A Model for Standardization/Adaptation Strategy Selection in the Iranʹʹs Multinational Companies (MNCs)

Purpose-The research aims at evaluating the standardization/adaptation of international marketing strategy in Iran multinational companies (MNCs) based a model in which the impact of external environmental variables on the marketing mix internal variables (i.e. Product, Promotion, Price and Place) is considered, while in the previous researches no attempt was done to examine the interdependency of these internal variables. The present researchers tried to delineate the role of this reciprocal relationship in dictating the organization marketing strategy. Design/methodology/approach-The research is classified as a descriptive research which tries to fill out the existing gap in the practical framework presented in standardization/adaptation debates. The research seeks to fulfill an applied objective as well as finding some appropriate approaches for its studied sample. Decision Making Trial Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Analytical Network Processing (ANP) are the methods used in studying these two groups of variables. Findings-The presented model and relations resulted from the DEMATEL and ANP methods implementation show that (1) there is a relationship between the internal affecting factors which means that there is interdependency between these variables and (2) the standardization/adaptation strategies are employed to some degrees. In case of the studied sample the standardization strategy proved to have a higher degree of application as compared to the adaptation strategy. Originality/value-The obtained data reveals that there is interdependency between the internal effecting factors or marketing mix elements (4Ps).Therefore, the internal and external factors need to be considered simultaneously in any attempt to determine the international marketing strategy. It is also recommended that two multi criteria decision making methods- DEMATEL and ANP -can be used at the same time in order to solve the international marketing strategy problems.