The uncertain opportunity to internationalize : - A study of Inward-Oriented Internationalization

Abstract: The internationalization process is usually viewed from an outward- perspective ininternational business literature. In this thesis the focus is put on an outward-inwardinterrelationship perspective. An extensive literature review from literature in internationalbusiness literature, entrepreneurial literature as well as international marketing literature wasconducted in order to extract key variables that affect the process of internationalization of thefirm. The key variables that were examined were: Business Contacts, InternationalExperience, Perceived International Opportunity and Perceived International Uncertainty.A qualitative interview with semi-structured questions was conducted in order to construct amodel that should be used as the basis for a quantitative study of an inward-driveninternationalization process, in order to generalize. The results were in line with thepropositions based on the relationships between the variables. In other words, the constructedmodel and the developed questionnaire were of use when examining the relationship betweenthe variables and seem to be of value when applied to an inward oriented context. Thevariable International Experience received the highest score and seemed to reflect animportant contribution for the internationalization process. Nevertheless, further quantitativeresearch is asked for, in order to support the results and be able to generalize.