Social Ties and Foreign Market Entry

How Do Smaller Firms Select Foreign Markets?

“…Indeed, different empirical studies have indicated that firms, and in particular SMEs, usually do not adopt a systematic market approach, because entry decisions are often made by 'nonrational' reasons that apparently defy the optimizing logic of the market (Lee & Brasch, 1978;Ellis, 1995Ellis, , 2000. For example, Van Hoorn (1979) found that when compared with multinational enterprises (MNEs) SMEs usually have not developed successful administrative policies and procedures, and have an inclination toward adopting opportunistic rather than systematic strategic decisions.…”

“…One of the most important SME decisions regarding the internationalization process pertains to which foreign market to enter and expand into (Ellis 2000;Agndal & Chetty, 2007;Sakarya, Eckman & Hyllegard, 2007;He & Wei, 2011). However, although the importance of this decision and the growing attention to SMEs, most of research related to International Market Selection (IMS) has been tailored to large firms (Douglas & Craig, 1992;Cavusgil & Zou, 1994;Makino, Lau& Yeh,2002) and few studies were focused on smaller ones (Brouthers & Nakos, 2005;Francioni, 2010).…”

Business models and market entry mode choice of small software firms

“…The Uppsala internationalization model (Johanson and Wiedersheim-Paul, 1975;Johanson and Vahlne, 1977) could be applied together with firms' business model for the analysis on how a firm's entry mode evolves over the time when it gathers experiential knowledge in the market. Also the influence of business and social networks (Johanson and Mattsson, 1988;Ellis, 2000) on the entry mode beside of a firm's business model requires further research. Finally, as current research suggests (see e.g.…”

Vertical Integration for Full Outsourcing: Growth and Internationalization of a Portuguese Packaging Firm

“…Recent studies devoted attentions to the internationalization of small and medium-sized firms with limited international experience (Oviatt & McDougall, 1994). These firms do not have slack financial and human resources to single-handedly sustain the onus of international expansion, and are more dependent on their network of "facilitating" ties than large firms (Ellis, 2000). Oviatt and McDougall (1994) argued that the traditional factors that characterized the evolutionary model are no longer present (e.g., transportation and communication costs are decreasing), which raises the question of what the current factors are that drive firms to internalize activities across geographic markets.…”