A Configurational Perspective of Branding Capabilities Development in Emerging Economies: The Case of the Chinese Cellular Phone Industry

When the world’s markets converge with globalisation, firms are competing within and beyond national boundaries. In a global market, the multinational corporations (MNCs) from developed economies enter emerging economies, and local firms compete within or outside their domestic markets.1 Research on emerging economies has increasingly gained attention of researchers because the unique political, economic and institutional factors in these economies generate interesting research questions and provide rich contexts for theory development and theory testing.2,3 However, previous research in this domain tends to focus on MNCs with a static view of global competition.4–6 Research with a focus on the dynamics of global competition is needed in order to address the following three questions: First, what are the competitive advantages of MNCs that give rise to their market dominance when first entering emerging economies? Secondly, how do local firms develop and reconfigure their capabilities to compete with financial and marketing juggernauts like MNCs? Thirdly, how do MNCs and local firms learn from each other and develop their capabilities in response to rapid market and institution changes in emerging economies?