| Abstract: | The demise of communism in the post command economies (PCEs) has created considerable interest from both academics and practitioners. As a result, a myriad of Western marketing academics and practitioners have been exploring the region. Despite the abundance of literature on cross-cultural research and practice, many PCE researchers have failed to consider fundamental issues related to cross-cultural/cross-national research design. This paper highlights a number of problems researchers face when investigating PCE regional phenomena. In particular, the authors discuss the issue of commonality and demonstrate how the use of multivariate analyses can be effectively used to: (1) identify more homogenous groupings of PCEs; and, (2) validate marketing constructs developed outside the PCEs. Though based on analyses of the interdependence of political and economic variables, the authors identify sub-groupings of countries that largely reflect traditional geo-cultural groupings: the Baltics, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia and Peripheral, and Ccntral Asia. The authors also discuss traditional cross-cultural research approaches and demonstrate how the operationalisation of appropriate approaches can improve the application of regional marketing stratey and validity of PCE findings. |
