Two tales of internationalization – Chinese internet firms' expansion into the European market

This article focuses on Chinese Internet firms' overseas expansion, particularly in the European market. By relying on an exploratory approach and by conducting in-depth case studies of three high-profile firms – Alibaba (AliExpress), Tencent (WeChat) and ByteDance (TikTok), the research provides rich insights into such expansion, and more specifically, an understanding of their motives, strategies and challenges. The research contributes to the limited literature on the internationalization of Chinese service firms. While largely affirming the literature on internationalization, the multiple case study approach adopted provides rich granular insights into the distinctive motives, strategies and challenges that Chinese Internet firms can face in the European market. It identifies particular nuances that are easily missed in studies based on secondary data. In particular, two clearly distinct processes of internationalization in Europe emerge. While existing work on the internationalization of Chinese Internet firms has mostly regarded them as a cohesive and homogeneous set of companies, our findings suggest that we are dealing with two different sets of companies whose approaches toward internationalization seem to be radically different, revealing two tales of internationalization. From the findings it emerges that differently from the Internet firms that started to internationalize earlier as part of a “first wave” of internationalization, the firms that started to internationalize later as a part of a “second wave” have done so, with a significant speedier pace by also adopting a bolder internationalization strategy that shares some common features with the first movers but that also displays a remarkably higher level of sophistication. Significantly, this type of firm does not seem to suffer from any liability of any kind.