I thought that I knew quite a lot about international marketing strategy...having worked in this field most of my life. However, I found that I still had a lot to learn. Also, things were moving along very fast because of the internet and the changes in marketing wrought by rapid communications and the ability for producers to sell direct to consumers. This is one of the few text books that I have ever read cover to cover. Even when I was at University, I tended to "dip" into the textbook to read about a particular topic or expand my knowledge on one aspect etc. So, reading right across the subject, as I was forced to do here, was both a challenge but also quite illuminating. I think this is actually quite a good text book. ...though I thought I detected an occasional error in it. (Now I can't quite remember them but I think there was some half-baked story about dumping and a few other things that I found myself asking ..."Really?").
There are some nice diagrams and charts which help in learning. For example. Figure 5.2 showing the geographical development of SME's. I also rather liked Hofstede's five cultural dimensions: individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and Confucianism (even though Confucianism sits rather uncomfortably in this list). One problem with labelling whole countries against this framework is that it ignores huge differences within the countries. For example, the typical difference between city and country. And the difference between university educated and uneducated. We've recently observed the phenomena of Donald Trump, in the USA, carrying 72 million of his fellow Americans along to vote for him....a high proportion of them from the religious right ....presumably believing in miracles ...and certainly a lot of them open to conspiracy theories. They appear to be very different to about 65% of the voters in New York who voted for the Democrats. The basic point being that one needs to be very careful in assigning something like a "cultural measurement" to a country and it would certainly be preferable to target reasonably uniform sub groups within a country who share cultural values. Middle America might have more in common with the evangelicals in Brazil than with Americans in San Franciso or New York.
I also liked Fig 2.2 which is a deceptively simple graphic of market entry barriers, including; tariffs, quantitative restrictions and restrictive practices. I think, frequently the international debate has simply been about tariffs when other measures can have much greater impact on trade.
And I liked Figures 7.1 and 7.2 showing market entry methods and levels of involvement required plus inherent risk in entering foreign markets. (I've just wasted 40 min looking for something similar which I developed myself and used but couldn't find it. However, I have incorporated the same concept into the book I wrote for the International Trade Organisation: "Entering New Market: A guide for trade representatives. 2013." (See Figure 5 in that book)).
In fact, there is a lot to like about the current book and I'm happy to give it 4.5 stars. ( )