Foreign Direct Investment, Economic Transition and the Impact on Marketing Practice in Slovenia

Abstract

Central Europe (CE) has been an important locus for research in the area of marketing since the fall of Communism. Researchers have adopted both the perspective of a potential investor in the region (Quelch, Joachimsthaler and Nueno, 1991) and well as that of indigenous firms (Hooley, 1993; Noar, 1989). This study builds on an emerging line of research that examines the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on marketing practice in countries in CE. The extant research has highlighted, for example, that Hungarian firms tend to be more market orientated than their Polish counterparts (Shipley et al., 1994) and that firms with foreign participation in Hungary are more likely to have long-term, growth-orientated marketing objectives than state-owned enterprises (Hooley et al., 1996). To date, however, most research has focussed on the larger countries in CE, such as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. In particular, there is a dearth of knowledge on the status of marketing in several of the smaller economies, such as the Baltic states, Slovakia and the states of the former Yugoslavia. The research outlined in this chapter is the beginning of the process of filling this void, presenting an assessment of the impact of foreign direct investment on the marketing practice of a sample of Slovene firms.