The context of international business has evolved over the years and hasalways refl ected the climate of the time. Three major changes that havetaken place in the last decade or so should be noted. First, the landscape ofthe global economy changed drastically in the last decade or so. The Asianand Latin American fi nancial crises, the further expansion of the EuropeanUnion (EU), and the emergence of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, andChina) as economic powerhouses have occurred during this period. Andmost recently, the global fi nancial and economic crisis caused primarilyby the U.S. subprime mortgage loan crisis since late 2008 is ravaging theintegrity of the global economy with unprecedented severity.Second, the explosive growth of information technology tools, includingthe Internet and electronic commerce (e-commerce), has had a significant effect on the way we do business internationally. On one hand,everyone seems to agree that business transactions will be faster and moreglobal early on. And it is very true. As a result, the nature of the globalsupply chain and global trade as managed by multinational fi rms has fundamentallychanged. However, on the other hand, the more deeply wehave examined this issue, the more convinced we have become that certainthings would not change or could even become more local as a resultof globalization that the Internet and e-commerce bestow on us.Third, it is an underlying human tendency to desire to be differentwhen there are economic and political forces of convergence (often referredto as globalization). When the globalization argument (and movement)became fashionable in the 1980s and 1990s, many of us believed thatglobalization would make global business easier. Doing business beyondnational borders, indeed, has become easier, but this does not necessarilymean that customers want the same products in countries around theworld. For example, many more peoples around the world than ever beforeare trying to emphasize cultural and ethnic differences as well as acceptingthose differences. Just think about many new countries being born as wellas regional unifi cations taking place at the same time.Indeed, these global changes we have observed in recent years aremore than extraordinary. As a result, business practitioners are facingenormous challenges to cope with those changes in an uncertain world.This book is constitutes a timely compilation of work addressing marketingin an uncertain world, competition from emerging and reemergingmarkets, global sourcing, and meeting old and new global challenges.