1, with abundant funds.
Carrefour and Procter & Gamble, which we are familiar with, have total assets of $20.3 billion, foreign assets of $654.38+003 billion, foreign sales of $654.38+07 billion, and total sales of $30 billion. The latter's total assets are $3 1 billion, foreign total assets are $0/billion, and foreign sales are $0/0/800 million, with total sales reaching $37 billion. Obviously, these two companies have strong competitive strength in the retail and daily chemical industries.
2. In addition to the advantages in economic strength, it is more important that multinational companies generally have a global corporate strategy, and their increasingly "deeply integrated" production structure makes them more flexible and cost-effective in the competition process.
Why do multinational companies have strong international competitiveness? Traditional theories of multinational corporations, industrial organizations and enterprises have made many theoretical explanations on the sources of competitive advantages of multinational corporations. With the intensification of competition and the change of environment, the current international competitiveness of multinational companies mainly comes from five advantages.
1) Core knowledge and ability form a new monopoly advantage.
Monopoly advantage refers to the competitive advantage of multinational companies with respect to their competitors' unique resources or capabilities. It is generally believed that the monopoly advantages of multinational corporations mainly come from the following aspects:
2) Product differences
The theoretical hypothesis that neoclassical economics pursues perfect competition. In a perfectly competitive market structure, many producers produce the same product, but they are unable to control the market and can only accept the balanced price formed by the relationship between supply and demand, so there is no way to talk about monopoly advantage. But in the real world, it is normal for the market to present imperfect competition. In an imperfect competitive market structure, even if many producers produce and sell the same product, there are differences, which are manifested in the quality, performance, grade, specification, brand and trademark of the product. Whoever grasps the differences will have a competitive advantage over competitors. It is precisely because of the wide variety of products produced by multinational companies that they meet the needs of consumers at different levels and thus gain competitive advantages.
3) Technology R&D investment and technology monopoly
Because of their huge assets and anti-risk ability, multinational companies can invest a lot in research and development, and form technological leadership and technological monopoly by taking the lead in technological innovation, such as owning patents, patented technologies, production know-how and new product development capabilities superior to competitors.
4) Market monopoly advantage
Multinational companies have transnational marketing networks and have accumulated rich marketing skills for a long time. Often, the products of one or some multinational companies have a high international market share in market segments, and it is easy to form a unilateral monopoly or oligopoly and manipulate market prices.
Going deep into multinational companies, we can find that the monopoly advantage of contemporary multinational companies has developed a new form of expression-core knowledge and ability advantage, which can be called new monopoly advantage. This advantage has gradually replaced the traditional monopoly advantage and become the main source for multinational companies to establish monopoly advantage.
The background of the new monopoly advantage is that knowledge economy will become the dominant economic form. In the era of knowledge economy, the cultivation and possession of knowledge and the resulting ability differences have increasingly become one of the main sources of competitive advantage for enterprises. This new monopoly advantage of contemporary multinational corporations is obvious. Many multinational companies have established their own unique knowledge training and knowledge sharing systems, have core competitiveness, and increase technological innovation, forming a monopoly of technological knowledge.
The absolute monopoly position of contemporary multinational companies can be seen only from their strong technical strength and very strong technological innovation ability. Take the Fortune 500 companies as an example. Today, they have more than 765,438+0% of the new technologies and processes produced worldwide every year, accounting for about 62% of the total international technology transfer. According to statistics, the research expenditure of the world's top 500 enterprises accounts for 85% of the total research expenditure of the host country, 76% in Britain, 82% in France and 93% in Italy and the Netherlands. Most new technological innovations are owned by multinational companies.
5) New internalization advantages
The advantage of internalization means that due to the incompleteness of the market, enterprises internalize the intermediate product market and replace the external market with internal cooperation, thus saving excessive transaction costs when using the external market and reducing the competitive advantage brought by the production and operation costs of enterprises.
The idea of enterprise internalization was put forward as early as the article "On the Nature of Enterprises" published by Coase 1937. Coase believes that "the operation of the market has a cost. By forming an organization and letting an authoritative organization (an' entrepreneur') control resources, some market operating costs can be saved. " Later, Buckley and Carson put forward the concept of intermediate products, which gave a new explanation to the reasons why enterprises pursued internalization. The so-called intermediate products refer to semi-finished products used by enterprises to manufacture other products, as well as research and development, marketing skills, technology, management skills, personnel training and so on.
In the real world, not only the final product market is incomplete, but also the intermediate product market is incomplete, which makes enterprises have huge transaction costs through the external market. In order to maximize profits, enterprises must strive to internalize these intermediate products in their organizational systems. It can be seen that the competitive advantage brought by the internalization of the external market by multinational companies (called the traditional internalization advantage here) is mainly manifested in two aspects: First, reducing transaction costs, enterprises will generate various costs when trading in the market. For example, the cost of obtaining necessary information, the cost of finding a suitable trading partner and bargaining with it, the negotiation cost of stipulating the rights and obligations of both parties in the contract, the risk cost and opportunity cost of accepting the contract, and the cost caused by delayed market contact or untimely supply of intermediate products. The transaction cost can be reduced by changing the transaction activity of intermediate products from relying on the external market to through the internal organization of the enterprise. The second is to use transfer pricing to obtain financial benefits. Transfer pricing refers to the pricing when intermediate products are transferred between the parent company and subsidiaries or between subsidiaries. Companies can avoid or evade taxes through transfer pricing, so as to maximize the overall profit of the company.
In the past, the main way of internalization of multinational corporations was property rights integration, that is, through mergers and acquisitions, new enterprises and other ways to realize the shareholding and holding of upstream or downstream products (especially intermediate products) of the company. The great disadvantage of this internalization method is that with the expansion of enterprise scale, the internal organization and management expenses of enterprises have also increased greatly, which partially or even completely offset the cost savings brought by internalization, and the inherent slow response of large enterprises has also hindered the establishment of competitive advantages of multinational companies.
Some multinational companies have developed a new form that can be called "virtual internalization", that is, strategic agreements replace equity participation as the main form to build internal markets, so that they can not only enjoy the benefits of traditional internalization-saving market transaction costs, but also gain new advantages of saving organizational management costs. This new form has increasingly become one of the main sources of competitive advantage of contemporary multinational companies.
6) Global strategic advantages of value chain decomposition and integration
Global strategic advantage refers to the organizational efficiency generated by multinational companies' overall arrangement of production and business activities on a global scale in order to reduce costs and maximize profits. Foreign direct investment and growing strategic alliance are the main forms of global strategy of multinational corporations. Generally speaking, the global strategic advantages of multinational corporations are mainly reflected in three aspects:
First of all, through foreign direct investment, we can gain the low-cost advantage of the host country. Multinational companies usually choose the host country with abundant natural resources, low labor force and superior geographical location to invest, which can reduce production costs and seek low-cost advantages of products.
Second, gain market entry advantage. Multinational companies can bypass the tariff and non-tariff barriers of the host country and reduce the cost of entering the market through foreign direct investment; At the same time, it will take advantage of the convenience of local production and operation to occupy the host country market to the maximum extent and obtain satisfactory market share.
Third, complementary advantages. Multinational companies can make full use of the superior resources and capabilities of enterprises and even competitors around the world by establishing strategic alliances around the world, so as to enhance their competitiveness.
At present, the global strategy of multinational corporations has a new feature, that is, to decompose and integrate the enterprise value chain on a global scale, so as to gain strategic advantages. The production and operation of multinational corporations is a value chain. According to Porter's value chain theory, this value chain consists of enterprise infrastructure, human resource management, scientific and technological development, procurement management, incoming materials storage and transportation, production and processing, finished products storage and transportation, marketing and after-sales service. Multinational companies decompose the value chain according to the principle of minimizing cost and maximizing income, arrange all links in the most suitable country or region in the world, and then integrate them. Relatively speaking, multinational companies.
7) The advantages of economies of scale are more prominent.
Economies of scale reflect the relationship between economic scale and economic benefits of enterprises. A large number of studies show that the expansion of enterprise scale can improve the economic benefits of enterprises. The advantages of scale economy of large enterprises are manifested in many aspects, such as centralized production and operation cost saving, centralized production, centralized research and development, establishment of large-scale sales network, centralized market purchase and sale, etc. , can improve the efficiency of enterprise resource use and reduce the unit product cost. Large enterprises also have strong organizational management ability, rich international management experience and various specialized management talents, which is conducive to the division and integration of internal resources and forms an overall advantage; Financing advantages: large enterprises have strong strength and good credit standing, and can usually obtain funds at a lower cost, with a wide range of financing channels, and so on.
Compared with ordinary enterprises, the scale of multinational companies is undoubtedly very huge. The economies of scale generated by the huge scale of multinational corporations have become an important source of their competitive advantages.
8) The increasingly important speed economic benefit advantage
Speed economy refers to the excess economic profits brought by enterprises meeting certain needs of customers at a faster speed than competitors.
The reasons why speed produces economic benefits are: first, the first entry effect. Which enterprise can take the lead in seizing business opportunities and meet customers' needs with the fastest speed, it will gain customers' recognition and loyalty first, and then it will gain the "first Mover advantage" and occupy a larger market share, thus winning the initiative in the future competition. Second, the effect of technological innovation. Adhering to the speed economy strategy means that enterprises should intensify technological innovation, strive for product innovation or process innovation at the fastest speed, speed up product upgrading and constantly improve product quality. Compared with old products, new products will bring more economic benefits to enterprises. Third, the utility spillover effect. In modern economic society, customers' demand is accelerating, and customers prefer products with short life cycle and fast update. The more novel the product, the more effective it is for customers. Therefore, if an enterprise attaches importance to the time effect and can meet the needs of customers to the maximum extent with the fastest speed and the least time, then customers will be willing to pay a high price, so that the enterprise can obtain excess profits.
At present, multinational companies vigorously implement the "speed economy strategy", which is highlighted in the cycle of technological innovation and the application strategy of technological innovation results.
The technological innovation cycle of multinational corporations is getting shorter and shorter. For example, the frequency of Microsoft launching a new version of Windows operating system is getting faster and faster, thus occupying the advantage of the first innovator for a long time.
The application speed of technological innovation achievements has been greatly accelerated. In the past, the application of technological achievements generally showed the characteristics of gradient advancement. When multinational companies first develop new technologies and produce new products in their home countries, they first meet the needs of the domestic market, then obtain sales benefits in the international market through export, and finally transfer technology to the outside. It takes a long time for a new technology to gain a competitive advantage. However, after World War II, imitation and innovation, typical of Japan, flourished, and competitors would imitate the technology during the export period and preempt the local market, making it increasingly difficult for new technologies to maintain their competitive advantage for a long time. Therefore, multinational companies are increasingly adopting the "sprinkler irrigation mode" of external expansion. Once new technologies and products are developed, they will be adopted in almost all markets around the world at the same time.