Market Entries of Emnes in Developed Markets – A Case Study from Slovenia and Germany

Abstract

To get an insight into internalization processes of Slovenian MNEs and particularly to their activities in Germany, we adopted a distinctively qualitative approach and conducted semi-structured interviews with key actors of five major Slovene companies we used as case studies. Our study shows that several major assumptions regarding frontier and emerging market MNE international activities do not fit to Slovene companies. They were found to act as innovation leaders with high quality products and services, as well as with competitive pricing, as long as their technological capabilities are competitive. The liability of foreignness as well as the liability of country of origin are steeply declining with increasing technological capabilities in Slovene EMNEs. They also showed high institutional familiarity and suffered little from uncertainty. Our study also shows that Slovene companies partially show competitive advantages compared to their German counterparts. Moreover, our findings confirm that economic liberalization, in this case Slovenia’s entry into the European common market, is a significant force driving company growth and internationalization. Thereby, this study presents generalizable insights into the internationalization process from Central and Eastern Europe and anywhere where large multinationals are scarce yet.