Speed of e-commerce internationalisation: impacting factors within the fashion industry

Abstract

Internationalization through e-commerce has been a rather under researched area and the effect of e-commerce on speed is even more so. This thesis’ purpose is to increase the understanding of the process of how companies within the Swedish fashion industry internationalize. A qualitative research approach is applied to answer the research question, which is: How does e-commerce impact the speed of internationalization of companies within the Swedish fashion industry? By using a multiple case study method and semi-structured interviews the authors strive to gain deeper understanding of the subject. In their analysis of the empirical findings the authors discuss the term internationalization as well as the term speed of internationalization. Speed of internationalizations is defined as the amount of events per time period. Shneor and Flaten’s (2008) conceptual framework of internationalization is discussed. Companies are then classified into three instead of two groups: internet-based, internet-enabled and internet-enabled with multichannel sales. Effects of e-commerce on the speed of internationalization of companies within the fashion industry are: As internet-based companies depend per definition on e-commerce their speed curve is not affected by other sales channels. They seem to have high speed in the beginning and a slower or absent speed later on when profitability becomes more important. E-commerce facilitates the speed of internationalization of internet-enabled companies. They gain a somewhat higher speed in the beginning, and then e-commerce smoothens out the speed curve and helps to find new markets. This also has some impact on speed, since the company can internationalize to less cost and risk through e-commerce as opposed to physical stores. Speed of internationalization is impacted heavily for companies which also sell their brand through other channels, as these channels act as lever when they also sell the brand through e-commerce. The companies open market-specific shops fist and later EU or global shops to identify future opportunities. The authors lean on the CAGE framework (Ghemawat, 2001) and find barriers, which impact negatively on speed of internationalization and groups them into general, e-commerce and fashion related barriers. It is found that networks, expertise and experiential knowledge are vital for overcoming these barriers.