Developing Country Domestic Firms’ Online Reviews; Implications for International Business Strategy in Foreign Countries

Abstract

The purpose of the article was to explore how online reviews and ratings of firms in its domestic developing country have implications for international business strategies with special emphasis regarding expansion into developed foreign countries markets. This research followed a multi method qualitative study. A serial two phased qual-QUAL approach was done. The first minor qualitative study was two Focused Group Discussions (FGD) followed by a major qualitative study based upon personal Interviews (PI) of twenty-six international business strategy experts. The data from both the phases were content analyzed for themes. The findings reflected that increasingly in the internet age, during foreign market entry in a developed country, reviews and rating mattered specially for firms coming from developing countries. In this research, the influence of reviews and ratings on international business strategy was explored. Theoretically this study contributed to the foreign market entry stage stakeholders vetting process theory in the context of online reviews and ratings. Online reviews and ratings as a repository in the context of International Business Strategy (IBS) could be viewed as a strategic asset from a resource-based view (RBV) from strategic management literature [1-2]. The ability of a firm to get to apply the lessons learnt from these online reviews and ratings could be viewed as a dynamic capability (DC) [3] which would in turn be anchored in the knowledge-based view (KBV) by the firm [4]. The aspects of bounded rationality as well as bounded reliability [4-5] would also be applicable interwoven with the theoretical considerations of RBV, DC and KBV. These were the theoretical implications of this study. This was one of the first studies that explored how online reviews and ratings of firms in its domestic developing country had implications for international business strategies with special emphasis regarding expansion into developed foreign countries markets.