Example of An International Expansion Strategy

The color TV market boomed after the introduction of color TV in the late 1979. China opened for commercial production and the electronics manufacturing moved steadily to China up to the 1990s because of the cheap labor cost. Growth in the TV market in the past 10 years was dominated by the flat screen TV. TCL is an emerging Chinese company which bought Thomson television business and Alcatel Mobil phones in line with its main business of multimedia , communications, home appliances and electronics. This accusations moved TCL from being the 60^th in the 1995 to be the number one brand in China now. TCL vision is to strengthening their foundation by reforming their basics and continuously innovating . Acquiring the Thomson television and Alcatel Mobil brings in a proven and successful technology to TCL and widen the ambitions goal of the “top 10 in 10 year” globalization vision (“Vision”, 2007-2008).

Innovations is a strong part of TCL business and part of the organization vision. TCL set up the first Research and Development (R&D) center for audio research in 1992. Currently, TCL has 18 R&D centers with 20 manufacturing bases around the world. TCL operated as separate business units in 2004. Some of the business units are multimedia, telecommunications, personal computers, consumer electronics and CD/DV distribution. Multimedia and mobile handsets generated most of TCL’s revenues at the same period. Supply chain management is a key success factor for TCL, which employed 80 people for sourcing and quality management. TCL made substantial profit because of its efficient supply chain management while its competitors lost money although all of them are sourcing their material from china (C. Bartlett, Ghoshal, & Beamish, 2008). The perfect supply chain enabled TCL to integrate its businesses and R&D centers together to move faster than its competitors in selecting the promising innovations and convert them into competitive product distributed around the world (C. Bartlett, et al., 2008).



References:

(“Vision”, 2007-2008). Vision  Retrieved Jun 10, 2010, from http://www.tcl.com/main_en/About%20TCL/Vision/index.shtml?catalogId=13047

Bartlett, C., Ghoshal, S., & Beamish, P. (2008). Transnational management: Text, cases, and readings in cross-border management (5 ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.