Conference Agenda

The paper investigates the internationalization pathways of luxury SMEs in terms of timing, scale, and scope. The paper adopts a multiple case study approach and reports findings from four cases of Italian SMEs operating in the luxury fashion industry. Luxury SMEs show precocity in their internationalization and view the global market as a primary target since the beginning; they consistently uphold a global image and possess global genetics over time through specific scope and scale of internationalization; their internationalization is driven by the necessity to avoid the costs associated with not being recognized as a global player in the market. The paper expands the knowledge on the internationalization of luxury companies, whose globality is usually taken for granted. The simultaneous presence in several global markets legitimizes the luxury character of the brand and strengthens the recognition of its excellence.

The paper aims to explore the connections between immigrant-led enterprises’ network patterns and their entrepreneurial marketing capabilities, including marketing innovativeness and opportunity focus. A CATI survey has been conducted among 85 Georgian entrepreneurs operating in Poland's food and beverage production, catering/restaurant services, and retail services.

To assess the differences in the network patterns and the differences in entrepreneurial marketing capabilities of the studied firms, we applied the Hartigan-Wong K-mean clustering algorithm, and we extracted three clusters from the sample based on the gap statistic criterion. The analysis evidenced that immigrant entrepreneurs with the most significant bridging network in the host country show higher marketing innovativeness than the remaining firms. The opportunity identification by immigrant entrepreneurs is stimulated both by their bonding as well as by their bridging network. A surprising finding was that all respondents perceived competitors as significant in their marketing success abroad.

This systematic-narrative hybrid literature review article aims to summarize the literature (journal articles and book chapters) on Central and Eastern European (CEE) firms’ outward internationalization failures: definitions and understandings of “failure”, “failed” firms’ internationalization processes, causes of “failed” initial and subsequent foreign activities, and consequences of “failed” internationalization. It demonstrates that different objective and subjective measures were used for defining and measuring “failure”. Consensus regarding which firms (from slow internationalizers to born globals) can be considered “failed” is lacking. In different studies, internal and external causes of CEE firms’ outward internationalization “failure”, and internationalization-related and other consequences of “failed” internationalization also vary considerably. Due to the complexity of the “failure” phenomenon, it is impossible to identify the most characteristic type of “failed” internationalization or offer “optimal” advice for avoiding them.