Doing Business in Vietnam from the Perspectives of Polish Entrepreneurs – the Role of Local Partners

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the challenges of expanding into an emerging market for multinational enterprises (MNEs) and the strategies they adopted to overcome these adversities. While interest in the expansion of MNEs into the Vietnamese market is increasing, there is a lack of research on this process from the Polish businesses' perspectives, which may differ from existing literature. The analysis of information obtained by a semi-structured interview method shows that the psychic/cultural distance is the most critical challenge the Polish enterprises must face when entering the Vietnamese market. The study also shows that the key success factor for the expansion of the Polish enterprises into this market is a local partner, i.e., acquiring an appropriate Vietnamese partner, good cooperation with him/her, and building mutual trust. As a result, among the available forms of internationalization, the Polish enterprises most often choose export and various forms of cooperation with local partners as the main ways to enter this market