This enables the firm gradually to increase its understanding of quality expectations, personnel requirements, distribution and media structures, and buying behavior peculiarities on the foreign market. For service firms the situation is different. One way or the other, it immediately faces all this and other problems related to entering a foreign market." (Carman and Langeard, 1980, p11). It has to find an entry mode and a strategy that helps it to cope with this situation as well as possible. The choice of course depends on the type of service and market.
General entry modes.
In the literature it has been suggested that the choice of entry mode for service firms when going abroad is either to follow existing clients when they internationalize or to look actively for new markets (Erramilli and Rao, 1990). Today, however, the technological innovations such as internet and satellite have created totally new forms of internationalization. In many cases going abroad is not a choice of the service firm any more. Potential customers on foreign markets pick up service offers for a domestic market and require the firm to deliver internationally as well. Internet has opened up services for consumers wherever these have access to their websites. Of course the firm can choose to ignore foreign interest in its offerings, and perhaps lose new markets of considerable size, or it can sometimes unexpectedly find itself an international service provider. Specialty retailing, such as book stores and fitness equipment, are examples of services that in this way have become internationalize.
Gronroos identify three general entry modes for service firms going into foreign markets:.
(1) client-following mode;.
(2) market-seeking mode; and.
(3) electronic marketing mode.
Of course, the three types of entry modes are not totally mutually exclusive. A firm using the Internet as a form of electronic marketing mode can do this deliberately to get access to international markets.