International expansion strategies: developing some research propositions on the scope and speed of the path of internationalization

The purpose of this chapter is to define a typology of international expansion strategies accounting for antecedents (potentially conscious or subconscious) that influence exports marketing managers' decisions, thereby formulating a new theoretical framework to bridge the current theory-practice gap in international expansion. Based on the dimensions of the internationalization path, this chapter defines a typology of strategic alternatives which depicts how a firm's expansion to international markets relates to the number of markets and to the time frame of internationalization. The authors postulate a typology of firms’ strategic expansion and approach to international markets that is influenced by product’s factors, firm's dynamism and innovativeness, firm's approach to markets, firm's strength of dominance, and level of foreign market development.