سرمایه گذاری های جدید بین المللی به عنوان "شرکت های چند ملیتی کوچک": اهمیت قابلیت های بازاریابی

This paper explores how marketing capabilities contribute to the international expansion of international new ventures, and influence their choice of entry mode. The study examines how marketing capabilities help international new ventures to use entry modes involving higher resource commitment in international markets. The proposed model was tested on country-level data from Spain. The results show that marketing capabilities contribute to a firm's decision to choose entry modes involving higher resource commitment in foreign markets. The paper also includes insights on antecedents of international new ventures’ choice of entry modes in foreign markets.

Today, barriers to international trade and investment are significantly eroded. Internationalization has been eased by improvements in technology, infrastructure and deregulation. Nevertheless, rapid international market entry alone is not a sufficient strategy for international new ventures (INVs). It must be supported by entry mode strategies (Jones and Coviello, 2005 and McDougall and Oviatt, 1996). It is particularly striking to note the paucity of studies analyzing the factors that may influence the governance structure INVs usually expand internationally (Autio, 2005, Jones and Young, 2009 and Zahra, 2005). The lack of these studies is especially surprising since entry modes involve greater commitment of resources in foreign markets (Aspelund, Madsen, & Moen, 2007) than in host country markets. INVs are subject to the liabilities of newness and youth (Burgel and Murray, 2000 and Jones and Young, 2009) that highlight marketing functions. This study sheds light on the current literature on this topic and lays the basis for future research. Previous studies have highlighted market entry decisions as one of the major topics for international marketing focusing on managerial “how-to” (Kotabe, 2001). INV theory (Oviatt & McDougall, 1994), however, has been excluded from comprehensive literature reviews (e.g. Brouthers & Hennart, 2007). Hence much of the research on SMEs, international marketing and the process of internationalization has been ignored. In this regard, entry mode is fundamental to gain a fuller understanding of international entrepreneurship. Indeed, entry mode is a formal part of the internationalization process, and is indicative of the competitive stance of SMEs in foreign and global markets. An amazing number of studies have failed to accommodate any discussion on the role of entry mode or mode of operation as a component of international venturing (Jones & Young, 2009). The few available studies do little more than observe entry modes as reported by respondents and add little knowledge to strategic choices (Jones & Young, 2009). This research lays the basis for future research by establishing marketing capabilities as an antecedent of higher commitment entry modes in INVs. By contemplating marketing capabilities as a key factor in the choice of entry modes, especially those involving higher commitment of resources, this study helps to further understanding INVs’ international behavior. It would seem logical to assume that INVs choose relatively lower commitment entry modes such as indirect exporting or licensing whenever possible in order to overcome resource constraints and foreign risk (Aspelund et al., 2007, Burgel and Murray, 2000, Coviello and Munro, 1997 and Jolly et al., 1992). The use of entry modes involving higher commitment in foreign markets does not seem to be a realistic approach to international markets in the early stages (McAuley, 1999) because INVs lack resources and experience. Nevertheless, some authors have recently shown that not only do INVs use entry modes involving higher commitment in foreign markets right from the start (Aspelund et al., 2007) but that it also seems to be a competitive strategy (Zahra, Ireland, & Hitt, 2000). A possible factor influencing the choice of entry modes involving higher commitment of resources (Brouthers, 2002 and Brouthers and Nakos, 2004) is INVs’ knowledge of foreign markets. The greater the knowledge, the more likely it is that INVs will use methods involving a higher resource commitment such as joint ventures, partial or total acquisition or greenfield investments (Johanson and Vahlne, 1977 and Johanson and Vahlne, 1990). Therefore, the development of marketing capabilities can play a fundamental role in understanding how INVs increase their commitment of resources in foreign markets (De Clercq et al., 2005, Oviatt and McDougall, 2005, Prashantham, 2005 and Weerawardena et al., 2007). This study contributes to international entrepreneurship research in several ways. First, given its impact on performance, numerous empirical studies have addressed the entry mode decision (Brouthers and Hennart, 2007, Canabal and White, 2008 and Sarkar and Cavusgil, 1996). It is the third most researched field in international management (Werner, 2002). However, little effort has been made in the field of international entrepreneurship. Our study contributes to make up for this lack of empirical studies explaining the antecedents of entry mode decision in international new ventures. Second, we examine a wider range of modal choices rather than simple bivariates, like equity/non-equity modes, thereby enriching the analysis. Third, for research on international entrepreneurship and international new ventures to develop further, we need to know more about the factors affecting the entry mode choice of these companies. Most of the reported research has turned its attention on the external conditions that affect entry mode choice (Morschett, Schramm-Klein, & Swoboda, 2009). However our research is focused on marketing capabilities. Finally, because international entrepreneurship research is lacking notions from international business theories (Young, Dimitratos, & Dana, 2003), such theories are needed to broaden the scope of the research field. This study contributes to international entrepreneurship research by integrating concepts from a resource-based view of firms with international entrepreneurship research. In this paper we develop a theoretical model that explores the effect of marketing capabilities on higher commitment entry modes and INVs’ international success. We construct our theoretical model on contributions coming from the resource-based view of firms (RBV). This choice has been motivated by the fact that RBV emphasizes the role of the firm's capabilities when explaining entry mode choice. We then test this model in an empirical study of a multi-industry sample of Spanish INVs operating in foreign markets. Finally, we discuss the results of the study, together with its limitations, implications and possible future research lines.

This article set out to demonstrate the important role of marketing capabilities in the internationalization of new ventures. The results of the empirical research have shown that marketing capabilities improve the international performance of international new ventures and enable them to opt for high order entry modes in foreign markets. Thus, the study contributes to the International Entrepreneurship literature by identifying marketing capabilities of one of the factors that influence the governance structure INVs use to expand internationally. Consequently, our results offer a route to the targeted development of policies designed to encourage more firms to accelerate their internationalization process. These policies might focus on helping international new ventures to develop marketing capabilities. Our study has found a positive relationship between international new ventures’ marketing capabilities and their higher commitment entry mode choice, furthering understanding of international entrepreneurship by introducing discussion on the role of entry mode as a component of international venturing as proposed by Jones and Young (2009). Nevertheless, more research is needed in order to explain other variables that may be involved in this decision, an objective that lies beyond the scope of this paper. For example, the number of countries in which the company is operating, the risk associated with each of these countries, or the learning demands associated with the new market may influence entry mode choice (Andersen, 1993). Another factor to be considered is the uncertainty deriving from the specific characteristics of the market itself, such as changes in technology or in consumer tastes. The risk of obsolescence of technological assets may favor the use of lower resource commitment modes to enter new markets (Yip, 1982a and Yip, 1982b). However, the need to develop capabilities associated with technological development in the sector might lead to the use of entry modes involving a higher commitment of resources, as these entry modes can encourage learning in INVs (Zahra et al., 2000). The characteristics of the products or services INVs offer can also influence the entry mode they choose. INVs whose products or services are characterized by a high level of tacit knowledge may prefer to use entry modes involving greater resource commitment than firms with law tacit kwoledge. In this case, the risk that a firm's specific advantages might be expropriated through a license or a partner in a joint venture may be more significant than other factors in understanding why this choice was made (Brouthers & Nakos, 2004). This article has focused on demonstrating that marketing capabilities allow higher commitment entry modes to be used. Future research could analyze the kind of capabilities that drive lower investment entry modes and how this kind of entry mode is related to international performance. Considering the effect of marketing capabilities on international performance, it seems worth insisting on the need for more in-depth research to reveal sources of marketing capabilities for international new ventures, bearing in mind the lack of experience this kind of company has. For example, following recommendations by Sharma and Blomstermo (2003) or Laanti, Gabrielsson, and Gabrielsson (2007), who highlight the need to take the characteristics typical of this type of firm as a starting point in order to understand their international behavior, an interesting line of investigation would be to discover whether early international entry can contribute to the development of marketing capabilities in these firms. International new ventures, which are created with international status, may quickly establish routines for managing multicultural forces, for coordinating international resources and for selling in different countries (McDougall et al., 1994 and Oviatt and McDougall, 1994). As Autio et al. (2000) point out, the cognitive, political and relational impediments associated with older firms are obstacles that could limit the firm's ability to identify, assimilate and respond to new foreign market information (Eriksson et al., 1997, Hitt et al., 1997 and Wagner, 2004). Early international entry may reduce fears over the effort required to learn about foreign markets and these firms are less constrained by existing domestic relationships and more likely to develop knowledge through relationships that have been built internationally (Sapienza, De Clercq, & Sandberg, 2005). These are some reflections we believe should be taken into account to better understand the absorptive capacity of INVs. The design of the survey instrument has been recognized as influencing measurement error (Sudman, Bradburn, & Schwarz, 1996). In web surveys, the screen size, settings, web browser, and color palette used by the designer can significantly change the appearance of the measure (Batagelj and Vehovar, 1998, Couper et al., 2001, Miller, 2001 and Tedesco et al., 1999). Following recommendations in the literature, the questionnaire web page was designed to fit the width of the screen and was scrollable to minimize context and order effects. Instructions were given at each step: in the web mode drop-down boxes were used, offering either one choice from a list, or check boxes for multiple-choice questions. Nevertheless, the appearance of the survey will depend on the user's computer and software configuration and as such, some influence of measurement error cannot be ruled out. Although we designed a procedure that allowed us to measure the frequency of entry mode choice, it also involves a loss of information and precision related to the combination of modes driven by different causes. Impacts of this way of measuring entry mode on the results cannot be absolutely discarded. Future research could focus on one specific market, each firm answering for its multiple markets separately. On the whole, using primary or secondary sources of data alone to measure performance does not necessarily capture the entire domain of the construct. It may introduce the dilemma of single data source bias and/or lead to inaccurate inferences (Hult et al., 2008). Thus, to draw conclusions about performance more effectively, further research should consider using both primary and secondary sources of data. The measure of non-financial international performance focused mainly on commercial aspects. In our view, it would also be interesting to discover the effects of the variables studied here on other aspects of non-financial performance, such as customer satisfaction or positioning. Finally, a general contribution of this study has been to test and confirm the explanatory power of the resource-based view of firms in the field of international entrepreneurship research.