International market selection: the case of Portuguese companies in Poland

There are more than 100 Portuguese companies in Poland, what makes this Central European country the 5th most sought destination for Portuguese foreign direct investment. How did these companies select this particular foreign market? The present work seeks to identify the factors that underlie the decision of Portuguese companies when choosing to enter Poland as an international market. Polish market selection research on two investigated firms concluded that there are two different reasons that impact on the international market selection decision of Portuguese companies in regards to Poland for their international operations: 1) Poland was selected because of market characteristics and 2) the selection of polish market was a firm response to unexpected opportunity. Despite the fact that the International Market Selection (IMS) process is quite broadly described in the existing literature, this paper is the only one that approaches IMS from a perspective of one specific foreign investment destination country as well as one specific investors group.