Customer-Company Identification Of Chinese Corportions' Multinational Operations

More and more Chinese corporations are participating in the wave of internationalization.With the emergence of the attractiveness of emerging markets and the implementation of the “Belt and Road” policy,some Chinese corporations have selected a wide range of emerging markets along the Silk Road to conduct transnational operation.Although there is often a positive technological gap between Chinese multinational corporations and host countries,it is still not easy to gain customer-company identification in emerging markets.Existing research on cross-border customer-company identification does not involve emerging corporations entering emerging markets,that is,the “emerging-emerging” context.In view of the key role played by organizational innovation in coordinating the internal and external factors of the company,this study discusses about the core issue of “how does Chinese corporation's multinational operation gain customer-company identification in emerging markets through organizational innovation”Focusing on the organizational level,the research follows the transmission process of “context-behavior-performance” to open the black box between organizational innovation and customer-company identification from the perspective of organizational innovation behaviors.Based on the theories of multinational operation,customer-company identification and organizational innovation,this paper sorts out that overcoming the customer gap is a necessary condition to obtain customer-company identification,and then proposes a research framework for corporations to overcome the customer gap and gain customer-company identification through organizational innovation.To be specific,Xiaomi and OV,which develop the consumer-end product businesses in India with two operating modes of light and heavy assets,are selected as the research object.By adopting an exploratory vertical comparison case study,the evolution process of the customer gap and organizational innovation of the target company's multinational operation are combed in detail.The following conclusions are drawn in this paper.Firstly,the challenge of multinational operation under the “emerging-emerging” context comes from the customer gap,which has experienced the evolution process of “cognitive gap-profit gap-emotional gap”.Secondly,there are different paths and types for Chinese corporations to enter emerging markets.The flexible penetration innovation path is manifested as “low-end online creation-frugal OEM coordination-ecological borderless reshaping”,while the rigid inculcation innovation path is manifested as “high-end offline transfer-the resettlement of sole investment in new venture-the interactive independent research promotion”.Thirdly,organizational innovation can effectively overcome the customer gap.In this process,companies gradually increase the actually or originally lower profit through organizational innovations and reduce the customer gap until reaching agreement with the actual or expected level.Finally,the influence of cognitive gap,profit gap and emotional gap on customer-company identification shows the relationship of element's hierarchically progressive superposition,with a rising trend.The research conclusion analyzes the path selection and evolution principle of Chinese corporation's multinational operation to gain customer-company identification from the mechanism level,which is more universal and explanatory for China's companies in the consumer-end product industry under the context of emerging market entry.