Order, positioning, scope and outcomes of market entry

This research aims to analyze the relationships between three dimensions of the market entry strategy for new products – order, positioning and scope – and four dimensions of performance – customer satisfaction, competitive position, costs and profitability. The consideration of internal links between the entry dimensions, together with their effect on the different performance variables, will enable us to determine the existence of mediating effects, which up until now have barely been examined in the literature. We test our model on a cross-sectional sample of 136 manufacturing firms, applying structural equation modeling based on the Partial Least Squares (PLS) methodology. Our findings reveal that all the three strategic decisions included in our model of market entry do affect performance, although their influence changes according to the performance dimension being measured.