| The competitive activities of enterprises have always been the focus of academic research.In the real world,there are fewer and fewer enterprises that only sell or produce a single product in one market.More and more companies set up businesses in multiple markets.When their competitors do the same,the result is a network of multiple market connections.In this network,enterprises meet in multiple markets.For example,insurance companies provide various types of insurance for customers;airlines provide services for passengers on multiple air routes;pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises provide various types of drugs;diversified companies such as Haier,produce a variety of products and sell them in different regional markets,especially when the enterprises develop to a certain scale,implement diversified operations to disperse risks,and sell products from all over the country,even around the world,which can be seen that multimarket enterprises have become a common form of modern enterprises.Although there are many researches about the relationship on multimarket contact and enterprise performance and enterprise competition intensity,there are few researches on enterprise innovation under multimarket contact.However,Anand et al.(2009)and Theeke and Lee(2017)believe that the “mutual restraint” effect of multimarket contact is borderline,which is no longer applicable to the competition based on knowledge resources,so it is necessary to rethink the relationship between multimarket contact and enterprise innovation.Some scholars have tentatively analyzed the impact of multimarket contact on enterprise innovation,and mainly focused on the sample analysis of western mature markets.Some scholars believe that the impact mechanism of multimarket contact and enterprise innovation lies in the “mutual restraint” effect,while others believe that the more fierce competition brought by imitation has produced competitive effect on enterprise innovation.Therefore,their research has different opinions on the theoretical logic of multimarket contact research.Therefore,in the environment of multimarket contact,what is the effect of enterprise innovation? How about the mechanism? What factors influence the relationship between multimarket contact and enterprise innovation?Based on this,this paper takes knowledge-based view,organizational learning theory and institutional theory as the theoretical basis and takes Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturing industry as the research sample to test the effect.In addition,mechanism of multimarket contact and enterprise innovation,as well as the regulatory role of environmental regulation,institutional environment,enterprise nature and overseas background of executives on multimarket contact and enterprise innovation.The main research conclusions are as follows:Firstly,multimarket contact promotes product innovation in the focus market.There are few researches on multimarket contact and enterprise innovation,and there are always divergent theoretical explanations.This paper believes that the impact of multi market contact on enterprise innovation is through the dual mechanism of competition and cooperation.This paper verifies the positive correlation between multimarket contact and the number of patent applications of enterprises in the focus market through empirical research.Secondly,there are two main mechanisms about the relationship between multimarket contact and enterprise innovation,namely cooperation mechanism and competition mechanism.Due to the particularity of knowledge resources,the “mutual restraint” effect of multimarket contact on knowledge resources is no longer effective.Due to the familiarity brought by multimarket contact,it promotes cooperation between enterprises and enterprise innovation.At the same time,the familiarity of multimarket contact will also increase the threat of enterprises to obtain imitation from their competitors.Furthermore,the competition brought by the imitation learning of multimarket contact will intensify the competition of knowledge resources and further promote the innovation of enterprises.Through the empirical analysis of the research samples in this paper,it is found that compared with large-scale enterprises,multimarket contact plays a more positive role in the number of patent applications of small enterprises in the focus market.Compared with mature enterprises,multi market contact has a more positive effect on the number of patent applications of start-ups in the focus market.Compared with the enterprises with fewer patent applications,multimarket contact plays a greater role in promoting the number of patent applications in the focus market.Thirdly,considering that multimarket contact may have different effects on enterprise innovation in different situations,this paper considers the regulatory effects of environmental regulation,property right protection system,enterprise nature and overseas background of executives.The results show that the regulatory effects of environmental regulation on multimarket contact and enterprise innovation are not significant,that is,with the increase of environmental regulation,multimarket contact has no significant effect on enterprise innovation.The negative effect of enterprise innovation has not become stronger.However,the regulation effect of property rights protection is significant.It shows that the innovation of multimarket contact is enhanced with the increase of property rights protection.Compared with non-state-owned enterprises,state-owned enterprises weaken the positive effect of multi market contact on enterprise innovation,and state-owned enterprises are not conducive to enterprise innovation.The regulatory role of overseas background of senior executives shows that compared with enterprises without overseas background of senior executives,overseas background of senior executives enhances the positive effect of multimarket contact on enterprise innovation.It shows that overseas background of senior executives is conducive to the input and output of enterprise innovation,and enterprises should actively attract high-level talents from overseas.The contribution of this paper may be as follows:Based on the knowledge-based view,organizational learning theory and institutional theory,this paper empirically tests the effect and mechanism of multimarket contact and enterprise innovation.And the regulatory effect of environmental regulation,property right protection system,enterprise nature and high management of overseas background on the relationship between multimarket contact and enterprise innovation,taking Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturing industry as the research sample The specific research contributions are as follows:Firstly,this paper verifies the relationship between multimarket contact and enterprise innovation.Previous research results mainly focused on the relationship between multimarket contact and enterprise performance and competition intensity,but these relationships mainly discussed the relationship between multimarket contact and enterprise downstream product market competition and performance.Few scholars discussed the competition of upstream knowledge resources of enterprises,and there were some differences on the theoretical basis.For example,Greve and Mitsuhashi(2004)discussed from the perspective of “multiunit organization” theory and “mutual restraint” of multimarket contact that multimarket contact is conducive to enterprises to obtain more patents.However,Anand et al.(2009)and theeke and Lee(2017)both believe that the “mutual restraint” effect of multimarket contact is bounded.Anand et al.(2009)believe that in the exploration activities,enterprises are more likely to reduce uncertainty by imitating behavior than seeking the “mutual restraint” effect.Theeke and Lee(2017)think that the “mutual restraint” effect of multimarket contact depends on the competition field and resource type of the enterprise.This effect only occurs in the downstream activities of the enterprise(market entry and exit,product price,etc.),and the competition for knowledge resources of upstream activities may not be reduced.Therefore,we can see the theoretical explanation of the relationship between multimarket contact and enterprise innovation.There are still some controversies.This paper holds that the mode of action of multimarket contact and enterprise innovation is more complex.For intellectual resources,the “mutual restraint” effect of multimarket contact is no longer effective,because enterprises have more incentive to protect property rights,no longer fear the threat of retaliation from other competitors,and the increase of multimarket contact level promotes cooperation and competition among enterprises,and then promote enterprise innovation.This paper tests the relationship between multimarket contact and enterprise innovation,enriches the empirical research of multimarket contact and enterprise innovation.Secondly,this paper brings the external environment(environmental regulation,property rights protection),enterprise characteristics(enterprise nature)and executive characteristics(Executive overseas background)into the analysis framework of multimarket contact and enterprise innovation,and systematically analyzes the regulatory effect of the above scenario variables on the relationship between multimarket contact and enterprise innovation.At present,most researchers mainly choose market concentration(Jans and Rosenbaum,1997;Fuentelsaz and Gómez,2006;Haveman and Nonnemaker,2000;Deng Xinming et al.,2019;Zeng fu E and Yuan Jingbo,2016),strategic alliance(Chuang et al.,2018),CEO tenure(Stephan et al.,2003),sphere of influence(Gimeno,1999;Gimeno,2015),resource similarity(Grimm and Simon,2000;Young et al.,2000),enterprise scale(Mas-Ruiz and Ruiz-Moreno,2011;Reeven and Penning,2016),etc.,rarely include the external environment(property rights protection system,environmental regulation),enterprise characteristics(enterprise nature)and executive characteristics(overseas background of executives)into the research framework of multimarket contact.Therefore,this paper breaks through the choice of scenario variables in the study of multimarket contact and enterprise behavior,and brings the above scenario variables into the framework of multimarket contact and enterprise innovation,which is also an extension of scenario factor analysis of multimarket contact theory.Finally,we test the effect and situational factors of multimarket contact and enterprise innovation in China's emerging markets.At present,most researches of multimarket contacts are based on the data of mature Western markets,such as American aviation industry(Prince and Simon,2009),Spanish hotel chains(Fernandez and Marin,1998),American cement industry(Jans and Rosenbaum,1997),etc..However,there are great differences in legal system and economic development between emerging economies such as China and mature western economies.Domínguez et al.(2016)believed that due to information asymmetry,uncertainty,etc.,enterprises in emerging economies might be more difficult to observe the behavior of competitors and conduct internal coordination.Therefore,the data research results based on western mature markets have relatively limited guiding role for Chinese enterprises.This study uses the data of Chinese emerging market pharmaceutical manufacturing listed companies to get the results of the impact of multimarket contact,which is not only a supplement to the empirical study of multimarket contact in different economies,but also more valuable for the practice of local enterprises.China's rapid political,economic and institutional changes,accompanied by relatively underdeveloped factors and product markets,also provide a very suitable background for exploring the role of multimarket contact. |
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