Understanding legitimacy in the foreign market entry process

From a network perspective, entering a foreign market is seen as establishing relationships across borders. In this article, however, it is argued that apart from and/or along with developing relationships, it is vital to consider how the entrant firm understands what is perceived as legitimate. The purpose, therefore, is to develop the research on foreign market entry processes by focusing on the entrant firm's understanding of host country actors' expectations on its behaviour, providing legitimacy to the entrant firm. It is proposed that the foreign market entry process is affected by the degree of internationalisation in the home market network, the structure of the host country network, and the coercive, as well as the normative pressures. One implication is that an entrant firm must understand the correspondence between its interpretations and the host country's real expectations.