The aim of this book is to offer up-to-date insights into the challenges for international firms represented by managing their marketing mix in “distant” countries, especially considering the role played by cultural distance. Building on the famous McCarthy’s “4Ps,” and on the concept of “cultural distance,” the book outlines some key challenges and opportunities for firms that manage international marketing policies about “product,” “price,” “place,” and “promotion” in culturally distant markets. At the same time, the book looks at extant conceptualizations and approaches considering the evolving environmental forces, which are contributing to further challenges for firms that are confronted with changing economic and social scenarios. Indeed, markets and societies are increasingly affected by multiculturalism, and new patterns in consumers’ behaviors have emerged due to the proliferation of digital technologies and, more recently, due to several market disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic. How do firms manage culturally distant and increasingly evolving cultural environments is a relevant topic worthy of discussion from both a theoretical perspective and a practice-based approach, through the analysis of real-world case studies. Researchers of cross-cultural marketing and practitioners intending to get acquainted with the latest research on the topic would particularly benefit from this book.

The twelfth volume in the Progress in International Business Research series presents extensive accounts of the contemporary scientific debate on how to assess the impacts of distance, both negative and positive ones, on the conduct of international business.

It has been widely argued that, with the decline in trade costs (e.g., transport and communication costs), the importance of distance has declined over time. This paper examines the evolution of the geographic profile of countries' trade by studying the evolution of their distance of trade (DOT) in 1962-2000. The paper find that the DOT falls over time for the average country in the world, and that the number of countries with declining DOT is close to double those with increasing DOT. Thus, distance seems to have become more important over time for a majority of countries. The paper examines various hypotheses in order to explain the evolution of the DOT. One of the conclusions is that its evolution is unrelated to that of the overall level of trade costs but depends on the relative evolution of its components. We also examine the impact on the DOT of changes in production costs, customs costs, domestic transport costs, of air relative to land and ocean transport costs, of competition, exchange rate policy, regional integration, uneven growth, counter-season trade, and "just-in-time inventory management." The paper also offers some insights into how these changes may affect the home bias in consumption and the border effect.