Challenges and opportunities for marketers in the emerging markets

With increasing importance of the emerging markets in the global economy, there is growing interest among marketing researchers and managers to understand the differences between the consumers in the developed and emerging markets as well as the challenges and opportunities posed by these differences for both local and foreign marketers in these emerging markets. However, most recent research on consumer behavior and marketing strategy in the emerging markets uses concepts and theories developed and tested in the developed markets. Hence, it is not clear if these studies reflect the real picture of the consumers and marketers in the emerging markets by looking through the lens of developed markets. This special issue consists of twenty six papers, categorized along three broad themes (comparative marketing strategy, comparative consumer behavior, and emerging markets perspective), which not only extend the growing research on this important topic but also push the agenda for making the field of marketing into a truly global discipline, by not just merely replicating established theories and models but also identifying the limitations of the existing theories and extending these to provide fresh insights. This editorial also presents some useful directions for future research on this topic.