PB2B

E-Commerce and Foreign retailers might not sound like it, but they have much more in common than you might think. As much as they are different from one another, as E-Commerce is internet based and foreign retailers may exist anywhere around the country, both markets experience the same struggles by entering preexisting foundations. Ecommerce and foreign retailer startups provoke a change in a market whenever any new business is entering the field. First foreign grocery retails enters the Finnish market—a stakeholder model written by Outi Uusitalo and E-commerce technology adaptation: A Malaysian grocery SME retail sector study written by Shareah Kurnia both study how a new business enters a previously established market and its transition towards success or failure.

            The study on E-commerce is important so that industries can see what works and what does not. They are made up of small and medium enterprises known as SMEs. E-commerce business are ran online using the internet. These businesses have become relevant within the millennial era as internet usage keeps on expanding. Creating a small business online takes seconds and can be free for the most part. While advanced countries like the United States are settling in with E-commerce business’ well, foreign markets are having a more difficult time adjusting to the scene. Kurnia focus’ primarily on the grocery market and their advancement in technological E-commerce. In other words, how can online business’ keep up with actual built stores? While in more prominent and developed countries E-commerce can boom, other developing countries may be set back due to the lack of present technology.

            Uusitalo’s article has a similar idea and has similar research questions regarding transition into a new market. Uusitalo goes into depth of the host market. He questions and analyzes how a foreign business will enter another country and how it will produce in it. What will be risked and what could become a positive outcome of gambling and moving across the seas. It is similar to Kurnia’s research questions as both topics regard a new foundation in the grocery market. Both research questions are based around a new type of market entering a preexisting one.

            Kurnia began her research by studying how foreign countries would adopt the new technological movement. Her research featured countries such as Australia, Malaysia, South Africa, and more. Each country was then decided on and was given its pros and cons whether they are able to adopt E-commerce or not. Kurnia focused her study on Malaysian grocery stores. She focused her studies based around the country because of the governmental acceptance and support for SMEs. Sending out a questionnaire, she came back with different constructs on how and why ecommerce can help stores expand. Her findings help her understand how and if ecommerce can survive in developing countries and if it can, how will it make an impact on them.

            Uusitalo’s research has four questions; What are the stages of the entry process into a foreign market?, Which are the main stakeholders during the different stages?, How do the stakeholder groups react towards the entrant?, and What are the stakeholders’ roles and motives? Uusitalo focus’ on how new grocery firms advance and how stakeholders react to the growth into a host country. He states that the process of entry of a foreign retailer consists of three stages being the antecedent, operational, and settling. For his research, data was collected in published Finnish newpaper and business magazines. They also collected minutes of the municpial board and planning committee meetings. The last type of data collected was from a discussion group of a national tabloid newspaper.

            Both articles researched studied the impact of how a new business would function and regulate in a new market. Technological advancement and ecommerce have the protentional to make business’ boom and to help them grow. The affordance that came out of Kurnia’s article included having well established tables and examples to help her study. It would have helped her research tremendously if she was to use a larger sample group and not just a small number of stores. The larger the sample, the more accurate her results could have been. She also included the negatives and the positives that would come out from the increase of SMEs and their use of ecommerce. This article was primarily aimed at new SMEs and the people that study the market. On the other side, Uusitalo’s article was strong in regards to providing tables with examples and discussing how a new competitor entering a foregin market could poise difficulties for the company and the stakeholders themselves. Uusitalo wanted to target new business incomers and stakeholders. Both writers summarized their articles towards the end of each providing the negatives and the positives from their own research and noting readers what they found from their studies.

            I noticed how similar their tables were. It was almost like they wrote one another’s articles. I found them to be both very intriguing and somewhat difficult of articles to comprehend. Both used many details and specifics to get their point across. I found it interesting how small Kurnia broke down the ecommerce effectiveness towards each country. She explained the pros and cons due to difficulty of technological advancement in developing nations.