State and determinants of inter-regional market entry practices in the Chinese construction industry: evidence from national quality award projects
Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management
ISSN: 0969-9988
Article publication date: 13 April 2020
Issue publication date: 22 July 2020
Abstract
Purpose
Due to the lack of industrywide data, now there is only perceptual knowledge, through survey data, that construction firms may face great challenges in geographical diversification. The article aims to provide an objective description on the state of interregional market entry practices in the Chinese construction industry. How these practices are influenced by related set of regional and industry-related factors is further studied.
Design/methodology/approach
Description analysis of the practices is first performed based on a first-hand industrial data set including 1,020 projects and 404 construction firms. Combining provincial panel data in the National Bureau of Statistics of China, related regional and industry-related factors on these practices are further analyzed through hierarchical regression models.
Findings
(1) Interregional market entry practices are not quite prevalent during the past two decades, only involving 271 projects and 111 firms which accounts for 26.57% and 27.47% of the analyzed subjects respectively; (2) Large, state-owned and experienced firms are more frequently involved in the practices; (3) A number of regional factors such as local market protection and industry scale also significantly impact the practices.
Research limitations/implications
The empirical analysis of this study was conducted using the specific dataset from the National Quality Award Projects where firms tend to be national, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to the whole industry contexts.
Originality/value
While most of the research on market entry practices in the project-based construction industry is undertaken at project or firm level based on survey data, this research represents an exploratory effort of using objective data to provide a macro overview of the practices at the industry level. The findings could contribute to a deepened understanding of how these practices are impacted by related regional- and industry-level factors.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research has been financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71771172). The authors are grateful to Yixuan Tang at Tongji University for her valuable assistance in data collection. We also thank Dan Tan, Yingyan Jin at Tongji University and Vincent Cho at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University for their precious guidance during the writing of this paper.
Citation
Wang, G., Xia, C. and Cao, D. (2020), "State and determinants of inter-regional market entry practices in the Chinese construction industry: evidence from national quality award projects", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 27 No. 7, pp. 1461-1477. https://doi.org/10.1108/ECAM-06-2019-0336
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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