Från Sverige till världen - hur internationaliserar man (vitt) snus? En fallstudie om internationaliseringsprocessen för en digital SME som säljer en ny produkt

Sammanfattning: Internationalization is and will always be important for companies that have ambitions to grow and an international vision to expand to countries beyond the domestic market. In an increasingly digital world, much is changing in how companies internationalize, and this applies to a very high degree to companies that sell a product that has not previously been on the market. Existing theories in the field of internationalization have been criticized for not always capturing the internationalization process for digital fast-growing companies (so-called "start-ups") and there are also few studies conducted on internationalization for companies that sell a completely new product. In our study, we examined a company that only sells a new product, white snus (nicotine pouches) via e-commerce and that has rapidly expanded to several new markets that lack a tradition of using snus products. The study is conducted with an inductive and qualitative method where interviews have been conducted with leading people in the company who work with the international expansion of the platform. We discuss how well the company's internationalization process is in line with established theory in the field and how the internationalization process is affected by the sale of a new product. The most important conclusions are that the regulatory and cultural distances are the most important external factors and that the digital platform and the entrepreneur's visions are the most important internal factors for our investigated case object.