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Strategic positioning of foreign firms in a host market is vital for their success. By integrating the resource partitioning theory and the resource-based view, this study aims to investigate foreign firms’ strategic positioning (i.e. their choice of generalist or specialist positioning strategy) and its performance implications in the US market.

The final sample includes 212 foreign companies from 28 countries operating in the US market. Multiple data sources were used to collect data of these foreign companies’ subsidiaries in the USA This study used logistic regression to test its major hypotheses.

The results of this study suggest that a generalist positioning strategy is positively related to performance in a host market. It is also found that market concentration and local market knowledge moderate this strategic positioning – performance relationship.

For a foreign firm that enters a host market, market concentration (an industry-level factor) in the host market and the firm’s local market knowledge (a firm-specific factor) play prominent roles in the strategic positioning – performance relationship.

This study offers a novel perspective of international business strategy by applying the lens of resource partitioning theory to study the relationships between multinational enterprises’ strategic positioning and performance. This study contributes to the strategy literature in that it examines the performance implications of firms’ strategic positioning (i.e. generalist or specialist positioning).

With the growth of worldwide e‐commerce, companies are increasingly targeting foreign online consumers. However, there is a dearth of evidence as to whether global consumers prefer to browse and buy from standardized global web sites or web sites adapted to their local cultures. This study provides evidence from five different countries as to whether global consumers prefer local web content or standardized web content. The study also measures how the degree of cultural adaptation on the web affects consumer perception of site effectiveness.

This paper deals with the international development of firms through the online sales channel. Despite the ever-growing importance of the issues involved in such internationalization strategies, they have received limited attention in the literature.

The paper presents an analysis of an expressly developed database of 20 multibrand luxury retailers in the online fashion market

The analysis highlights the international dimension of these players and sheds some light on internationalization through e-commerce of the luxury fashion retailers. In particular, the paper states that e-commerce may be related to different degrees of internationalization in multibrand luxury fashion retailers and that internationalization of multibrand luxury fashion retailers through e-commerce is unrelated to physical stores abroad.

Future research should be aimed at analyzing the characteristics of a greater number of actor, such as mono-brand luxury manufacturers, also comparing the fashion system with other sectors where the online channel exhibits a similar important trend.

The paper’s originality is related to a new phenomenon that has yet to receive appropriate consideration in the literature, the online international company growth with particular focus on the online channel as a new means to develop into foreign markets

To explore the depiction of cultural values on international web sites.

To measure cultural content on the web Singh and Matsuo's conceptual framework was used. Content analysis was used to study the cultural content on web sites from China, India, Japan and the US.

The results indicate that local web sites of India, China, Japan and US not only reflect cultural values of the country of their origin, but also seem to differ significantly from each other on cultural dimensions.

This study validates the cultural value framework of Singh and Matsuo by successfully using it to analyze the cultural content on various country web sites. The study also provides evidence to international marketers and academics that instead of a “transnational web style” a culturally unique web style is emerging on the web.

Marketers need to culturally customize their international web sites as the web is emerging as global medium impregnated with local cultural values.

The paper extends the standardization versus localization debate to the web, a medium yet not explored in this context.

This study aims to explain the internationalization speed of e‐commerce companies (ECCs).

Based on the archive data of the American ECCs, the study used multiple regression analysis to estimate the influences of a number of micro‐ and macro‐factors.

The results show that the speedy foreign market entry by ECCs was positively influenced by top management team's international experience, and innovative and marketing capabilities.

The study did not deal with the entry mode of ECCs inviting more future research efforts in this direction. Additionally, as established MNEs have integrated e‐commerce into existing business, future research can be devoted to examine the impact of this integration on the internationalization of firms.

Extant literature has addressed the internationalization of ECCs with a focus on the level of internationalization. This study contributes to the current literature by extending research on globalization of ECCs and incorporating both micro‐ and macro‐level factors affecting the speed of international expansion.

Internationalization is of high relevance and has been discussed intensively. However, different internationalization paths have been proposed by theoretical models and have been observed in reality. In this study, we examine the internationalization path of 52 German firms over a period of ten years using comprehensive and rich data on all new ventures established by these companies within this period. We find four distinct patterns of internationalization and propose a stage model of internationalization based on these findings. Our results show different challenges for managers depending on the stage of internationalization and render interesting starting points for further research.

Purpose – To identify and systematically analyze empirical works in the emerging field of global online entrepreneurship.

Design/methodology/approach – A review of empirical articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals (1997–2008) focused on global online activities of entrepreneurial firms. The methodology purposefully compares a large number of recent studies on the main objective, type of research, theoretical framework, methodology, and main findings.

Findings – The systematic analysis of 45 articles reveals the most relevant publications in the field highlighting the collective contribution of this body of literature. The review offers insight into the state of the art of the field, discusses the implications for future development, and provides insights into the entrepreneurial aspects of e-commerce use.

Research limitations/implications – The review is limited to empirical articles published in academic journals and does not cover important conceptual contributions, book chapters, or conference publications.

Practical implications – The review highlights avenues for the future development of the field and provides guidelines for practitioners involved in global online business.

Originality/value – This paper provides a consolidation of an emerging field and offers practical advice to firms involved in global e-commerce.

We examine whether firms’ multinationality leads to better performance and what the role of R&D investment is in the multinationality performance linkage. Unlike the previous studies, we employ both accounting‐ and market‐based measures of firm performance for a large sample of U.S. manufacturing firms. Our results show that the empirical relation between multinationality and performance is not monotonic but varies with the phase of a firm’s multinationality, starting with a negative relation initially, followed by a positive one, and then again a negative one. This horizontal S‐shaped curvilinear relation of multinationality is more pronounced for the market‐based performance measure and is supportive of the three‐stage theory of internationalization. We also find that a firm’s multinationality is related to greater firm performance when the firm possesses R&D investment, and that the effect of R&D increases with the extent of a firm’s multinationality. These results lend strong support for the Internalization theory and the resource‐based view of firms’ international expansion. Our results are robust to different model specifications with an alternative measure of multinationality.

Using daily returns from 1980‐2006, we find a significant contemporaneous association between all European Union (EU) equity markets and Germany. There is, however, no significant indication that the German stock market leads or lags the movements in the other EU stock markets. A higher share of imports by Germany from other EU countries, as well as fluctuations and increased volatility in the exchange rate, have negative effects on stock market co‐movements. Conversely, the difference in equity market capitalization with Germany, the greater the foreign direct investment by Germany, and the fact of belonging to the eurozone all contribute to greater stock market co‐movement.

This paper examines the effect of R&D investments on the market value of firms in the U.S., Germany, and Japan. Specially, this paper investigates the empirical validity of the widely‐held economic views that suggest that the stock‐market oriented U.S. financial system leads to more corporate myopia and hence to less longer‐term investments such as R&D than the bank‐oriented German and Japanese firms. Findings include that U.S. firms invest in R&D as much as their counterparts in Japan and Germany; the market places a significant and positive value on R&D investments by U.S. firms, though lower than German and Japanese firms; and there are notable differences among the three nations with respect to several other variables. The overall evidence lends little support to the corporate myopia view on U.S. firms.