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Top1. Introduction
The retail industry is changing fast, stimulated by the dynamism of markets and the complexity of the relationship between companies and customers. This impacts companies to varying degrees, depending on specific and intangible assets, on the decision-making ability and on the capabilities to manage the continuous transformation of organisation.
The retailers’ ability to understand the context and adapt the value proposition appears to be strategic, although it is complex especially in internationalization strategies.
Different scholars studied the relationships between markets and innovation (Davenport et al., 2007; Birkinshaw et al., 2008) and the need for continuous company adaptation, adaptability, and transformation (Easterby-Smith & Prieto, 2008; Teece, 2014) to changes from an international context. In fact, the analysis of the internationalisation process shows that firms accumulate capabilities, such as learning, cultural adaptability all related to multiple countries (Zahra et al., 2006).
Dynamic capabilities may be further tailored to firms’ specific internationalisation processes, as each of them – whether incremental or accelerated – suggests a predefined path for differential capability building (Prange & Verdier, 2011).
The dynamic capabilities framework (Teece 2007; Teece et al.1997; Barney, 2014; Kozlenkova et al., 2014) can be useful for studying the internationalization strategies of retailers and for understanding whether differences emerge for companies operating in their own domestic market and companies operating in international markets.
Therefore, starting from the previous research streams, the aim of this work is to apply a model to measure the dynamic capabilities of sensing, seizing and transforming of retailers, ascertaining whether these capabilities differ between national and international retail enterprises.
The paper is organised as follows. Firstly, the theoretical background of dynamic capability definitions in international business and in retail companies is described. Secondly, the methodology is outlined. Then, the framework is applied by analysing dynamic capabilities in two contrasting retail companies, and the results presented. The paper closes with conclusions and managerial implications.