an evaluation of the actual consequences that reflect “personal characteristics”. On that account, then we can make an ethical judgement on marketing managers as according to Hursthouse (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,2013), the ethics could not provide action-guidance failed.

7



Should some sections of the manuscript be expanded, condensed or omitted?

Generally, the authors clarified the focus of this study repeatedly which is international marketing managers’ behaviour reflected by “honourable merchants” (trust and ethics) and experiential learning key concepts (capability and competence) towards the relationships in international marketing channels. Thus, we think some sections should be expanded by providing alternative solutions for international marketing managers to handle issues and control behavior with channel members before concluding as a whole. This is because the article mentioned “five ethicseducation outcomes'' by Hunt and Vitell (2006, p. 9) as the purposes of this study which can help the international marketing managers for reference and apply in real life situations. Also, we think some sections should be condensed in terms of divide key concepts by sectors: 

Primary Sector: focus on natural resources (agriculture and mining).



Secondary Sector: focus on finished goods production (construction and manufacturing)



Tertiary Sector: focus on service to customers (retailers, entertainment and financial)

From this, we can know how each sectors’ marketing managers’ behavior reflects those key concepts and maintain relationships with channel members in international marketing channels.



What underlying assumptions does the author have?

The underlying assumptions that the authors have is on the importance of experiential learning and transformative learning through critical reflection in marketing education. Since earlier, the authors did mention and focus that as marketing educators, they must focus on the ethical outcomes as suggested by Hunt and Vitnell (2006). However, all of these ethical outcomes don't relate and show connection in transformative learning through critical reflection. Therefore, this underlying assumption weakens the author's argument.

8

(Ethical outcomes proposed by Hunt and Vitnell)



Has the author been objective in their discussion?

Yes, the authors had been objective in their discussion. This can be proven through the previous two research questions that have already been answered quite satisfactorily. For the first question “could marketing relationships in international marketing channels be predicted by international marketing managers’ behavior reflected by key concepts?”, it brings the result through multiple linear regression analyses supported by five models with key concepts (trust, capability and competence) being the predictors of marketing relationships in international marketing channels. From this, competence has the strongest influence followed by capability and trust. For the second question which is “can we measure the progress of this research theme in the international marketing literature and understand the nature of this phenomenon?”. It brings the result through forecasting analysis of the research theme which is a nonlinear phenomenon, meaning the authors come with suggestions to implicate “critical reflection” from educational programs in broadening international marketing solutions in current assumptions of marketing managers.

9



What methods did the author(s) use to reach conclusions?

In this article, the authors use inductive reasoning to reach conclusions which begin with specific observations that are divided into a number of scopes. They focused on the emergence and growth of international marketing managers’ behavior and their marketing relationships by undertaking a systematic analysis of concept...