Impact of culture on marketing of health services – Elekta in Brazil

Maria Fregidou-Malama and Akmal S. Hyder

International Business Review, 2015, vol. 24, issue 3, 530-540

Abstract: We examine how culture influences the international marketing of health services. This is done by analyzing how culture affects trust, networks and standardization/adaptation and how trust develops and operates in relation to culture, networks and standardization and adaptation. Using qualitative data gathered through semi-structured interviews and researcher observations, we find that the cultural dimensions of power distance, individualism/collectivism and uncertainty avoidance have an impact on trust, network development and standardization/adaptation. This finding helps in deciding what parts of the service to standardize and what to adapt for successful services marketing. We conceptualize three interrelated levels of trust comprising country-, company- and individual trust. This multilevel trust offers an important understanding of how to manage cultural complexity in the international marketing of services. The theoretical model developed based on cultural dimensions can be useful when marketing services in other countries.

Keywords: Adaptation; Cultural dimensions; Network; Standardization; Trust (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969593114001607
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:iburev:v:24:y:2015:i:3:p:530-540

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/133/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... me/133/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.ibusrev.2014.10.010

Access Statistics for this article

International Business Review is currently edited by P. Ghauri

More articles in International Business Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().