Guest Editors: Pervez Ghauri, Destan Kandemir, Birgit Hagen, and Aysegül Özsomer
Submission Window: April 1–June 30, 2026
Global markets are increasingly characterized by volatility, political conflict, and institutional frictions. In this environment, firms frequently face not only the challenge of entering new international markets but also the necessity of exiting, reentering, or reshaping their global strategies. Despite the growing frequency of these dynamics, our theoretical and empirical understanding of the marketing drivers, processes, strategies, and consequences of deinternationalization and reinternationalization remains limited.
Extant research has recognized that cycles of deinternationalization (often triggered by international conflicts and related sanctions) and reinternationalization (including the pressures for reshoring) are becoming increasingly salient. Yet, the drivers and outcomes of these processes remain underexplored and deserve further investigation (Berry 2013; Fang et al. 2025; Kafouros et al. 2022; Meyer et al. 2023). Specifically, findings on how economic and political differences influence foreign divestment remain equivocal, underscoring the need for more contextualized insights into their interrelationship (Nguyen et al. 2022).
In this context, while entry modes in international markets have received considerable scholarly attention, firms’ exit from foreign markets remain comparatively underexplored (Sousa and Tan 2015). Existing studies have examined exit decisions at the firm, subsidiary/parent, industry, and country levels (for a review, see Tan and Sousa [2020] and Da Foneseca and Da Rocha [2023]). For instance, Yayla et al. (2018) studied the impact of market orientation, relational capital, and internationalization speed on market exit and reentry decisions in turbulent target markets and concluded that relational capital specific to host countries negatively affects market exit decisions under political conflict. Tan and Sousa (2019) connected exit decisions to innovation research, showing that innovation capability moderates the relationship between performance and exit. Meanwhile, Watson et al. (2018) emphasized the role of digital technologies in shaping foreign market entry modes, highlighting a parallel need to explore how digitalization influences foreign market exits—including exit from online internationalization.
The frequency and scale of the foreign market entry, reentry, and exit decisions have grown significantly in the past two decades. Institutional differences and political frictions between developed and emerging economies are often cited as root causes (e.g., Nguyen et al. 2022; Niu and Wang 2024). Moreover, drivers, processes, and outcomes of exit and reentry vary substantially across large resource-rich firms, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and born globals (Da Fonseca and Da Rocha 2023), emphasizing the importance of internal firm context. As a result, both executives and scholars face the daunting challenge of developing the marketing knowledge and capabilities necessary to manage foreign market entry, reentry, and exit decisions successfully.
From an international marketing perspective, marketing strategy and capabilities are central to understanding de- and reinternationalization. Jafari-Sadeghi et al. (2023) identified that the lack of marketing capabilities—such as inadequate interpretation of market signals, misfit between products and markets, and insufficient adaptation—as the primary internal drivers of reduced internationalization among SMEs. Other factors include mismatches in marketing/digital channels (e.g. platform and promotional cost, visibility issues) and challenges in customer acquisition, which often determine whether internationalization falters or regains momentum through recalibration (Crick et al, 2020; Jean et al. 2025; Vissak and Francioni 2013).
Therefore, the primary aim of this special issue is to stimulate research on how underlying concepts and methodologies in international marketing—alongside insights from related fields such as international business, strategy, and entrepreneurship—can advance our understanding of marketing capabilities, strategies, and their outcomes at the customer and/or firm (subsidiary/headquarters) level in the context of foreign market entry, reentry, and exit.
Potential Topics of Interest
We encourage both conceptual and empirical contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes pertaining to foreign market entry, reentry, and exit in international markets:
- Interrelationships between international, multinational, global, and transnational marketing strategies and foreign market entry, reentry, and exit modes.
- Impact of marketing capabilities and strategies on organizational performance during foreign market entry, reentry, and exit.
- Value creation and value capture factors shaping marketing strategies in foreign market entry, reentry, and exit modes.
- Marketing communication and advertising in shaping firms’ foreign market entry, reentry, and exit decisions.
- Consumer and customer responses to market entry, reentry, and exit decisions.
- Marketing performance appraisal and feedback systems in foreign market entry, reentry, and exit decisions.
- Effects of national and organizational culture differences on marketing capabilities and strategies in foreign market entry, reentry, and exit.
- Influence of technology (e.g., AI, digitalization) on marketing capabilities and strategies in foreign market entry, reentry, and exit.
- Interrelationships between strategic agility, ambidexterity, and marketing capabilities and strategies in foreign market entry, reentry, and exit.
- Role of diversity (e.g., gender, board composition, language) in shaping marketing capabilities and strategies in foreign market entry, reentry, and exit.
- Impact of innovation capability on marketing strategies and outcomes in foreign market entry, reentry, and exit decisions.
- Effects of de- and reinternationalization on different aspects of firm performance, considering strategic/proactive, forced, or mimetic behavior.
- Internal changes in micro foundations and organizational transformation associated with reinternationalization.
This special issue seeks to advance knowledge on the aforementioned issues and beyond. We welcome submissions from diverse theoretical and empirical perspectives. Papers should not only contribute new evidence but also engage critically with existing assumptions and accumulated knowledge. We encourage thought-provoking contributions that challenge prevailing views and offer fresh, even counterintuitive, perspectives on foreign market entry, reentry, and exit strategies.
Submission Guidelines
Submissions should follow JIM’s manuscript format guidelines. All manuscripts will be reviewed as a cohort for this special issue of the Journal of International Marketing. Submissions will undergo the journal’s double-anonymized review process and adhere to established norms and procedures. Manuscripts must be submitted via the journal’s ScholarOne site.
For questions regarding this special issue, please contact the lead guest coeditors: Pervez Ghauri (p.ghauri@bham.ac.uk) and Destan Kandemir (dkandemir@gsu.edu).
Submissions for the special issue open on April 1, 2026, with the final deadline for submissions being June 30, 2026. Please note that the review process (desk review and first round) can take approximately 3–4 months.
Special Issue Editors
Pervez Ghauri completed his PhD at Uppsala University (Sweden) where he also taught for several years. After moving to the UK, he served in Manchester Business School and King’s College London as chaired professor of International Business. Currently, Pervez is Professor of International Business at University of Birmingham, UK. Pervez is the founding Editor of International Business Review and Consulting Editor for Journal of International Business Studies since 2017. He also served as Editor (Europe) for Journal of World Business for the period 2007–2014. Pervez is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, European International Business Academy, and the Academy of International Business, where he was also Vice President between 2008 and 2010. Pervez has published more than 30 books including the bestseller, Research Methods in Business Studies, now in its 5th edition with Cambridge University Press. He has published more than 100 articles in top-level journals such as Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of International Marketing, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Research Policy, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of World Business, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, and International Marketing Review. He has guest edited several top-level journals. Pervez has also been consulting and running executive training programs with several companies such as BP, Ericsson, and Airbus Industries.
Destan Kandemir is a visiting professor at Georgia State University, USA. She received her PhD in marketing and international business from Michigan State University. Her research focuses on marketing strategy, new product development, innovation, strategic alliances, and international business. Her publications have appeared in the journals including Journal of Management, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of International Marketing, Journal of the Product Innovation Management, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, International Marketing Review, International Business Review, and Thunderbird International Business Review. She has served as a Co-Chair of Journal of Product Innovation Management’s Annual Research Forum in 2024 and 2025.
Birgit Hagen is Associate Professor of International Entrepreneurship and Marketing at the University of Pavia, in Double Affiliation with the Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences, Austria. She received her PhDs from the WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business), Austria, and from the University of Pavia, Italy. Her research focuses on international entrepreneurship, in particular entrepreneurial internationalization and the entrepreneurial behavior underlying internationalization and marketing. Birgit has published in the Journal of International Business Studies, International Business Review, International Marketing Review, Management International Review, Industrial Marketing Management, and in various books (e.g. International Entrepreneurship) and book chapters. In the past, she held senior executive marketing positions in Austria, France, and Italy in a multinational enterprise.
Aysegül Özsomer is Professor of Marketing at Koç University, Türkiye, and serves as Editor in Chief of Journal of International Marketing. She earned a PhD in marketing and logistics from Michigan State University. Her over 30 years of experience in research, consulting, and teaching in the United States and Türkiye has resulted in publications in top marketing journals such as Journal of International Marketing, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, and Journal of Business Research. Her papers have received several awards, such as the S. Tamer Cavusgil Award for the best Journal of International Marketing article in a given year in 2013 and 2023, and the Gerald E. Hills Best Paper Award in 2011 for the ten-year impact made to research on entrepreneurial marketing and market orientation. She is the coauthor of the book The New Emerging Market Multinationals: Four Strategies for Disrupting Markets and Building Brands (published by McGraw-Hill, 2012). The bulk of Professor Özsomer’s work is in international marketing, and she is active in the AMA Global Marketing SIG.
References
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