Gaining and sustaining first mover advantage in the growing market (a case of international companies operating in the market of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region)

Abstract

The objective of the master’s thesis is to explore factors responsible for a company gaining and sustaining first mover advatnage in the growing market, and to illustrate them on the example of international companies operating in Russia that have production facilities in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region that entered the Russian market at different periods of time –the 1990s, and the first decade of the 21st century. The tasks of the paper were to explore types of first mover advantage, and ways to measure it, analyze sources of first mover advantage in market and non-market environment of business, identify opportunities and challenges of doing business in emerging markets for first movers, and identify sources of first mover advantage based on the literature review of major works in the area, and conduct an empirical research to compare those sources with the factors responsible for gaining and sustaining FMA on the example of two international companies running operations in the market of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, namely companies working in tobacco and automobile industry. As a result of research an integrative framework has been developed. It is based on extensive literature review (59 sources), and is tested on the cases of two companies – JTI and Ford – operating in Russia.