حالت ورود بازار خارجی شرکت های خدمات: مورد برنامه های MBA ایالات متحده

While international expansion has become an important strategic imperative on the part of knowledge intensive service firms such as U.S. business schools, little empirical support is available on how these business schools enter foreign markets. If U.S. based business education programs are expected to prosper in light of the potential onslaught of international competition, expansion to overseas markets will be one of the most sought after options available. A poor choice in market entry strategy, or the lack of international market entry, can result in a negative impact on the educational institution. This research focuses on developing, measuring, and empirically testing a framework of key factors influencing international market entry mode choice of U.S. business schools by using primary data from faculty and administrators of U.S. Master of Business Administration (MBA) schools.

Globalization, rising affluence in developing and transitional economies, improved infrastructure, and advancements in communication and information technologies have increased the opportunities for marketing services beyond borders (Ekeledo & Sivakamur, 1998; Javalgi & White, 2002). On a comparative basis, the service sector has become the most dynamic part of the global economy (Javalgi & White, 2002). Among services, the so-called knowledge-based sectors have been growing the fastest in developed economies, experiencing an average annual growth of 10–12% over the past several years (Styles, Patterson, & La, 2005). Knowledge-based services include management consulting, engineering, education, and information technology (Lovelock & Gummesson, 2004; Styles et al., 2005). Apart from general characteristics of services (e.g., intangibility and inseparability), knowledge-based services possess additional characteristics such as high customization, high uncertainty and resulting high risk. Within knowledge-based services, international education has taken on major economic importance and policy emphasis (Brown & Duguid, 2000). Education markets thrive in the developing world and through billion-dollar tutoring in Asia (Coulson, 2006). For example, at many U.S. universities, tutoring in quantitative fields is increasingly obtained via computer from abroad, rather than from the traditional graduate students in residence (Homework Tutoring, 2007). Beamish and Calof (1989) documented the significance of an internationally oriented education system for the future economic resilience of a nation. UNESCO reports that “better education contributes to higher lifetime earnings and more robust national economic growth.” (EFA, 2004). Many universities and colleges are seeking opportunities to offer their programs beyond domestic borders. Given the globalization of the world economy, business education appears to be particularly in demand. Universities are also seeking to find answers to the challenge of continued growth in the future, and attempt to position themselves to be attractive to students and faculty from around the world. Despite the importance of the service sector in both domestic and world markets, the existing empirical literature about market entry strategies of knowledge intensive service firms such as educational services is scarce (Lovelock & Gummesson, 2004). The reasons for a lack of development in the existing literature most likely relates to the complexities of the educational industry (e.g., the mode of delivery, service quality) (Scherer, Javalgi, Bryant, & Tukel, 2005), and the customary reluctance of experts on external issues to look at these same issues within their own professional internal environment. The focus of this research is two-fold. First, we aim to improve our understanding of the foreign market entry mode decisions by knowledge intensive service firms such as U.S. business schools. Second, we attempt to employ a popular international business theory, Dunning’s eclectic paradigm (1988), and test it in the context of knowledge-based service firms (U.S. business schools). Within business schools, we focus exclusively on Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs. We believe that simultaneous investigation of undergraduate and PhD programs would provide confounding elements for our analysis (e.g., links to other undergraduate fields and program size). MBA programs, however, tend to be stand alone activities which can be transferred easily and are in higher demand. For parsimony, we will limit our analysis to mode four of the World Trade Organization (WTO) – i.e. the mobility of an institution through a commercial presence abroad (Item 4 in Table 1). Within mode four, we will consider different forms of establishments, ranging from licensing and franchising to joint ventures and wholly owned investments. This study makes an important contribution to the international service marketing literature in that it identifies the key factors that bear on the mode of entry decisions. We believe it is one of the few articles that research market entry strategies used by U.S. business schools offering an MBA across the borders. The results of this study will help such schools to develop a comprehensive product/service market plan that includes investigating and choosing a foreign market entry mode. The organization of this research is presented in four sections. The first section covers the study background. The second section presents the literature review related foreign market entry mode of service firms. The third discusses development of hypotheses. The fourth section focuses on the findings, followed by discussion and conclusions.

This study makes several important contributions both to international services marketing practitioners and scholars. First, the research identifies and applies key constructs of mode choice from Dunning’s eclectic theory of international production and the entry mode literature to business schools. The implications of the findings in this research have shown that if a business school chooses to expand into overseas markets it should consider certain components such as market potential, product differentiation, and contractual risk. The present study focuses on higher education, especially management education delivered by U.S. business schools. As with many empirical studies, out study has several limitations and presents a number of future avenues for research. This study focuses on the foreign entry choice of education services offered by U.S. business schools. There is a need for more research and better understanding the internationalization process of other types of knowledge intensive business services (e.g., medical services), from other nations as well. Although in this study we did not find any significant support for the relationship between school size and foreign market entry decisions, it is possible that other characteristics such as international experience of the business school may influence the choice of foreign entry mode decisions. We therefore call for future research to investigate the relationships between business schools’ years of international experience and the scale, scope, and speed of the internationalization by the business school’s MBA and other professional university programs. This study encourages researchers to investigate further determinants which might have significant impact on the foreign market entry mode choice of service firms. Given the increasingly rapid generation of knowledge and the improvements in technology useful for its dissemination, there is likely to be more activity and competition in the higher education sector. Increasing technological capability is also likely to generate academic “distance-jobbing”, where information dissemination can be distributed around the globe – coming from and going to everywhere. Understanding how entry modes are chosen and how they affect success is crucial both to the firms (in our case, universities), themselves, as well as the governments who are likely to expand their international education approaches. It must be noted that modes of internationalizations are complex within and between different knowledge-based service firms. It this study, we have concentrated mainly on the WTO mode 4 – the foreign direct investment mode of entry. Clearly, the other three modes of student, faculty and program mobility also have large roles to play and are likely to require different actions by universities. Though our conceptual approach has been global, our data were obtained from only U.S. MBA programs – leaving room for additional findings from current and future programs in other nations. Focusing on these different modes, and also on different sectors and locations of knowledge-based service firms, researchers may be able to identify additional factors that are unique to the service sector. Much needs to be done to further enhance our understanding of the internationalization of knowledge-based service firms.