Because the web can be an influential medium for attracting and retaining customers, it is critical to examine the connection between web advertising and corporate strategy. This is particularly true for multinational organizations, which face the most complex organizational environment. The purpose of this paper is to propose that multinational organizations should be concerned with alignment of their strategy and web image because of the size and geographic spread of their operations.
This research paper reviews the fundamental global strategies that corporations can pursue (e.g. integration, transnational, national responsiveness) and then empirically examine the relationship between corporate global strategy and web advertising strategy for 20 multinational organizations.
The results show that misalignment between corporate global strategy and web advertising strategy is reasonably common. For two thirds of the companies in our sample, there was imperfect alignment.
The paper suggests three reasons why this can be, and offer a tool that enables organizations to recognize how they should handle design and content matters for the combination of corporate and national web sites.
