ABSTRACT
As exemplified by the sheer volume of academic research published on this one topic alone, market entry is the fulcrum of international business (IB) studies, justifying this chapter’s central positioning within the textbook. After all, in its simplest expression, the entire discipline revolves around the actions taken and decisions made by entrepreneurial interests seeking to operate outside of their original domestic borders. The chapter is written with both these aspects in mind, starting with a review of the seminal construct formulated to conceptualise commitment to internationalisation attitudes, namely Uppsala theory, recently modified to internalise insights derived from Network theory. The rest of the analysis applies a decision-making ladder that starts with the choice between going abroad via trade (import/export) versus foreign direct investment (FDI) and in the latter case, whether theFDI in question is to be done on a greenfield or brownfield basis: with or without a partner; and with or without a capital investment.
