Firms strategically expand to countries that offer important location advantages. Yet, for digital firms, which can instantly release their technologies worldwide, it is unclear whether a focus on specific locations can still provide strategic advantages. The authors argue that digital firms reap critical demand-side location advantages for the internationalization of their technologies by strategically interacting with users in lead markets that exhibit either high within-country demand heterogeneity or preference overlaps with several other countries. Simply penetrating a lead market is not enough, however, as both demand-side and supply-side factors influence the digital firm’s potential to take advantage of lead markets. On the demand side, a digital firm should avoid focusing on paying users or acquiring light users. On the supply side, the digital firm must deploy adequate technological and marketing capabilities to benefit from user interactions in lead markets. Thus, the authors link demand-side opportunities and supply-side firm capabilities to develop nuanced theory on how digital firms can spur international expansion. They find empirical support for their arguments by analyzing a large multicounty database of mobile apps in Apple’s App Store.

公司从战略上扩展到具有重要区位优势的国家。然而，对于可以立即在全球范围内发布其技术的数字公司而言，目前尚不清楚专注于特定位置是否仍可以提供战略优势。作者认为，数字公司通过与领先市场的用户进行战略性互动，从而在技术国际化方面获得关键的需求侧位置优势，而领先市场的国家内部需求异质性很高，或者与其他几个国家的偏好重叠。但是，仅仅渗透到领先市场是不够的，因为需求方和供应方因素都会影响数字公司利用领先市场的潜力。在需求方面，数字公司应避免专注于付费用户或获得轻度用户。在供应方面，数字公司必须部署足够的技术和营销能力，才能从领先市场中的用户交互中受益。因此，作者将需求方的机会和供应方的公司能力联系起来，以发展关于数字公司如何刺激国际扩张的细微差别的理论。他们通过分析Apple App Store中大型移动应用程序的大型县数据库，找到了论点的经验支持。