Strategic Motives For International Alliance Formation*

Abstract

This paper considers the strategic motivation for international alliance formation for a sample of UK firms with partners in western Europe, the United States and Japan. the relative importance of a set of strategic motives is identified and related to extant theory. A parsimonious set of strategic motives for the sample studied is provided by means of factor analysis. the paper identifies the main strategic motives for alliance formation by UK firms as intrinsically linked to the market and geographical expansion of the firm and that the main strategic motives are underpinned by the theories of strategic positioning and organizational learning. This study also finds that some of the often suggested motives for alliance formation found in the literature, in particular aspects of risk reduction associated with new projects, appear not to be particularly important motivating factors. Hypotheses are tested on the relationship between the relative importance of individual strategic motives and a number of characteristics of the sample - contractual form of the alliance, relative partner size, primary geographical location of the venture, industry of the alliance and partner nationality. Implications of the findings for future theorizing on alliances and their motives is identified. Copyright 1996 Basil Blackwell Ltd.

Consumer perceptions of co-branding alliances: Organizational dissimilarity signals and brand fit

“…Our finding that there is a negative relationship between the co-branding partners' combined organizational characteristics of firm size, industry scope, and country-of-origin image dissimilarity and consumer brand fit perception suggests that, in addition to brand-related factors, organizational characteristics affect consumer assessments of co-brands. Organizational dissimilarity results from strategic alliance formation motives, such as access to complementary resources (Chung et al, 2000;Wernerfelt, 1984), new customer segments (Harrigan and Newman, 1990;O'Dwyer et al, 2011) and new geographical markets (Glaister and Buckley, 1996;Reuer et al, 2011). Co-branding alliance formation between firms with a heterogeneous organizational structure make sense from a strategic perspective.…”

“…International cobranding alliances represent a widely adopted strategy in today's increasingly global business environment (Li and He, 2013). Firms ally with foreign brands, headquartered in different countries (Bluemelhuber et al, 2007) in order to avoid market entry barriers (Glaister and Buckley, 1996;Reuer et al, 2011), to reduce costs of doing business abroad (Hymer, 1960(Hymer, /1976, and to decrease the liability of foreignness (Zaheer, 1995). Forming partnerships with local firms can help overcome consumer animosity towards foreign brands (Fong et al, 2014;Li and He, 2013;Voss and Tansuhaj, 1999).…”

“…From a firm's perspective, these organizational characteristics reflect strategic motives for the formation of co-branding alliances and partner selection (Oeppen and Jamal, 2014), such as the access to complementary resources (Chung et al, 2000;Wernerfelt, 1984), the development of new customer segments (Harrigan and Newman, 1990;O'Dwyer et al, 2011), and the entry into new geographical markets (Glaister and Buckley, 1996;Reuer et al, 2011). As many studies use signaling theory 'to explain the effectiveness of brand alliances with respect to consumers (…), it seems logical to investigate the sender side of the signaling phenomenon' (Gammoh and Voss, 2011, p. 83).…”

International Cooperation on Innovation: Empirical Evidence for German and Portuguese Firms

“…However, there are also some specific motives for entering into international cooperative agreements. Glaister and Buckley (1996) Gassmann's (2002) findings that technology-intensive firms are trying to exploit location-specific innovation advantages through the internationalisation of their R&D activities and are thus able to cope with the increasingly globalised environment, can serve as an explanation for Glaister and Buckley's (1996) result. Firms no longer look for partners, say,.…”

“…Hagedoorn, 1993;Glaister and Buckley, 1996;Narula and Hagedoorn, 1999;Cassiman and Veugelers, 2002;Sakakibara, 1997;Miotti andSachwald, 2003, Aschhoff andSchmidt, 2006). Cooperation activities are usually characterised by intensive knowledge exchange and mutual learning, basically by combining complementary assets and building synergies (Dachs et al, 2004;Becker and Dietz, 2004).…”