Models of Internationalization: A Business Model Approach to Professional Service Firm Internationalization
ISBN: 978-1-78560-463-8, eISBN: 978-1-78560-462-1
Publication date: 27 October 2015
Abstract
The leading frameworks of internationalization have contributed significantly to our knowledge of how firms internationalize, but do not fully explain how firms actually create and capture value from customers when internationalizing their activities. Understanding the value creation and capture activities defining their business model(s) is critical for firms moving into less familiar markets, and is particularly relevant for service firms where variability is an inherent feature of the firm/client experience. To address this gap, we take a business model perspective to analyze 144 internationalization events of 10 professional service firms. We find that the case firms adopted four different business models when internationalizing, and that single firms may utilize portfolios of business models. Our findings contribute to both the services internationalization and business model literatures by showing how variability in the internationalization process substantiates the need for business model portfolios.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the support and guidance from the editors – Vincent Mangematin and Charles Baden-Fuller – and more general thanks for encouragement and insights from other colleagues at Cass Business School and Grenoble Ecole de Management. We also thank Jon Morgan of Paraphrase for his careful and insightful editing assistance. We would also like to acknowledge funding to support this project from the College of Business, Dublin Institute of Technology.
Citation
McQuillan, D. and Sharkey Scott, P. (2015), "Models of Internationalization: A Business Model Approach to Professional Service Firm Internationalization", Business Models and Modelling (Advances in Strategic Management, Vol. 33), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 309-345. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0742-332220150000033008
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015 Emerald Group Publishing Limited