Why do Banks Internationalize? The Distinctive Strategy of a Brazilian Retail Bank

Informações

Código: ESO802
Divisão: ESO - Estratégia em Organizações
Tema de Interesse: ESO-A - Estratégia em Organizações

Autores

Sebastião Cunha, Dirk Michael Boehe

Resumo

Drawing on strategic management approaches and case research we develop a novel argumentexplaining the internationalization of retail banks. We argue that the internationalization ofservice firms may be motivated by the aim to strengthen their market position on the homemarket. This is different from previous research which has focused on the host country marketand has neglected the possible impacts of internationalization on the home market. The retailbank studied clearly combined a differentiation with a market niche (or focus) strategy in thatit offered a set of new value-added services as a “South American Bank”. We claim that ourcompetitive advantage argument is conceptually different from existing approaches such asthe follow-the-client, internalization or ownership advantage arguments. We further show thatthe international diversification and the beachhead arguments are a corollary of and to acertain extent compatible with our explanation.

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