Born to be Global and the Globalisation Process

During the last decades, we have witnessed a large number of entrepreneurial firms that reach the world market at a fast pace (‘born global firms’). Our analysis suggests that the ongoing globalisation process indeed implies that born to be global firms would be more prominent in the world economy due to the reduction in the cost of exploiting good business ideas globally. However, our analysis also suggests that entrepreneurial firms have incentives to sell their business to incumbents. Indeed, we show that ‘born to be sold global firms’ can be even more frequent as a result of trade liberalisation and the international deregulation of the market for corporate control.     

Customer Orientation in Chinese Industrial Firms and Global Marketing Implications

Abstract

The study focuses on the moderating role of environmental context (demand unpredictability and technological turbulence) and technological context (production technology routineness and product complexity) on the relationship of customer orientation with market performance relative to the industry in Chinese state-owned industrial firms. The results show significant moderating effects of technological turbulence and production technology routineness: the greater the technological turbulence and the more routine the production technology, the stronger the customer orientation-market performance relative to the industry relationship. The results also show that market performance relative to the industry is positively affected by customer orientation, but inversely affected by demand unpredictability. The findings have implications for global marketing as well as for theory development.     

Hopes in the Crisis ——Chinese Automobile Market in the World Automanufacturing Industry Shuffle

The economic crisis spread rapidly around the world, making automobile industry one of the victims who are shocked hardest, leading to an industrial shuffle in global automobile industry. USA, EU and Japan, the traditional top three leading countries in global auto- mobile industry, could not have their lucks to escape from the crisis. The weak global automobile market forces these transnational auto companies to be more cautious about the future than ever. As reflected in the latest performance reports, though governments took measures to maintain the market, the sharp decline in global automobile sales volume continued in the first quarter. Automobile market bottomed out in the second quarter. US auto industry was affected the most, with two out of the top three manufacturers getting bankrupt and regrouped. In the first half, auto sales volume in USA was 4.80 million, down by 35.1% from that of the same period in 2008. The third largest automobile market in the world, Japan had a sales volume of 2.18 million, down by 21.5% with the same comparison.     

民族品牌汽车将实现跨越式发展中国将成为世界第一生产制造消费大国

中国汽车市场已成为世界第一产销市场。当前,中国汽车业存在的主要问题是缺乏强有力的汽车产业发展规划,缺乏整车设计开发和先进汽车发动机的研发能力,缺乏独立创新能力和核心竟争能力。政府应出台扶持民族品牌汽车业做大做强的产业政策,制定鼓励中国大型民营车企的振兴发展规划,鼓励技术创新,掌握汽车制造的核心技术,利用后发优势和低廉的生产制造成本,从低端向高端发展,利用新一代混合动车、电动车开发生产优势。中国汽车必将走向世界,必将成为世界主要的汽车生产制造大国和强国。     

Vertical Intra‐industry Trade and Fragmentation: An Empirical Examination of the US Auto‐parts Industry

The global auto industry has undergone a significant structural transformation in the last two decades as a result of the international fragmentation of production. This increase in cross‐border production‐sharing activities in the auto industry led to intra‐industry trade (IIT) in auto‐parts. In this study, the extent of IIT in the US auto‐parts industry is examined by decomposing trade into inter‐industry trade, vertical IIT and horizontal IIT. Then the development of vertical IIT is analysed as an indicator of international fragmentation between the US and 29 trading partners. Several country‐specific hypotheses suggested by the fragmentation literature are tested for the period 1989–2006. The results indicate that a substantial portion of IIT in the US auto‐parts industry is vertical IIT, and the econometric results generally support the hypotheses drawn from the theory. In particular, the findings show that the extent of the US vertical IIT is positively correlated with average market size, differences in market size, differences in factor endowments and outward foreign direct investment, while it is negatively correlated with distance and differences in per capita GDP.     

Art of Innovation-AutO Shanghai 2009

As one of the important global automotive industry events that are worthiest of being participated in and devoted into in 2009, The 13th International Automobile ＆ Manufacturing Technology Exhibition （＂Auto Shanghai 2009＂） themed on ＂Art of Innovation＂ will take place April. 22- 28, 2009 at the Shanghai New International Exhibition Centre with a brand new Vision.     

The Global Engineering Consultancy Market

The purpose of this paper is to assess and analyze the size and characteristics of the engineering consultancy market in select Western nations and worldwide. A secondary goal is two-fold: to look briefly at the training required for careers in this field and to evaluate the strategies of the participating firms. This sector has grown in the past half-century to about U.S.$550 billion revenue globally, with nearly 3 million establishments and about 500,000 employees. There are giant, multinational firms that span across regions; but the sector is still highly fragmented, and the top 10 firms have less than 15 percent of the global market share. The typical firm in the industry in most major countries consists of around five or six professional associates. The data problems in analyzing this sector are formidable. The paper offers guidelines to using these statistics. It also describes steps necessary for effective marketing.     

The evolution of alliances in the global airline industry: A review of the African experience

In an increasingly globalized world, alliances have proliferated in one industry after another, and the competitive game has shifted from firm versus firm to group versus group, leaving many firms operating on the margins of these constellations. Using the case of the global airline industry, this article examines how the shift from bilateral to multilateral alliances has left many African airlines operating on the margins of the global airline alliances groupings. We conjecture that a number of internal organizational factors, such as size and lack of access to scarce resources, and external factors, such as a slow market‐reform process and insufficient reform of state‐owned airlines, have hindered their success in a highly competitive environment. The theoretical, managerial, and policy implications of these findings are discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Issues of Competitiveness

Abstract

This article investigates the forces that constrain Taiwanese-based corporations from improving quality and introducing and marketing new products. A total of 182 executives from the service and manufacturing sectors participated in the study. The results indicate that Taiwanese-based firms are optimistic about their competitive market position and about their respective industries. Furthermore, executives of these firms prefer to compete in regional and global markets. Absence of pride in a job well done, ineffective performance evaluation systems, and excessive government regulations were found to be the most important factors that may prohibit improvement in product quality. The results also reveal that various factors may hinder the development and marketing of new products. They are inattentiveness to consumer needs, top management's lack of attention to world competition and global opportunities, deterioration of the competitive spirit among employees and managers, absence of a flexible manufacturing strategy, volatile business environment, and too much focus on immediate results.     

Auto Parts Market Potential Coming into Surface

Looking at the increasingly fierce competition in the world auto market. global automobile manufacturing industry, taking Europe, the U.S. and Japan as representatives, is gradually forming a new type of relationship, mutual cooperation between whole vehicle and parts manufacturers. We can clearly see that auto parts manufacturers have become independent from the whole vehicle manufacturing companies, which means that the former structure of auto industry has greatly changed, and a new relationship,     

Currency Substitution and Price Endings: Right Digit Effect

ABSTRACT

The strategic manipulation of prices. rightmost digits has been a tactic used by retailers in the western world for decades. By studying the internationalization of pricing tactics in a global economy, our research adds a much needed contribution to the literature of price endings and pricing tactics in global markets. We find that at lower price levels, consumers exposed to a 99 ending price in a currency substitution market are more likely to purchase the product compared to consumers in the US market. At higher price levels, on the other hand, consumers in either market situation exhibit no change in purchase intentions. Thus, the 99 ending tactic has no effect on consumers when the product is expensive. The use of the right digit effect by managers in a currency substitution/ dollarized economy as a way of persuading consumers to buy is still likely to be more successful compared to the USA market. As such, firms in a dollarized economy should structure their pricing strategies while taking into consideration the type of product they are offering and the consumer market they are dealing with.     

Globalisation and Industrial Policy: The Case of China

After a quarter of a century of industrial policy, China's objective of nurturing a group of globally competitive state‐owned enterprises appears to have succeeded beyond most expectations. However, China's SOEs are far from catching up with the world's leading firms. Protection through state ownership in a massive, fast‐growing economy has permitted China's SOEs to earn large profits and achieve high market capitalisations, but this is not the same thing as building globally competitive firms. The fact that China's industrial policy has been unsuccessful after a quarter of a century of intense effort demonstrates how difficult it is to construct an industrial policy in the era of capitalist globalisation, which has produced intense global industrial concentration across large parts of the global value chain. Although the detailed content of the next stage of reform of China's large state‐owned enterprises is unclear, China's determination to build a group of globally competitive large companies remains undimmed.     

The rise of super-elite law firms: towards global strategies

This paper reviews the pressures towards globalisation reshaping the corporate law sector. It uses Yip's [Yip, G.S. (1996). Total global strategy (2nd ed.). Englewood-Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall] framework of global industry drivers. The dominant view has been that the globalisation potential of the legal industry is low since there are few global legal products and many regulatory differences between markets. However, within the corporate law sector, strong regulatory differences between countries are outweighed by the combined impact of market, competitive and cost drivers. Evidence from this research shows that the balance of industry drivers is towards there being benefits to the pursuit of global strategies within this sector. In practice, a small number of very large corporate law firms are implementing global strategies in pursuit of specific sources of future competitive advantage. Thus a small ‘super-elite’ of globalising firms is emerging.     

全球生产网络、俘获效应与集群企业转型升级——整合性分析框架与政策建议

随着全球生产网络理论的兴起,嵌入跨国公司所主导的全球生产网络已经成为发展中国家产业集群以及集群内企业转型升级的重要选择,但是这一过程中集群企业却往往会产生"俘获效应"并陷入"低端锁定"的不利局面。对此,基于跨国公司因素、集群环境因素和企业自身因素系统构建了导致集群企业产生"俘获效应"的三维度整合性分析框架,然后基于此分析框架并结合我国企业众多成功案例,从企业和政府角度系统提出了促进全球生产网络条件下我国集群企业规避"俘获效应"实现成功转型升级的策略选择。     

BRICs汽车工业发展对世界汽车工业格局的影响

BRICs被认为是未来几十年世界经济增长最快的地区。伴随着经济的发展,该地区将成为未来最大的汽车市场,汽车工业也会随之获得巨大的发展。本文对BRICs汽车工业发展的历程和现状做了概述,并分析了BRICs汽车工业的发展对世界汽车工业格局的影响。     

Russian Gas and Oil Giants Conquer Markets in the West

Abstract

Russian firms are not integrated to the global business world solely via investments from the West to the East but also through investments from Russia to other countries. This article proves that some significant Russian corporations have already taken root in Western economies, including the US market. The first wave of the Russian companies in the West increases the pressure to analyze them as potential partners or competitors. This article uses a REM model to describe the foreign operations of the two biggest Russian corporations, Gazprom and LUKoil. The fast-expanding activities of Russian firms abroad signify that a new era in international business has begun on the eve of this millennium.     

The Restaurant Revolution-Growth,Change and Strategy in the International Foodservice Industry

Summary

This paper reports the results of a two-year investigation into the forces driving change in the global foodservice industry and the identification and analysis of competitive methods used by multinationals to respond to these forces. The five forces identified are: (1) globalization and economic change, (2) a knowledge based environment, (3) the future labor force and its entrants, (4) concern for well being, and (5) threatened natural resources. The competitive methods as identified by analyzing multinational foodservice firms are: (1) strategic expansion into the international marketplace, (2) investment in technological development, (3) internal competency development, (4) effective communication to target markets, and (5) competitive pricing strategies. Using the co-alignment model of strategy as the underpinning of the analysis it was determined that multinational firms have responded well to the forces of globalization and economic change, and the knowledge based environment. However, it appears that little competitive methods have been developed to address the forces such as labor force, well being and threatened natural resources. The implication here is that firms that are not in alignment with environmental forces will have to address this concern if they expect to continue to add value for all industry stakeholders.     

China' Auto Industry Under the Financial Crisis

The global financial tsunami has swept the automobile industry and put major auto markets in the world at stake.     

A review and evaluation of market orientation research in an emerging African economy

ABSTRACT

The paper synthesizes the level of strategic market orientation of firms operating in the emerging economy of Ghana over the last two decades. It dwells on market orientation studies in general, and the banking industry and exporting firms in particular. Market orientation has a positive relationship with performance for both foreign and domestic firms across the many studies. Foreign firms in general appear more market oriented due to experience effect and relationship with parent organizations. As competition heats up in the banking industry, organizations need to be more innovative to sustain their performance or to survive. For exporting firms, there is the need for decreased formalization and increased decentralization so as to enhance the levels of market orientation. The paper develops propositions to guide organizations in applying marketing principles in the running of their business activities. Further, the paper provides an update on the literature with suggestions for future research in the theory and practice of strategic market orientation in the context of the study.     

Competitive Strategies of Tiawanese PC Firms in Their Internationalization Process

Small Taiwanese firms have been successful in developing market niches internationally for their products in the fast-growing and highly competitive global information industry. To identify the competitive strategies used by these firms, a study was udnertaken which classified various stages of their internationalization processes. Results indicate that these firms established their momentum in the global marketplace either by using a regional focus combined with innovation synergy or by emphasizing a combination of marketing techniques as their strategy components.