소비자 네트워크구조와 외부성이 Born global화에 미치는 영향:한국 온라인게임업체의 해외진출시기 미치 진출전략 결정요인에 관하여

Now more and more SMEs expand rapidly into foreign markets from or near their founding and these firms are often called born global firms (or international new ventures). The accelerated internationalizations are relatively frequent in new high-tech firms, especially firms that do internet-based businesses. Korea has become the world’s largest online game industrial country since late 1990s fueled by a rapid growth of online game industry based on strong IT infrastructure. Korean online games are spreading not only into China and ASEAN countries but also into the developed countries including the U.S.A and Japan. The rapid internationalization strategy of Korean online game companies is a very good example of the born global strategy of firms. So, we investigate factors that influence Korean online game companies’ born global strategy including the timing of entry into foreign market and the entry strategy. We focus on the reasons of pursuing born global strategy derived from existing studies and on the network externalities of online game as a new factor. This is because console game companies perform traditional slow internationalization strategy though they are also included in a game industry and have features of born global firms as online game companies do. Network externality (network effect) means a condition that a choice of one consumer affects a choice of another consumer. Network externality is generally divided into indirect network effects and direct network effects. The indirect network effects happen when as the installed base of a certain product expands, consumers of the product can benefit from the increased compatible complementary goods. So, the indirect network effects increase in proportion to the number of users. Also, the "Winner-Take-All" situation happens in the industry where these effects are important as a result of establishing an industry standard, like in the console game industry. When the direct network effects happen, consumers are affected by choices and advices of people who have direct relationships rather than network size. So, we should measure the direct network effects by using the model in which network structures are reflected. Watts and Strogatz incorporated the “Regular Network” that has many sub-units of users and the “Random Network” that has users who are randomly connected to each other. In the business that has the regular network followers can enter the market easily and small companies that occupy niche markets can survive, but these kinds of companies cannot succeed in the industry that has the small world network or random network structure. Also, according to the “Dynamic Network Model (BarabasiAlbert Model)”, early nodes have a greater possibility that they may acquire many links than following nodes. Finally, in a network structure that has hubs, the winner-take-all situation has a great chance to happen. The online game industry has these features. Therefore, we base five propositions on the network externality influencing the born global strategy. In the analysis, we compared online games with the console games due to their differences in network structures and effects. We conducted a case study with two representative industries: console game, and online game. Findings from the case study generally support our arguments. First, we found that online game businesses carry out the born global strategy for rapid market occupation because the direct network effect of online games is stronger than that of console games. While a console game company performed gradual internationalization by starting from export, online game businesses did their business abroad nearly from their inception. This is because two games have different direct network effects due to the different network structure. In the case of online game industry, the winner-take-all situation has a great chance to happen because the network structure is close to the small world structure. So, even though they have low quality games or lack internationalization experiences, it could be a good strategy for them to preoccupy foreign markets through rapid internationalization and then develop high quality games. Secondly, online game businesses enter the foreign market with the strategy targeting online game communities rather than using complementary goods to maximize the direct network effect. In the game industry that has small world structure like MMORPG, consumers are affected by choices and advices of people who have direct relationships and direct network effects are significant. As expected, we found that online game businesses tried to maximize the direct network effect through performing mouth-to-mouth marketing strategy around PC rooms, supporting off-line meeting, and encouraging online communities. The console game business, however, tried to maximize the indirect network effects by operating varying businesses that can produce complementary goods for its console games. Finally, in the case of online game businesses that have many light-users who are not very immersed in one game, they choose the strategy of maximizing indirect network effect through complementary goods. Although both casual games and web-board games are online games, light-users account for large part of users of these games unlike the case of role-playing games. These game businesses performed strategy using complementary goods because the impact of the direct network effect of the games that light-users enjoy is different from that of the games that heavy-users enjoy. We focused on the businesses of the online game industry, one of the most important in Korean culture contents industry and introduced a new factor - the network externalities of online game. We gave important implications to online game businesses about the validity of born global strategy and foreign market strategies including choices of entry modes or strategic alliance partners. The findings of this research are not easily generalized and applied to other culture contents industry because it is focused on only one industry. And our research method could be complemented by Numerical model using simulation method.