Identification and measurement of international strategy over time: the colour television business from 1960 to 1982

Byrne, John (1987) Identification and measurement of international strategy over time: the colour television business from 1960 to 1982. Doctoral thesis, University of London: London Business School.

Abstract

This thesis is about the measurement of firms' international strategies as they are indicated in actual results. It examines the changing international strategies and the relative performance of the ten leading firms in the consumer colour television (CTV) receiver business from 1960 to 1982. Previous publications on international strategy have suffered from a lack of detailed empirical research and have focused their attention on ex ante strategy prescription. Neither academic researcher7s n7o-rfirms appear to have developed any methodology for plotting the on-going competitive game. This thesis adopted a minimal data approach to study the evolution of global competition. Four main indicators of international strategy were selected: sales volume, sales value, production volume and production value. To construct a longitudinal database for the research, these indicators were measured annually for each of the ten firms in seven territories. The firms' , de facto international - strategies and their relative performance in the global competition were then studied ex Post through three main research objectives and seven subsidiary objectives by reference to the minimal data set. There were two main findings of the research. Firstly, the study found a correlation between the de facto international strategies of the firms and their relative performance in the global competition. Firms which adopted strategies of selling globally in all markets, but which limited production to their major markets, were characterised by more stable global competitive success over time than all the other firms. Firms which adopted geographic focus strategies, serving a single market throughout the period studied, were characterised by poorer performance in the global competition than the other firms. Secondly, the study found that the availability of data to identify and measure international strategy was very limited both in the public domain and within the firms themselves. Without the data to research international strategy, firms must be limited in their choice of strategies. The minimal data approach adopted for this research was of value in providing a detailed ex post explanation of the global competition. It shows promise as a research*technique to measure international strategy and as a practical tool to develop global competitor monitoring systems both for'academic researchers and for decision makers in business. The de facto international different from the ex ante' writers. In addition, the associated with success in to have evolved over time strategies. strategies strategies de facto L the global rather than observed here were proposed by previous nternational strategies competition were found remain as fixed, one-off strategies.