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It is only logical that a firm aims to make a profit after entering the market. However, some firms enter the market with the goal of market expansion and even burn money to pursue market share, which is counterintuitive in practice. To explore the theoretical foundations behind this rare phenomenon, this paper focuses on discussing the impact of the market expansion entry strategy on the entrant firm and the incumbent firm.

Using a game theory model of a supply chain with an incumbent and an entrant, this paper explores the mathematical conditions for the entrant to adopt either the traditional or the market expansion entry strategy and investigates the incumbent’s benefits and losses under different entry strategies.

The results show that when the market-expansion effect and the selling price ceiling are moderate, the entrant firm always adopts the market expansion entry strategy, and the incumbent firm obtains a free ride from the entrant firm and benefits from it. The entire industry profits and the industry consumer surplus are increased. In particular, we further investigate the cases in which the incumbent firm has a first-mover advantage or there is a troublesome cost, and the results confirm the aforementioned conclusions.

By considering market share as the entrant’s goal, this paper contributes to the dual-purpose literature. Moreover, based on the model’s mathematical results, this paper offers relevant management insights for the entrant and its stakeholders in the e-commerce platform.

The case is written on the basis of published sources only.

Doodlage, a start-up incorporated in 2012 by Kriti Tula, Paras Arora and Vaibhav Kapoor, used discarded waste to create sustainable fashion products. It had a first-mover advantage in recycled fashion goods in the first 10 years of its existence. The company contributed to sustainable fashion by providing an alternative to fast fashion production, creating enormous clothing waste and environmental degradation. In the first quarter of 2022, it saved and reused 15,000 m of fabric waste. From 2018 to 2021, the company grew 150% annually, targeting the right customers and regions to expand its business. It ensured that postproduction industrial waste and postconsumption garments were used to produce clothes. It also confirmed that the waste generated in its fabric screening process was used to create stationery items and other valuable accessories.

However, the sustainable fashion model that gave the company a competitive advantage became obsolete in 2022 due to increasing competition in the industry as various players using unique ideas entered the market. The company is encountering operational and logistical challenges that are affecting its performance. The demand for its products was also subdued due to high prices of upcycled and recycled clothes and less consumer spending post-COVID pandemic. The competitors of Doodlage offered multiple products produced using environmentally friendly farming and manufacturing techniques, attracting sustainable purchasers. What should be the new portfolio of products for the company to explore future growth opportunities? Considering their vast price, can consumers be encouraged to buy upcycled clothes? How should the company ride the winds of change in the industry?

The instructor should initiate the class discussion by asking questions such as how frequently do you shop for clothes? Do you care about the fabric of your apparel? After you discard your clothes, do you think about where these goods finally end up? Data on the amount of total waste generated in the fashion industry should be communicated to students to connect it with the importance of the concept of circular economy. Post this, the instructor should introduce the business model of Doodlage to bring the discussion into the context of the fashion industry before going ahead to discuss the company’s dilemma.

The case study has been prepared for management students/business executives to understand electric vehicle (EV) business, business environment, industry competition and strategic planning and strategy implementation.

The size of the Indian passenger vehicle market was valued at US$32.70bn in 2021; it was projected to touch US$54.84bn by 2027 with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of more than 9% during the period 2022–2027. The passenger vehicle industry, a part of the overall automotive industry, was expected to grow at a rapid pace, as the Indian economy was rising at the fastest rate. However, the Government of India (GoI) had put a condition on the growth scenario by mandating that 100% of vehicles produced would be EVs by 2030. Tata Motors (TaMo), a domestic player in the market, had been facing a challenging competitive environment. Although it had been incurring losses, it had successfully ventured into the EV business. TaMo had taken advantage of the first mover by creating an electric mobility business vertical to enable the company to deliver on its aspiration of providing innovative and competitive e-mobility solutions. TaMo leadership had been putting efforts to scale up the electric mobility business, thus, contributing to GoI’s plan for electric mobility. Shailesh Chandra, president of electric mobility business, had a big task in hand. He had to scale up EV production and sales despite insufficient infrastructure for charging and shortages of electronic components for manufacturing.

The case study has been prepared for management students/business executives for strategic management class. It is recommended that the case study is distributed in advance so that the students can prepare well in advance for classroom discussions. Groups will be created to delve into details for a specific question. While one group will make their presentation, the other groups will question the solution provided and give suggestions.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

This study aims to explore the effect of chief executive officer education on firms’ action timing and acquisition performance in industry merger waves. In addition, this study investigated the moderating influence of CEO duality and firm cash flow on the relationship between education and entry timing.

Following the methodology for determining merger waves in previous studies, the authors identified 16 industry merger waves of Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2019. Multiple linear regression was employed to examine the hypotheses.

The results showed that higher CEO education was associated with early participation in merger waves. CEO duality negatively moderated the education-entry timing relation. The effect of CEO education on entry timing was more pronounced when firms had higher cash flow. Moreover, more educated CEOs materially enhanced acquisition performance in merger waves.

Entry timing in industry merger waves has important implications, as early movers establish competitive advantages and achieve higher acquisition performance. However, the managerial characteristics determining entry timing have not received adequate attention. Meanwhile, studies examining the effect of CEO education on acquisitions are limited. This study explored the effect of CEO education on firms’ entry timing and acquisition performance in merger waves, thereby contributing to the literature on merger waves and managerial characteristics. This study’s findings regarding the moderators of the education-entry timing relation enrich the literature on corporate governance and agency theory.

This study aims to investigate how firms of different sizes respond to competitive pressure from peers.

This study employs machine learning techniques to measure competitive pressure based on management discussion and analysis (MD&A) documents and then utilises the constructed pressure indicator to explore the relationship between competitive pressure and corporate risk-taking behaviours amongst firms of different sizes.

We find that firm sizes are positively associated with their risk-taking behaviours when firms respond to competitive pressure. Large firms are inclined to exhibit a high level of risk-taking behaviours, whereas small firms tend to make conservative decisions. Regional growth potential and institutional ownership moderate the relationships.

Utilising text mining techniques, this study constructs a novel quantitative indicator to measure competitive pressure perceived by focal firms and demonstrates the heterogeneous behaviour of firms of different sizes in response to competitive pressure from peers, advancing research on competitive market pressures.

Designing and developing responsible business practices can create various tensions for service organizations. The purpose of this research is to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between customer engagement (CE) and responsible business practices (e.g. environmental, social and/or governance [ESG], corporate social responsibility [CSR] and diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI]) and explore customer engagement tensions that service organizations may face.

This research develops a list of CE-related responsible business practice tensions and empirically explores their relevance through in-depth interviews with nine ESG professionals.

This paper makes three important contributions. First, we find support for nine distinct but related tensions with implications for CE that organizations must navigate when pursuing responsible business practices. Second, interview participants provide some suggestions for tackling these tensions, which we support with relevant theories. Finally, we develop a conceptual framework that may stimulate future service research and inform the implementation of ESG strategies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to conceptualize and empirically explore the tensions that emerge between responsible business practices and CE. The authors develop a novel analysis of the CE-related tensions that emerge when pursuing an ESG strategy.

The findings are based on a small sample of ESG professionals. Future research may take a quantitative approach to further evaluate the role that these tensions play in engaging customers.

This research provides a conceptual framework that may guide ESG professionals in understanding, framing and navigating CE-related tensions when pursuing responsible business practices.

A social benefit may be found when service organizations are better able to successfully navigate CE-related tensions when pursuing responsible business practices.

The authors revisit the traditional OLI paradigm with the objective to allocate politics within the set of internationalization advantages by building on the political strategy literature. The authors outline the specific role of political advantage that facilitates and propels the international expansion of state-owned multinational enterprises (SOMNEs) from emerging markets.

A conceptual paper which explains the role of political advantage in the internationalization of SOMNEs. The authors expand the scope of the OLI to capture the impact of firms' home governments' policies and relationships with host countries which are leveraged by SOMNEs in their internationalization.

The authors define political advantage as a new type of advantage which depends on and is sourced from external actors. The authors argue that P-advantage is a multifaceted and unstable part of POLI composition, which is contingent on political shifts and may be leveraged by various firms. The authors also assert that political capabilities have limitations in sustaining political advantage, which may be compensated via enhancing the political activity of firms.

The authors conceptualize the POLI-advantages paradigm for the internationalization of SOMNEs by proposing that in addition to the traditional ownership, location, and internalization advantages, firms can capitalize on their political advantage to enter markets where internationalization might have been difficult without their political connections.

This study investigates how firms’ awareness of sustainability affects the revision of their internationalization strategy. Adopting a resource-based view (RBV) approach, the authors argue that sustainable-oriented firms have a higher propensity to de-internationalize (i.e., to go back to their home country) when confronted with the need to relocate foreign manufacturing subsidiaries, as the shortening of value chains would allow the reduction of transportation emissions and enhanced corporate image as green-oriented entities. Furthermore, the authors explore the role exerted by a stringent regulatory setting in the home country on the likelihood of de-internationalization. The empirical test conducted on a sample of relocations performed across European nations in 2002–2014 reveals that multinational enterprises (MNEs) – regardless of their sustainability orientation – have a higher probability to de-internationalize when their home countries have strict institutional contexts in place.

This study examines current dynamics, consolidates current knowledge, elicits trends, identifies and analyzes primary research clusters, offers future directions, and develops an integrated framework for Product Advantage (PA) research.

Using the SCOPUS database, this study applied bibliometric analysis (208 articles) and conducted content analysis on the 35 curated articles selected using a combination of bibliographic coupling and the most cited articles.

This study presents the field’s publication trends, most relevant authors, articles, journals, and knowledge structures. It identifies six primary research themes and four major clusters using the thematic map and bibliographic coupling. Marketing and PA, New Product Development (NPD) and PA, Product Innovation and PA, and New product speed and PA are the main clusters. Finally, this study offers directions for future research and provides an integrated framework for PA research.

By developing an ADO framework of PA, the study offers key insights into how PA shapes product outcomes and identifies key antecedents of PA. Firms must focus on firm factors such as market and technological orientation; product factors, such as development time and pre-announcement proficiency; external factors, such as competition; and environmental factors, such as competitive intensity and technological turbulence. It enables firms to create products with high PA, shaping product outcomes and contributing to their competitive advantage.

This is the first study to conduct a two-stage sequential hybrid review of quality articles on PA. It offers an Antecedents-Decisions-Consequences (ADO) framework based on significant studies and offers cluster-wise directors for future research.

This study aims to explore how to overcome and address the loss of exploratory innovation, thereby achieving greater success in exploratory innovation. This phenomenon of loss occurs when enterprises decrease their investment in and engagement with exploratory innovation, ultimately leading to an insufficient amount of such innovation efforts. Drawing on dynamic capabilities, this study investigates the relationship between organizational foresight and exploratory innovation and examines the moderating role of breakthrough orientation/financial orientation.

This study used survey data collected from 296 Chinese high-tech companies in multiple industries and sectors.

The evidence produced by this study reveals that three elements of organizational foresight (i.e. environmental scanning capabilities, strategic selection capabilities and integrating capabilities) positively influence exploratory innovation. Furthermore, this positive effect is strengthened in the context of a high-breakthrough orientation. Moreover, the relationships among environmental scanning capabilities, strategic selection capabilities and exploratory innovation become weaker as an enterprise’s financial orientation increases, whereas a strong financial orientation does not affect the relationship between integrating capabilities and exploratory innovation.

Ambidexterity is key to successful enterprise innovation. Compared with exploitative innovation, it is by no means easy to engage in exploratory innovation, which is especially important in high-tech companies. While the loss of exploratory innovation has been observed, few empirical studies have explored ways to promote exploratory innovation more effectively. A key research implication of this study pertains to the role of organizational foresight in the improvement of exploratory innovation in the context of high-tech companies.

This paper contributes to the broader literature on exploratory innovation and organizational foresight and provides practical guidance for high-tech companies regarding ways of avoiding the loss of exploratory innovation and becoming more successful at exploratory innovation.