Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper offers a fresh methodological insight in examining the functional relationship between standardisation and involvement strategies in international marketing. It starts by reviewing the underpinning literature, focusing on the form of the relationship that exists between the endogenous and the embedded explanatory variables that determines firms’ strategic thrusts. It argues that the essential relationship has at its base a short-run and long-run dynamic, even though a strategic marketing position adopted by a firm may depend uniquely on the circumstances it faces in the international market. Those circumstances may induce either short-term or long-term responses depending on the dynamisms characterising the marketing environment. Very often, this dichotomous relationship, based on short-run and long-run dynamics, is ignored in the literature. Whilst analytical and statistical problems may make distinguishing between short- and long-run effects difficult, it is nevertheless desirable that international marketing researchers and strategists should be aware of the complex nature of such responses and their dynamics