Establishing and Restructuring Marketing Channels: An Exploratory Study of a Taiwanese Company in Russia

Zusammenfassung

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The rise of emerging markets not only provides opportunities for business growth but also for academic researchers to explore different paradigms in international marketing activities. This article details a case study of how a Taiwanese mother board company establishes and re-structures marketing channels in Russia over three developmental stages: entry, accelerating growth and decelerating growth stages. The findings reflect that market mechanism cannot be fully developed in the entry and accelerating growth stages due to obstacles to distributor selection and limited resources of supplier. Different growth speeds between channels necessitate the supplier to re-structure its channel partnerships.

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Auszug

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Establishing and Restructuring Marketing Channels: An Exploratory Study of a Taiwanese Company in Russia

1. Introduction

Global business competition not only creates new opportunities for growth but also brings enormous complexity to the business landscape. In recent decades, many foreign investors were pulled towards emerging markets by their rapid economic development, government policies favoring economic liberalization and the adoption of a free market system (Arnold/Quelch 1998). On the other hand, some mature or declining products, industries or markets have pushed firms to explore new opportunities elsewhere. Emerging markets consequently become excellent arenas for foreign companies to extend the life cycle of their products and their businesses. For example, the manufacture of mother boards (MB) used in personal computers (PC) is facing market saturation in Taiwan, but it still has huge growth potential in many emerging economies. These bullish markets have attracted many Taiwanese manufacturers, who enter through mergers and acquisitions, or through setting up marketing channels in cooperation with local distributors. Many of these distribution structures develop gradually from single to multiple channels, and from exclusive to inclusive distribution arrangements.

Emerging markets geographically comprise the transition countries of the former Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, Asia and the so-called 'developing countries' of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America (Hoskisson et al. 2000). The entry and adaptation of investors in foreign environments have created a new research field that has departed from traditional marketing studies. The dynamism of emerging markets challenges the theories developed in the advanced, stable, economies (Arnold/Quelch 1998; Dawar/Chattopadhyay 2002; Burgess/Steenkamp 2006). Even marketing programs operated by multinational firms are scarcely adapted for these markets, thus causing low market penetration, ...

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