Preferences and Performance of International Strategies in Retail Sectors: An Empirical Study

This study examines the international strategies of retailers that have been internationalising aggressively, especially since the 1990s. By applying the Integration-Responsiveness (I-R) framework, we hypothesise that retailers use all four strategies (international, global, multinational and transnational) but that their preferences for these strategies vary across retail sectors (food and non-food). From the inter-sector-based and sector-specific perspectives, we also hypothesise that the strategies correspond to different levels of performance. Based on extensive pre-tests, in-depth face-to-face interviews with 112 executives in 90 retailing firms' headquarters and a two-tailed measurement of the framework dimensions, the results support most of our hypotheses. Thus, for both scholars and managers, this study provides, for the first time, empirical insights into successful international strategies for retailers.