Simultaneous determination of entry timing and involvement level

The globalization of markets and businesses has meant that many companies now consider the world as a potential marketplace. In this changing environment, two crucial decisions taken by companies are time of entry (e.g. whether to enter early or late) and level of involvement (e.g. whether to adopt low involvement modes such as exports or high involvement modes such as sole venture). Although existing research has examined these issues and underscored the importance of these two decisions in isolated descriptive research, none has developed an integrated mathematical modeling framework for handling these two decisions simultaneously. To alleviate this important gap in the literature, develops a mathematical model for considering these decisions in a simultaneous framework. The results of the model are illustrated by means of numerical simulations. Managerial implications of the model and future research directions are delineated.