Organizational Expansion to Underserved Markets: Insights from African Firms

Although scholars have highlighted the need for firms to explore and exploit market opportunities in underserved markets to achieve superior performance, emerging-market firms' strategic choices and constraints in such environments remains an underexplored area. Drawing on insights from the intra-Africa air travel sector, we uncovered that the intense competitive pressures on inter-African routes has intensified both exploration and exploitation activities on the intra-African market as firms seek to mitigate the competitive effects. We also found that the firms' exploitation activities have been punctuated by a number of firm-specific and institutional factors. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.