日系塗料２社の住宅・建築用海外事業の比較研究

――寡占反応説は成立するか？――

抄録

This study aims to prove the Theory of the Oligopolistic Reaction（ ORT） in the comparative study in analyzing the trajectory of the overseas paint business for the housing and buildings of two Japanese oligopolistic paint companies – Nippon Paint and Kansai Paint over the past 60 years since 1960’s.

Knickerbocker （1973） introduced the ORT to explain why competing companies in the monopolistic industries tend to follow rival companies into the similar foreign markets in almost simultaneously. In contrast, Ietto-Gillies（ 2019） argues that the herding of foreign market entries in the ORT is taken place as a result of the risk-averse action by these companies. The ORT is proved effective in explaining the herding phenomenon by generalizing the incentives and results of the oligopolistic companies. This, however, counter-argues that Ietto-Gillies’s conclusion is simplistic in explaining the strategic action. Therefore, the ORT must be further explored by analyzing actual cases. Thus, the ORT is revisited by analyzing the historical case of two Japanese paint companies.

This study focuses on two factors, the mode of the foreign market entry decision – countries or areas, incentives, timing, and scheme, and the ex-ante conditions of two companies. Conclusion is drawn that the ex-ante conditions of the two companies had clearly affected each foreign strategy and their accomplishment. This contributes to add new decision factors to the ORT in the recent period of the competitive global business arena.