International advertising strategy: the standardisation question in manager studies : Patterns in four decades of past research and directions for future knowledge advancement

Purpose – This paper's objectives are firstly to systematically analyse patterns of research in international advertising standardisation (IAS) conducted among managers and secondly to suggest fruitful paths for future research in this area. Design/methodology/approach – Content analysis of academic papers published in major marketing, advertising and international business journals. Findings – Results show that overall future research would benefit from a unified definition of and measurement procedures for advertising standardisation as only these can ensure the advancement of knowledge in the field. Additionally, more research is needed in order to further explore process issues in advertising standardisation, especially a newly proposed perspective related to the implementation process of the standardisation decision. Finally, an interesting avenue for future research relates to the study of the subjectivity involved in the standardisation decision. Research limitations/implications – As with all literature reviews, this paper is limited to analysing works in a selection of the top academic journals in the field. However, a careful choice of the most important journals has been made, providing a good reflection of knowledge in the area. Originality/value – This paper appears to be the first literature review focusing on manager studies in the field of IAS.