Customer-embedded opportunities in entering complex foreign markets

This study aims to contribute to the existing literature on opportunity creation and enactment in the process of internationalization of entrepreneurial firms, by addressing the case of entering complex markets - conceived here as a scenario of internationalization towards uncertain markets. The empirical work consists of a multiple case study of 10 Italian small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). First, we find that opportunity creation and enactment in entering foreign environments is embedded in customers: market entry decisions are driven by the availability of homogeneous customers in the target markets. Second, both pre-internationalizes and already internationalized firms all share the availability of one type of learn-ing from the external environment in guiding their entry decisions in prospective markets that we define as “customer oriented” learning. The paper further contributes to the international business literature by arguing that entering a complex market enhances the overall international performance of the firm and that SMEs entering one or more complex markets during the first stages of their internationalization process upgrade their general knowledge and develop compe-tencies in managing complexity that can be transferred to other (complex) markets.