Masaaki Kotabe

Masaaki Kotabe
Temple University | TU · Department of Strategic Management

Ph.D., Michigan State Univ.

About

208
Publications
296,904
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Introduction
Masaaki Kotabe is currently an affiliate professor of marketing and international business at the Shidler College of Business at University of Hawaii at Manoa. In 2021-24, he held a joint appointment at University of Hawaii at Manoa and at the School of Commerce, Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan until his retirement from Waseda in 2024. Previously, he held the Washburn Chair Professorship at the Fox School of Business at Temple University in 1998-2021, and the Ambassador Edward Clark Centennial
Additional affiliations
August 1998 - December 2012
Temple University
Position
  • The Washburn Chair Professor of International Business and Marketing
August 1990 - August 1998
University of Texas at Austin
Position
  • Professor of Marketing and Ambassador Edward Clark Centennial Fellow
August 1986 - July 1990
University of Missouri
Position
  • University of Missouri-Columbia

Publications

Publications (208)
Chapter
Management practices and orientation need to change when the climate of the time in which firms operate changes. In the 1980s–early 1990s when the world enjoyed a broad economic growth on a global scale, Japanese management practices were admired in awe around the world. Despite such admiration, however, Japanese firms, on average, tended to have m...
Chapter
We write this retrospective piece on our article, “Trust and Performance in Cross-Border Marketing Relationships: A Behavioral Approach,” (Aulakh et al. 1996; hereafter, referred to as the ‘1996 Trust Paper’) after more than twenty-five years since its publication in the Journal of International Business Studies Special Issue on cooperative strateg...
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Existing research on international partnerships focuses primarily on the ex ante structuring of interorganizational relationships. This study departs from this research by taking a behavioral approach to understand the ex post maintenance of cross-border marketing partnerships. A conceptual model is developed by identifying the antecedents of trust...
Article
Purpose The problem statement is how to identify and analyze the corporate risks involved in the relationships with external agents involved in the open product innovation process (OPIP)? Seeking to extend this investigation, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the enterprise risks identified in corporate relations with external agents of the O...
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Digital transformation has a significant impact on firm internationalization. This paper aims to provide a systematic literature review to analyze two decades of literature on key issues related to digital transformation at the individual, firm, and macro (international) levels and its impact on firms’ internationalization process. We show the impa...
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As the sharing economy has grown rapidly and replaced the traditional businesses, new rules and norms for data and digital trade have emerged divergently in many countries. Such divergence in global e-commerce policies may be a major barrier to the internationalization of the sharing economy business. This paper aims to develop an internationalizat...
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Startups in the Brazilian organizational scenario have been growing fast and understanding these startups' internationalization strategies have been highly relevant. Such startups have developed a social, environmental, and economic impact solution that had the support of government programs in its internationalization process, seeking to understan...
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Purpose The purpose of this paper was to present the stages of the Brazilian startups' organizational life cycle (OLC), identifying and describing the main factors related to the entrepreneurial and organizational perspectives, as well as the factors related to external relationship agents and the associated risks at each OLC stage. In addition, th...
Chapter
An understanding of the environment is important for the marketer. Social, technological, economic, political, and ecological factors can have a major impact on the firm’s opportunities and threats. Key social and cultural elements to consider are the redefinition of occupations, a societal trend toward postmaterialism, and major demographic shifts...
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Advertising represents the talking part of the dialogue referred to in ► Sect. 12.2. In practice, this process is much more complex, as is hinted at by the encoding/decoding model.
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The good or service as seen by the consumer constitutes much more than just a physical core product; all the intangibles that accompany the product form the package. The product audit is used to explore what this package comprises. The Ansoff Matrix looks at the four main growth strategies and demonstrates the increase in risk as a company moves fr...
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Marketing is a particularly practical business discipline. There may be many definitions of marketing, but all of them consider the customer to be the focus of decision-making, and all of them describe the dialogue between the producer and the customer—increasingly as it takes place in a global context. Marketing efforts vary, depending on the diff...
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In most organizations, the main marketing resource is the salesforce. This resource is qualitatively different than almost all other marketing activities because of its dependence on relationships between individuals. The role of the salesforce mainly covers prospecting, selling, and supporting.
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Remaining vigilant in changes in the diverse market environment is instrumental to proactively meet customers’ needs, wants, and expectations. In this chapter, we have first discussed environmental changes from the contexts of technological environment, financial environment, regulatory environment, societal environment, geopolitical environment, c...
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Distribution comprises channels and supply chain management. Channels deal with institutional linkages such as retailers and wholesalers, whereas supply chain management addresses the processes underlying these linkages, such as warehousing, transportation, and inventory management, and connects them from the supplier to the end user. The objective...
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Markets can be defined in a number of ways, but for a marketer, the key definition is in defining who the customer is. Even so, there are different categories: (1) customers, (2) users, and (3) prospects. This categorization leads to the concepts of penetration and brand (market) share.
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Focus on the buyer is the key dimension of marketing and is what sets the discipline apart from all other business fields. The marketer must therefore understand how buyers come to the decision to purchase a product. This decision-making process is a complex one, both for consumers who are end users and for industrial buyers. For consumers, the pro...
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As a method of promotion, precision marketing is likely to expand significantly because of the explosive growth of the internet and data collection techniques needed to drive it. Precision marketing is best evidenced by direct mail activity and telesales.
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Short term—For capacity loading, information transmission, and control
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In general, the use of plans conveys a number of advantages: (1) consistency, (2) responsibility, (3) communication, and (4) commitment.
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The theory of new products or new services starts with a gap analysis, which looks to the following: (1) usage gap, (2) distribution gap, (3) product gap, and (4) competitive gap. In practice, much organizational development effort is devoted to modification of existing successful products or services by feature modification, quality modification,...
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Much of pricing theory is derived from economics, especially from supply and demand theory. This information is encapsulated in the famous demand and supply curves. The price is set by the point where the curves intersect. The degree to which demand is susceptible to price changes (price elasticity of demand) is another concept borrowed from econom...
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This chapter explored the search for information about the customer and the market. This constitutes the listening part of the marketing dialogue. Marketing research is also needed to assist managers in the decision-making process and to analyze organizational performance. To be viable, however, the benefits derived from marketing research need to...
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Purpose This study aims to investigate the risks associated with managing the dispersed knowledge in inter-organizational arrangements for innovation. Specifically, it proposes a model to analyze the knowledge management risks in open innovation, applied in four steps. Design/methodology/approach Initially, the authors carried out a systematic lit...
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This teaching case presents the company Bia Brazil, one of the leading Brazilian exporters of activewear, founded in 1994 by a former gymnast, Beatriz, with websites in Portuguese, English, and Spanish. In 1996, the first exports to Costa Rica took place. Over the years, the company has expanded its sales to over 40 countries. The company seeks the...
Book
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This core textbook provides students with comprehensive insights on the classical and contemporary marketing theories and their practical implications. A fourth, revised edition of Marketing Management, the text features new classical and contemporary cases, new interdisciplinary and cross-functional implications of business management theories, co...
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Purpose This study aims to investigate how relational resources, such as the buyer’s trust in its suppliers and the level of supplier involvement, affect the level of tacit knowledge integration capabilities (TKICs) of the firm, which, in turn, is hypothesized to affect business performance. Design/methodology/approach Based on the dynamic capabil...
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This study empirically examines the role of founder ethnic composition in international new venture (INV) strategy choice and performance. We find that new ventures with more immigrant entrepreneurs on the founding team have an advantage of pursuing an INV strategy to generate higher revenues. Moreover, new ventures with an ethnically diversified f...
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As scholars have examined the antecedents, processes, and performance of early internationalizing firms in the past three decades, the domain has become a full-fledged research field. However, extant reviews have not yet provided a comprehensive picture of the determinants of early internationalizing firms and their performance although it is a rel...
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Research summary The purpose of this study is to develop a behavioral framework for management decision‐making under bounded rationality to analyze foreign direct investments and political risks in host countries. This study shows that managers construct reference points on political risks and assess actual political risks in host countries relativ...
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Concurrent sourcing is critical to multinational firms’ operations in emerging economies, such as China. Despite its prominence, research is lacking on the underlying conditions and performance implications of this strategy. We investigate the driving factors of multinational firms’ concurrent sourcing strategy and test whether concurrent sourcing...
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Full-text available
Management practices and orientation need to change when the climate of the time in which firms operate change. In the 1980s–early 1990s when the world enjoyed a broad economic growth on a global scale, Japanese management practices were once admired in awe around the world. Since the Japanese economy began to slip into a decade-long recessionary e...
Article
Full-text available
While Japan is one of the most innovative countries in the world, it has experienced a prolonged stagnant economic growth in the last 20 years. The development of new products and/or services has become critical for future economic growth. However, we know little about how individuals disseminate and legitimize inventions for new product and/or ser...
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the main barriers, practices, methods and knowledge management tools in startups that are characterized as agile organizations with dynamic capabilities to meet the demands of a business environment of high volatility, uncertainties, complexity and ambiguity. Design/methodology/approach The conceptua...
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Increased global sourcing of manufacturing and service activities from independent suppliers has been a prominent part of the restructuring of firms’ supply chains since the 1980s. Academics and consulting companies have advocated global sourcing as one of the key drivers of superior corporate strategy that has a direct impact on marketing performa...
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Purpose The volatile scenario of technological innovation demonstrates the need for risk control processes, in order to ensure its viability. The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for risk management in the introduction of new technologies by start-ups, aiming to provide the guidelines for the improvement of this process....
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Research Summary This article tests real options theory predictions that uncertainty and flexibility are key value drivers for offshore outsourcing moderated by switching costs. Examining firm‐specific and market data for outsourcing cases by U.S. firms, we find that the impact of market and environmental uncertainty and flexibility on outsourcing...
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide insights from the upper echelon, agency, and organizational identification literatures to help explain cross-cultural differences in top management team pay. Design/methodology/approach This is a theoretical paper building upon the executive compensation literature examining US and Japanese pay sch...
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In today's volatile global marketplace, firms should pursue flexible asset distribution and high-quality and low-cost manufacturing operations simultaneously. Previous studies examined the relationships between supplier management-related variables and market performance with cross-sectional data; however, little guidance is available for how newly...
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Purpose: This paper examines the statistical relationship between outbound Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and firm performance. We focus on how the link is influenced by sector-specific differences and geographical factors. Methodology: We compile a time-series cross-sectional dataset that includes financial variables and FDI activities of South K...
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Immigrant-started new ventures face the liability of ethnicity because of their founders’ disadvantaged immigration status. It is extremely difficult for them to acquire human, social and financial capital and access market in founders’ country of residence to survive. This study empirically examines the survival of immigrant-started new ventures....
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One of the emerging phenomena of global competition is the increasing number of business innovations originating from emerging economies and dispersing to developed nations. This phenomenon also known as Reverse Innovation is recently being observed by large MNCs operating in developing nations. Another set of key players and perhaps initiators of...
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By incorporating institutional theory with the dynamic capability perspective, we investigate how emerging-market firms’ organizational capability to acquire resources through political networking with government officials complements their absorptive capacity in enhancing incremental and radical innovations. We further investigate the conditions u...
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Over the past few decades, outsourcing, in particular off-shore outsourcing, has become a widely used means for firms to improve their performance. Outsourcing helps lower the firm's breakeven point and improve its return on invest-ment. As a result, many firms have increased their outsourc-ing activities. In our studies we find that although firms...
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Although empirical work has examined differences between salesmen and saleswomen on various aspects, no comprehensive study has examined gender-based distinctions in salespeople's work motivation. The paucity of research attention on this topic is surprising given the plethora of literature in organizational behavior. This paper reports the results...
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Much research attention has been directed over the past twenty-five years to ethical issues in marketing. One area of marketing that is gaining research interest is the selling arena. Despite the extant literature on selling ethics, few studies have focused on identifying situations that pose ethical problems for field sales personnel. This paper r...
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The prominence of Emerging Market Multinational Companies (EMNCs) in the global marketplace has challenged our assumptions about the nature of global competition and corresponding strategy. We use an inductive approach to conduct historical analysis of eight companies that originated from key emerging markets viz China and India. We examine the var...
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Significant scholarly attention in international business has been paid to cross-border movements of financial capital through foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, and international entrepreneurship. The transnational flows of people and the different types of capital that they possess have received lesser attention. Communication and t...
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This study examines the export strategies of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the financial and non-financial aspects of their export performance. Hypotheses derived from previous studies and the unique characteristics of SMEs were empirically examined in a sample of Korean manufacturing SMEs. Findings suggest that the differentiation strate...
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Full-text available
Over the past few decades, outsourcing, in particular offshore outsourcing, has become a widely used means for firms to improve their performance. Outsourcing helps lower the firm's breakeven point and improve its return on investment. As a result, many firms have increased their outsourcing activities. In our studies we find that although firms ma...
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Full-text available
We investigate trust relationships between senior business executives and their overseas partners. Drawing on the similarity-attraction paradigm, social categorization theory, and the distinction between cognition- and affect-based trust, we argue that executives trust their overseas partners differently, depending on the partners’ cultural ethnici...
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As monitoring mechanisms are critical to exporter-distributor relationships, the effectiveness of different types of monitoring mechanisms remains an important issue. Our study goes beyond the separate effects of monitoring mechanisms on opportunism, and tests the moderating effects of market orientation (MO) and norm-based information exchange on...
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Purpose Through a comprehensive literature review and data analysis, the purpose of this paper is to adopt a multi‐perspective interrelation of different dimensions of existing theory to eventually bridge the fields of political and business marketing, identify the underlying causes of voter behaviour, and distil the critical factors of small polit...
Article
Almost all managers have directly or indirectly been involved in the practice of outsourcing in recent years. But as they know, outsourcing is not straightforward. Outsourcing inertia, when companies are slow to adapt to changing circumstances that accommodate higher outsourcing levels, may undermine a firm’s performance. This article investigates...
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Despite the acknowledgement of functional integration as an important driver of new product development (NPD) success and the growing recognition of the significance of industrial design (ID), the integration between industrial design and other functional units in NPD has been rarely researched. In this article, we examine the marketing and ID inte...
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Our study focuses on the internal process through which market orientation influences performance in export markets, and develops a model of market orientation–marketing capabilities–competitive advantages–performance relationships. Using survey data of 491 export ventures based in China, we find that marketing capabilities mediate the market orien...
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Many firms rely on external sources to acquire knowledge that is critical for enhancing new product market performance. Using a sample of 121 emerging multinational corporations (EMNCs) from China, we explore the effects of managerial ties with government officials and foreign MNC partners on knowledge acquisition and investigate how the acquired k...
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Over the past few decades, outsourcing has become a widely used and researched means for firms to change their performance. In this article, we attempt to link outsourcing to the market success of firms, specifically their market share. We argue that although firms may be able to increase their market share through outsourcing, this is only true up...
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We integrated the resource-, institution-, and industry-based views to investigate the determinants of export propensity and export intensity, and examined performance outcomes of firms’ export behaviors using the longitudinal data of 18,644 domestic private enterprises and foreign wholly owned subsidiaries in China from 2001 to 2005. We found that...
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Breakthrough innovations are difficult to create, yet they are critical to long-term competitive advantage. This highlights the considerable opportunities and risks that face corporate entrepreneurs. We study the complex explorative and exploitative entrepreneurial processes of multinational firms operating in the global pharmaceutical industry. We...
Article
Breakthrough innovations are difficult to create; yet they are critical to long term competitive advantage. This highlights the considerable opportunities and risks that face corporate entrepreneurs. We study the complex explorative and exploitative entrepreneurial processes of multinational firms operating in the global pharmaceutical industry. We...
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Full-text available
This research contributes to the understanding of global sourcing strategy of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBSs) by offering an explanation for the differential performance among firms, even when they use similar global sourcing strategies. Using a systems integrator as the sourcing firm's perspective, the authors argue that complex KIBS...
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This study asks how a firm's degree of outsourcing across all activities influences financial performance. We argue there is an optimal degree of outsourcing, where firms outsource some activities yet integrate others, and that deviations lower performance in a negatively curvilinear fashion. We find empirical support, using 1995 and 1998 data on a...
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In this study we developed a model of the dynamic capability development mechanisms in Emerging Market manufacturing Firms (EMF). We identified three dynamic capability development mechanisms: organizational learning, reverse engineering, and manufacturing flexibility. We generated hypotheses based on this framework, linking these mechanisms with f...
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International business research is probably more influenced by various forces of the economic and political climates than its domestic (or generic) counterpart. The emergence of new market economies in Eastern Europe, China, India, and Brazil, the consolidation of the European Union, as well as a decade of economic stagnation and recent resurgence...
Book
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In an internationally minded and detailed analysis, the contributors seek to examine the state of the art in research in international marketing, with particular emphasis on the conceptual framework and theory development in the field. Looking at new research, formative and fundamental literature and the nature of strategic alliance and global stra...
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Full-text available
Increased global sourcing of manufacturing and service activities has been a prominent part of the restructuring of firms' supply chains in the 1990s and beyond. Academics and consultancy firms have largely supported the view of global sourcing as one of the key drivers of superior performance. As we are now increasingly discovering, the drawbacks...
Article
An important component of globalization during the last two decades is the increased participation of developing economies in the global