Standardization or Adaptation of Marketing Mix in Finnish Small and Medium Size Export Enterprises

Abstract

Whether to standardize or adaptate marketing strategy is a big concern for every international company and marketing practitioner. Many researches have been made of standardization and adaptation and it is also highly debated in academic literature, but the role of culture have gotten less attention. In this thesis the purpose is to research which strategy, standardization or adaptation, is more used in the marketing-mix of Finnish SMEs that have export activity. The effects of culture on the marketing-mix are also taken into consideration.

In the theoretical part the basic concepts of marketing-mix are gone through from where the focus is moving to cultural effects on the 4P and to standardization and adaptation issues. In the empirical part quantitative methods were used. The research was made in a form of a structured question sheet that was answered by 269 enterprises. The answers were analyzed using means and cross tabulation.

The results of this thesis show that both standardization and adaptation are used. Even that different parts of marketing mix lean towards certain strategy supporting partly the previous studies, there is always exceptions because of cultural factors. Cultural effects seem to be the most important motive for standardization or adaptation in different areas. Differences are also found depending on geographical distance which most often means also cultural distance. The type of enterprise also affects the choice of the strategy.