آزمون (آزمون مجدد) فرضیه های پیروی از مشتری در گسترش بانک های چند ملیتی

Theory suggests that multinational banks follow their corporate and non-corporate customers. Previous empirical studies have tested the hypothesis that multinational banks follow their corporate customers. This study bridges a gap between the theory and previous empirical studies by testing the hypothesis that multinational banks also follow their non-corporate customers. We accomplish the purpose by empirically testing a model of the effect of home country factors on multinational bank expansion. Our results support the hypothesis that multinational banks also follow their non-corporate customers.

The most important monopolistic advantage in multinational bank expansion is the reputation amongst domestic customers and a special knowledge of their needs. This advantage, based on relational contracting (Williamson, 1981), gives banks a privileged opportunity to follow their customers abroad. The ‘follow the customer’ strategy is well known in the literature (Tschoegl, 1987).1 The internalization theory (Buckley and Casson, 1976, Tschoegl, 1987 and Casson, 1990)2 asserts that this strategy can be applied not only to corporate customers but also to non-corporate customers such as permanent immigrants and non-citizen permanent residents. Previous empirical studies have focused on testing the ‘follow the corporate customer’ strategy. This study bridges a gap between the theory and previous empirical studies on multinational bank expansion by testing the hypothesis that banks also follow their non-corporate customers to provide financial services to these customers in the foreign country. To accomplish the purpose, we test two sets of three hypotheses related to the effect of home country factors on multinational bank expansion in the United States (U.S.). In this context, we extend Grosse and Goldberg's (1991) model of the effect of home country factors on foreign bank expansion by incorporating the non-corporate customer hypothesis. An extensive justification for the choice of the U.S. as the host country can be found in Hultman and McGee, 1989 and Grosse and Goldberg, 1991. From the standpoint of this study the choice of the U.S. enables us to make a direct comparison with the results in Grosse and Goldberg (1991). The first set of hypotheses (H1–H3) is related to the ‘follow the customer’ strategy, and the second set of hypotheses (H4–H6) is related to other home country factors that affect multinational bank expansion. Specifically, our main hypothesis (H1) is related to the ‘follow the non-corporate customer’ strategy, and all the other hypotheses are simply controls. Testing the effect of home country factors in a single host country (in this case, the U.S.) controls for host country effects that can obscure the home country factors of interest to the study. Focus on foreign bank expansion into a single host country also permits the role of bilateral international factors to be examined (Tallman, 1988). The paper is organised as follows. Section 2 describes the hypotheses and variables concentrating on the reasons the selected factors affect multinational bank expansion and presents the model to be tested. Section 3 describes the data and methodology. Section 4 reports the empirical results and Section 5 includes a summary and conclusions.

In this study, a model based on the effect of home country factors on multina- tional bank expansion is empirically tested. It bridges a gap between the theory and previous empirical studies on the ‘ follow the customer ’ strategy of multinational banks. The results are consistent with the theory-based predictions in that the ‘ follow the customer ’ strategy can be applied not only to corporate customers but also to non-corporate customers. The results also suggest that anecdotal evidence (Jones, 1982) and theoretical evidence (Perkins, 1979) of the relationship between tourism and foreign bank expansion might also be amenable to empirical investigation. From the standpoint of the internalization theory and as far as the ‘ follow the customer ’ strategy is concerned, this study has important implications. The ‘ follow the customer ’ strategy resembles the product cycle approach (Vernon, 1966) in that an advantage can be developed in the home country and then transferred to a foreign country. This analogy can, however, be misleading. As Casson (1990) has observed, however, there are two ways in which this analogy can be misleading. First, in the case of multinational banks, the advantage can only be transferred to countries to which the home country customers travel unlike manufacturingmultinational enterprises where the advantage can be transferred anywhere. Second, unlike the product cycle model, the monopolistic advantage may originate in a poor country rather than a wealthy country. Since no skill-intensive innovation is required, and no pressure to meet sophisticated demand is necessarily involved, it is the direction of home-country based customers and not relative level of economic development that governs the direction of foreign expansion.