'본글로벌(born global)전략'을 추구하는 벤처기업의 특성과 성과에 관한 연구

A Study on the Born Global Venture Corporation's Characteristics and Performance

기업 환경의 국제화에 따라 설립초기에 국제화를 시도하는 벤처 기업이 증가하고 있고 이러한 현상은 기존의 기업 국제화의 단계적인 모델로는 설명에 한계를 가진다. 소위 태생적 글로벌 벤처(born global venture; BGV)은 R&D 밀집도와 경쟁밀집도가 높은 하이테크 산업에서 많이 나타나며 기존의 실증 연구에서 BGV의 환경 및 기업의 역량 특성과 국제화에 따른 기업 성과에 대한 연구가 진행되어 왔다. 그러나 기업의 성과의 경우 실증적인 연구에서 상호 다른 결과를 보이고 있으며 기업의 성과에 중요한 영향을 미치는 마케팅 전략에 대한 논의가 부족했다고 판단된다. 이에 본 연구에서는 BGV에 포함되지 않는 기업(Non_BGV)에 비하여 BGV가 보유하고 있는 기업 역량과 마케팅 전략의 차이 및 BGV의 기업 성과를 성장성, 수익성, 시장 성과 측면에서 분석해 보았다. 결과적으로 BGV는 Non_BGV에 비하여 기업의 지식을 활용하는 능력 및 해외 경험에서 차이를 보였으며 두 기업군이 추구하는 마케팅 전략에서도 차이가 있음을 보였다. 또한 기업의 성과 측면에서는 성장성과 시장 성과에서는 BGV가 더 나은 성과를 보였으나 수익성 측면에서는 차이가 없는 것으로 분석되었다.

The international involvement of a firm has been described as a gradual development process "a process in which the enterprise gradually increases its international involvement in many studies. This process evolves in the interplay between the development of knowledge about foreign markets and operations on one hand and increasing commitment of resources to foreign markets on the other." On the basis of Uppsala internationalization model, many studies strengthen strong theoretical and empirical support. According to the predictions of the classic stages theory, the internationalization process of firms have been recognized and characterized gradual evolution to foreign markets, so called stage theory: indirect & direct export, strategic alliance and foreign direct investment. However, termed "international new ventures" (McDougall, Shane, and Oviatt 1994), "born globals" (Knight 1997; Knight and Cavusgil 1996; Madsen and Servais 1997), "instant internationals" (Preece, Miles, and Baetz 1999), or "global startups" (Oviatt and McDougall 1994) have been used and come into spotlight in internationalization study of technology intensity venture companies. Recent researches focused on venture company have suggested the phenomenons of 'born global' firms as a contradiction to the stages theory. Especially the article by Oviatt and McDougall threw the spotlight on international entrepreneurs, on international new ventures, and on their importance in the globalising world economy. Since venture companies have, by definition. lack of economies of scale, lack of resources (financial and knowledge), and aversion to risk taking, they have a difficulty in expanding their market to abroad and pursue internalization gradually and step by step. However many venture companies have pursued 'Born Global Strategy', which is different from process strategy, because corporate's environment has been rapidly changing to globalization. The existing studies investigate that (1) why the ventures enter into overseas market in those early stage, even in infancy, (2) what make the different international strategy among ventures and the born global strategy is better to the infant ventures. However, as for venture's performance(growth and profitability), the existing results do not correspond each other. They also, don't include marketing strategy (differentiation, low price, market breadth and market pioneer) that is important factors in studying of BGV's performance. In this paper I aim to delineate the appearance of international new ventures and the phenomenons of venture companies' internationalization strategy. In order to verify research problems, I develop a resource-based model and marketing strategies for analyzing the effects of the born global venture firms. In this paper, I suggested 3 research problems. First, do the korean venture companies take some advantages in the aspects of corporate's performances (growth, profitability and overall market performances) when they pursue internationalization from inception? Second, do the korean BGV have firm specific assets (foreign experiences, foreign orientation, organizational absorptive capacity)? Third, What are the marketing strategies of korean BGV and is it different from others? Under these problems, I test then (1) whether the BGV that a firm started its internationalization activity almost from inception, has more intangible resources(foreign experience of corporate members, foreign orientation, technological competences and absorptive capacity) than any other venture firms(Non_BGV) and (2) also whether the BGV's marketing strategies-differentiation, low price, market diversification and preemption strategy are different from Non_BGV. Above all, the main purpose of this research is that results achieved by BGV are indeed better than those obtained by Non_BGV firms with respect to firm's growth rate and efficiency. To do this research, I surveyed venture companies located in Seoul and Deajeon in Korea during November to December, 2005. I gather the data from 200 venture companies and then selected 84 samples, which have been founded during 1999${\sim}$2000. To compare BGV's characteristics with those of Non_BGV, I also had to classify BGV by export intensity over 50% among five or six aged venture firms. Many other researches tried to classify BGV and Non_BGV, but there were various criterion as many as researchers studied on this topic. Some of them use time gap, which is time difference of establishment and it's first internationalization experience and others use export intensity, ration of export sales amount divided by total sales amount. Although using a mixed criterion of prior research in my case, I do think this kinds of criterion is subjective and arbitrary rather than objective, so I do mention my research has some critical limitation in the classification of BGV and Non_BGV. The first purpose of research is the test of difference of performance between BGV and Non_BGV. As a result of t-test, the research show that there are statistically efficient difference not only in the growth rate (sales growth rate compared to competitors and 3 years averaged sales growth rate) but also in general market performance of BGV. But in case of profitability performance, the hypothesis that is BGV is more profit (return on investment(ROI) compared to competitors and 3 years averaged ROI) than Non-BGV was not supported. From these results, this paper concludes that BGV grows rapidly and gets a high market performance (in aspect of market share and customer loyalty) but there is no profitability difference between BGV and Non_BGV. The second result is that BGV have more absorptive capacity especially, knowledge competence, and entrepreneur's international experience than Non_BGV. And this paper also found BGV search for product differentiation, exemption strategy and market diversification strategy while Non_BGV search for low price strategy. These results have never been dealt with other existing studies. This research has some limitations. First limitation is concerned about the definition of BGV, as I mentioned above. Conceptually speaking, BGV is defined as company pursue internationalization from inception, but in empirical study, it's very difficult to classify between BGV and Non_BGV. I tried to classify on the basis of time difference and export intensity, this criterions are so subjective and arbitrary that the results are not robust if the criterion were changed. Second limitation is concerned about sample used in this research. I surveyed venture companies just located in Seoul and Daejeon and also use only 84 samples which more or less provoke sample bias problem and generalization of results. I think the more following studies that focus on ventures located in other region, the better to verify the results of this paper.