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1.0 Introduction介绍
1.1 Background背景
随着互联网时代的到来和全球一体化的到来，全球跨境B2C交易量迅速增加，在这一过程中，许多企业通过国际化获得了经营成功，值得注意的是，传统上认为大型企业更有可能在BECA获得国际成功。利用他们拥有更多的资源，但现实是，越来越多的中小服装企业在成立之初就进入了国外市场（Odlin和Benson Rea，2017年）。它们在资源、人才、财力等方面远不及大型企业，因此，自20世纪90年代以来，它们在国际上取得成功的原因引起了许多学者的关注（Mosberger，2011年）。进入2010年，学者们发现，除了传统的市场准入、资源准入、竞争优势准入等模式外，中小企业都是通过互联网实现国际化，这种模式越来越普遍。本研究以嘉盛为例，探讨中小型服装企业如何透过网路进入美国市场。
As the era of the Internet and the global integration comes, the global cross-border B2C volume increased rapidly, in this process, many companies have gained operational success through internationalization, and it is noteworthy that large enterprises have been traditionally believed that they are more likely to be internationally successful because they have more resources, but the reality is that more small and medium-sized garment enterprises have entered foreign markets at the beginning of their establishment (Odlin and Benson-Rea, 2017). They are far less than large enterprises in terms of resources, talent, financial resources and other aspects, so reasons for their international success have caused attention of a lot of scholars since the 1990s (Mosberger, 2011). Entering 2010, scholars have found that in addition to traditional market access, access to resources, access to competitive advantage and other models, small and medium - sized enterprises are through the Internet to achieve internationalization, this model is more and more common. This study aims to investigate how small and medium - sized garment enterprises, taking Jia Sheng as an example, enter the US market through the Internet.
Figure 1 Global cross-border B2C volume from 2014-2020
1.2 Introduction of Jia Sheng Garment嘉盛服装介绍
杭州嘉盛服装有限公司（简称嘉盛）成立于2008年，现有员工约200人，年收入8000万元。 2009年，该公司开始利用阿里巴巴与美国的服装公司合作。由于它提供的产品具有优良的服装质量，低廉的价格，及时的交货，它满足了其国际合作伙伴，以在其成立的早期成功进入国外市场。
Hangzhou Jia Sheng Garment Co., Ltd. (Jia Sheng for short) was established in 2008, so far it has about 200 employees, and the annual revenue has reached 80 million RMB. In 2009, the company began to make use of Alibaba to cooperate with clothing companies in the United States. As it provides products with excellent clothing quality, low prices, timely delivery, it satisfied its international cooperators to achieve the success of entering foreign markets in the early days of its establishment.
考虑到嘉盛发展美国市场的过程，它没有雄厚的资金实力，核心技术优势和现成的国际营销渠道，但它在成立初期就开拓了美国市场，很难想象过去。进入国外市场的中小企业将遇到许多问题，如难以找到合适的市场机会，国际成本高，效率低，以及各种商业风险等。嘉盛成功的关键因素之一是利用互联网和电子商务平台成功克服上述困难。因此，探讨嘉盛利用互联网成功进入美国市场具有重要意义，也为其他中小服装企业实现国际化提供了参考。但是，随着外部环境的变化，如何利用互联网进一步提高嘉盛的国际竞争力，是嘉盛下一步需要解决的问题。Considering the process of Jia Sheng’s developing the US market, it does not have strong financial strength, core technical advantages and ready international marketing channels, but it has developed the US market in the early period when it was established, it was difficult to imagine in the past. SMEs in the process of entering foreign markets will encounter many problems, such as difficulties in finding the right market opportunities, high international cost, low efficiency, and a variety of business risks and so on. One of the key factors of Jia Sheng’s success is the use of the Internet and e-commerce platform to overcome the above-mentioned difficulties successfully. Therefore, it has great significance for me to explore how Jia Sheng makes use of the Internet to successfully enter the US market, and it also provide a reference for other small and medium-sized garment enterprises to realize internationalization. However, as the external environment changes, how to use the Internet to further improve the international competitiveness of Jia Sheng is the real problem that Jia Sheng needs to solve next.
2.0 Research aims and objectives
Based on the above analysis, the research aim was design as that, since 2010, how Jia Sheng (a SME) moves to the US market by using the Internet so as to recommend on SMEs’ penetration in foreign markets. McDougall and Oviatt’s (2000) research reveals the SMEs meet difficulties in entering foreign markets, such as difficulties in finding right market opportunities, high international cost, low efficiency and a variety of business risks and so on. Based on these studies, I have developed the following research objectives.
Research objective 1: To identify the market penetration strategies to enter the US online clothing market;
Research objective 2: To evaluate how JiaSheng has developed and expanded the market in US;
Research objective 3: To determine how the Internet could be used to diversity JiaSheng's products and markets;
3.0 Literature review
3.1 Definition of small and medium-sized enterprises
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) refer to economic units with relatively small size of personnel, small asset size and small scale of operation (Clercq, Sapienza and Crijns, 2005). Such enterprises are mostly managed by the owners directly and there is less interference by the outside world (Monsberger, 2011). There are different definitions for small and medium-sized enterprises in different countries, such as in the United States, it is defined an enterprise with less than 500 employees; in the United Kingdom, it refers to small and medium-sized enterprises with a small market share, they are managed by the owners themselves and they have independent business, employ less than 200 people (Odlin and Benson-Rea, 2017); in China, small and medium-sized enterprises are enterprises with less than 1,000 employees or operating income of 80 million dollars (Zhang, Tansuhaj and McCullough, 2009).
3.2 Theoretical concepts
3.2.1 Ansoff Matrix
Figure 2 Ansoff Matrix (Ansoff, 1957)
Ansoff Matrix takes product and market as the two basic orientations to distinguish four product/ market portfolio and the corresponding marketing strategy, they are on behalf of enterprises’ four options to achieve income or profit growth, the main logic is that companies can choose four different growth strategies to achieve the goal of increasing revenue (Ansoff, 1957). The four different growth strategies are market penetration, market development, product development and diversification Market penetration takes existing products to satisfy existing customers, by promoting or upgrading the quality of service, etc. to persuade consumers to switch to use different brands of products, or to persuade consumers to change the use of habits, to increase the purchase quantity and so on (Ansoff, 1957). Market development is through providing existing products to develop new markets, companies must find customers with the same product needs in different markets, they often adjust the product positioning and sales methods, but the core technology of products does not have to be changed (Ansoff, 1957). Product development is the introduction of new products to existing customers, through adopting product extension strategy and making the use of existing customer relationships to increase market share (Ansoff, 1957). Diversification refers to providing new products to new markets, it is the most risky diversification strategy because of the fact that the companies’ existing expertise is not useful at this moment (Ansoff, 1957).
Ansoff Matrix reflects four different marketing strategies. This study was based on Ansoff Matrix to analyze Jia Sheng’s successful marketing strategies for its international penetration analysis, and what marketing strategies will be more helpful in the future for its penetration in the foreign markets.
3.2.2 Market penetration strategy
Market penetration is to face the existing customers with existing products, by promoting or upgrading the quality of service, etc. to persuade consumers to switch to use different brands of products, or to persuade consumers to change their use habits , increase the quantity of purchase and so on (Ansoff, 1957). Based on Ansoff Matrix, The risk of implementing the market penetration strategy is minimal and minimum resources are required to be invested. In contrast, implementation of market development strategy, product development strategy will meet the second risk, and the resources required to invest are the second; to carry out diversification business strategy faces the most risk and it needs to invest the most resources. So for SMEs like Jia Sheng, to take market penetration strategy is better for it to avoid market risks and have an access to international success.#p#分页标题#e#
3.2.3 Marketing mix theory
Figure 3 Marketing mix (McCarthy, 1960)
Marketing mix refers to a combination of a range of marketing tools used by a company to pursue its marketing objectives in a target market. According to the needs of customers and corporate marketing objectives, a company can determine the best marketing mix of controllable marketing factors. The most classic marketing mix is the 4P marketing mix (McCarthy, 1960). It covers the following four aspects (McCarthy, 1960). First is product, it focuses on the function of development, requiring that products should have a unique selling point, product functions should be the first. Second is price, according to different market positioning to develop different pricing strategies, product pricing is based on corporate brand strategy. Third is place, it focuses on the nurturing of dealers and establishment of sales network. Fourth is promotion, including brand promotion, advertising, public relations and a series of marketing behavior.
This study was based on the theory of marketing mix to explore what Jia Sheng’s successful marketing mix for its penetration in the US in the past, and what kind of marketing mix in the future will help them to deal with challenges.
3.2.4 Porter's Five Forces Model
Figure 4 Porter's Five Forces Model (Porter, 1980)
Porter's Five Forces Model was proposed by Michael Porter in the early 1980s. It argues that there are five forces in an industry that determine the scale and extent of competition, the five forces comprehensively affect the attractiveness of an industry (Porter, 1980). The five forces are bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of new entrants, threat of substitute product, and the rivalry among competing sellers (Porter, 1980). The five-force model analyzes the macro-competitive environment of an enterprise and provides an analytical tool for the enterprise to develop a competitive strategy (Porter, 1980). This study will analyze the American market environment faced by Jia Sheng, based on the five-force model to find the best market competition strategy for Jia Sheng's penetration in the US market.
3.3 Discussion
Ansoff Matrix and market penetration theory provides a good analysis tool for enterprises to develop proper product strategy, their advantage is to recognize that market environment is dynamic rather than static, corporate strategy should make the best choice based on environment changes. But they also have shortcomings, such as they only focus on market, product situation, and pay less attention to product promotion, price, sales channels and other important factors. Based on Ansoff Matrix and the market penetration theory, this study analyzed the success of Jialheng's past product strategy and how it adjusts its product strategy according to the change of the external environment.
4P marketing theory summarizes the four important factors in marketing activities to establish a theoretical framework for development and implementation of marketing strategy system. It can be based on 4P marketing theory to analyze the success and failure of Jia Sheng’s marketing strategy. However, it is worth noting that 4P marketing theory ignores the importance of consumer demand, under the conditions of surplus product in the market, how to meet the needs of consumers become an important part of Jia Sheng’s marketing process.
Porter's Five Forces Model is used for competitive strategy analysis, it can effectively analyze a customer's competitive environment (Porter, 1980). Porter's Five Forces Model also has some shortcomings, it emphasizes the competition between enterprises but ignores the cooperation between enterprises, in the reality, enterprises often do not defeat their opponents but cooperate with the opponents to commonly have an access to more resources and market (Zhang, Tansuhaj and McCullough, 2009). In this study, it was through Porter's Five Forces Model to understand the external competitive environment faced by Jia Sheng in the US market, and according to the results of the analysis to understand whether the strategy of Jia Sheng's matches the external environment.
An important common ground of these theories is the analysis of the management of enterprises from a strategic perspective. The difference between these theories is that what they focus on is different. Ansoff Matrix and market penetration theory emphasize that the strategy of an enterprise should make the best choice with the change of the environment (Ansoff, 1957). Porter's Five Forces Model emphasizes strategic environment analysis and its impact on corporate strategy (Porter, 1980), and 4P marketing theory mainly explores corporate marketing mix strategy (McCarthy, 1960). This study made multiple uses of the above theories to comprehensively analyze the international marketing strategy of Jia Sheng. The combination of these theories can not only make the analysis result more comprehensive, but also make up for the defects of these theories themselves.
4.0 Methodology
4.1 Research methods
In this study, it will make a combined use of quantitative research and qualitative research methods.
The reasons for using the method lie in that quantitative research is a research approach based on positivist epistemology and objectivism methodology, quantitative research refers to the expression of problems and phenomena with quantity, and then to analyze, test, explain, and thus obtain the laws of changes of quantity (Creswell, 2003; Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2007). This study is through the questionnaire survey to understand the views from Jia Sheng international staff on the use of the Internet in the US marketing.
Reasons for adoption of a qualitative research method lie in that it takes general recognized axioms, a set of deductive logic and a large number of historical facts as the basis of analysis to describe, interpret things investigated, the purpose is to further study the specific characteristics or behavior of objects, and further explore the causes of its (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2007).
The use of quantitative research will help researchers to understand what marketing strategies that Jia Sheng adopts and the effects of these strategies, the use of qualitative research allows researchers to understand why the company uses these strategies and how these strategies were implemented. The combination of quantitative research and qualitative research can complement the shortcomings of using quantitative research or qualitative research separately, and allow researchers to study the marketing strategies of Jia Sheng in the US market from multiple perspectives to improve the reliability of the research results.
4.2 Research tools
The research tools used in this study will be questionnaire and semi-structured interview.
This study will use questionnaires to collect quantitative data. The use of questionnaires helps to collect a lot of sample data in a short period of time, and the information collected is very easy to be processed through quantitative analysis. The downside is that questionnaire is not very good for understanding the psychology and motivation of consumers, and because it is not face to face investigation with the respondents, if the respondents do not seriously fill out the questionnaires, it may mislead the research results. It is expected to issue 40 copies of questionnaires, the objects will be the international staff from Jia Sheng. The questionnaire will be mainly from product, price, place, promotion to understand the staff’s views on the company’s marketing strategy of using the Internet to explore the US market. Options of the questionnaires will be expressed by using the form of Likertscale method, from 1 to 5, it represents from “totally disagree” to “totally agree”.
This study will use semi-structured interviews to collect relevant qualitative information. The reason for using semi-structured interviews is that, as a result of direct communication with the respondents, the author can gain a deeper understanding of the respondents' thoughts and motivations, the disadvantage is time-consuming and less samples taken (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2007). In this semi-structured interview, three interviewees will be determined, they will be Jialheng’s international marketing manager, product manager and financial manager. Choosing them will be first because they are the direct participants in the process of entering the US market. They are well aware of the problems encountered during the process of Jia Sheng’s entering the US market. Second, since the author’s relatives were the staff of the company, they could be invited to participate in the survey. They will be informed in advance about the purpose, significance of this investigation by the author to get their permission. The interviews will be carried out via using Skype. Each interview will take about 15 minutes. The main content of the interview will investigate the motivation of the enterprise to achieve internationalization, what difficulties they encounter, how they use the Internet to solve the problems, how they solve the crisis in future, and so on.
4.3 Analysis
SPSS 21.0 will be adopted in this study for the quantitative data analysis, descriptive statistics will be first used for statics of the frequency, percentage, standard deviation, mean of the questionnaire results. Then according to the standards Best’s (1994) to evaluate the questionnaire results, it will understand the respondents’ recognition of Jia Sheng’s current strategies of using the Internet in penetrating in the US market.#p#分页标题#e#
This study will make use of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2007) to analyze the international strategy of Jia Sheng in using the Internet from the following aspects: international cost, international efficiency and international risk.
4.4 Limitations
Consider the limitations of this study, as most small and medium enterprises are not listed, their business data and information is difficult to obtain through the Internet, to obtain the international data related to an enterprise will cost a lot of time and money (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2007). And the main research object is only an enterprise, it may lead to the inadequate representativeness of the research results.
5.0 Rationales
In the early 21st century, enterprises have made use of e-commerce to achieve the success of entering foreign markets (Sasi and Arenius, 2008). With the progress of science and technology, as well as further deepening trend of globalization and adjustment of the national trade policy, after 2010, the international market and trade environment have changed a lot (Pinho and Prange, 2016), in the process of internationalization, what SMEs met in the process of entering foreign markets through the network is different those before 2010, which brings many challenges to their entering foreign markets (Odlin and Benson-Rea, 2017). However, there are not many studies on these issues at present. This study focuses on the reasons for Jia Sheng’s successful use of the network to entering foreign markets after 2010, which can be said to fill the gaps in this field.
6.0 Research significance
In practice, the significance of this study lies in analysis on how Jia Sheng makes use of the Internet to solve a series of problems encountered in the process of internationalization, the problems include the formulation and adjustment of product strategy, the formulation of marketing strategy, environmental impact and so on, which provides a reference for other SMEs to solve the problems in the process of penetrating foreign markets. Theoretically, the significance of this study is establishment of an analytical framework for analyzing the problems faced by SMEs in the entering foreign markets in the Internet age, so as to provide reference for other SMEs to formulate long-term international marketing strategy.
References
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