Download International Marketing Involvement: The Construct

International Marketing Involvement:
The Construct, Dimensionality, and
Measurement
The growing importance of international marketing operations for ABSTRACT
the survival and success of an increasing number of businesses
underscores the need to understand their involvement in these
activities. To this end, this article proposes an eclectic and multidimensional definition as well as a new measure of international
marketing involvement where equity, administrative, and operational components represent the three distinct behavioral means
that can be utilized by a business to perform foreign marketing
activities. Based upon a field study conducted in the United States
of 45 firms and 78 product market units, evidence is supportive of
the internal consistency and construct validity of the proposed
measure of international marketing involvement (IMI).
The 1990s have been a watershed for most businesses worldwide where competing internationally has become a necessity
rather than a matter of discretion. Consequently, there has
been considerable interest among marketing scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in understanding the different
facets of a business's international involvement in marketing
programs. For marketing scholars, this interest centers on
explaining and predicting the different degrees of international marketing involvement. For the marketing practitioner,
the issues of concern relate to the assessment, selection, and
implementation of different degrees of marketing involvement
in serving foreign markets. For policymakers, the trade and
balance of payments considerations call for efforts to promote,
restrict, or otherwise influence the degree of firms' international marketing involvement so as to enhance national interests.
Despite the growth and the widely recognized importance of
international marketing involvement, surprisingly little attention has been focused on the systematic analysis of the meaning and measurement of the international marketing
involvement concept itself. A cursory review of the literature
suggests that international marketing involvement is a complex and, perhaps as a result, poorly understood phenomenon.
The mostly imprecise and often contradictory terminology
encountered in the literature underscores the concerns about
Esra Gencturk
Terry L. Childers
Robert W. Ruekert
Submitted October 1994
Revised April 1995
July 1995
Journal of International Marketing
Vol. 3, No. 4, 1995, pp. 11-37
ISSN 1069-031X
11
the existing measures of this construct. The conspicuous
absence of psychometric considerations in empirical studies
further calls into question the reliability and validity of the
existing measures. In the absence of a clearly delineated conceptual definition as well as reliable and valid measures of
international marketing involvement, our ability to explain
and predict this concept appears to be limited at best. In fact,
Sullivan (1994, p. 338) argues that "theory testing remains
ambiguous precisely because we cannot ascertain whether the
acceptance or rejection of a hypothesis is the result of excessive error in measurement or the adequacy or inadequacy of
prevailing theories." This limitation is critical given the
importance of international marketing activities and the nontrivial level of investment and risk they entail.
The purpose of this study is to overcome these limitations by
developing a conceptual and operational definition of international marketing involvement (IMI) which can be incorporated
into future research with reasonable assurance of its psychometric properties. To this end, we propose tbe following general yet inclusive constitutive definition of IMI:
International marketing involvement refers to the degree to
which a Product Market Unit engages in cross-national
transfer of resources to support marketing activities in a
host-country.
Consistent witb the received conceptualizations, the definition proposed in this study posits that the distinguishing feature of IMI is the cross-national transfer of resources so as to
serve one or more foreign markets (e.g., Bartels 1968; Cavusgil
and Nevin 1981). The emphasis on cross-national performance
of marketing activities also suggests that IMI refers to the
behavior of a business and needs to be conceptualized as a
continuous behavioral construct along a high-low involvement continuum. Furthermore, given the within firm and
cross-country differences observed in international involvement behavior (e.g., Douglas and Craig 1983), the proposed
definition explicitly acknowledges that IMI needs to be
assessed in the context of a Product Market Unit's (PMU's)
product, pricing, distribution, and promotion activities in a
particular host-country.
IMI is also a complex, abstract construct that is inherently
ambiguous until it is separated into its component parts.
Hence, the precise operationalization of the construct requires
identification of the components that represent defining features of the underlying behavior. In this study, we build upon
the constitutive definition of IMI and identify three theoretically defensible and distinct dimensions that distinguish
12
Esra Gencturk, Terry L. Childers, and Robert W. Ruekert
among the behavioral means that can be deployed by a PMU in
performing international marketing activities. In the section
below, these dimensions are derived based on a review and
synthesis of the various views on IMI. We then describe the
measurement scale developed and the empirical research
designed to assess its reliability and validity. After reporting
the results, their implications for international marketing theory and practice are discussed. °
International involvement has been the subject of considerable
research in various disciplines within the general field of
international business and economics. Previous studies in the
areas of international trade, industrial organization, and market imperfections provide a rich description of and an array of
explanations for firms' international involvement behavior.
The various definitions and measures of IMI used by these
researchers in their quest to understand this phenomenon are
discussed below by grouping them according to the attribute(s)
emphasized.
BACKGROUND AND
LITERATURE REVIEW
The importance of top management's orientation in shaping a
firm's international involvement was originally proposed by
Perlmutter (1969). He identified three orientations to describe
companies with international involvement. They were: 1) ethnocentric (home country), 2) polycentric (host-country), and 3)
geocentric (world) orientation. According to Perlmutter, these
different orientations reflect increasing degrees of international involvement, respectively. Similar views on international involvement exist in the literature, each using global
orientation as an indicator of a firm with high international
involvement. For example, Kobrin (1994) suggests that a firm
exploits its geographic scope and become highly involved in
international operations when it is deeply committed to a geocentric mindset in its management and decision making.
Managerial Orientation
Despite the conceptual appeal of the managerial orientation
criterion, most of the existing empirical work has concentrated
on the geocentric orientation, rather than assessing the range of
possible orientations. A notahle exception is a study hy Wind,
Douglas, and Perlmutter (1973) which empirically explores
each orientation in the context of 15 international marketing
decisions. Their results suggest that while greater international
involvement is associated with a geocentric orientation, each
element of the marketing mix may reflect a different attitudinal
orientation. This observed variability may explain the difficulty of using top management's orientation as an indicator of
its involvement in international marketing. Several researchers
have also shown that top management's orientation serves as
an antecedent to the degree of international involvement rather
International Marketing Involvement: The Construct, Dimensionality,
and Measurement
13
than being its defining characteristic (e.g., Cavusgil 1984;
Cavusgil and Nevin 1981). Hence, favorable orientation and
deliberate interest in international operations appear to be
instruments that allow a firm to mobilize its financial and managerial resources in serving host-country markets.
Mode of Operations
One of the most frequently discussed attributes of international
involvement is the legal form of foreign operations which can
range from ownership modes such as wholly owned foreign
facilities to nonownership modes such as licensing and export
marketing. Based on the market imperfections explanations of
international investment (Hymer 1960, 1976; Kindleberger
1969; Rugman 1981), this literature considers equity presence
in a foreign market as a hierarchical response to imperfections
in international markets. Hence, the need to internalize
exchanges to safeguard them against hazards of market imperfections is viewed as the principal reason for different institutional modes. Although acknowledged as a simplification, the
prevailing view assumes that ovkrnership modes represent the
highest level of international involvement since they entail the
most extensive form of participation in and commitment to foreign operations (e.g., Anderson and Gatignon 1986; Erramilli
and Rao 1993; Hill, Hwang, and Kim 1990).
While this research stream has been instrumental in bringing
much-needed theoretical rigor and analytical insight into the
mode decision, the use of institutional ownership modes as an
indicator of international involvement is not w^ithout its drawbacks. First, there is no empirical evidence in the literature
which suggests that the aggregate shifts in legal claims from
ownership to nonownership modes are in fact indicative of
home-office managers' actual involvement in international marketing activities. In fact, research on international distribution
channels suggests that international involvement tends to be
issue- or task-specific and may best be captured by the vertical
integration of specific activities (e.g., Anderson and Gatignon
1986; Davidson and McFetridge 1985; Klein, Frazier, and Roth
1990). In this context, a given task can be contracted out to external agents or suppliers (i.e., market contracting or nonequity) or
it could be internalized and performed by a company's own
employees (integrated or equity). Hence, a meaningful assessment of IMI requires addressing equity considerations in terms
of vertical integration of marketing tasks rather than as discrete
choices among institutional modes of operation.
Control
14
While the prevailing view considers a business's legal ownership position and its control over foreign operations to be
closely related, the need to distinguish between ownership and
control considerations has been acknowledged by several
Esra Gencturk, Terry L. Childers, and Robert W. Ruekert
researchers (e.g., Anderson and Gatignon 1986; Erramilli and
Rao 1993; Sohn 1994). In fact, the importance of control as a distinct consideration separate from the institutional mode decision is reflected in several conceptual definitions of IMI. Root
(1984), for example, explicitly specifies control over the policies
of foreign affiliates as the essence of international involvement.
In examining the licensing agreements, Carstairs and Welch
(1982) also provide empirical evidence suggesting that the control exercised can vary not only across different modes but also
within a given mode as indicated by differences in the responsibilities assumed and carried out by the licensors. Consequently,
it seems possible for a firm to control foreign operations without
majority legal ownership or conversely to have little control
over these operations despite majority or even complete legal
ownership. That is, while institutional modes based on legal
ownership claims give a firm legitimate authority to control foreign operations, it does not necessarily imply that this authority
will be exercised (c.f., Gaski and Nevin 1985).
Yet another view of international involvement is espoused by
studies that consider the nonfinancial resources allocated to
foreign operations (e.g., Baliga and Jaeger 1984; Cray 1984; Hill
et al. 1990; Rosson and Ford 1982). These resources are generally discussed in terms of managerial time and effort expended
on foreign activities. Cray (1984), for example, views international involvement as an effort directed at coordinating and
supporting geographically dispersed activities. Coordination,
as Cray uses the term, is distinguished by situating the foreign
operations in a network of relationships with other parts of the
firm. In a similar vein, Rosson and Ford (1982) use the term
intensity to refer to the degree of contact and resource
exchange between home and host-country members. The indicators of intensity used by these authors include number of
letters and support materials exchanged, visits made, amount
of effort expended, and training provided. Despite the variations in terminology, these studies reflect the importance and
relevance of nonfinancial resource commitments in examining
IMI. However, due to the prevalence of conceptual articles, the
assessment of IMI in terms of deployment of these resources
has been limited and inadequate.
The definitions in this category emphasize financial performance such as profitability, foreign sales, or foreign assets as
an indicator of international involvement. For example. Root
(1984) considers a company whose foreign sales are 25 percent
or more of total sales as "heavily involved" while Aggarwal
(1979) measures international involvement not only by the
percentage of foreign sales but also by the percentage of foreign income and assets.
Effort Allocation
Performance Outcomes
International Marketing Involvement: The Construct, Dimensionality,
and Measurement
15
While these findings lend some support to the relationship
between overall performance of a firm and the extent of its international involvement, they all provide a simplistic and rather
arbitrary distinction between high and low degrees of international involvement. The aggregate nature of firms' foreign sales
or other financial performance data tends to disguise the underlying substantive differences in foreign operations and, hence,
in international involvement behavior. Fluctuations in
exchange rates as well as differences in accounting practices
can also alter the reported figures substantially. Furthermore, as
Mikhail and Shawky (1980) point out, it is not clear whether a
firm's superior performance (even when detected) leads to, or is
a by-product of, higher international involvement. Hence, in
addition to the concerns about the direction of the relationship
between performance and IMI, performance itself does not
appear to be central to defining the IMI construct.
TOWARD A
MULTIDIMENSIONAL
CONCEPTUALIZATION OF
INTERNATIONAL MARKETING
INVOLVEMENT
As reflected by the various definitional attributes considered
in the literature, IMI is a complex construct that is inherently
ambiguous until it is separated into its component parts. In
this study, IMI is hypothesized to have three distinct behavioral dimensions:
1) Equity Involvement is defined as the degree to which hostcountry marketing activities are performed by PMU
employees:
2) Administrative Involvement is defined as the degree to
which a PMU exerts control over host-country marketing
activities.
3) Operational Involvement is defined as the degree to
which a PMU spends time and effort on host-country marketing activities.
These three dimensions correspond to the vertical integration,
control, and effort allocation attributes, respectively. They are
considered central to the IMI construct since they represent
theoretically defensible and distinct behavioral means that can
be used by a PMU when performing international marketing
activities. The central premise of this study is that these three
parameters are not interchangeable or synonymous but rather
complementary and interdependent as each examines a different aspect of a business's involvement in international marketing activities. As such, their simultaneous assessment is
deemed necessary to reflect the full scope of the phenomenon
considered. Furthermore, given the observed variation in
international involvement behavior across different marketing
activities and foreign markets, each dimension incorporates
involvement in product, pricing, promotion, and distribution
16
Esra Gencturk, Terry L. Childers, and Robert W. Ruekert
distribution activities in a particular host-country. Each
dimension is also viewed as a continuous variable where
higher degrees of equity, administrative, and operational
involvement reflect a higher degree of IMI. In the absence of a
theoretical justification for attributing differential importance
to any of these dimensions, they are weighted equally and
assumed to serve complementary roles in reflecting the overall
IMI of a PMU. Hence, over the conceptual range of IMI from
highly involved units to relatively uninvolved ones, the three
dimensions are expected to be positively related to each other.
Any attempt to understand the IMI construct must also
account for the relationships it is expected to have with other
constructs. To this end, several variables that have generally
been associated with IMI are also considered in this study.
However, no research to date has examined the effects of these
variables on all four elements of the marketing mix or across
all three dimensions of IMI. Since the limited scope of past
research does not allow a full consideration of a given variable's effect on each dimension of involvement in each type of
marketing activity, the hypotheses considered below pertain
only to the generally accepted measures of a few antecedent
variables whose domain is very well defined and whose relationship to IMI behavior has been empirically established.
TT]
Related Variables
Unit Size: The size of an organization (or subunit) has been
used consistently in the extant literature to explain various
aspects of its international involvement behavior. For the most
part, the conceptual arguments and empirical findings emphasize the size-based advantages (e.g., financial and managerial
resources) that enable larger firms to pursue higher degrees of
equity involvement. Horst (1972), for example, suggests that
larger firms may have an easier time financing the fixed cost of
higher equity modes as they are often considered to be a better
credit risk than small firms.
Based on organizational behavior theory, it has also been
argued that an increase in firm size contributes to complexity of
the administrative task by compounding the problems of coordination, communication, and control. While larger organizations can enjoy size-based advantages, they also become more
complex and differentiated, threatening to overload managers
with too many decisions (Baliga and Jaeger 1984). Therefore,
difficulty of monitoring increasingly specialized and differentiated roles along with greater administrative distance as well as
pressures for administrative efficiency are expected to increase
larger businesses' reluctance to exercise direct control over the
activities conducted in host-country markets (e.g., Cray 1984;
Rugman 1981). These arguments suggest that:
International Marketing Involvement: The Construct, Dimensionality,
and Measurement
17
Hi: The greater the size of a PMU:
a. the greater will be its equity involvement; and
b. the lower will be its administrative involvement.
International Experience: International experience refers to
knowledge accumulated through learning by doing whereby
an understanding of international marketing is enriched by
previous experience. While the relationship between international experience of a business and its international involvement has been examined extensively, these studies have
produced mostly conflicting results. For example, while there
is some evidence suggesting that international experience may
not have any effect on international involvement (e.g., Kogut
and Singh 1988), others have observed a positive (e.g.,
Gatignon and Anderson 1988), a negative (e.g., Davidson and
McFetridge 1985), and a U-shaped relationship (Erramilli
1991). These results can be attributed not only to the different
conceptualizations of international experience but also to the
failure of previous studies to distinguish between different
manifestations of international involvement.
Accordingly, we rely mainly on the conceptual literature to
posit that international experience will be positively related to
equity involvement but negatively related to both administrative and operational involvement. Support for these expectations is provided in several streams of research. First, the
importance of international experience in encouraging the use
of integrated modes can be traced back to Johanson and
Vahlne's (1977) work which views a firm's international
involvement as an experiential process whereby degree of
involvement is successively increased upon gradual acquisition, integration, and use of knowledge about foreign markets.
According to this perspective, the accumulation of knowledge
about foreign markets creates a highly specialized staff which
reduces the need as well as the willingness to rely on local
firms for market expertise and know how (e.g., Horst 1972;
Johanson and Vahlne 1977; Rosson and Ford 1982).
Based on market imperfection explanations of international
involvement, it has also been argued that the tacit nature of
experiential knowledge (Teece 1981) would favor internalization of host marketing activities, thereby increasing a firm's
equity involvement. The difficulty of codifying experiential
knowledge about foreign markets would, however, suggest that
international experience cannot be disseminated effectively
without the transfer of people who possess the relevant knowledge about foreign markets. As a result, greater international
experience facilitates the development of a specialized staff
organization in local markets which in turn requires less control and effort allocation by the parent unit. That is, internationally experienced PMUs may find it easier to internalize
Esra Cencturk, Terry L. Childers, and Robert W. Ruekert
foreign marketing activities and then to decentralize and delegate the decisions about these activities to specialized staff at
lower levels in the hierarchy. Taken together, these considerations suggest that:
H2: The greater the international experience of a PMU:
a. the greater will be its equity involvement;
b. the lower will be its administrative involvement; and
c. the lower will be its operational involvement.
Managerial Attitudes: An important consideration in the internationalization literature is senior management's attitudes
toward international marketing activities. While there appears
to be a conceptual consensus on the importance of managerial
attitudes, only a few attempts have been made to empirically
examine their impact on IMI behavior (e.g., Cavusgil and
Nevin 1981; Wind et al. 1973; Kobrin 1994).
A favorable attitude toward international marketing has generally been viewed as a prerequisite for higher degrees of equity
and operational involvement. More specifically, deliberate and
positive interest in international marketing is considered to be
necessary for the deployment of financial and nonfinancial
resources required for host-country marketing activities (e.g.,
Cavusgil 1984; Cavusgil and Nevin 1981). For example, senior
management's negative attitude is expected to increase
reliance on nonequity contractual arrangements in an attempt
to externalize the fixed costs and the perceived risk generally
associated with internalized exchanges. Similarly, negative
attitudes and opinions about international marketing activities
are likely to decrease the managerial time and effort expended
on these activities. Accordingly, it is hypothesized that:
H3: The more favorable senior management's attitudes
toward international marketing activities:
a. the greater will be the unit's equity involvement; and
b. the greater will be its operational involvement.
The procedures suggested by Nunnally (1978) were followed
in generating the multiple item measurement scales used in
this study.
International Marketing Involvement: Given the eclectic conceptualization of IMI adopted in this study, each of its three
components was measured across all four facets of the marketing mix concerning product, pricing, promotion, and distribution activities in foreign markets. The four subscales were
constructed based on a sample of the most prominent observables suggested in the literature and the scale items were intentionally kept broad so as to apply to the different dimensions of
RESEARCH DESIGN AND DATA
COLLECTION
Measures
International Marketing Involvement: The Construct, Dimensionality,
and Measurement
19
international involvement as well as to different products and
industries. Care was also taken to ensure that all items conformed to their behavioral definition. The resulting 20 items,
consisting of four sets of five-item marketing subscales, and the
response formats used in measuring equity, administrative, and
operational involvement, are presented in the Appendix.
In addition to the aforementioned tripartite measure of IMI
developed in this study, its traditional measure based on institutional mode of operations was included in order to address
validity considerations. The alternative modes considered in
operationalizing the mode of operations measure are provided
in the Appendix.
Unit Size: The size of a PMU was measured by three openended questions; each of which has been used in past research
(Horst 1972; Erramilli and Rao 1993). The items concern the
PMU's worldwide: 1) number of employees; 2) total assets (in
dollars); and 3) dollar sales.
International Experience: Based on measures used in past
research (Erramilli 1991; Rosson and Ford 1982), international
experience is measured in this study with the following five
open-ended questions: 1) the number of different countries in
which the PMU's products are currently sold; 2) the number of
different foreign countries in which a PMU's products have
ever been sold; 3) the number of years since the first foreign
sale of a PMU to any foreign country; 4) number of foreign
countries where the PMU has a majority-owned subsidiary;
and 5) number of majority-owned subsidiaries which currently sell PMU's products.
Managerial Attitudes: The managerial attitude scale used in
this study was based on the measure used by Cavusgil and
Nevin (1981), and Cavusgil (1984). The statements comprising
the 6-point Likert scale concerned the degree to which a
PMU's senior management: 1) expects international marketing
activities to have a positive effect on the unit's profits; 2)
expects international marketing activities to have a positive
effect on the unit's growth; 3) considers international marketing activities as a waste ofthe unit's resources; 4) considers the
unit's domestic activities to be more important than its international marketing activities; 5) has no intention of increasing
the unit's international marketing activities; 6) actively
explores international market opportunities; and 7) frequently
travels abroad.
1—
Research Setting
20
The psychometric properties of the scales were tested between
late 1987 and 1990 in a field study using cross sectional data
from U.S. based international firms located in a Midwestern
Esra Gencturk, Terry L. Childers, and Robert W. Ruekert
state. To assess the potential biasing effect of this research setting, two preliminary analyses were conducted on measures of
international marketing activity for which comparable data
were available at the national as well as state level. The results
of these analyses suggest that the firms in this research setting
do not differ from their national counterparts in terms of either
percent of export-related shipments (t=1.04, p=.31) or percent
of export-related employment (t=1.36, p=.18).
The selection of sample units was accomplished in three
stages. First, the International Firm Directory (IFD) published
by the state's Trade Office was used to select a random sample
of 130 firms. The cbief executive officer named in the directory for each firm was sent a letter introducing the study and a
participation request form. After a second wave of letters and
request forms, completed participation forms were received
from 97firms.Since six mailings bad undeliverable addresses,
the returned participation forms represent 78 percent of the
124 net mailings.
Sample and Survey Instrument
Of tbe 97 firms tbat responded to tbe introductory letter, 58
agreed to take part in tbe study and were contacted in tbe second stage of the sampling process to identify the PMUs of eacb
firm. In tbis study, a PMU was operationally defined as tbe
smallest set of products wbicb were grouped together for international strategic planning and reporting purposes. In tbe
tbird stage, eacb unit manager was asked to identify tbe
respondents wbo would be most knowledgeable about the
unit's foreign marketing activities. While tbe managers were
encouraged to designate as many informants as possible, the
concentrated nature of PMU and foreign country knowledge in
most firms rendered systematic collection of multiple informant data unfeasible. As a result, only 158 informants were
identified across tbe 89 PMUs of tbe 58 firms tbat bad agreed
to participate in tbis study.
After content validation of tbe measurement scales by five individuals wbo were familiar witb tbe research topic, tbe questionnaire was pretested extensively in personal interviews witb
tbree informants from two PMUs. In the final pretest, tbe questionnaire was administered by mail to 10 informants across five
PMUs to test tbe data collection procedures. Overall, no difficulties were observed and no major cbanges were made eitber
in tbe content or tbe format of tbe instrument.
Tbe data for the main study were collected by a mail survey
directed to tbe remaining 145 informants at the 82 PMUs. In
Pretest of the Instrument
Data Collection
International Marketing Involvement: The Construct, Dimensionality,
and Measurement
21
tbe first section of tbe survey, informants were asked to selfselect tbe PMU and tbe foreign country tbat tbey bad tbe most
knowledge about and tben respond to tbe survey questions in
reference to their particular selection, unless asked to do otberwise. This procedure enabled an unambiguous identification of tbe unit of analysis and ensured tbat eacb respondent
could truly assume tbe role of an informant by providing information about tbe PMU and tbe foreign country tbat s/be
believed to be tbe most qualified and knowledgeable about.
Tbe follow-up procedure involved tbree mailings yielding
usable responses from 78 PMUs in 42 firms. Even tbougb multiple informant data were obtained for 11 PMUs, tbese data
bad to be treated as independent observations in subsequent
analyses since they addressed PMUs' marketing activities in
different foreign countries. Accordingly, the results reported
in tbis article are based on informant data generated by the 91
respondents participating in tbe main study.
PRELIMINARY ANALYSES
Assessment of Sample Firms
Assessment of Sample PMUs
and Key Informants
22
Prior to assessing tbe psycbometric properties of tbe survey
instrument, several preliminary tests were performed to assess
tbe appropriateness of tbe sample firms, PMUs, and tbe informants.
Tbree analyses were conducted to assess tbe appropriateness
of sample firms based on tbe IFD data on dollar sales, number
of employees, and firm age. In the first analysis, no significant
differences were observed between tbe firms tbat agreed to
participate in this study and those that declined to do so in
terms of their dollar sales volume (t= .99, p=.32), employees
(t= 1.04, p=.3O), or age (t=.2O, p=.8O). In tbe second preliminary analysis, tbe firms responding to eitber tbe first or tbe
second wave of tbe participation request mailout were compared, and no significant differences were observed between
tbe dollar sales (t=1.48, p=.15), employees (t=.92, p=.36) or age
(t=.28, p=.78) of the two groups. Survey nonresponse bias was
assessed in the tbird preliminary analysis wbere the results
revealed that the 7 nonrespondent firms closely resembled tbe
45 firms witb completed questionnaires witb respect to their
sales volume (t=.64, p=.53), employment (t=.96, p=.34), and
age (t=1.37, p=.18).
Since tbe data on tbe key descriptive parameters of population
PMUs were not available, sample variance in relevant PMU
cbaracteristics was used to assess tbe appropriateness of tbe
PMUs included in tbe main study. Tbe sample statistics on tbe
tbree cbaracteristics of 78 PMUs are depicted at tbe top portion of Table 1. Tbe observed sample beterogeneity was conEsra Cencturk, Terry L. Childers, and Robert W. Ruekert
sidered desirable for estimating the validity of the proposed
scale, since the degree of international marketing involvement
of a PMU was hypothesized to be a function of these variables.
Characteristics of PMUs
Number of countries where PMU's
products are currently sold:
Worldwide employees:
Foreign sales as a % of worldwide sales
Mean
Range
1 - 115
20 - 10,000
1-90
33
1,089
24
Tahle 1
Characteristics of the Sample
PMUs and Informants
Characteristics of Informants
2-38
4-41
4-23
Years of international experience
8
Years with PMU selected
9
Years with PMU in the foreign country selected 6
Title
Number of Informants
(absolute frequency)
President/CEO/Chairman
Vice President
Director
PMU/Area Manager
Other (e.g., Country Specialist, Brand Manager)
6
15
18
45
7
The appropriateness of respondents as key informants
assessed by examining the self-report information provided by
each informant in the last section of the survey. While there is
no comparable objective benchmark to judge the relative magnitude of informant attributes, the sample statistics on four
informant characteristics reported in the lower section of
Table 1 provide preliminary evidence for the quality and
appropriateness of study informants.
As the first step in the measure evaluation process, the reliability of each multi-item scale was estimated based upon
domain sampling theory which relates the measurement error
directly to the internal consistency of the items included in an
instrument (Nunnally 1978). Accordingly, the items considered in each scale were evaluated based on item-to-total correlations to identify and delete ill-fitting items. The pre- and
post-purification coefficient alpha estimates as well as the
descriptive summary statistics for each multi-item scale are
presented in Table 2.
PSYCHOMETRIC ANALYSES—
MEASURE VALIDATION
Internal Consistency
International Marketing Involvement: The Construct, Dimensionality,
and Measurement
23
Table 2
Internal Consistency Estimates
and Descriptive Statistics for
the Multi-Item Measures
Full Scale
Reliability
(# of items)
Worldwide size
92 (3 items)
International
experience
83 (5 items)
Managerial
attitudes
.72 (7 items)
Purified Scale
Reliability
(# of items)
Mean
S.D.
.21
2.93
.85 (4 items)
.52
3.67
.75 (6 items)
26.75
4.63
.87 (4 items)
29.86
26.80
24.65
17.95
5.60
8.69
7.22
7.36
.93 (4 items)
26.83
21.06
20.39
14.54
6.25
9.83
8.28
7.51
.88 (4 items)
21.04
16.48
16.68
11.28
8.14
8.46
7.51
6.28
Equity involvement
Product
Price
Promotion
Distribution
.87 (5
.91 (
.85 (
.83 (
items)
" )
" )
" )
Administrative involvement
Product
.87 (5 items)
Price
.94 ( " )
Promotion
.92 ( " )
Distribution
.91 ( • " )
Operational involvement
Product
Price
Promotion
Distribution
.92 (5
.93 (
.91 (
.87 (
items)
"
)
"
)
"
)
International Marketing Involvement Measure: The proposed
measure of IMI is expected to display a hierarchical factorial
structure where the four marketing components represent the
separate dimensions subsumed under the more general equity,
administrative, and operational involvement dimensions.
Since such factorially complex constructs require a separate
internally consistent scale for each dimension, reliability
assessment was performed separately for each of the four marketing subscales embedded under each involvement dimensions.
Based on the item-to-total correlations, the items in the respective four subscales appeared to be relatively equivalent in tapping the domain of their specific marketing activity, except for
item 5 in the distribution subscale. Accordingly, the distribution subscales for equity, administrative, and operational
involvement were purified by removing item five from further
consideration. The pre- and post- purification coefficient
alphas in the range of .85 to .94 obtained across the 12 market-
24
Esra Cencturk, Terry L. Childers, and Robert W. Ruekert
ing subscales provide strong evidence for the internal consistency of each.
Antecedent Variables: Of the three variables hypothesized to
influence a PMU's IMI behavior, the item scores of size and
international experience scales were standardized through a
Z-score transformation because they were both measured by
open-ended scale items involving different units of measurement. Accordingly, internal homogeneity of these two scales
was assessed based on the corresponding standardized item
scores. In the case of PMU size measure, scale purification was
not considered necessary because the three scale items exhibited consistently high correlations with the standardized total
score. On the other hand, item 5 in the international experience scale and item 7 in the managerial orientation scale were
deleted because of their substantially lower correlations with
the total score of their respective scales.
The purified scales were subjected to a factor analysis to assess
the unidimensionality and construct validity of each set of
congeneric items. Since the items in a unidimensional scale
represent repeated attempts to measure the underlying construct, they are expected to load strongly on one factor to satisfy the requirements of convergent validity while loading
weakly on all other factors to meet discriminant validity
requirements. While the extraction of the factors was guided
primarily by the a priori specification of the number of factors,
the highest derived primary and secondary item-factor loadings of ± .40 and above were used in interpreting the instruments' factorial structure. In the interest of space, only a
summary of the factor analytic results is provided."•
Factorial Composition
International Marketing Involvement: Given the complex measurement structure of the IMI scale proposed in this study, the
substructure of each dimension was subjected to a common
factor analysis.2 Since varimax and oblique rotations yielded
similar factor patterns, the results of the varimax solution are
used in assessing the factor structure of the IMI dimensions.
Four factors with eigenvalues greater than one emerged from
the factor analyses, confirming the a priori specification of the
four dimensional factorial structure for each component of
IMI. The amount of variance extracted in the four factor solutions for the three involvement dimensions was: equity—74
percent; administrative—78 percent; and operational—78 percent. Furthermore, in all the analyses, the items in each marketing subscale had their highest loading on the same factor,
and each factor clearly corresponded to a different element of
the marketing mix. For the equity involvement dimension, the
average loading for the distribution component items was .74,
International Marketing Involvement: The Construct, Dimensionality,
and Measurement
25
while for product, pricing, and promotion the average loadings
were .75, .73, and .68, respectively. In the case of administrative involvement dimension, the average loading for distribution was .71 and for product, pricing, and promotion the
average loadings were .74, .76, and .71, respectively. The operational involvement dimension demonstrated comparable
loadings with average loadings of .79, .76, .76, and .70 for distribution, product, pricing, and promotion respectively. The
pattern of derived factor loadings, hence, reaffirms the unidimensionality of the marketing subscales and provides at least
preliminary evidence for their convergent and discriminant
validity.
Antecedent Variables: To assess the internal structure of the
measures used for the antecedent variables, the 13 purified
items across the three independent scales were subjected to a
principal components analysis with varimax rotation (see
Note 2). A three-factor solution was derived accounting for 64
percent of the variance. As expected, the highest loadings on a
factor were exhibited only by those items included in the same
measure. The items for the size measure had an average loading of .90, for international experience average loadings were
.80, and for the managerial orientation scale the average was
.66. Consequently, the derived pattern of factor loadings confirms the hypothesized unidimensionality of each scales and
provides evidence for their convergent and discriminant validityT;
MTMM Examination of IMI
Inter-Correlational Properties
26
In view of the encouraging factor analytic result, a more rigoro^^ assessment of construct validity was undertaken by examining the inter-correlation matrix of the IMI subscales. To this
end, each marketing mix variable was represented by a composite score based on an unweighted linear sum of the purified
item scores in the corresponding marketing subscale. The pairwise correlations among the four marketing mix measures both
within and across the three types of international marketing
involvement are displayed in Table 3. These correlations can
be construed as a quasi multitrait-multimeasure matrix where
the equity, administrative, and operational involvement
dimensions constitute the traits, and the four marketing subscales constitute the measures. However, since all of these
marketing measures rely on self-report data based on a 7-point
Likert-type scale, they do not meet Campbell and Fiske's
(1959) requirement of distinctly different and independent
methods of measuring the same variable. Therefore, the matrix
of correlations reported in Table 3 should be evaluated with
caution. In this matrix, the previously reported internal consistency coefficients are displayed in parentheses along the
main diagonal while the italicized entries identify the validity
diagonal of each heterotrait-heteromeasure matrix.
Esra Gencturk, Terry L. Childers, and Robert W. Ruekert
Pricing
Product
£7
Al
01
El
Al
Promotion
01
El
Al
01
Distribution
El
Al
01
Product
El
(.87)
Al
.29 .87
01
.03 .40 (.92)
Pricing
El
Al
01
.32
.09
.04
.10
.38
.30
.06 (.01)
.34 .39 (.94)
.58 .17 .64 (.93)
Promotion
El
.22
Al
-.03
01
-.06
.03
.42
.32
.08
.34
.62
.71
.27
.13
.38
.68.
.48
.12 (.85)
.45 .41 (.92)
.73 .11 .57 (.91)
Distribution
El
.24 -.08
Al
.07 .43
01
.03 .26
.06
.37
.48
.68
.26
.15
.30
.75
.45
.14
.54
.58
Note:
El:
Al:
OI:
.64
.31
.12
.21
.68
.43
Table 3
Within and Cross-construct
Pairwise Correlations between
the Marketing Subscales
.07 (.87)
.45 .41 (.93)
.61 .33
.71 (.88)
Entries in the diagonal are sub.scale reliabilitie.s.
Equity Involvement
Administration Involvement
Operational Involvement
Substantively, the correlations in the validity diagonal are all
significant at the .01 level, and range from .22 to .73. The
degree of agreement observed between multiple attempts at
measuring the same trait with different measures provides
strong evidence for the convergent validity of the four measures of equity, administrative, and operational international
marketing involvement.
Preliminary support for discriminant validity is also provided,
since each validity estimate exceeds all the cross-dimension
correlations between different measures. However, as would
be expected, a few of the validity correlations are lower than
the corresponding cross dimension correlations between the
same measures since the three dimensions share a moderate
amount of variance partly because of common measure variance and also due to true variation among related constructs.
Even in the presence of common measure variation, the results
are encouraging since all the cross-dimension correlations for
International Marketing Involvement: The Construct, Dimensionality,
and Measurement
27
the same measure are lower than the corresponding internal
consistency estimates. Furthermore, a relatively consistent
pattern is observed in both the magnitude and order of crossdimension correlations. That is, across most of the heterotrait
entries, the lowest correlation is observed between the equity
and operational involvement dimensions and the highest correlation is displayed between the administrative and operational involvement.
Based on the criteria established by Campbell and Fiske
(1959), the above results provide additional evidence for, and
reaffirm the convergent and discriminant validity of, the four
marketing subscales. These results, taken together, make it
possible to examine the psychometric qualities of the entire
scale used for the three dimensions of IMI. Accordingly, a separate composite score was calculated for equity, administrative, and operational dimensions as a linear unweighted sum
of the corresponding item scores across the four marketing
subscales. The internal consistency of each composite scale
was then estimated by the formula suggested by Nunnally
(1978, pp. 246-54) for calculating the reliability of linear combinations. The resulting internal consistency estimates for the
equity, administrative and operational involvement scales
equaled .95, .97, and .97, respectively.
The validity of these three composite measures was assessed
by evaluating their pairwise correlations and also their correlation with the traditional mode of operations measure. The top
portion of Table 4 displays these correlations where the entries
in parentheses represent the previously reported linear combination reliability estimates.
Table 4
Pairwise Product Moment
Correlations between Measures
and Antecedents of
International Marketing
Involvement
Equity
Administrative
Operational
Measures
Equity
Administrative
Operational
Mode of operations
(.946)*
.328"=
.361 '^
(.967)
.551 «=
-.065
(.969)
-.078
.201 ^
-.298^
-.139
.157 a
-.298 •=
-.269 f^
.255 "J
Antecedents
Worldwide size (n=52)
International
experience (n=90}
Managerial
attitudes (n=91)
-.032
.021
.237^
* = Entries in the diagonal are linear combination reliability estimates,
a = p<.10
D<.10
b = p<.05
c = p<.01
28
Esra Gencturk, Terry L Childers, and Robert W. Ruekert
The pairwise correlations between equity, administrative, and
operational involvement measures support our a priori expectations in that they are all significant at the .05 level or below,
indicating adequate convergence. However, the magnitude of
these correlations is not so large as to suggest the treatment of
these three measures as a unidimensional indicator of the
same underlying trait. In fact, support for their discriminant
validity is provided by reliability estimates that are considerably higher than each measure's correlation with any of the
other scales.
Additional support for the convergent validity of the equity,
administrative, and operational involvement scales was
obtained from their correlation with the traditional mode-ofoperations measure which addresses the institutional mode
choices. These correlations provide a relatively stringent validation test for two reasons. First, the traditional mode measure
involves a single item objective identification of legal ownership structure of foreign operations. As such, it differs from
the task-specific, multidimensional measure of international
marketing involvement proposed in this study, thereby better
satisfying the maximally different method requirement for
convergent validity. Second, unlike the tripartite measure of
IMI proposed in this study, the mode of operations measure
reflects a rather narrow conceptualization of international
marketing involvement since it focuses primarily on the legal
ownership aspect of foreign marketing activities.
=====
Additional Evidence of IMI
Convergent Validity
'
The traditional mode of operations measure is also expected to
display a differential association with each of the three dimensions of IMI. More specifically, we expect the mode of operation measure to have the strongest association with equity
dimension of IMI given that both measures are concerned with
responses to market imperfections in foreign markets. Yet,
equity and mode measures address these responses differently
because they operate at two distinct levels. Equity involvement, as used in this study, refers to the extent to which marketing activities are purchased in the market as opposed to
performed internally hy company employees. This is a related
but separate consideration from mode of foreign operations
decisions which is concerned with the legal ownership claims
of the parent company in a foreign country.
The pairwise correlations of the mode of operations measure
reported in Tahle 4 substantiate these expectations. More
specifically, support for convergent validity is provided hy the
relatively high and significant correlations hetween mode of
operations and the equity involvement measure. Similarly, the
low and insignificant correlation of mode measure with the
measures of administrative as well as operational involvement
International Marketing Involvement: The Construct, Dimensionality,
and Measurement
29
provide evidence of discriminant validity. These findings also
attest to the narrowness of the construct's domain as captured
by the traditional mode of operations measure. While the
mode of operations criterion has been the most frequently
used indicator of international involvement, its usefulness as a
single measure of a multidimensional activity appears to be
overestimated and indeed potentially misleading.
==^====s========i
Correlates of IMI
Based on the relatively strong internal consistency and validity evidence provided by the aforementioned analyses, the
proposed IMI measure was evaluated further to ascertain its
value in producing observable results consistent with a priori
expectations. To this end, the composite scores for the three
involvement measures were correlated with the measures of
the antecedent variables to test the substantive hypotheses
considered in this study.
In general, the correlational results depicted in the lower portion of Table 4 are encouraging, supporting four of the seven
bypotbeses. Furtbermore, two otbers are in tbe expected direction but fail to reacb significance at tbe .05 level. Specifically,
tbe observed positive association between a PMU's size and its
equity involvement is consistent witb Hla but is significant
only at p<.10. On tbe otber band, tbe significant negative relationsbip a PMU's size bas witb administrative involvement
confirms Hlb supporting tbe contention tbat home office managers of larger PMUs are less likely to exercise control over foreign marketing activities. While no relationsbip was
bypotbesized, tbe results also reveal tbat a PMU's size is not
related to tbe operational involvement of its managers in international marketing activities.
Tbe results concerning a PMU's international experience
reveal tbat its positive relationsbip witb PMU's equity
involvement is consistent witb tbe literature yet not significant at .05. In contrast, international experience of a PMU is
strongly and negatively related to its administrative and operational involvement, confirming botb H2b and c. As sucb,
tbese results provide support for tbe role internationally experienced staff plays in enabling bome office managers to reduce
tbe time and effort tbey spend on foreign marketing activities
as well as tbe control they exercise over tbem.
A finding tbat was not anticipated is tbe insignificant relationsbip between managerial attitudes and equity involvement.
Wbile no relationsbip was bypotbesized, managerial attitudes
toward international marketing are not found to be related to a
PMU's administrative involvement eitber. Tbese insignificant
relationsbips are interesting especially in view of tbe attention
given to managerial attitudes in tbe extant literature. One pos-
30
Esra Gencturk, Terry L. Childers, and Robert W. Ruekert
sible explanation for these results is that a more complex relationship exists where the impact of managerial attitudes is
moderated hy variahles not considered in this study. It is also
conceivable that managerial attitudes toward international
marketing may no longer he an important or relevant factor in
today's increasingly glohal environment where almost every
manager knows the inevitability of international
involvement.^ The results, however, support the importance of
managerial orientation for operational involvement in international marketing where a significant positive association is
observed, confirming H3c. As such, this study provides support for the contention that favorable managerial attitude is
important in making home office managers commit time and
effort to foreign marketing activities.
In summary, the pattern of correlational evidence supports the
broader conceptualization of IMI advocated in this study. The
ohserved differences in the direction and magnitude of these
correlations underscore the need to examine equity, administrative, and operational involvement as separate behavioral
strategies that can be deployed by a PMU in performing international marketing activities.
The primary thrust of this study was to develop a comprehensive definition of IMI and to empirically evaluate the psychometric properties of the tripartite measure proposed in this
study. The results offer a number of implications for both managers involved with international marketing as well as
researchers interested in furthering our theoretical understanding of this important area. However, there are also a numher of limitations of this research that should be explicitly
recognized.
Ideally, the purified and validated scales should be applied to
new data to rule out errors caused by factors external to the
instrument or to reduce the possibility of attributing initial
findings to chance. Hence, in the absence of a diligent crossvalidation procedure, the IMI scale cannot be offered as a
definitive measurement scale. The results of this study merely
suggest that the proposed IMI scale is a reasonable approximation of the underlying construct, and that the evidence is
encouraging enough to treat it as a reliahle and valid measure
in our study context. However, these results should be considered tentative until they are replicated and confirmed by
future research.
DISCUSSION
Limitations
International Marketing Involvement: The Construct, Dimensionality,
and Measurement
31
Managerial Implications
An important implication of this work for international marketing practice comes from the simultaneous consideration of
three distinct yet complementary behavioral means that can be
deployed by a business in performing international marketing
activities. This eclectic approach and the choices it highlights
are particularly important since most published material in
this area has focused primarily on the institutional mode of
foreign operations as an indicator of international marketing
involvement. Our results highlight the fact that businesses can
and do use means other than direct ownership to increase
their involvement in performing marketing activities in a foreign country. The results also confirm the growing reliance of
businesses on contractual rather than ownership-based
alliances, and attest to tbe increasing importance of administrative and operational involvement in representing a business's involvement in foreign marketing activities. By drawing
attention to different types of international involvement and
assessing them simultaneously in the context of a single study,
the findings suggest that businesses can still be actively
involved in foreign marketing activities even though internal
or external constraints prevent them from using the traditionally advocated legal ownership route.
A second interesting finding from tbis study is tbe lack of
direct relationsbip between institutional mode of operations
in a foreign market and tbe level of administrative and operational involvement of a business in tbat market. As some managers migbt expect, institutional modes based on legal
ownersbip claims were not related to differences in tbe degree
of administrative control exercised over bost-country marketing activities or to tbe amount of time and effort a business
spends on these activities. Tbe implications of tbis finding is
that control is probably determined by a bost of factors and
institutional mode of foreign operations is not a particularly
good predictor of ultimate managerial control exercised over
the foreign operations. Surprisingly, the same general finding
was also evident in the relationsbip between mode of entry
and amount of effort expended on tbe foreign operation.
Theoretical Implications
32
Tbeoretically, support gained for the robustness and generality
of relationships predicted from past research as well as the
unanticipated relationships provide a basis for future research
in the area of international marketing involvement. The results
suggest that studies which rely on global estimates of IMI or
those that focus on only one type of involvement, such as
equity involvement, run the risk of misrepresenting the way
businesses conduct marketing activities in foreign markets.
Wbile sucb limited measures are easier to use, conclusions on
the causes or effects of IMI based on such measures should be
viewed as extremely tentative. This is especially relevant since
Esra Gencturk, Terry L Ghilders, and Robert W. Ruekert
the results of this study suggest that different dimensions of
this construct may be influenced by different explanatory factors. Thus, the importance of using a broader definition of the
IMI construct as well as measuring and modeling each of its
components cannot be overstated for both diagnostic and theoretical purposes.
As mentioned earlier, the lack of a strong relationship between
institutional mode choices and either administrative or operational involvement poses a number of interesting questions for
theory development and testing. While the prevailing view
assumes that control and legal ownership claims are strongly
and positively related, the results of this study suggest that
institutional mode of operations in a foreign market is not significantly related to control exercised over the various types of
marketing activities performed in that market. Hence, it
appears that the rather global measure of institutional modes
may not be sensitive to how particular foreign marketing functions get executed. In this respect, this study's explicit recognition that marketing activities represent a broad set of
functions, each of which could theoretically he performed hy
either external agents or company employees, hecomes important in capturing equity aspects of IMI hehavior.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This article was partially supported
by a grant from the University of
Minnesota Curtis L. Carlson School
of Management. The authors would
like to thank Orville C. Walker, Ir.
and Kenneth Roering for their contrihutions to this research project,
and gratefully acknowledge the
many helpful suggestions provided
hy Tamer Cavusgil and the anonymous //M reviewers.
As a first attempt at developing and testing a tripartite conceptualization of the IMI construct, this study focused exclusively
on relatively well established correlates of IMI. It should he
noted, however, that there are other antecedent variahles that
influence the nature as well as the magnitude of a PMU's
involvement in international marketing activities. Hence, a
natural extension of this study is to expand the scope of
explanatory variahles in order to yield a broader explanation
of a PMU's international marketing involvement behavior. In
this respect, particular attention should he focused on identification of external and additional internal determinants of IMI.
Finally, future research also needs to explore how well IMI
serves as a predictor of a PMU's performance. This could be
accomplished in a numher of ways. First, the relationship
hetween the three dimensions of IMI could be examined for a
single performance outcome, such as profitahility. Similarly, a
single dimension of marketing involvement could he related to
alternative performance outcomes. Given the importance of
these activities, such questions deserve more attention than
we have provided to date. It is hoped that the precise operationalization of the IMI scale and its current application provide a solid foundation for future efforts designed to better
understand a business's involvement in international marketing activities.
THE AUTHORS
Esra Gencturk is assistant professor of marketing and international
business at the University of Texas
at Austin.
Terry L. Childers is professor of
marketing at the University of
Minnesota.
Robert W. Ruekert is associate professor of marketing at the University
of Minnesota.
International Marketing Involvement: The Construct, Dimensionality,
and Measurement
33
NOTES
i. summary tables depicting the results of all the factor analyses
performed are available from the authors upon request.
2. The principal factor analysis was deemed more appropriate
than a maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis for
two reasons. The first reason concerns the preliminary nature
of this study in proposing a tripartite conceptualization of
international involvement across all four aspects of marketing
activities. Hence, a priori specification of measurement parameters is considered to be premature in the absence of a sufficiently detailed theory about the relations among the three
dimensions and the corresponding indicators. The second reason is a methodological one concerning the adequacy of sample size, especially since the robustness of the maximum
likelihood estimation procedure against small sample sizes
remains an unresolved issue.
3. The authors thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this
explanation.
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36
Esra Gencturk, Terry L. Ghilders, and Robert W. Ruekert
APPENDIX
Measures of International
Marketing Involvement
Scale
Mode of Operations
Equity Involvement
Scale Items
Response Anchors
Internally developed wholly owned subsidiary
Acquired wholly owned subsidiary
Joint Venture
Licensing
Direct exporting
Indirect exporting via merchant distributors
Indirect exporting via commission agents
Product Subscale
1. Product Design Specifications
2. Package Design Speciflcations
3. Process Design Specifications
4. Brand Name Selection
5. Development of New Products
Pricing Subscale
1. End User Price Specification
2. Provision of Credit
3. List price Specification
4. Dealer Allowance
5. Price Discounts
Promotion Subscale
1. Sales Force Training
2. Advertising
3. Non-advertising Promotion
4. Design of Promotional Materials
5. Personal Selling
Distribution Subscale
1. Warehousing
2. Inventory Management
3. Local Transportation
4. Order Processing
5. Specification of Territorial Coverage
l=Always Performed by
Company Employees
7=Never Performed by
Company Employees
Administrative
Involvement *t
l=Home-office Managers
Have Complete Control
7=Home-Office Managers
Have No Control
Operational
Involvement t
l=Home-Office Managers
Spend Very Little Time
and Effort
7=Home-Office Managers
Spend A Lot of Time and
Effort
* In analyzing the data, the equity and administrative involvement scales were reverse coded such that higher values represent more of the trait.
t The marketing subscale items for Administrative and Operational Involvement are the same as those for Equity
Involvement.
International Marketing Involvement: The Construct, Dimensionality,
and Measurement
37