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This paper aims to provide a wide picture of studies on heuristics for international decision-making with a focus on foreign market entry. This paper systematically reviews studies published in the international business and international marketing domain to examine heuristically based decisions for foreign market entry.

This paper proposes a systematic literature review and an in-depth analysis of 32 papers published between 1997 and 2021 dealing with foreign market entry and the use of heuristics for international decision-making.

Even if the marketing and management literature is in many ways permeable to the debate around heuristics developed in experimental psychology and cognitive science, international business and international marketing studies on the one hand recognize that international decision-making, especially when dealing with foreign market entry, is strongly characterized by uncertainty, on the other hand, there isn’t a developed and systematized literature about it. This paper shows key topics and areas fundamental to foreign market entry in which heuristics are applied by decision makers and their effectiveness.

A systematic review of the use of heuristics for foreign market entry decision-making can represent a useful step for a more organic development of knowledge about the more general use of heuristics for international decision-making. Understanding the decision-making process on the modes of entry in foreign markets is a key topic for international marketing and international business scholars and practitioners.

To have success in newly liberalized markets, firms must have a plan of action before resources are committed. What some companies do not realize is that their own entrepreneurial orientation (EO) will dictate their strategies, and performance outcomes, in both their home market and abroad. In order to maximize firm performance in newly liberalized markets (such as Cuba), firms must be able to objectively gauge their own EO. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Within this framework, the present paper will attempt to effectively measure the EO of decision-making managers from US companies that have an interest in entering the Cuban market. A final sample of 81 US managers accepted to collaborate. They were then split into two groups (high and low EO; with 41 and 35 managers in each group, respectively) and compared regarding three variables: entry mode strategy, government affiliation strategy, and performance outcomes.

The results show that EO is related with performance, but not with the two proposed variables of entry mode and government affiliation.

In sum, the added value of the paper is to link US managers’ strategies and performance in a newly liberalized market which has been seldom studied: Cuba. The fields of entry mode strategies and government affiliation decisions in this newly liberalized market remain poorly investigated. Not all firms managed by highly entrepreneurial-orientated managers will decide to enter foreign markets and, on the contrary, domestic firms which are not interested in international markets can be run by highly entrepreneurial managers. This is due, in part, to the fact that internationalization can be driven by other factors. Therefore, this paper will attempt to demonstrate if certain entry modes will perform better than others when the foreign market is a newly liberalized economy. Additionally, the importance, and effect, of governmental relationships on performance outcomes will be tested within the research.

As the wave of liberalization and deregulation have accelerated to relieve rigid controls over airline routes, capacity, and fare setting regimes, Low Cost Carriers (LCCs) have emerged especially in local aviation markets since the 1970s.

This paper has studied the effects of LCC's entry into the domestic aviation market which was pre-occupied by two major carriers, Korean Air (KAL) and Asiana Airlines. Through a simple model describing two situations, prior and post to LCC's entry, we analyzed changes and trends of each airline's output and profit based on the Cournot and two-stage Stackelberg game equilibrium.

In summary, our conclusion consists of five points: (1) Even though JIN Air's entry reduced KAL's respective output and profit, the more JIN Air produces, the higher the joint-profit of KAL and JIN Air is, (2) From the joint-profit aspect, increasing KAL's output to a level than JIN Air's is more profitable on the Gimpo-Jeju route, on the other hand, increasing JIN Air's output higher than KAL's is more profitable on the Jeju-Busan route, (3) Even though JIN Air's entry increase Asiana Airline's output, the more JIN Air produces, the less Asiana Airlines's profit is, (4) Total output in markets as well as total profits of firms will increase under certain conditions, (5) KAL and JIN Air tend to get caught in an unresolved conflict on level of LCC cost.

The purpose of this paper is to engage in a comprehensive review of the research on information technology (IT)-mediated international market-entry alliances.

This paper provides a theory-informed conceptual framework of IT-enabled cross-border interfirm relationships and performance outcomes. It integrates perspectives of resource-based view (RBV) and transaction cost economics (TCE) to argue that the establishment of interfirm IT capabilities enhances the marketing performance of the foreign partner in the host location by improving interfirm relationship governance. Furthermore, IT-related risks and contextual restrictions are identified as important moderators.

Conceptualisations of IT capabilities, IT-enhanced interfirm governance, and IT-led marketing performance improvement are suggested. Drawing on RBV and TCE, IT resources, related human resources, and IT integration between partner firms in combination enhances the ability of firms to manage the relationship more effectively through shared control, interfirm coordination, cross-firm formalisation, and hybrid centralisation. These benefits then bring about better upstream and downstream marketing performance in the host location. Additionally, IT capabilities help to mitigate possible contextual limitations and risks.

The paper offers a number of theory- and literature-informed research propositions which can be empirically tested in future studies.

Top managers of firms currently in or planning to enter international alliances for market entry should carefully consider effective development of interfirm IT capabilities in terms of readiness of hardware and software, human resources, and organisational resources.

The paper provides an integrated framework and propositions which contribute to limited understanding and appreciation of IT value in international market-entry alliances.

Farmers often decide simultaneously on crop production or input use without knowing other farmers' decisions. Anticipating the behavior of other farmers can increase financial performance. This paper investigates the role of other famers' behaviors and other contextual factors in farmers' simultaneous production decisions.

Market entry games are a common method for investigating simultaneous production decisions. However, so far they have been conducted with abstract tasks and by untrained subjects. The authors extend market entry games by using three real contexts: pesticide use, animal welfare and wheat production, in an incentivized framed field experiment with 323 German farmers.

The authors find that farmers take different decisions under identical incentive structures for the three contexts. While context plays a major role in their decisions, their expectations about the behavior of other farmers have little influence on their decision.

The paper offers new insights into the decision-making behavior of farmers. A better understanding of how farmers anticipate the behavior of other farmers in their production decisions can improve both the performance of individual farms and the allocational efficiency of agricultural and food markets.

This paper aims to study whether international niche market leaders (INMLs) gained their leading position as early mover or diligent follower, and assess whether they leveraged hard or soft forms of technological, supply pre-emption and customer lock-in advantage mechanisms.

Empirical material stems from qualitative and quantitative data on a sample of 20 niche companies from the Basque Country (Spain) that operate in business to business markets.

The sample predominantly followed an early entrant strategy and applied soft measures to reach niche market leadership.

Findings imply that early entering fosters conquering leadership in niche markets, that pioneer advantage is easier to sustain in niches than in mainstream markets, and that soft measures are more effective in niche markets than in larger markets. A limitation to our findings is that they follow from explorative research on a sample of firms from a reduced geographic setting.

Hidden champions and INMLs can be important sources of technological progress and economic value for the localities that host them. Therefore, despite their traditional low profile and the fact that they are not always the largest firms around, policymakers may want to pay more attention to this type of companies.

Tot he best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to research entry timing and its outcome for market leadership with regard to niche players or hidden champions-type of firms. It introduces an original taxonomy to operationalize and distinguish between hard and soft measures to leverage advantage mechanisms related to market entry timing.

Although cross-border e-commerce has become increasingly popular among small and medium-sized enterprises as a foreign market entry mode, research on the determinants of its success is scarce. Drawing on the resource-based view, this study aims to examine the relationship between a firm’s information technology, international marketing and export operations capabilities and its cross-border e-commerce strategic and financial performance.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze data from a sample of Italian exporters in the food and beverage industry.

The results highlight the mixed effects of information technology, international marketing and export operations capabilities on both e-commerce strategic and financial performance. Moreover, the use of third-party e-commerce platforms reduces the effect of exporters’ information technology capabilities on their e-commerce financial performance.

The majority of exporters in this study had implemented cross-border e-commerce only recently; hence, longitudinal data on the success factors of e-commerce are not available.

While cross-border e-commerce may work as an accelerator of the overall export performance, export managers are urged to approach it strategically with a clear medium-term view to develop the required capabilities.

This study was one of the first to examine the drivers of small and medium-sized exporters’ cross-border e-commerce performance. Moreover, unlike most previous analyzes, it focused on e-commerce as a foreign market entry mode rather than a supplement to offline exporting activities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore international market development for mature products and practices used in a novel business context.

Taking a qualitative approach, the case study method was chosen to investigate how firms develop markets in relation to a new international business context. Critical international decisions are analysed using a managerial perspective.

The success of international ventures depends on managerial learning and effectiveness. In this paper, the authors argue that decisions about international market development can add significantly to the understanding of how business firms enter and develop markets in novel business contexts. Two case studies show different approaches for meeting challenges in distant markets. Four propositions are developed.

A theoretical contribution of this study is the importance of factors that explain international market development decisions in novel business contexts. The balance between incomplete knowledge and making resource commitments is of central concern to international managers. Some of this is tacit knowledge that a firm achieves and learns during the process of market development and other knowledge can only become available after an actual market entry. A second theoretical contribution of this study is the significance of contextual market knowledge in a novel business context.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the drivers of lean approaches and successful management of wearable technology start-ups. The paper is a descriptive study that employed a case study methodology based on semi-structured interviews with ten start-ups’ managers in Wearable Technology 2017 conference. Participants were selected based on convenience sampling and the pre-set criteria. The current study contributes to this field through the main findings, which suggest that four stages need to be considered by starts-up for a successful market readiness, including the time of entry and overcoming market entry barriers, product attributes, product development process, and commercialization. Finally, findings were categorized in the form of an iterative learning loop model and also, practical strategies and methods were recommended for successfully going through each stage.

This paper aims to provide a bibliometric meta-analysis of the already substantial and growing literature on international franchising. Franchising is a model for businesses to achieve scale with limited resources. International franchising is a mode of entry that allows firms to develop new markets with relatively little risk but also little control.

Using a systematic approach, the paper identifies all articles in the ISI Web of Science from 1970 to 2018 that includes the term international franchising (in the title, the abstract or keywords) and finds 131 articles. This paper used HistCite software to analyze the bibliometric data.

Four major research clusters in the international franchising literature are identified. In addition, this study shows a change in research patterns regarding topics, theories and methodologies from the 1970s through 2018. The paper presents the most influential articles, authors and journals.

From the analyzes, this study develops a conceptual framework of international franchising and suggest avenues for future research.