eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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ABSTRACT

Objectives of the Study

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly striving for international markets to survive the global competition. To overcome their deficiencies in contra to large multinational corporations the SMEs utilize alliances, despite the fact that many of the collaborations fail. The objective of this thesis was to study the rationale for utilizing an alliance when entering international markets. Further, Russian market was used as a specific example to review whether it alters the propensity to collaborate.

Academic background and methodology

The study combined the research streams of SME internationalization, alliance theory, and theories on Russian market to build a comprehensive picture on the existing knowledge. Literature review findings were abductively tested using an empirical case study of Airport Concepts -alliance. The empirical results were compared with the literature by means of the resource-based view.

Findings and conclusions

The primary finding of the study suggests that SMEs utilize alliances for entering foreign markets because of alliance's capability to offer resources required by internationalization. The specific resource types that matched the demand and supply were identified as knowledge, marketing, networks, technology, and economies of scale. The rationale behind cooperation was also found to be closely tied with the contextual environment of the company. Research's secondary finding is that Russian market evidently increases the predisposition to collaborate and use alliances.