Gordon E. Miracle

This essay traces the history of international advertising practice and the parallel evolution of the literature to describe, evaluate and improve it. History can explain how the business of international advertising and its related academic discipline developed; it can teach how to avoid the mistakes of the past. But research and theory, as well as practical experience, are necessary to generate new knowledge that is useful to guide future practice. This paper illustrates how international advertising practice, research and theory are interrelated. The paper includes a discussion of 100 years of: (1) international advertising practice, and (2) contributions to the literature – especially standardization versus adaptation of international advertising. As the practice of international advertising developed, practitioners wrote about their experience and offered guidelines to others. But most have achieved only modest refi nements in their international advertising strategies, tactics, executions, and integrated campaigns. Correspondingly, academic researchers have described, evaluated and investigated the nature of international advertising. But they have made only modest contributions to knowledge. However, there is hope. Academic researchers are fi nally beginning to do the kind of cross-cultural international experiments that are needed to generate new knowledge that will likely be useful in practice. They are also developing improved research methods needed to achieve reliable and valid research results. The paper concludes with specifi c suggestions for future international advertising research.