Research On The Foreignness And Mitigating Strategies Of The Sharing Economy Platforms

With the continuous integration of digitization and globalization trends,the international business environment,the production and operation of enterprises and the consumption patterns of users have all undergone tremendous changes.Although sharing economy platform firms have been able to rapidly expand globally in the wave of digitization,they have faced a series of issues in relation to the liability of foreignness in the subsequent implementation of their internationalization strategies.Therefore,many sharing economy platform firms have rapidly withdrawn from overseas markets,or been acquired by local competitors in recent years.Existing literature lacks in-depth exploration on this phenomenon,and thus,it is important and urgent to explore the liability of foreignness in the process of internationalization of the sharing economy platform firms.Based on the mobile application data of sharing economy platform firms,this research explores antecedent factors for the foreignness of these enterprises,and strategies to cope with the foreignness.Specifically,this work explores three research questions around the foreignness of sharing economy platform firms:What is the mechanism of the foreignness of sharing economy platform firms?What are the unique advantages of multinational sharing economy platform companies that are more likely to obtain the asset of foreignness and succeed overseas?How can multinational sharing economy platform companies use marketing strategies to overcome the liability of foreignness?Therefore,this work conducts three sub-studies to analyze these three research questions.The first sub-study identifies possible sources of the foreignness of multinational sharing economy platform firms based on the "strategic triangle" framework.After verifying the issue by using mobile application data of the sharing economy platform firms,the sub-study concludes that institutional distance,development level of the ICT industry and marketing ability have significant positive impacts on overseas performances of the sharing economy platform firms.In addition,the degree of service exposure in the sharing economy transaction process strengthens the liability of foreignness,or in other words,weakens positive impacts of the asset of foreignness on firms’ performances.The second sub-study uses a network-based eclectic paradigm and adopts the fuzzy set qualitative ratio analysis method to empirically analyze unique advantages of enterprises in their host countries.The results show that sharing economy platform firms with ownership and network advantages can achieve high performances more easily;sharing economy platform firms with ownership disadvantages,location disadvantages and internalization disadvantages are not easy to achieve high market performances;when the network is weak and its internal advantages are obvious,the overseas market performances of the sharing economy platform firms depend on the intensity of competition.The third sub-study examines the relationship between marketing communication adaptation strategy of the sharing economy platform firms and their performances,and explores contextual factors that affect the relationship from the perspective of national culture and transaction.Results show that the adaptability of marketing communication has positive impacts on the overseas market share of the sharing economy.Among them,regarding countries with a high economic nationalism index and sharing economy platforms with a high degree of service contact,the relationship between the adaptability of marketing communications and the overseas market share of sharing economy can be enhanced.Derived from the internationalization background of sharing economy platform firms,this research studies the mechanism of the foreignness and its mitigating strategies,contributing important theoretical and practical values.The theoretical contributions of this study include the following three aspects.First,based on the internationalization scenario of the sharing economy,this study explores the mechanism of the foreignness in multinational sharing economy platform firms and identifies antecedent factors for the foreignness,making up for the absences of existing literature on the foreignness of multinational companies.Second,this study explores how to use unique advantages and marketing communication adaptive strategies to cope with the foreignness of sharing economy platform firms,and broadens research paths of strategies to deal with the foreignness.Last but not least,by combining national culture and features of sharing service transactions,this study finds the regulating effects of nationalism index and the extent of service exposure on mitigating strategies for the foreignness,providing theoretical enlightenment for multinational enterprises to enter the market.In addition,the contribution of this research in the field of management practice includes the following three aspects.First,this study explores the foreignness issue based on the internationalization of the sharing economy,helping multinational enterprises choose overseas markets.Second,the conclusions of this study provide important decision-making inspiration for the internationalization strategy of sharing economy platform firms,and urge enterprises to fully recognize the source of the foreignness and its mitigating strategies,that is,by using their own unique advantages and marketing adaptability strategies to obtain the asset of foreignness or make up for the liability of foreignness.Last but not least,situational factors dealing with the foreignness(such as nationalism index and service exposure)identified in this study can help decision makers of multinational sharing economy platform firms choose more suitable target markets based on features of shared service products and nationalism indexes of overseas markets.