일본기업의 한국시장 진출형태에 관한 연구 - 진입형태 결정요인으로서의 수요특성 -

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to derive some hypotheses about the effects of demand characteristics on the determination of foreign entry modes. This research is not a hypotheses-testing type but a hypotheses-building type. Four Japanese firms and their Korean affiliates were investigated as the cases. These companies are material or part manufacturing companies in the semiconductor or automobile industry. Three existing theories were applied to explain the behaviors of the Japanese firms entering the Korean market: the eclectic theory by Dunning, the process model by Johanson and Vahlne, and the macro-economic approach by Kojima. In result, all the existing theories could explain only some portion of the firms' behaviors as they have not properly included demand characteristics as a determining factor of entry modes. Considering these limitation of existing research, this article presents two hypotheses, each of which emphasize either the importance of the customer in the world market or the technological interdependency between its own company and the customer.