SMALL AND MEDIUM BRAZILIAN COMPANIES: PROPOSITION OF AN EVOLUTIONARY BEHAVIORAL MODEL FOR THE INTERNACIOLIZATION OF HPPC FIRMS

Abstract

Studies about the internationalization of companies began to be made in the 1960’s. This is another example focused on a group of small and medium-sized Brazilian manufacturers of cosmetics, toiletry and perfumes. It is an exploratory and descriptive ex-post facto research, conducted under a qualitative approach to investigate internationalization processes through interviews with the companies’ key representatives, whose data analysis drew on particularly content analysis of the narratives in order to ascertain similarities and differences between the investigated internationalization processes, and between those and the Uppsala Model. At the end, there was evidence of gradualism, but it was also found that the companies have not used a specific model to internationalize. Therefore, the study proposes the use of an evolutionary behavioral model for the internationalization of small and medium-sized Brazilian manufacturers of cosmetics, toiletry and fragrance which stems from the alliance between strategies used by the firms and the Uppsala Model’s characteristics.