| Summary: | The internationalization of businesses have always been a prominent topic in the subject of International Business. Much of the current literature that has covered the internationalization of businesses were written in the early 1970s. Hence, these theories was based off of traditional business models. However, the twenty first century brings with it the rise new types of business models, like platform businesses.
Therefore, this thesis studies the internationalization process of platform businesses, as there is a lack of research on this form of businesses. Hence, the motive to study such a topic. A C2C type of platform business will be studied in this thesis, a C2C platform business means a consumer to consumer business. The case company for this thesis will be Airbnb and it will be compared with traditional hotel businesses. This thesis will be using Dunning’s Eclectic paradigm as a framework to examine the internationalization of platform businesses.
The main objective of this thesis is to find out whether platform businesses’ internationalization process follows Dunning’s model. The overall findings of this thesis is that the model is able to explain the internationalization of platform businesses but lacks explanation in the speed of internationalization of platform businesses. Hence, this thesis looked at additional factors that may need to be integrated into Dunning’s model for better explanation of platform businesses’ internationalization process. Moreover, this thesis provided suggestions for traditional hotel businesses to adapt to the current business environment with regards to the findings.
|
|---|