ABSTRACT
This study deals with the process of the cross-border transfer of business models in retailing based on the case of the Seven-Eleven Japan Co. Ltd (SEJ), which first imported the business model of the convenience store from the US and later transferred it to China. The existing literature on retail internationalization suggests that it is important to move beyond the concept of internationalization as an operation of stores in a country other than that which the firm's headquarters is based. Dawson (2007) is of the opinion that this is a rather narrow view of internationalization in a continually consumer driven global economy, with increasing convergence of information and communication technologies which enable effective management of large networked retail firms. In such a context it is an imperative to take a process based view of internationalization which has implications through all the stages in the core value chain of the retailer, from sourcing through to logistics, store operations, property management to customer relationships (Dawson and Mukoyama 2006). The empirically grounded indepth case study on the internationalization of Seven Eleven convenience stores in Japan and China examines the aforementioned processes in detail, thereby addressing an area of retail internationalization which has received scant attention in the literature so far.
