International News
Massey & Otago Researchers win Major US Marketing Award
Monday, 15 February 2010
Researchers whose work is helping New Zealand companies to break into international markets has won a prestigious award for an article first published six years ago. Professor Sylvie Chetty of Massey University and Professor Colin Campbell Hunt of Otago University challenged existing theories to show that companies export in their own “Kiwi way”.
(via Massey University) Their work revealed that New Zealand firms do not follow textbook approaches of selling through agents and licensing a partner before setting up manufacturing plants overseas.
Instead, they adopt either what they call a regional model of launching into Australia, a "born global" strategy of going international within two years of starting up, or a global model of developing a strong domestic market and launching out slowly.
Professors Chetty and Hunt have won the American Marketing Association’s prestigious Hans B. Thorelli Award for their 2004 article A Strategic Approach to Internationalization: A Traditional Versus a ‘Born-Global’ Approach.
The award is given annually to the article published in the Journal of International Marketing that has made the most significant and long-term contribution to international marketing theory or practice.
Dr Chetty says New Zealand firms have to be strategic due to the small size of the country and its remoteness. “We are export-focussed and there is not a large domestic market. This means we have a contribution to make in developing theories that can be used worldwide, in particular in other small, open economies” she says.
“Firms in countries such as Finland, Denmark and Sweden, with similar small domestic markets, are learning from New Zealand.”
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