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Entry barriers of small and medium‐sized software firms in the Japanese market
Author(s) -
Ojala Arto,
Tyrväinen Pasi
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
thunderbird international business review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.553
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1520-6874
pISSN - 1096-4762
DOI - 10.1002/tie.20167
Subject(s) - software , business , industrial organization , market size , personalization , production (economics) , domestic market , barriers to entry , marketing , commerce , market structure , international trade , economics , computer science , macroeconomics , programming language
The Japanese software market size was U.S. $131,773 million in 2004. Due to limited domestic software production, Japan is highly dependent on imported software products. Despite the market potential for foreign software firms in Japan, almost no research exists on what kind of challenges foreign software firms encounter when they are entering the market. To fill this gap, this article investigates the entry barriers of small and medium‐sized software firms in the Japanese market by using a multicase study. The findings suggest that most of the barriers are firm‐specific and mainly related to firms' resources and capabilities to operate in the market. The entry barriers encountered also seem to differ somewhat from earlier investigations, which have mainly targeted large manufacturing firms. The new observations included common barriers related to the intensive information flow of customization and localization needs and market requirements of software products. The findings are useful for both practice and further research. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.