Maria Luiza Carvalho de Aguillar Pinho International Licensing as a Strategic Option for firms in the Creative Industries Tese de Doutorado Thesis presented to the Programa de Pós-graduação em Administração of PUC-Rio in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doutor em Administração de Empresas. Advisor: Profª. Angela Maria Cavalcanti da Rocha Rio de Janeiro April 2018 Maria Luiza Carvalho de Aguillar Pinho International Licensing as a Strategic Option for firms in the Creative Industries Thesis presented to the Programa de Pós-graduação em Administração of PUC-Rio in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doutor em Administração de Empresas. Approved by the undersigned Examination Committee. Profa. Angela Maria Cavalcanti da Rocha Orientadora Departamento de Administração – PUC-Rio Prof. Marcus Wilcox Hemais Departamento de Administração – PUC-Rio Prof. Renato Dourado Cotta de Mello UFRJ Profa. Ariane Cristine Roder Figueira UFRJ Prof. Otávio Henrique dos Santos Figueiredo UFRJ Prof. Augusto Cesar Pinheiro da Silva Coordenador Setorial do Centro de Ciências Sociais – PUC-Rio Rio de Janeiro, April 24, 2018 All rights reserved. Maria Luiza Carvalho de Aguillar Pinho Graduated in Psychology at PUC-Rio in 1990, post- graduated M.Sc. in Business from COPPEAD, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro worked directly with international business management at a French multinational for 15 years. Ficha Catalográfica Pinho, Maria Luiza Carvalho de Aguillar International licensing as a strategic option for firms in the creative industries / Maria Luiza Carvalho de Aguillar Pinho ; advisor: Angela Maria Cavalcanti da Rocha. – 2018. 162 f. : il. color. ; 30 cm Tese (doutorado)–Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Departamento de Administração, 2018. Inclui bibliografia 1. Administração – Teses. 2. Negócios internacionais. 3. Licenciamento. 4. Indústrias criativas. 5. Modos de entrada. I. Rocha, Angela Maria Cavalcanti da. II. Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. Departamento de Administração. III. Título. CDD: 658 To my beloved partner in life for all his support, encouragement and trust in me. To my kids with all my love. To my family. Thank you! I’m grateful to have all of you. Acknowledgments First of all to my advisor for her enormous patience, support and knowledge; for all the time expended debating, reading and revising; but especially for her confidence in me trusting this challenging project. I will be eternally in debt with Prof. Agricola Bethlem (in memory) who challenged me to start a new career path as an academic. I wish you were here to testify this accomplishment. I am grateful to the university staff, all professors and my Ph.D. friends for their support and guidance. With a special mention to Prof. Marcus Hemais Wilcox who helped me writing and testing an international case study and Prof. Jorge Brantes saving me in the hypothesis testing and statistical challenges. I am also grateful to Prof. S. T. Cavusgil who received me as a Visiting Scholar, encouraged and supported my research at the Institute of International Business at Georgia State University for me. A special mention to Mandy Swygart-Hobaugh who helped me with N*Vivo, and Jennifer Jones who supported me with Qualtrics and took time checking my English and assuring my survey comprehension. A new standard in the librarian’s role for me! What a great team and university! There are no words to state how you all have changed my life. A very special gratitude goes out to Brazilian Investment and Export Promotion Agency - APEX, and the Brazilian Independent Producers for all learning and access provided to the audiovisual industry without which this dissertation would never be possible. A special mention to the entrepreneurs and executives who spent their precious time on the interviews and feedbacks: Celia Catunda, Enio Kuruma, Juliano Prado, Kiko Mistrorigo, Marco Luporini, Mauricio de Sousa, Miguel Moreira and Ricardo Rozzino. It was fantastic to work with you. What a crack people you are! Abstract Pinho, Maria Luiza Carvalho de Aguillar; Rocha, Angela Maria Cavalcanti da (Advisor). International Licensing as a Strategic Option for firms in the Creative Industries Rio de Janeiro, 2018. 162p. Tese de Doutorado – Departamento de Administração, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. International licensing is a vital entry mode for the creative industries, a dynamic sector of the world economy, growing at a faster pace than traditional sectors. The context of digitalization increased the relevance and value of content and brand/character licensing. In 2016 global retail of licensed merchandise reached 272 billion dollars driven by entertainment/character which represented 45% of the total (LIMA, 2017). The International Business (IB) literature argues that licensing is a low-cost, low-involvement and low-risk entry mode although it is the sole alternative for some sectors. The lack of academic research on the subject, the relevance of licensing for the creative industries and the limited presence of Brazilian firms in the international market motivated this research. This Ph.D. dissertation comprises four essays that evolved in parallel, although complementary, directions to better gather different perspectives on the subject. The initial effort was to map the extant literature on international licensing. The first essay evaluated the use of different theoretical perspective in IB research and the application of these theoretical perspectives to small and medium-sized firms. The second essay reviews the IB literature to understand the theoretical influences on the study of licensing using a bibliometric approach. A third essay, of an exploratory nature, analyzed for case studies from small-sized Brazilian firms aiming at understanding how licensing was present in their business and its use in their international process. Finally, the fourth essay consisted of a survey to identify the perceptions of executives from a segment of the creative industries concerning international licensing for their content and brands/characters. Finally, general conclusions were drawn from the four essays, theoretical implications were presented and recommendations were made for the use of licensing by managers. Keywords International Business; International Licensing; Bibliometrics; Case Studies; Survey Creative Industries. Resumo Pinho, Maria Luiza Carvalho de Aguillar; Rocha, Angela Maria Cavalcanti da. Licenciamento Internacional como Opção Estratégica as empresas da Indústria Criativa. Rio de Janeiro, 2018. 162p. Tese de Doutorado – Departamento de Administração, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. O licenciamento internacional é um modo de entrada vital para as indústrias criativas, consideradas um dos setores mais dinâmicos da economia global, com crescimento mais rápido do que o dos setores tradicionais. O contexto da digitalização aumentou a relevância e o valor do licenciamento de conteúdo e marcas/personagens. Em 2016, o mercado de vendas de mercadorias licenciadas atingiu 272 milhões de dólares, estimulado pelo segmento de entretenimento/ personagens, que representou 45% do total (LIMA, 2017). A literatura de Negócios Internacionais (NI) argumenta que o licenciamento deve ser visto como um modo de entrada de baixo custo, baixo envolvimento e baixo risco, mas trata- se, em alguns casos, da única forma de internacionalização acessível a algumas empresas. A insuficiência de pesquisa acadêmica sobre o tema, a relevância do licenciamento para as indústrias criativas e a limitada presença de empresas brasileiras no mercado internacional motivaram esta pesquisa. Esta tese de doutorado compreende quatro ensaios que foram desenvolvidos em direções paralelas, ainda que de forma complementar, para entender melhor as diferentes perspectivas sobre o tema. Procurou-se, inicialmente, mapear a literatura sobre licenciamento internacional. Assim, o primeiro ensaio avaliou o uso de diferentes perspectivas teóricas na pesquisa em NI e a aplicação de tais perspectivas teóricas a pequenas e médias empresas. O segundo ensaio realizou uma revisão de artigos publicados em NI para estudar as influências teóricas, usando um enfoque bibliométrico. Os dois últimos ensaios caracterizam-se como pesquisa empírica. O terceiro ensaio, de natureza exploratória, analisou estudo de casos de pequenas empresas brasileiras, com o propósito de compreender como o licenciamento internacional estava representado em seus negócios e seu uso no processo de internacionalização. Finalmente, o quarto ensaio consistiu de uma survey para identificar as percepções de licenciamento internacional de executivos de um segmento das indústrias criativas, no que se refere a conteúdo e marcas/personagens. Por fim, conclusões gerais foram extraídas dos quatro ensaios, chegando-se a implicações teóricas e recomendações quanto ao uso de licenciamento por gerentes. Palavras-chave Negócios Internacionais; licenciamento; indústrias criativas; modos de entrada . Table of contents 1. Introduction 17 1.1. Creative Industries 19 1.1.1. UNCTAD Perspective 19 1.1.2. Entertainment and Media Industry 25 1.2. Animation Business Evolution 27 1.3. Licensing the Creative Industries 28 1.4. Research Motivation 31 1.5. Structure of the Thesis 32 2. The Essays 34 2.1. Essay I - Expanding International Licensing Theory and Research: Challenges and Opportunities 34 2.1.1. Abstract 34 2.1.2. Introduction 34 2.1.3. Conceptualizing International Licensing 35