If your business has done well stateside, you may be primed to expand overseas to capture additional customers and gain market exposure throughout the world. But before you take that major step, there are some aspects to consider before initiating the internationalization process.
Internationalizing has a number of advantages, but they do not come without challenges. If you can create an effective strategy for getting over the hurdles that internationalization might present, the process can reap many benefits that your business will get to enjoy for years into the future.
Let's find out together. Throughout history, Italy has been recognized as an excellence for creativity, style, and outstanding entrepreneurship. It can boast being world leader in manufacturing, machinery, and related fields. Fashion, luxury, design, foodstuff: these are the sectors in which Italian entrepreneurship makes the difference compared to other international players. Entrepreneurs are often thought of as national assets to be refined, motivated and remunerated to the greatest possible extent.
Entrepreneurs can change the way we live and work. If successful, their revolutions may improve our standard of living. In short, in addition to creating wealth from their entrepreneurial ventures, they also create jobs and the conditions for a flourishing economy.
Despite this, many entrepreneurs are not yet aware of the added value of Italian products , so they immediately abandon the idea of bringing it abroad. So, to be successful outside the local market you have to be convinced your product will sell, you need to identify your own Unique Selling Proposition and work on that. Pinpointing your USP requires some hard soul-searching and creativity.
Analyze how other companies use their USPs to their advantage. For example, Charles Revson, founder of Revlon , always used to say he sold hope, not makeup. This is an example of a company that has found a USP "peg" on which to hang its marketing strategy. Understanding where your business can be successful is one of the fundamental things to think about. And the answer to this dilema will be decisive in planning all future choices. All studies included in our review had to involve some type of key internal implementation factor and analysis.
Some studies included content or external context findings but were included if they also showed results at the internal context or strategic process stages. The 22 studies were analyzed using the categorical analysis technique, one of the dimensions of content analysis proposed by Bardin A summary was then produced for each article, which listed the categories: year of publishing, company size SME - small and medium enterprises or MNC — multinational corporates , methodological approach theoretical or empirical , the internationalization key internal factors analyzed, their strategy approach equivalent and the implementation stage they refer to.
The article summaries provided us with easily identifiable markers for comparisons of the research being conducted in the field. Figure 1 demonstrates the main steps of the research. In this section, we analyze the 22 reviewed articles as described in the methodological procedures, in order to identify the key internal factors that impact business internationalization strategies.
Although we did not impose any time-limit to the research, the results we found when we examined the articles per year of publishing revealed that the concern about internal key factors for strategic implementation is a reasonably new issue in the business internationalization literature.
Only 2 articles Hendry, ; Chiesa, were published earlier and can be considered among the pioneers on the matter. Source: Elaborated by the authors. The predominance of empirical studies reinforces the developing aspect of the theory Cooper et al. This result shows that the issue of the key internal factors for implementation is relevant for either size of company, even considering their particularities.
As a whole, the descriptive analysis of the articles reveals the initial stage in which the internal aspects of strategy implementation are found in the business internationalization literature, despite their relevance to different sizes of company. The following qualitative analysis will provide evidence of which aspects are slightly better developed and which have been neglected. The qualitative analysis was based on the categorization of the reviewed articles as: i the internationalization key internal factors analyzed; ii their strategy approach equivalent; and iii the implementation stage they refer to.
Table 2 consolidates the results of the categorical analysis and reveal the relevance of each key internal factor of strategic implementation in the internationalization literature. Note: The sum of the number of articles in Table 1 exceeds the total of 22, because some of the reviewed articles discuss more than one key factor. Initially, what draws attention is the fact that Internal Context factors are considerably more researched than the ones concerning the Strategic Process.
Rodriguez, Wise and Martinez and Fisch and Zschoche agree that the flexibility to shift production among subsidiaries, adapting manufacturing processes, and cooperative relationships impacts the firm's innovation and market expansion-adaptation capabilities, increasing profitability of international production networks. In addition, Miozzo and Mo and Sanna-Randaccio and Veugelers researches bring evidences that decentralization on the headquarters-subsidiary relationships can provide flexibility and help to take advantages of favorable external factors.
The Managers competence stands out as being the most preeminent topic in the internationalization literature reviewed and the evidences point to the same conclusion, that being that managerial capabilities have a positive influence on the expected outcome. Nummela, Saarenketo and Loane highlight the importance of managerial experience in filtering the external drivers of failure.
In a complementary way, Chebbi, Yahiaoui, Vrontis and Thrassou reinforce different attributes of leadership nurturant, personal touch, expertise, simple living and high thinking, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and the giving model of motivation impact in successful internationalization.
Beleska-Spasova, Glaister and Stride and Efrat and Shoham add more evidence to the matter, pinning out that managerial capabilities can overshadow physical resources and external factors in affecting positively the international success of a firm.
Hendry and Gammelgaard, McDonald, Stephan, Tuselmann and Dorrenbacher proposes that business networks is one of the determinants for the creation of an effective international organization. Mort and Weerawardena explain that link with evidences that fundamental and secondary networking capabilities enable identification and exploitation of market opportunities and facilitates the development of knowledge-intensive products.
In contrast, the Strategic Process factors are noticeably less discussed in the reviewed internationalization literature. Discussing subsidiary performance evaluation, Miao, Choe and Song states that subsidiary-toparent knowledge flow is facilitated by establishing efficient formal mechanisms such as an expatriation policy and a subsidiary performance evaluation system.
However, Miozzo e Mo discuss that international tools for integration and co-ordination, including corporate processes and global supply chain management, reinforce centralization, which may lead to less flexibility to take advantages of external factors. Borini, Oliveira, Silveira and Concer showed that organizational communication is vital in reducing uncertainty and disseminating knowledge, therefore the reverse transfer of innovation depends on strong integration communication between the parent and its subsidiaries, among other factors.
To answer that we propose the following specific objectives: to identify the implementation stages and the parallels between the two literatures; and to describe and analyze how implementation is being discussed and the research gaps in the internationalization literature.
Therefore, we conducted a descriptive review of the literature, focused on articles in the ISI Web of Science database, chosen as a relevant repository of international scientific production. The findings highlight that antecedents, motivations or the strategy content make up the vast majority of research on internationalization studies, and comparatively very little attention has been given to the key internal factors, corroborating the research of Carr, Haggard, Hmieleski and Zahra The descriptive analysis of the reviewed articles confirms the initial stage in which the internal aspects of strategy implementation are found in the business internationalization literature, despite their relevance to different sizes of company.
The majority of the articles were published in the last 10 years and are based on empirical evidence, what reinforces the developing aspect of the theory Cooper et al. In addition, there seems to be no big debates over the Internal Context factors, with most of the results pointing in the same direction about the issue discussed.
However, the strategy literature points out other constraints to effective communication that have yet to be addressed by the internalization literature, such as the clear definition and dissemination of tasks and responsabilities Rapert et al.
It is worth mentioning some limitations of this research that concern the delimitation of the database used, being restricted to ISI — Web of Knowledge, and the researched terms used to compose the reviewed articles sample.
Although we intended to pursue an extensive research, we do not intend nor imply that it is exhaustive. We aimed to provide a more in-depth analysis of the current state of the literature on the key internal factors by bridging the theory of business internationalization and strategic implementation.
In doing so, we expect to contribute by providing a systematic framework for factors analysis and indicating the main gaps in the internationalization literature. Future researches concerning the implementation of internationalization strategies might be facilitated by the analytical framework provided Table 1.
In addition, some key issues, mainly concerning the Strategic Implementation Process communication, commitment and control systems seem to have been seriously neglected by internationalization researchers and therefore represents a gap in the holistic understanding of the internationalization process and a prolific field for future research. Successfully Implementing Strategic Decisions.
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According to the U. For many companies, international expansion offers a chance to conquer new territories and reach more of these consumers, thus increasing sales. For example, U. For instance, companies with international operations can offset negative growth in one market by operating successfully in another.
Companies also can utilize international markets to introduce unique products and services, which can help maintain a positive revenue stream. Coca-Cola is an example of a company that diversifies through global operations.
This quarter, the company reported increased sales in China, India and South Korea, which benefited Coca-Cola worldwide.
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