Transformative international marketing: an integrative review and a recursive framework of cross-border transformation

Purpose Why should transformative marketing be assumed to operate in the same way when it crosses national market boundaries? Existing research treats internationality as context rather than as a condition that shapes the meaning, legitimacy and consequences of transformation. This review addresses that gap by conceptualizing Transformative International Marketing (TIM) and developing a recursive framework that explains how cross-market discontinuities and interdependence condition the reconfiguration of international marketing and how those reconfigurations in turn transform stakeholders and market systems. Design/methodology/approach The study employs a systematic literature review to examine the knowledge structure and development of TIM research. The review applies the Theory–Characteristics–Context–Methodology and planning, operationalizing, writing, embedding, and reflecting (POWER) frameworks to 129 studies published between 1994 and 2025 in Scopus and Web of Science. The corpus was subsequently examined through theoretical foundations, substantive characteristics, geographic and international contexts, and methodological patterns. Findings The study reveals that transformative marketing has been theorized largely as a marketing phenomenon, overlooking how heterogeneous and interconnected markets alter transformation itself. It distinguishes whether change is transformative through depth, scope, durability and consequentiality, from how transformation unfolds through directionality, valence and normative contestation. It separates transformation of international marketing from transformation through it and specifies the boundary conditions under which TIM offers distinct explanatory value. Originality/value The study’s originality lies in repositioning internationality from a contextual backdrop to a constitutive element of transformative marketing theory. Rather than extending transformative marketing through additional firm- or stakeholder-level variables, it establishes TIM as a distinct and deliberately bounded domain of international marketing inquiry. The review also moves beyond importing general theories into international settings by integrating transformative marketing with international marketing mechanisms and market-system perspectives. In doing so, it provides a theoretically coherent foundation for studying transformative change under cross-market heterogeneity, interdependence, contested legitimacy and global-local tensions.