Entry Barriers and Market Entry Decisions

Many firms enter new markets each year in search of growth, but only a handful succeed. A major reason for failure is underestimation of market entry barriers and competitors' reactions to market entry. Thus the objective of this book is to help marketers make more informed market entry decisions. To that end, the authors provide a comprehensive discussion of market entry barriers in both domestic and international markets, as well as strategies for overcoming them.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the origins and nature of barriers, as well as a review of the existing literature on the subject. Chapter 2 concentrates on the differences between barriers in consumer and industrial markets in both early and late market entry situations. Barriers to entry in international markets are explained in Chapter 3. The timing of market entry is discussed in Chapter 4, where it is demonstrated that the nature of barriers changes in response to different stages of the product life cycle. Chapter 5 explores the relationship between exit and entry barriers and makes the case that the fear that market exit might be costly often plays an important role in market entry decisions. Chapter 6 examines the vital role of managerial consensus regarding market entry decisions. Chapter 7 explores profitability and other factors involved in early versus late market entry decisions. Strategies for overcoming barriers are covered in Chapter 8, and the book concludes with two Appendices that provide detailed market entry simulation exercises for domestic and international market.

FAHRI KARAKAYA is Associate Professor of Marketing and Director of the MBA program at University of Massachussetts, Dartmouth. He has published in the Journal of Marketing and other journals and presented scholarly papers at numerous national conferences. Prior to joining academia, he held several marketing management positions.

MICHAEL J. STAHL is Associate Dean for Research and External Affairs in the College of Business Administration at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. In the early 1970s, he was the program manager on the design and development of a communications satellite. He has published over thirty journal articles and several management books, including the Quorum book Competing Globally Through Customer Value (1991).