Despite recent currency crises, most of the Asia-Pacific economies continue to be among the most attractive markets in the world and now appear to be recovering rapidly. An important element in understanding the dynamics of firm strategies in Asia is the nature of nonmarket strategies, which concern efforts to respond to and influence the political-economic-social environment. To examine such nonmarket strategies and how they fit with other firm tasks, this article first focuses on “positional analysis”—that is, how market forces, firm competencies, and the nonmarket environment influence the choice of trade, investment, or some mix, at the national, regional, or global level. It then considers the nature of “strategic analysis,” consisting of a firm's choices of market arena, a transaction cost analysis of organization forms for market penetration, and a distributive politics analysis of nonmarket issues. These factors combine to influence the firm's integrated strategic choice. Implementation of this choice is based on “tactical analysis” that focuses on the market, organizational, and nonmarket tactics that firms must pursue to succeed with their chosen strategy.

Software has become one of the central drivers of growth in an expanding global economy. Despite concerted “catch-up” efforts by European and Asian firms and governments alike, few major software players are not American. In particular, European software producers were slow to adapt to the new challenges posed by U.S. firms with standardized software products tied to rapidly innovating computer hardware systems and the Internet. One exception is Germany's SAP, which has quietly managed to become one of the largest software companies in the world. This article examines the market and nonmarket factors that have led to this company's success in both the global and Asian context. First, it will examine how SAP was able to bring the first fully integrated package to corporations around the world and thus to establish a global presence in one of the largest software niche markets, enterprise resource planning software. Second, this study highlights the importance of taking the nonmarket environment into account in Asia. Finally, the article demonstrates how SAP's strategy in Asia was a part of its global plan to simultaneously maximize market share and improve efficiency.

Airbus strategies in Asia operate in an environment shaped by three forces: the technical constraints of building modern aircraft, the demands of world and regional markets, and the structure and objectives of the consortium itself. These factors map onto an integrated strategy analysis. The positional analysis for Airbus must focus on its status as the challenger to the dominant firm, on the consortium's peculiar organizational structure, and on the opportunities and constraints offered by its nonmarket context (multiple national governments plus the European Union). One way of looking at Airbus's experience is as a continual series of disruptions aimed at creating openings for Airbus to enter markets dominated by well-established competitors, in particular, Boeing. These strategic moves have involved both market and nonmarket elements. This article assesses the market and nonmarket strategies that Airbus has employed to establish itself in the crucial Asian market.

For three decades Japanese auto producers, supported by the Japanese government, deployed with extraordinary success market and nonmarket strategies to access the small and fragmented but rapidly growing car markets of Southeast Asia. The last half-decade has presented a series of unexpected challenges, including extended recession and financial reform in Japan; the lingering effects of the financial crisis in Southeast Asia; and the entry of new competitors from South Korea, North America, and Europe. These pressures have split the industry into two. Leaders Toyota and Honda have defended and extended traditional Japanese production networks. Weaker players such as Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Suzuki have accepted subordination to the leading western firms, which are rationalizing their Japanese partners and using them to enter Japan and other Asian markets. This article explores production, trade, and investment data, industrial policies toward autos in Japan and Southeast Asia, and brief case studies of Toyota and Nissan to illustrate the challenges to, and varying responses of, Japanese auto producers in developing Asia. These firms remain committed to Southeast Asia, but the days of Japanese dominance are drawing to a close.

This article examines the evolution of U.S. chemical firms' corporate strategies in Asia over the past decade. Prior to the Asian financial crisis, these firms treated the Asian market as an expansion outlet due to a persistent lack of growth in Western markets. Since the crisis, U.S. firms have reformulated their market and organizational strategies to better withstand disruptions of business or product life cycles, specifically through refocusing core competence and establishing regional production networks. Meanwhile, their nonmarket strategies have lagged behind market strategies in specificity and sensitivity to the Asian context. This article explores the early effort in safety and environmental self-governance of the chemical firms in Asia, and argues that the history of domestic competition and government-business relations in the home market has to a large degree determined the transnational strategies of U.S. firms. Finally, U.S. chemical firms strategies are increasingly dependent on the behavior of their Asian competitors - in particular whether Asian producers enter into alliances with U.S. firms or resist liberalization and regional market interpenetration.