Successfully Navigate Throughout the Academic Processes of

¶ … successfully navigate throughout the academic processes of today's educational system, it is very important to determine value within the sources of information that higher education needs and promotes. It is important to examine not only the information contained within articles, but their sense of argument and their direction should also be included in determining qualitative value and utility. The purpose of this essay is to examine a scholarly article to determine its value.

In addition this exercise will be useful in sharpening observation skills and honing necessary skepticism that is necessary for any good scholar or scientist. International marketing is a more recent study of knowledge then mathematics or chemistry. It can therefore be understood as a relatively new and fresh idea. It is important to keep this in mind when analyzing scholarly articles to add certain context and historical value to the evaluation process.

The article I've chosen to evaluate, "Cross-Cultural Consumer Behavior: A Review of Research Findings "was published within the Journal of International Consumer Marketing in volume 23, 2011. The acceleration of information gathering in the last few decades requires recent publications to maintain a forward-looking perspective and its findings. The recent date of this publication is adequate for this evaluation in my opinion. The title of the article itself is important to analyze as it presents the overall impact the authors wish to convey to the reader.

Headings are in larger text and in bold print for a reason. If there is any one sentence that the authors would most likely wish the reader to remember after completing its analysis, would have to be the title. These words set the stage for the presentation and allow the reader's imagination to narrow itself into a certain mode of thinking and expectation. First impressions are very important and this is the literal first impression that the author wishes to make upon the skeptical world of academic research.

This article has two authors. This is also important due to the context in which the information was gathered. Some articles have many authors and some have just one. In some cases this consensus may either harm or improve the article itself. In this particular case the article under examination and its two authors did not play a significant impact within the value or quality of this article.

The overall approach of this article is to focus their information and present an argument, similarly to a literature review as opposed to specific experiments with statistical data being incorporated within the report. The authors overall approach seems to want to reinforce a certain line of thought that includes a model to understand culture and consumer behavior. Within the introduction of the article the Hofstede model of a cultural and consumer behavior is used to measure variance within certain quantitative examinations.

The authors use Hofstede's model as a point of authority and originality. The introduction is a very comprehensive and useful paragraph within this article as it introduces the main themes and gives the reader a direction to travel as it understands this piece of literature. A very useful and comprehensive diagram was included with an introduction to explain this Hofstede model.

It is a very simple and plain picture, however it is very enlightening as it shows the tendencies of the different qualities of the model and how they synthesize into a complete picture useful for those who wish to employ it as a tool of learning. It is the only diagram within the article, and perhaps the article could have used some more of these diagrams to help bring even more illumination to the subject at hand.

As the article progresses, the author's previous works become more frequently cited to enhance the argument. While too many references to one's own work may impede the judiciousness of the process, this article is balanced with other opinions that support the author's previous work. These references are adequately cited and appear to be thoroughly vetted. As the article progresses, the author's motives become much more clear.

This examination falls into more of an attempt to define terms in modern language instead of pointing out in argument against other theories or modeling. In my opinion this is welcomed due to a very complicated and jargon filled subject such as international marketing requiring cross referencing by students to a point that doesn't seem necessary. However the authors become quite verbose and seemed to lose the effectiveness of its efforts to define with too much cross-referencing within its own limitations are revealed.

The article does not follow a standard template of scholarly writing I've seen in most other journals. It is not divided into subsections as many other papers are where methodology, conclusions and discussions are distinctly separated and highlighted. This article flows smoothly and avoids becoming tedious and boring. Instead of distinguishing between certain subsections of a scholarly paper, for example discussions, methodology, and literature review these ideas are interwoven within the article's main body.

While this may not be a suitable approach for every type of research paper, in this particular instance it works very well. This is most likely due to the basic and primitive need of defining terms before any type of analysis can be conducted on any particular subject. The conclusion of this article is very simple.