Desalegn Abraha

Strategic alliances in the Baltic states : a case of Swedish firms

The importance of the Baltic states has increased due to increase of capital inflow from the West. A large part of the foreign involvement takes the form of alliance with local partners in the region. But how these alliances operate and fulfill the objectives of the partners in the Baltic states remain almost unexplored. By the help of depth interviews, four alliances, two in Estonia and the other two in Lithuania, have therefore been studied in this research work. The theoretical framework is based on the concepts of motives, resources, learning, network, performance and general environment. Cost reduction, market seeking, and development and maintenance of services have been the main motives of foreign firms in entering into the alliances. No clear cut motive is observed from the local partners’ side. Learning has been found important for both the partners and concerns cultural differences, local knowhow and adaptation to the Western way in doing business. A broader view of performance is presented by including network development in the article. Profitability, market share, and sales have been seen as short term while network development and relationships as longterm performance criteria in the alliances. The role of general environment on alliances and its impact on network development have also been observed. This study further suggests that alliances offering service dominated products concentrate on the local markets, while alliances offering products with less service elements have export as the target.

Institutional factors and strategic alliances in eastern and central Europe

Purpose – The study deals with institutional factors that have impact on the operation of east‐west alliances. Applying Kostova and Roths terminology of institutional and relational contexts, this paper aims to address how alliance relationship based on resources, learning and performance organizes and functions, and how institutional factors influence the alliance relationship.Design/methodology/approach – To properly highlight the role of institutional factors, eastern and central Europe (ECE) is divided into four categories, namely fast adapters, high and low medium adapters and slow adapters. A total of 20 alliances operating in different country categories have been selected for the study. In all alliances, foreign partners are Swedish firms and engaged in the manufacturing industry. Semi‐structured interviews containing both a fixed set of questions and a set of open‐ended questions have been used for data collection.Findings – The impact of institutional factors on firms in slow‐adapting countries...

Export based strategy or manufacturing establishment? Speculating with Russian market

Among China and India, former Eastern European countries, and especially Russia has been identified as one of the most lucrative market, e.g. in retail sector. However, this market has experienced quite enormous changes during the last two decades, and manufacturing establishment is considered to contain numerous risks, especially functionality of supply chains (incoming flows and distribution) is one of the main reasons. Our longitudinal case study research confirms this, and shows how difficult it is to achieve comparable cost efficiency in Russia as compared to other factories inside of the same company, but operating in well-developed high-cost country. Due to this, and by the fact that foreign companies still favour export based strategies, we develop mathematical models to evaluate which foreign transit harbours would provide lowest distribution costs. Our research results show that only small number of seaports needs to be considered, if distribution costs are the only issue to be concerned.

Counselling encounters between banks and entrepreneurs: a gender perspective

Purpose – To examine how customers, both men and women entrepreneurs, perceive service quality of the latest counselling encounters with their banks, and to find out if men and women differ in their satisfaction for two or more counselling encounters.Design/methodology/approach – A combination of research methods is used. First, data have been collected through focus‐groups interviews in a pilot‐study; second, data have been collected through a survey study. The focus is on perceived service quality and customer satisfaction and further business, personal and situational factors are included. A total of 215 women and 487 men participated in the survey.Findings – There are few gender‐related significant differences among women and men in their perceptions of service quality, and no signs which indicate that women perceive the service quality as less good. One group of women, in retail services, has perceived the service quality as being significantly different and positive compared with a group of men. Fur...

Marketing strategy in emerging market alliance : A longitudinal study

By applying a longitudinal perspective, this study examines how an alliance formulates and implements its marketing strategy based on motives, resources, learning, network and performance, in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). An in-depth study on a Hungarian alliance between a Swedish medical engineering company and a local partner has been conducted. The data is collected in two periods: 1999 and 2009, and for the convenience of the analysis, the result has been presented in two phases. By comparing the phases, it is shown how the environment in which the alliance operates changes and how the alliance responses by improving its marketing strategy. Major variation of the strategy includes focus on small and dental clinics, development of intensive contacts with big hospitals to gain huge contracts after the reformation of the healthcare sector and finding a balance between lowering price and maintaining high quality of the products and services.