Research On Social Capital’s Impact On Enterprises’ International Marketing Strategy

Internationalization of emerging markets’ enterprises has becoming a new frontierthese days (Peng,2007). Expanding overseas of Chinese enterprises is the most typicalrepresentative. Traditional international marketing strategic research mainly focused onthe causes which led to different enterprises’ international market performance. Classictheories generally attributed all these to the difference of internal resources or externalindustrial structures between enterprises. While these factors are, to some extent,explained the causes of difference of enterprises’ performance, but some criticalresources needed for competition beyond the enterprise, and the network which theenterprises are in also caused the difference of performance (Gulati，2007).Therefore, the strategic management school introduced the multinationalenterprises’ network to study this issue and incorporated the social relations and internalweb as very important factors into the theoretical framework. However, there lacked ofthe specialized research on international marketing strategic network, let alone thestrategic network of the internationalization of emerging markets’ enterprises such asChinese enterprises. Therefore, this paper filled the gap.This paper took the Chinese multinational enterprises as a research subject, andviewed the internal network, the upstream and downstream network, and host country’snetwork as the main factors. From four factors of strategic management, utilizing socialcapital theory this paper interpreted multinational enterprises’ marketing strategicanalysis, strategic choice, strategic utilize, and strategic transform. From ZTE andCHINT case, this paper studied the social capital theory of foreign subsidiaries and itsinfluence on parent company’s international market strategic analysis capabilities, andhow the vertical social capital influenced the international market strategic choice, andthe social capital of top management team’s influence on international market strategicimplementation. This paper also studied how the enterprises adjusted their marketstrategy and thus to maintain and enhance their competitive advantages when they facingthe regional differences of social capital in different countries’markets.This study reached the following three purposes. First, this article studied thedifference of different enterprises in international market strategic analysis, strategicchoice, strategic implementation, and strategic adjustment from the perspective ofinnovative social capital. Second, exiting research mostly based on customer awarenessof consumer goods and buy decision model, this paper focused on social capital’s special value and role in the industrial international marketing. Finally, this paper comparedgeographical difference of social capital in different overseas markets in case study, toseek a suitable regional management model of industrial international marketing.We adopted the method of combining case studies and standardization research andselected representative interviewees and assessed their social capital using social networkanalysis. Specifically, this paper studied the ZTE and CHINT, and analyzed the patternsand characteristics of its international marketing strategy to explore the impact ofmultinational social capital of marketing, and strategic management and new methods.Specifically, the research’s framework is as follows. Chapter1is introduction. Thissection describes the research background and research purposes. Followed Chapter2reviewed the international marketing theories literatures including the stage theory,behavioral theory, the export-led theory, environment theory in order to reveal themotives of international marketing. In this chapter we also introduced network model andfour-factors model in briefly. After summarizing the limitations and deficiencies ofexisting theory, we raised research gaps. In Chapter3this paper focused on analyzing theconcepts of social capital and international marketing. Chapter4and Chapter5are thecase studies. We analyses the ZTE and CHNT and discussed how the social capitalinfluenced the Chinese enterprises’ international marketing strategic management.Chapter6is the theory analysis. In this chapter we refined the normative research basingon case studies of chapter4and chapter5. Specifically, this paper analyses how internal,external environment, vertical and horizontal social capital influence the four process ofinternational marketing strategic management. Chapter7is the conclusion. In thischapter we briefly summarize the conclusions of this paper, and raise some policyrecommendations, and pointed out the limitations of this study and possible futureresearch directions.