Imitation and speed of the internationalisation process: an analysis of market selection process

The role of speed in the internationalisation process of firms is increasingly becoming an important research question for international business scholars. In this regard, prior research raised the importance of experiential knowledge for understanding internationalisation speed, but neglected other sources of knowledge acquisition in the internationalisation process. This paper addresses this gap by examining the impact of inter-organisational imitation on the speed at which firms locate their operations in foreign markets. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 479 Spanish international firms covering a 23-year period (1986-2008). The results show that a higher number of prior entries carried out by firms from the same industry and home country accelerated the speed of international operations. Besides, the results reveal a curvilinear relationship between the number of prior entries and the speed of locating operations in targeted foreign markets. The results suggest that the impact of imitation on the speed of international operations decreases when the targeted foreign market becomes less attractive due to saturation.