Swedish Music and Fashion - a Global Passion? : Swedish Gorn Globals: Where do they go and why?

Abstract: This Master Thesis discusses the phenomenon of Born Globals, i.e. companies which internationalise at an early stage and view the whole world as their playing field. Most definitions of Born Globals only regard the international output of a company. We have chosen to consider the international input as well. The definition of Born Globals used in our study is: ´a firm that from its inception derives competitive advantages from the use of resources and the sales of outputs in multiple countries´. These are the research questions: 1. Which countries/markets do the Swedish Born Globals trade in, input and output? 2. Why have the companies entered these countries/markets? 3. Does culture influence the decision of which countries/markets to go into? How? A purpose of this thesis is to contribute new knowledge within this subject. And since most research about Born Globals has been focused on the high-technology sector, we have as an alternative, selected two industries within the Experience Economy; music and fashion. We examined research question number 1 through a quantitative process; a telephone survey including ten Swedish Born Global companies from each industry. Furthermore, we approached research questions 2 and 3 through a qualitative manner using in-depth interviews with two companies from each industry. Theories chosen for this thesis are: the Uppsala School, the Transaction Cost Analysis, the Network, the Born Global, the Social Capital, the Marker Size, the Push and Pull and the Country Cluster theories. In conclusion, the largest output countries for the music business are Germany, the U.S., Japan and England. On the input side, the most common markets are England/UK, the U.S. and Germany. In the fashion business, the most common markets for output are Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, England/UK, Greece and Japan. The largest markets for input are Portugal, Italy and China. The music companies put forward a number of reasons for the most common output markets: openness to new music, large market potential, geographical closeness, similar music style, contacts and the use of a country as a “springboard” to enter other markets. The fashion companies gave a number of reasons for the most common output markets: geographical and cultural proximity, networks and similar fashion style. Reasons on the input side are: history in textile manufacturing, flexibility, quality, contacts, networks, coincidence, reputation and low cost. All respondents agreed that culture influences the decisions of which countries to enter as well as which markets to stay away from. In the Final Discussion we have presented an inductive model called the Born Global Four-Fielder. This model considers the international input and output sides equally important.