An examination of antecedents of international retail involvement

International retail expansion has become an increasingly viable strategic growth option for retail firms in developed and mature retail markets. As a result, an understanding of characteristics and behavior of retail firms expanding internationally becomes vital both for retail practitioners who need to make rational choices and for the academic community attempting to explain international marketing phenomena. The purpose of this research was to examine the present and anticipated international involvement of major retail organizations operating in the U.S., and to investigate the internal firm and industry specific determinants of international retail involvement (IRI). The concept of IRI has been defined as a market-serving involvement in retail activities in more than a single national environment. Grounded in the internationalization process theory, this study involved the development and testing of a model of IRI. The basic premise of the model was that the following six constructs act as antecedents to a retail chain's IRI: the retail differential advantage, the firm's knowledge, the firm's experience, the perceived attractiveness of international expansion, the domestic market growth opportunities and the retail firm size. The data was collected via mail-survey from an expert sample of retail executives with the strategic responsibility for a retail chain. Using a logistics regression as the primary statistical analytic method to test the proposed relationships, the results indicated that the model allows for a better prediction of IRI with the significant independent variables in the model than without them. The overall pattern of findings highlighted the pervasive influence of the firm's knowledge as indicated by its information seeking behavior, the firm's experience as indicated by its management capabilities, and the perceptions of attractiveness international expansion. Only a partial support was found for the role of a retail differential advantage and the firm's size in IRI. However, the lack of domestic growth opportunities and the firm's experience as measured by its foreign sourcing activities were not found to determine IRI in this study.