Distance between markets : - A study of distances between the Swedish and United Arab Emirates markets

The globalization has led to more firms internationalizing on the global market. This in turn has led to unclear borders between the home and host market. However, these internationalizing firms face different factor conditions on the global market. In this thesis we will investigate how the institutional and psychic distance factors affect the internationalizing firm. The theoretical framework of this thesis consists of relevant concepts that discuss the relevant difference in contexts between two markets, i.e. institutional distance and psychic distance. In addition to this we also included liability of foreignness/outsidership, the Uppsala model of internationalization and the Network Model to discuss how this distance can be handled. The theoretical framework will be applied to the chosen market of this study, United Arab Emirates. To fulfil the purpose of this study we have collected empirical data from three companies operating in this chosen market. Through applying the collected empirical data to the theoretical framework we could establish an empirically verified distance between the Swedish and United Arab Emirates market. In our study we understood that the two societies differ to a great extent, although if we isolate the business aspect of it; they are rather similar. There is though a distance, that we consider our case companies to a great extent has used their knowledge and networks to handle.