The purpose of this study is to analyze how adaptation/standardization, trust and network development are achieved when marketing services in a culturally distant country through handling the problems of intangibility and heterogeneity.
Qualitative data are collected in the form of unstructured interviews and direct observation to conduct a single case study on Gamma Knife.
Adaptation/standardization plays the central role in internationalization of services marketing. For service development and quality maintenance, values and ideas of the foreign company dominate the adaptation (i.e. standardization), while market‐related adaptation is carried out in response to local culture and practices.
The research is based on a single case. Future research can involve similar in‐depth study examining how internationalization of services works in culturally distant countries, the results of which can be compared with the current study.
In international services marketing, in addition to meeting formal and official requirements, managers must concentrate on building trust and informal contacts.
The research uses an empirical illustration to provide a model on internationalization of services marketing based on adaptation/standardization, trust and network, to overcome intangibility‐ and heterogeneity‐related difficulties.
