International marketing’s commitment to a technical and universalizing
approach to solving managerial problems has meant that
researchers have adopted an ethnocentric approach to branding. This
is becoming problematic as the global marketplace develops. The
authors argue that to meet the theoretical and methodological challenges
of global branding, international marketing scholars will need
to revise some key premises and foundations. Branding research in
the future will need to be contextually and historically grounded,
polycentric in orientation, and acutely attuned to the symbolic significance
of brands of all types. The authors offer some conceptual foundations
for a culturally relative, contextually sensitive approach to
international branding in which the construct of brand mythology is
central.