International Marketing Standardization and Financial Performance of Mobile Net-work Operators – An Empirical Analysis

This study explores the degrees to which service firms standardize marketing in¬struments in their foreign subsidiaries. It also analyzes associations between interna¬tional standardization of marketing instruments and company financial performance criteria in an industry study of mobile network operators. 15 mobile network operator corporations with substantial interna-tional business activities and 65 of their respective foreign majority-controlled affiliates were included in the empirical analysis. Results show that levels of international marketing stan-dardization vary substantially among the four program areas of the marketing mix. Product policy is most standardized in¬ternationally with an unweighted index value of 60.47%, while pricing procedures still reach a level of 54.07%. International standardization of distribution (42.19%) and promotion policy (33.33%) is significantly lower. No significant relations be-tween interna¬tional marketing standardization and performance of mobile network operators were found at the corporate level of analysis. However, at the subsidiary level of analysis in¬ternational product standardization and, to a lesser degree, price standard¬ization are signifi-cantly and positively related to the foreign affiliates’ EBITDA margin and market share when the PLS approach is used to construct latent standardization measures comprising weighted additive combinations of various marketing mix indi¬cators.