Case

For the Japanese car manufacturer Honda, the domestic and international environments in the early 1970s brought tremendous challenges to its export strategy, previously based on mass production in Japan. Honda wanted to develop extensive international production capabilities in overseas markets, especially the US market. However, Honda doubted its foreign facilities could attain the quality level characteristic...

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, a Toronto (Canada)-based company founded in 1960, is a leading player in the luxury hotel business worldwide. It currently operates 119 hotels and 45 residential properties in 48 countries as of December 2020, with several of its hotels routinely earning almost all major hotel quality recognition awards.[ii] In 2011, 45 Four Seasons hotels were among the ‘Top 500 Hotels’...

The US-based conglomerate 3M has been famous for decades for its culture of innovation. Its rule of allowing 15 per cent of its employees’ working hours to be spent on their own projects has been widely cited as the symbol of tolerance for experimentation. However, there is more to the firm’s core competences than this tolerance.   The development of the spirit of innovation 3M was incorporated...

The Swedish home products retailer IKEA Group (IKEA) has grown from a one-man mail order company, established in 1934, into an operation with 461 IKEA stores in over 40 countries/ territories and 217,000 employees in 2021[i].   The development of the IKEA formula The ‘IKEA formula’, critical to its international success, has developed gradually over time. Its main focus is the delivery of...

Case 3.1 The rise, fall and resurgence of industrial hot spots: The experience of Silicon Valley and Boston’s Route 128 [i]   The success of high-technology industries in Silicon Valley and the Boston Route 128 region has attracted many followers, both domestically and internationally. In 1999, there were as many as 88 ‘Silicon Wannabes’: one ‘Silicorn Valley’ (Fairfield, Iowa), one ‘Silicon...

Case 3.2 Shiseido: Becoming an insider in the perfume business in France[i]   Initially founded as a pharmacy in Japan in 1872, Shiseido expanded into the cosmetics business in 1897 by introducing a skin lotion. Shiseido then gradually expanded its product offerings in the makeup and skin care business. It also started to expand internationally, entering the Taiwan market in 1957. By the...

Case 4.1 Coping with the four dimensions of distance in the international expansion of Starbucks[i] US-based Starbucks, established in 1971, is the largest coffee house company in the world. When it decided to leave its North American base, it opened its first overseas locations in Japan and Singapore in 1996, and it quickly expanded throughout Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. By...

US-based Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retail firm, announced in 2006 that it would sell its 85 stores in Germany to its German rival Metro, after nine years of struggle there. Why did WalMart’s successful US retail model fail in Germany? What lessons can Wal-Mart gain from its experience in Germany to help it succeed in other international markets?   The history of Wal-Mart Sam Walton opened...

Case 5.1 Organizational transformation at Nestlé[i]   Swiss-based Nestlé S. A., the world’s largest food manufacturing company, employs around 270,000 people and has factories or operations in practically every country in the world.[ii] However, Nestlé does not focus simply on building and exploiting global brands. As noted by former CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, “There is a trade-off between...

Case 5.2 Organizational transformation at the Tata Group[i]   The Tata Group is an Indian multinational corporation with headquarters in Mumbai, India, and counts 935,000+ employees.[ii] The group has an operational presence in more than 100 countries across six continents. In 2022, it was India’s second-largest conglomerate (after Reliance Industries, active in oil and gas), and the group...

Founded in Berlin in 1847, Siemens has grown from a small telegraph workshop to one of the largest electrical engineering and electronics companies in the world. Focusing on the businesses of Automation and Control, Power, Transportation, Medical, Information and Communications, and Lighting, Siemens has 360,000 employees in over 190 countries. In fiscal year 2011, Siemens had sales of more than EUR...

Sony Corporation (Sony), the Japan-based consumer electronics and entertainment group, has become synonymous with breakthrough technology products, including the Walkman, Trinitron TV, Compact Disc Player and PlayStation video consoles. Over the course of more than half a century, Sony has developed into a world-class brand representing high quality and advanced technology in consumer electronics....

As an electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company, Singapore’s Flex International which is managed from its San Jose California headquarters, may be an unfamiliar name to many. That said, Flex produces and delivers printers for other well-known companies such as Hewlett-Packard, cell phones for Sony Ericsson and Motorola, Xboxes for Microsoft, just to name a few of its customers. Previously known...

Known throughout the world for quality and style, BMW as a manufacturer of luxury automobiles, motorcycles and engines, has built a strong reputation and brand image. For decades, the BMW trademark has been synonymous with quality German manufacturing and with attention to detail that caters to the refined consumer with a passion for driving. Currently, the BMW group consists of three brands: BMW,...

Famous for selling cosmetics door-to-door through ‘Avon ladies’ sales representatives, Avon is the world’s largest direct seller of beauty products, with more than US $11 billion in annual revenues from over 100 domestic and foreign markets.[ii] Avon was founded as the California Perfume Company by David McConnell in 1886 and named Avon in 1939. In 1914, it opened its first international office...

Porsche’s concern about operating exposure arising from changes in the exchange rate of the dollar can be traced back to heavy financial losses incurred in 1992–3. In one year, Porsche’s global sales dropped by 38 per cent to 14,000 units; in the US, its largest market, Porsche sold less than 4,000 units. The large losses were attributed not only to the global recession in the early 1990s, but also...

Case 9.1 International marketing at beer brewer Anheuser Busch – InBev[i]   Anheuser Busch (AB) – InBev is the largest beer brewing company and was formed in 2008, when InBev acquired St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch to become one “of the world’s top five consumer products companies”.[ii] Belgium-based InBev, at that point in time, the world’s number one brewer, was itself formed in 2004 through...

Case 9.2 A rising star from China: Haier Group[i]   After almost going bankrupt in 1984, the Qingdao General Refrigerator Factory from Qingdao (China) was restructured. Presently known as the Haier Group (in the following: Haier), it has become one of the world's leading consumer electronics and home appliances manufacturers. In 2021, Haier’s sales reached almost US $33.6 billion, [ii] a year-on-year...

Think for a moment about the brand names of high-end fashion and leather goods – names such as Louis Vuitton, Donna Karan, Fendi, Loewe, Céline, Marc Jacobs, Berluti, Rossimoda and StefanoBi; alcoholic beverage brand names such as Moët et Chandon, Hennessy and Dom Perignon; perfume brand names such as Christian Dior, Guerlain, Givenchy and Kenzo; and watch brand names such as TAG Heuer, Zenith and...

Many people have been very skeptical about Dell’s ability to replicate its famous direct sales model abroad. According to Dell’s CEO, when the US-based computer hardware company first expanded internationally (into the UK in 1987), “of the twenty-two journalists who came to our press announcement, about twenty-one predicted that we would fail. The direct model is an American concept, they claimed;...

From 2007 to 2009, Danone, the French multinational food company, was in a fierce battle with China-based Wahaha Group (the largest beverage producer in China) to win control of their joint ventures (JVs) in China. The fight is reported to have started in 2005 when Danone uncovered some unusual financial figures at the JVs, but this did not become known to the public until 2007, when Danone and Wahaha...

Case 13.1 CEMEX: Growing and growing stronger?[i] Of all the countries and industries one could match, the combination of Mexico and cement does not necessarily sound like the ideal couple to produce an efficient organization, able to expand internationally, largely through effective acquisitions. Yet, CEMEX has done just that. It has grown from a local Mexican producer into one of the world’s largest...

In 1981, after nearly 100 years in business, IBM introduced the world to home computing through the launch of the IBM personal computer (PC). The relatively small machine offered home users the basics of personal computing, complete with two floppy disks, 16 kilobytes of memory (expandable to 256 kilobytes), an Intel processor chip, and a DOS operating system developed by a small, 36-person company...

In 1992, US-based American International Group (AIG), one of the world’s largest insurance companies, was given the first licence issued to any foreign company to operate in China’s insurance market. Although other foreign companies started to receive licences in 1995, by 2001 AIG still held 8 out of the 12 licences granted to non-Chinese firms in the Chinese insurance industry. Moreover, the other...

With offices in over 50 countries around the world and a network of numerous Google domains (e.g., gmail.com) available in multiple languages, Google Inc. is by all accounts a highly successful MNE. In 2022, 58 percent of the revenue came from Google search ads, 12.3 percent came from Network ads and 11.2 percent came from YouTube ads. This means 81.5 per cent of Google’s US $ 69.1 billion in revenue...

Over the past decade, the many implications of the rise of the People’s Republic of China have become a topic of intense debate, as many seek to understand the impact of Chinese economic growth on the functioning of international markets. Of particular interest have been Chinese efforts to secure various physical resources, notably oil and gas. Chinese analysts expect the projected energy mix to increase...

Case 15.2 Infosys: The rise of a leading IT giant from India[i]   Founded in 1981 with seed capital amounting to only US $250, Infosys Limited (hereafter Infosys) turned into an international consulting and technology services company with headquarters in Bangalore, India. Infosys was the first Indian information technology (IT) company to be listed on the NASDAQ (National Association of Securities...

When Talisman Energy, a Canada-based oil and gas company, bought 25 per cent of the shares in the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC) by acquiring Arakis in August 1998, Jim Buckee, Talisman’s CEO at the time, was full of enthusiasm about the ‘spectacular potential’ of the deal.[i] Although Talisman foresaw political risks involved in the project, it never expected itself to become caught...

In the 1990s, US-based Nike Inc., the largest athletic shoe company in the world, was accused by labour and human rights activists of operating sweatshops in Indonesia, Vietnam and China. Nike initially viewed such accusations as public relations problems, but finally changed its defensive tactics to a more proactive approach after serious damage was inflicted to its reputation in the late 1990s. In...

Since the early 1990s, Shell’s reputation has been battered by corporate social responsibility problems such as the Brent Spar controversy and the Ken Saro-Wiwa trial in Nigeria. (Ken Saro-Wiwa was the environmentalist who was hanged and whose death some attributed in part to Shell.) Shell gradually realized that dismissing environmental and social issues could seriously hurt its business. It started...