Problem Statement : A Chinese automobile company Geely Auto aspires to enter the

US market by setting up their manufacturing unit there and producing cars locally to give
competition to their US and European counterparts.
They have contracted an automobile consulting company to understand the factors on
which the pricing of cars depends. Specifically, they want to understand the factors
affecting the pricing of cars in the American market, since those may be very different
from the Chinese market. The company wants to know:
Which variables are significant in predicting the price of a car How well those variables
describe the price of a car Based on various market surveys, the consulting firm has
gathered a large dataset of different types of cars across the Americal market.

The internationalization/globalization of Chinese firms is a research area that is growing

resoundingly. This echoes
theriseofChinaintheworldeconomyandtheupsurgeinChina’soutwardforeigndirectinvestmen
t(FDI)sinceChinajoinedtheWorld Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. As a result of its
economic boom, China has amassed a staggering $2 trillion inforeign exchange – the
largest reserves in the world – and started invest significant amounts overseas
(Shambaugh,
2009).Tenyearsago,onlysixChinesecompanieswerefoundinthelistofFORTUNE’stop500glo
balcompanies.Today,thenumberincreases to
37.Yet,thegrowingactivitiesofChinesefirmsontheinternationalarenaarelargelyunknowntoth
epublic,especiallyintheWest.InarecentteachinginSweden,Finland,andTheNetherlandswhe
nIasked:‘‘WhohasheardaboutaChinesecompanycalledHuawei?’’lessthanonefourthraisedt
heirhandsconfidently.InPoland,abitmorethanonetenthofbusinessstudentsin the classroom
answered the question positively. Few dare to believe Huawei is a world leader in
international patentfilings based on the statistics provided byWorld Intellectual Property
Organization (2009,
2010).ThelackofpublicknowledgeofChinesemultinationalshastodo,atleastinpart,withthelac
kofresearchonthesubject.ChildandRodrigues(2005)pointedoutthatresearchoninternational
izationofChinesefirmshasthepotentialtoenrichtheexisting Western-derived knowledge.
Their initiative has since been echoed enthusiastically by follow-up calls for papers(e.g.,
by
Management and Organization Review
and
Journal of World Business
), conferences and research projects.
Globalization of Chinese Enterprises
and
Chinese Multinationals
are welcoming volumes to fill the gap in the existingliterature. The former is teamwork by
a number of Western and Chinese scholars (mostly Western trained) with theForeword
and Preface written by John Child and Shaomin Li, respectively. The latter is also
teamwork resulted from a Sino-French research project with researchers mostly from
1
HEC Paris and Tsinghua School of Economics and Management,
andmostnotably,LiuChunzhi,PresidentandCEOofLegendHoldingsLtd.wrotetheForewordfo
rthebook.Thetwobooksshareone central concern: strategy of Chinese multinationals.
Globalization of Chinese Enterprises
is more theory-based inreasoningandwritingstylewhereas
ChineseMultinationals
ismorecase-basedanddescriptive.MajorChinesebrandssuchasHuawei, Haier, TCL,
Lenovo, etc. are covered in both texts