外文翻译---因特网对中小型企业国际化进程的作用.docx

外文资料翻译英文原文The Role of the Internet in the Internationalisation of small and medium sized companiesAbstract: It is now recognized that many firms are “born global and initiate international business from inception or shortly thereafter. They have been influenced by both globalization and the impact of new ICT technologies. The findings are presented, including the role of the Internet in marketing, distribution, business processes and market intelligence and competitor analysis. The role of the Internet as a knowledge building tool is discussed, and areas for future research are presented.Web access is available to all firms regardless of size, offering benefits which include: the reduced importance of economies of scale, lower marketing communication costs, greater price standard is action, reduced information float time, temporal asynchronicity, increased contact between buyers and sellers, and changes in intermediary relationships.Keywords ：Small firms, Internationalisation , Internet-enabled. The Internet offers a new means of maintaining and developing relationships with clients, channel partners, suppliers and network partners, the Internet provides firms with the means to co-ordinate and maintain communications across many sites easily and effectively. The argument that smaller firms can particularly benefit from the Internet to gather competitor or market intelligence, to promote themselves and service customers in new markets for relatively little expense is very persuasive. Knowledge of foreign markets has always been integral to internationalization theories, including the work of the early seminal Uppsala theorists who argued that a firms market knowledge determines its internationalisation trajectory. firms are able to garner knowledge and information with regard to their own specific internationalisation needs, thus reducing traditional information barriers to internationalisation.The objective of this study was to investigate and understand the behavior and strategies adopted by rapidly internationalising Internet enabled firms. For the purposes of the enquiry, Internet-enabled firms were defined as firstly having a web address and using ICT technologies in their day-to-day activities. Secondly, rapid internationalisers were those new ventures that exhibited an innate propensity to engage in a meaningful level of international business activity at or near inception, to achieve strategic competitive advantage.All firms viewed the Internet and e-mail in particular as essential for business in the 21st century, as it provides the service platform, which enables them to enter new markets, whilst reducing the investment and resources required in order to work internationally. E-mail served as a major communications channel with their customers, distributors, agents or suppliers and also to communicate with employees and sales offices or subsidiaries located elsewhere. In addition, many used e-mail to contact and pose problems to other specialists in the COPs that they belonged to. In other instances, such COPs had discussion areas, specifically set up to share software code, and exchange ideas. All firms offered the facility to contact them by e-mail, and increasingly initial enquiries were by e-mail. However, levels of sophistication varied, some offered this facility simply as, info. . ., whilst others had nominated people and dedicated e-mail addresses for various points of contact within the firm. Some companies, in particular those sited in New Zealand and Australia, cited the combination of e-mail and time zone differences as a positive advantage for them as e-mail sent from North America or Europe was answered by the start of business for the senders, giving the impression of an instant response.The internet as a marketing medium Almost without exception, firms were actively using the Internet as a marketing medium. Setting e-mail communications aside, the use of the Internet for marketing related purposes is the most popular use of this medium. Basically firms were using the Internet for three main purpose in this area: Marketing communications, Customer relationship management (CRM) and as a Marketing Channel (sales transaction and fulfilment), although the latter was less prevalent. The majority of firms utilised the Internet primarily as a marketing communications medium or tool. These firms were interested in getting more exposure for their proprietary products, services, and business opportunities. There was a broad consensus that the Internet offers a very cost-effective way for them to reach a large potential customer base compared to traditional communications methods: “We use it (the Internet) for all the marketing type things, advertising, promotion, contact, communications, demos of work, like a virtual catalogue. Its our window on the world. You found us there! It powers the international element really-otherwise we would need offices in each country we work in, instead of just the US.” CEO, Media promotion firm, New Zealand. “The website gives us a great marketing tool; we prepare a package of special events and put this on the website. So as people are becoming more aware of us, they can go to the website, see the APEC package and they dont have to call our sales person any more. And eventually, what we want is for the broadcaster to say, “APEC, go see if XXX have a package” CEO, Satellite news provider, Canada. Clear evidence emerged that the firms attached much more importance to supporting offline sales and CRM, than transacting or fulfilling orders online. Findings indicate that firms were using the Internet as a means to further develop and maintain relationships with customers and channel partners. At the most basic, the majority of firms in all locations offered online materials to support sales made via more traditional means. In general, but particularly prevalent among software firms, there was an online support facility, often combined with help facilities, suggestions and feedback opportunities, which are all elements of customer service. Those with more sophisticated CRM arrangements were providing vast amounts of shared information to customers in real time, and had Internet enabled specific interactions with both customers and suppliers. Undoubtedly the Internet was altering and reconfiguring the structure and operations of these firms, including their ability to collaborate online. This occurred at many levels, and significant numbers of firms were using the Internet to underpin relationships with strategic alliance partners, suppliers, clients, agents and distributors, research and development partners, and other software coding developers, both nationally and internationally. Thus the Internet was acting as an enabler of new collaborative forms of organization.Conclusion：Informal intra-firm knowledge sharing was occurring via virtual CoP, where members were connected due to a shared interest or problem. As the firms competitive advantage is embedded in the intangible, tacit knowledge of its human capital, these proved to be good mechanisms for knowledge exchange, supporting Ardichvilli and Wentling, Martin and Matlayand Sanchez and Perez. New product development and R&D activities were vastly enhanced in some firms through the knowledge pool created via formal and informal Internet enabled collaborations. Indeed for many firms in the present study, the Internet proved to be “. . . a powerful platform for collaborating with customers on innovation”.Importantly, firms were using the Internet as a knowledge and resource building tool, supporting Maloff) who asserts that the Internet can generate a wealth of external information. In fact, the firms key decision makers were internalising the knowledge gained with regard to both market intelligence and competitors, which then became part of the collective wisdom of the firm. Knowledge has always been viewed as crucial to internationalisation and is now well recognized as central to the internationalisation process. The input and moderation of the entrepreneurial founders leveraged Internet usage and enablement to best “fit” with the strategic objectives and internationalisation strategies of the firm. It is this Internet infusion that enables them to develop the knowledge rich environments in which they operate, reducing the barriers to internationalisation and increasing international opportunities and competitiveness. As such, Internet leverage by rapidly internationalizing firms in general, and knowledge acquisition activities in particular, merit much further.Form：Sharon Loane.The role of the internet in the internationalization of small and medium sized companiesJ.Science and Business Media，2006(3)：263277.因特网对中小型企业国际化进程的作用摘要：现在已经形成一种普遍的认识：许多公司是从一开始成立或其后不久就力图像全球化和国际化发展，他们已经受到全球化背景下新的信息和通信技术等因素的影响。调查结果显示：互联网的作用体现在营销、销售、业务流程、市场情报和竞争对手分析多方面。互联网作为一种工具，是一种知识积累手段，并有助于讨论、预测未来的研究领域。网络进程提供给无论规模大小的所有企业很多优势，其中包括：减少重要性规模经济，降低营销传播成本，更大的价格标准，降低信息浮动的时间，增加买家和卖家之间的联系，改变与中间人的关系等。关键词：小型企业，国际化，基于互联网互联网提供了一个维护和发展与客户、渠道合作伙伴、供应商和网络合作伙伴之间关系的平台，互联网公司提供的手段，以统筹和保持通信使得许多网站简便而有效。有人认为，特别是规模较小的公司可以利用互联网收集竞争对手或市场情报，以改善自己为客户提供的服务，在新的市场条件下付出相对较小的代价，这是非常有说服力的。了解国外市场一直是与国际营销不可分割的，乌普萨拉理论家（保罗，1975年；约翰森，1977年）认为，一个公司的市场知识决定了它国际化的轨道。现在人们普遍认识到，国际化的企业要重视外国市场方面的具体知识，了解当地的商业同行的关系，以及了解社会价值和商业文化。在较小的公司，特别是企业所有者或经理人或企业创始人是工作在第一线的，更应该拥有或获得这种知识。格兰特2002年假定新兴的以知识为基础的观点，该公司提供了一套利于公司存在与发展的系列因素，其中突出了知识的作用。知识植根于企业家从以往的经验方面吸取并发挥作用，从而赢得与企业趋于国际化相关的优势。例如，获得必要的金融支持，获得网络的合作伙伴。企业能够获得知识和信息可以满足自己国际化发展的需要，从而减少了传统的信息障碍。本研究的目的是调查和了解能通过互联网使公司迅速国际化的战略措施。为便于查询，互联网功能的企业被确定为首先在其日常活动中有一个网络地址和使用信息和通信技术的条件。其次，迅速国际化是那些新的合资企业一个天生的倾向，表现为进行有意义的高水平的国际商业活动，拥有为实现战略的竞争优势。所有的公司都认为，互联网和电子邮件是21世纪开展业务所必不可少的，因为它提供的服务平台，不仅使他们能够进入新的市场， 同时降低了投资和所需资源，以便在国际上工作。电子邮箱作为与他们的客户、分销商、代理商或供应商主要的沟通渠道，与员工和销售办事处或子公司的其他地方亦如此。此外，许多使用电子邮件联络和商议问题的，其他专家在缔约方举行会议的，也属于此类。在其他情况下，这种缔约方会议已提出在讨论区专门设置软件代码共享和交流的想法。基本上所有企业都提供了上网设施，以电子邮件的应用最为频繁。然而，复杂程度不一，一些提供这种设施的只是共享信息，而其他提名人，专用电子邮箱地址各联络点均在公司内。一些公司，特别是对于那些设在新西兰和澳大利亚（相隔较远），由于地区和时区的差异，电子邮件应用是一个积极的优势，他们发送的电子邮件从美国或欧洲的发送快捷而及时，大大减少了沟通阻力。互联网作为一种新型高效的营销媒介，很多公司几乎毫无例外地正积极利用互联网作为自己公司的一种主力营销媒介。除了设置电子邮件通讯外，利用因特网进行市场营销是目前最流行的使用这种媒介的手段。基本上企业利用互联网，为三个主要目的：营销传播，客户关系管理（CRM），销售交易和实现（作为一个营销渠道）。但后者不太普遍。大多数企业使用互联网主要是作为一个营销传播工具。这些公司有兴趣最大程度地公布其专有产品，服务和商业机会。一个普遍的共识是，互联网提供了极具成本效益的方法，使它们达成一项巨大的潜在客户群。相比于传统的通信方法，“我们用它（互联网）为所有类型的营销，广告，促销，联系，通讯，演示的工作，就像一个虚拟目录，这是我们对世界的窗口。你发现我们有它才能实现真正的国际化，否则，我们将需要在每个国家设立具体的办事处。我们的工作不是仅仅在美国。新西兰媒体宣传公司的总裁说，“该网站为我们提供了巨大的营销工具;我们准备的一系列特别活动都可以通过网站得到迅速及时的发布。因此，人们越来越意识到他们可以登陆网站，看到亚太经合组织，他们不再遇到所有的问