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Mimetic and experiential effects in international marketing alliance formations of US pharmaceuticals firms: An event history analysis

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Abstract

Alliances are recognized as an indispensable tool for managers operating in a global business environment, and as a fundamental stage of the internationalization process of the firm. Drawing on a co-evolutionary framework, this article investigates the mimetic and experiential effects in international alliance formation. We focus on a critical unresolved issue in the literature: what is the role of mimetic behavior and previous alliance experience in mitigating the uncertainty associated with engaging in cross-border operations? An event history analysis of 792 international marketing alliance formations initiated by 317 firms in the US pharmaceutical industry is employed to test the hypotheses. The findings of two different hazard rate models reveal significant complex effects of density and cross-border alliance experience on the propensity to engage in new international marketing alliances.

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Acknowledgements

The valuable comments of Professor Henrich R Greve and participants at the Applied Event History Modeling Workshop at Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, on earlier versions of this paper are gratefully acknowledged by us. We sincerely appreciate the valuable comments received from the anonymous JIBS reviewers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Supply Chain Management and Marketing Sciences, School of Business, Rutgers University, Newark and New Brunswick, USA

    Sengun Yeniyurt

  2. Department of Management and Marketing, Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Janell D Townsend

  3. Institute of International Business, Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    S Tamer Cavusgil

  4. King's College London, London, UK

    Pervez N Ghauri

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  1. Sengun Yeniyurt
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  2. Janell D Townsend
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  3. S Tamer Cavusgil
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  4. Pervez N Ghauri
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to S Tamer Cavusgil.

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Accepted by Matthew Myers, Departmental Editor, 5 December 2007. This paper has been with the authors for two revisions.

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See Table A1 here.

Table a1 Cultural distance for the home countries of the foreign partners
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Yeniyurt, S., Townsend, J., Cavusgil, S. et al. Mimetic and experiential effects in international marketing alliance formations of US pharmaceuticals firms: An event history analysis. J Int Bus Stud 40, 301–320 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2008.62

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