استراتژی جهانی در صنعت تبلیغات بین المللی

The strategic behaviour of international advertising agencies is studied using Yip's global strategy framework. In most cases, firms seek broad international engagement to leverage agency advantage; the development of uniform international management systems has a high priority; and “responsive” advertising output is common. Many agencies have developed IT systems to facilitate international communication and integration, and significant uniformity of branding and positioning policy is the norm. However, uniform patterns of industry-specific behaviour are not evident in many of the areas investigated, with wide variance in agency strategy at the firm level. These differences indicate that factors such as firm resources and administrative heritage are frequently at least as important as the industry environment in affecting strategy in international markets. The behaviour identified is also generally consistent with an industry environment where market drivers are very important, with most agency clients demanding consistent performance and quality internationally, along with responsiveness. Yip's framework, which emphasises the impact of industry structure on firm conduct, is useful in indicating how the environment tends to drive some dimensions of strategy in a ‘characteristic’ direction. However, it is also evident that more account needs to be taken of ‘resource-based’ theory, and thus the impact of idiosyncratic firm resources, when seeking to understand strategic behaviour in the industry.

Research in the field of international advertising has focused primarily on standardisation and contextual issues (Douglas & Craig, 1992; Shoham & Albaum, 1994; Kotabe, 2001). Study of the overseas operations of advertising agencies is limited, with gaps in knowledge of international strategic and managerial behaviour. As a result, ‘we know remarkably little about how such international advertising agencies operate’ (Grein & Ducoffe, 1998, p.1). This study focuses on the global strategy of international advertising agencies operating in Britain. The conceptual framework developed by Yip (2003) and Yip (1992) is used to describe both strategic behaviour and its antecedents. When studying the factors affecting strategy, a distinction is made between the impact of the external industry environment and internal variables, such as firm resources. The analysis therefore makes a contribution to knowledge of the overseas operations of agencies and the debate on the impact of the environment versus idiosyncratic firm capabilities as antecedents to strategic behaviour.

The research findings indicate that, at the firm level, there is considerable variation in the international strategies pursued by the survey firms. At the same time, ‘average’ behaviour aligned fairly well with the first four propositions. This is particularly the case regarding the dominant strategic thrust to establish broadly based overseas office networks. There is also evidence of common strategic directions in respect of the development and implementation of more internationally uniform management systems and procedures, and growing interest in developing IT systems and related processes to enhance communication and integration between the overseas offices. In the case of agency international marketing strategy, there is significant uniformity in the branding and positioning policies pursued overseas, but the development of standardised international advertising content is not a high priority in most of the agencies. It is also notable that although competition is strong in the industry, only one agency pursued an integrated international competitive strategy. In many policy areas there is little support for the notion of industry-specific patterns of strategic behaviour at the firm level. Thus, in respect of important dimensions of the product and services, global marketing and location levers, the behaviour of the individual agencies was often different from what was expected, with no single dominant pattern of strategic activity observed. It is also the case that strategy was frequently less ‘global’ than anticipated. This appears to be primarily due to the decentralisation of many advertising activities, and a need for agency ‘responsiveness’ in the industry as a result of the dominance of market forces over cost drivers.