Determinants of Reverse Marketing Knowledge Transfer Potential from Emerging Market Subsidiaries to Multinational Enterprises’ Headquarters

Emerging markets are becoming increasingly important for multinational enterprises because of their high growth potential and future prospects. The unique circumstances in emerging markets lead to increased pressure to offer creative marketing solutions that can be leveraged across the multinational network. Setting up subsidiaries to tap into these markets offers companies the opportunity to integrate in the local community and access its knowledge-base for local and global innovations. Literature, however, reveals that emerging market subsidiaries have been largely ignored concerning their potential for reverse knowledge transfer, and marketing initiatives are expected to be developed in mature, developed markets. Our paper fills this gap in research and contributes to extant literature by identifying factors at unit, relationship, and knowledge levels influencing reverse knowledge transfer potential specific to marketing knowledge from emerging market subsidiaries. The conceptual discussion leads to study propositions and conceptual framework