以藍蜻蜓為例 - eThesys 國立中山大學學位論文服務

國立中山大學國際經營管理學程
碩士論文
International Business MBA
National Sun Yat-sen University
Master Thesis
台灣棒壘球手套之北美市場進入策略–以藍蜻蜓為例
North American Market Entry Strategy for Taiwan Made
Baseball/Softball Glove
研究生：丁郁晟
Yu-Chen Ting
指導教授：鄭義 博士
Dr. Yih Jeng
中華民國 102 年 9 月
September 2013
i
摘要
棒球，是台灣的國球。隨著棒球運動的風行，棒球手套產業在台灣也曾經有過一
段光輝的歷史，1990 年代初期，台灣棒壘球手套工廠裏做的都是美、日各大世
界知名品牌的手套代工。然而，隨著台灣經濟發展、全球化經濟競爭影響下，手
套代工訂單已悄悄的轉向大陸以及其他東南亞國家。加上國內職棒簽賭、假球事
件爆發，嚴重影響棒球運動的風氣，也連帶影響了棒壘球手套的銷售。縱使台灣
本土市場不斷有一些小品牌嘗試著為市場注入一些新活力，然而在有限的市場中
發揮總是有限，最終還是在本土市場的紅海中互相廝殺、互相攻擊，爭食著不斷
萎縮的大餅。
台灣本土品牌 – 藍蜻蜓，一路走來一直秉持著”走出去”的理念，默默的在外銷
市場用心耕耘 13 個年頭。它的產品遍布亞洲及歐洲，現在更準備朝全球最大棒
壘球市場 - 北美洲進攻，憑藉著台灣製造的高品質手套以及具有競爭力的價格
搶攻棒壘球手套的頂級市場。
本研究將針對藍蜻蜓的規模及資源等內部競爭條件，結合北美洲市場調查，探討
最適合的市場進入模式。我們也將使用創新的手套設計方式以及客戶互動模式來
推廣我們在北美市場的新品牌。整個專案包含市場調查、進入策略、行銷方案以
及財務規劃都都秉持創業維艱的精神、以精實管理來將成本控制最低並以創新模
式將所有的經營活動之效益發揮至最大。本專案之基本精神為打開新市場的大門、
踏出創新的第一步，並為台灣棒壘球手套在北美市場的發光發熱種下希望的種
子。
關鍵詞：棒壘球手套、北美市場、市場調查、五力分析、進入模式
ii
Abstract
Baseball is the national pastime of Taiwan and the baseball glove industry had a
glorious history when all the world famous companies placed their OEM order to
Taiwanese manufacturers in the early 1990’s. However, due to the impact of
Globalization, competition from China and Southeast Asian countries become
stronger. Facing the situation of losing OEM orders and shrinkage of domestic market,
the situation is getting tougher for the baseball glove industry. New local brands are
trying to implement new ideas into the market, but there is actually not much can be
changed. The competition in the domestic market is getting worse and worse.
Dragonfly, a local brand which had 13 years experience in foreign market, decided to
enter the biggest market in the world – the North American market. This proposal,
would provide a unique and innovative way of glove designing and marketing
activities. Having the idea of lean startup and new approaches to new market will help
the business to minimize the cost and maximize the synergy. We hope that this
proposal would help Dragonfly to penetrate its new market and build the reputation of
MIT baseball/softball gloves in the North American market.
Keywords: baseball glove, North American market, market research, 5 forces
analysis, entry mode
iii
Contents
Chapter 1
Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1
1.1 Research Background ...................................................................................................... 1
1.2 Research Motives ............................................................................................................ 3
1.3 Research Purpose ............................................................................................................ 5
1.4 Research Process ............................................................................................................. 6
Chapter 2
Literature Review................................................................................................. 7
2.1 Market Analysis ........................................................................................................... 8
2.2 Michael E. Porter’s 5 Forces Analysis .......................................................................... 9
2.3 Market Entry Strategy ............................................................................................... 10
Chapter 3
Methodology ..................................................................................................... 18
3.1 Company Profile ............................................................................................................ 19
3.2 Baseball/Softball industry in Taiwan ............................................................................. 20
3.2.1 The role Taiwan plays in the worldwide supply chain............................................ 20
3.2.2 Challenge of Globalization ...................................................................................... 24
3.2.3 Learning from other industries............................................................................... 27
3.3 North American Market research ................................................................................. 32
3.3.1 Participants of Baseball and Softball ...................................................................... 34
3.3.2 Sales number of baseball/softball gloves ............................................................... 36
3.3.3 Vertical & Horizontal Comparison .......................................................................... 38
3.3.4 Users’ preference on baseball/softball gloves in the U.S....................................... 43
Chapter 4
Project Proposal................................................................................................. 48
4.2 Michael Porter’s 5 forces analysis of North American market...................................... 48
4.2.1 Rivalry among Existing Competition....................................................................... 49
4.2.2 Bargaining Power of Suppliers................................................................................ 52
iv
4.2.3 Bargaining Power of Buyers ................................................................................... 53
4.2.4 Threats of New Entrants ......................................................................................... 53
4.2.5 Threat of Substitute Products or Services .............................................................. 54
4.3 Market segmentation and choosing target market ...................................................... 55
4.4 Entry mode selecting and marketing strategy .............................................................. 60
4.4.1 Goals and Constraints............................................................................................. 61
4.4.2 Marketing Strategy ................................................................................................. 62
4.5 Sales Forecast and Financial Plan .................................................................................. 68
Chapter 5
Conclusion and Suggestion ................................................................................ 73
References ............................................................................................................................... 79
v
Figure of Contents
Figure 2-1 The Five Forces That Shape Industry Competition. .................................. 10
Figure 2-2 Types of Entry Mode .................................................................................. 12
Figure 3-1 World Baseball Map ................................................................................... 34
Figure 3-2 Baseball & Softball Participation in the U.S. ............................................. 35
Figure 3-3 Baseball Participants by Region................................................................. 36
Figure 3-4 Top 10 States by # of Participants .............................................................. 36
Figure 3-5 Basketball Player ........................................................................................ 39
Figure 3-6 Soccer Player .............................................................................................. 40
Figure 3-7 Batter .......................................................................................................... 40
Figure 3-8 Catcher ....................................................................................................... 41
Figure 3-9 Color preferences of Baseball Gloves in Taiwan and the U.S.. ................. 44
Figure 3-10 Examples of Infielders’ Glove.................................................................. 46
Figure 3-11 Examples of Outfielders’ Glove ............................................................... 46
Figure 4-1 Participant Structure of baseball & softball in the U.S.. ............................ 57
Figure 4-2 Participant Structure of softball in the U.S. ............................................... 59
Figure 4-3 ASA SOFTBALL TEAMS BY REGION .................................................. 60
Table of Contents
Table 2-1 International-Expansion Entry Modes ......................................................... 13
Table 4-1 Target Sales Amount for 2% Market Share ................................................. 68
Table 4-2 Financial Plan of the Project ........................................................................ 71
vi
Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
For a baseball/softball player, a glove is not only a tool that helps the player catch the
ball. It is, at the same time, an extension and a protection of the player’s hand.
Actually, wearing a glove was not considered to be a manly thing to do in the early
age of baseball history. We are not sure who actually wore the very first baseball
glove in a game, but we do know that it started to show in the professional games in
the early 1870’s. Players were hesitating to show that they were wearing gloves so
that flesh-colored gloves were the most popular ones. Baseball gloves first came in
pairs and worn on both hands of a player. Not until 1920, a web was placed between
the thumb and the index finger in order to create a pocket which enhanced the
probability of catching the ball. This design soon became the standard for a baseball
glove.
“Although the early gloves were not impressive by today's standards, they still
required a high level of craftsmanship to produce. Gloves were and are
labor-intensive products calling for a large amount of individual attention.”
( Lawrence H. Berlow, n.d.)
Global Industry Overview
1
Baseball/Softball gloves are usually made of cow hides, but still, there are a variety of
materials and grades you can choose from. (Further information could be found in the
following link:
http://www.eastbay.com/knowledgebase/default.cfm?&article=knowledgebase_Baseb
all_Equipment_fieldersgloves) The cow hides used for baseball/softball gloves are
mainly produced in the U.S. followed by Europe, Austria and Japan. Glove
manufacturers are located mainly in North America (USA and Mexico) and Asia
(Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, Indonesia, Philippine, Vietnam, Thailand and Pakistan).
Major glove consuming countries are those who have long baseball history and had it
implemented in their culture, leading by USA and Japan and the countries around
them such as Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Dominican Republic and Venezuela influenced
by the U.S. and Taiwan, Korea influenced by Japan. Besides these two main regions,
Australia, Netherland and Italy are also known as competitive teams in the baseball
world.
Baseball/Softball is a sport that requires a whole set of gears and equipments. It sure
is good news for baseball/softball equipment makers. Both in American and Asian
markets, baseball/softball equipments are dominated by a few US and Japanese
makers in their own territories.
2
Taiwan is also one of the major baseball-playing countries in Asia and is especially
famous for its student baseball performances. Baseball fans used to stay awake in the
midnight to cheer for Taiwanese national team winning the champion of William
Porter Little League World Series in 1968. Since after, baseball had become the most
popular sport in Taiwan. Taiwan professional baseball league was established in 1989.
For the past 24 years, the professional baseball had experienced the up-and-downs
including several scandals. Fans had lost their faith and passion toward the players,
the teams, the league and the sport itself. However, in 2013, WBC game had not
only earned baseball fans’ attention, but also had a positive impact on the professional
baseball in Taiwan. Baseball fans did not only found their way back to baseball, but
also found the way back to the stadium. (The average number of audience in the
professional baseball game had reached a record high for 2013 season)
1.2 Research Motives
Along with the development of baseball, the manufacturing capability of baseball
equipments had also become more and more mature. In the early 1990s Taiwanese
baseball glove factories receive OEM orders from world famous baseball equipment
companies both from America and Japan such as Rawlings, Wilson, Spalding, TPX,
Mizuno, ZETT, SSK…etc. During those years, Taiwanese manufacturers had polished
3
their glove making skills and had become the major glove producing country in the
world. However, as all the developing country will face the same challenge, Taiwan
was the same. Production cost had risen, brand companies had moved to the other
emerging countries seeking for cheaper labor. Similar to all the other traditional
industries in Taiwan, baseball/softball glove manufacturers are facing an issue of
industry transformation. Nowadays, the baseball glove manufacturer in Taiwan does
not only receive OEM orders from brand companies, but also develop their own
brands. In the past few years, more and more local brands are getting more and more
popular among leisure players and some were even highly preferred by professional
players. Unfortunately, due to the continuous gambling scandal in professional
baseball games being reported, fans and leisure players had lost their faith to the
games and the interest toward baseball. The market had shrunk so quickly that some
of the local brands could no longer handle it and went bankrupt. The factories those
who survived also suffered from the shrinkage of domestic market and the
competition became nasty.
With the high quality manufacturing capability, Taiwan has a rather limited market
size and needs to find a way out. Taiwan baseball equipment market is already mature
and there are already too many players in the market. Local small brands do not have
the advertising budget to compete with the big brands and can only compete on the
4
price. However, there are still other markets providing much better prices on the same
quality products. Take Korea for example, the price of a regular baseball glove could
be easily doubled from those sold in Taiwan. When we talk about foreign markets, we
cannot ignore the origin of this sport, the biggest market in the world – USA.
1.3 Research Purpose
Instead of competing on this small island with all the other players with similar
background and products, we would like to seek for a bigger market for better
chances. However, entering a market which is already mature with strong competitors
will never be considered to be easy. Although the market in North America is very big,
it is mainly dominated by a few major competitors such as Rawlings, Wilson and
Mizuno. Therefore, our chances will be really small competing with these huge glove
makers who already have endorsement from MLB players.
On the other hand, instead of competing on price, we would like to focus on the
high-end products which allow our consumers to customize their own personal gloves
and provide additional value to the current products. Our goal is to analyze the North
American market for baseball/softball market and find out the preferences of North
American customers and find the best approach to differentiate us from other
competitors in that market.
5
Overall speaking, our goal is to help Dragonfly to find a new market with better
profitability for their high-end products with supreme quality and come up with a
feasible plan to penetrate the market.
1.4 Research Process
Research process will be done in the format of a project based business plan which
will include two main parts: Market Research and Entry Strategy.
We will do as much study as we can to understand our target market. We will try our
best to get all the quantitative data and qualitative information. With all the data we
get, we are going create our market segmentation and find out which ones are more
suitable for our first step of penetrating the market. In the second part, we are going to
evaluate the market opportunities with current condition of the company, including
manufacturing, financing, logistics and IT system, to find out the most suitable target
market to start off. After evaluating all the conditions, we are going to suggest the
most suitable entry strategy to the North American market. In this part, not only the
overall strategy will be introduced, the practical suggestions and solid steps will also
be provided to help Dragonfly to get a bite of the pie.
6
Chapter 2 Literature Review
The research will be presented in the format of a project proposal. In the proposal, the
following aspects will be closely reviewed and carefully analyzed in order to provide
the reader a comprehensive understanding and helps the business owner to make an
objective decision to expend his business. In this chapter, we are reviewing the
existing tools that would help us to make the study more objective and helpful.
Since our goal is to penetrate North American Market of Baseball/Softball equipment
market, we would like to start our research from the North American market research.
After having an overall understanding of the market, we have to find our customer
segment in order to break through the market entry barrier. Using Michael E. Porter’s
5 Forces Analysis Model is going to allow us to have a clearer overview of the status
of the competition in that market. It also will help us to develop our business strategy
in penetrating the biggest baseball/softball market in the world.
When we finish the market study, the next step we have to do is to find the suitable
entry mode for our project in order to develop the correct entrance strategy for our
new market. To decide what entry mode is the best choice for us, we need to have a
comprehensive understanding of the categories of the choices, the market and the
constraints of the company.
7
For the paragraphs above, we have explained the framework of the project and how it
will be presented in the following chapters. In the following pages in this chapter, we
are going to introduce the theories and the analysis tools that we are going to use in
this project.
2.1 Market Analysis
Before deciding to enter a market, it is essential to have a clear picture about what
kind of market are we facing. Is it big or is it small? Is it an evolving market or is it a
mature market? Who are our competitors? How strong are they? Who are our
targeting groups? What are the preferences of our targeting groups? What are the
common channels of sales? How profitable is this market? ...etc. Not until these
questions are answered would the decision be made. Lacking of an overall
understanding toward the market will put the company into an extremely risky
situation and could loss a huge amount of money.
In the first part of the proposal, we are going to provide information of the market size
of North American baseball/softball equipment market. The information will be
shown in both absolute numbers and relative numbers to help readers have a clear
picture of the market size. We will look at the number of the baseball/softball
participant in North America and also the market value it created annually. These
8
numbers will also be compared with the other sports played in North America and
also the other baseball/softball market in the other countries. In this way, we will have
a chance to see what exactly the role “North American baseball/softball equipment”
plays in the global sporting goods industry.
In addition to the market overview, we would also do some deeper investigation about
users’ preference in North American market. Same product in different culture or
different country would need some adjustment to meet market expectations. This
issue could be easily ignored when people first enter a new market and don’t have the
cultural awareness. The adjustment could be minor, but the influence will be huge if
the key point was missed.
2.2 Michael E. Porter’s 5 Forces Analysis
When we are concerning about entering a new market we are definitely going to face
competitions, especially when it is already a mature market. To be successful, we
need to be very clear about what kind of competition we are going to deal with. Base
on the understanding toward the competition, we try to develop the correct strategy to
penetrate the market.
“In essence, the job of the strategist (usually the managers in the company) is to
9
understand and cope with competition. Often, however, managers define competition
too narrowly, as if it occurred only among today’s direct competitors. Yet competition
for profits goes beyond established industry rivals to include four other competitive
forces as well: customers, suppliers, potential entrants, and substitute products. The
extended rivalry that results from all five forces defines an industry’s structure and
shapes the nature of competitive interaction within an industry.”
Figure 2-1 The Five Forces That Shape Industry Competition (Michael E. Porter,
2008)
2.3 Market Entry Strategy
When facing the challenge of globalization, developing new market in oversea
10
countries are getting more and more common. When an enterprise decided to
approach a new market, there are 3 basic questions to be asked: When? How? and
Where? For the first and last question, we already had the answer. When we consider
the timing of entry, the decision is between first mover and late mover. For the North
American baseball/softball market, we do not have the much choice since it is already
a mature market. However, we can still take a look of advantages and disadvantages
of late mover, to understand what challenges and what merit we are going to have. As
for the question “Where?”, we have already had our topic setting in North America
and we will show you why in the next chapter. So the only question we need to work
out is “How?”. What strategy and entry mode is suitable for “Dragonfly” and provides
a higher possibility of success.
Enterprises which are entering a new market needs to choose a proper entry mode.
The question is “What kind of strategy should be used for the entry mode selection?”
According to Root (1994) there are three different rules:
1.
Naive rule – Company uses the same entry mode for all foreign market.
2.
Pragmatic rule – Company uses a workable entry mode for each market. These
kinds of companies usually start with low-risk entry modes.
3.
Strategy rule – Alternative entry modes are compared and evaluated before
11
decision is made.
Before we enter this huge and mature market with very limited capital and resources,
having a systematic comparison of alternative modes to find out the best decision will
definitely be our approach of choosing the right entry mode.
There are 3 types of entry mode: Hierarchical mode, Export mode and Intermediate
mode. For Hierarchical mode, the company will have higher control over the
operation but will have to cope with higher risk and lower flexibility. On the other
hand, Export mode will provide the company more flexibility and lower risk but with
lower control over the operation in the new market. Intermediate mode would be
something in between.
Figure 2-2 Types of Entry Mode (Senthil Mukundakumar, 2012)
12
To be more specific, international expansion is achieved through exporting, licensing
arrangements, partnering and strategic alliances, acquisitions, and establishing new,
and greenfield ventures. These international entry modes and their characteristics are
shown in Table 1 "International-Expansion Entry Modes" (Shaker A. Zahra, R. Duane
Ireland, and Michael A. Hitt, ,2000) Each entry mode has advantages and
disadvantages. Enterprises need to evaluate their own situations and choose the most
suitable entry mode.
Type of Entry
Advantages
Disadvantages
Low control, low local
knowledge, potential negative
Exporting
Fast entry, low risk
environmental impact of
transportation
Less control, licensee may
Licensing and
Fast entry, low cost, low
become a competitor, legal and
Franchising
risk
regulatory environment (IP and
contract law) must be sound
Contract
Shared costs reduce
13
Higher cost than exporting,
Type of Entry
Advantages
Disadvantages
Manufacturing and
investment needed,
licensing, or franchising;
Joint Ventures
reduced risk, seen as local integration problems between
entity
two corporate cultures
Fast entry; known,
High cost, integration issues
established operations
with home office
Acquisition
Greenfield Venture
Gain local market
High cost, high risk due to
(Launch of a new,
knowledge; can be seen
unknowns, slow entry due to
wholly owned
as insider who employs
setup time
subsidiary)
locals; maximum control
Table 2-1 International-Expansion Entry Modes (Shaker A. Zahra, R. Duane Ireland,
and Michael A. Hitt, 2000)
According to(Senthil Mukundakumar, 2012), Types of Entry Modes are as following:
Export mode
Products are manufactured in the domestic market or a third country and then
transferred to the target market. When setting up the exporting channels, The
14
company has to make sure what are the key activities that should be controlled by the
company itself and which functions could be out sourced.
Intermediate entry mode
It is an approach to transfer the knowledge or skill to the target market and also could
be a chance to create more export opportunities. The Ownership is not 100%
controlled by the parent company, but can be shared by the company and local
partners in the target market. There are four types of arrangements in intermediate
entry mode:
Licensing
Local partners can get a formal permission or right offered by the home company to
use its proprietary technology or other knowledge resources by providing certain
payment. It is also allows a company to establish local production without investing
any capital in it. It is usually for a longer term and involves more responsibilities for
the local company. A licensing agreement is an arrangement that the licensor gives a
certain form of valuable knowledge or skill to the licensee in exchange for certain
performance and payments from the licensee and it should always be formalized in a
written document.
15
Franchising
Under the concept of franchising the franchisee, which is an independent
organization , operates the business under the name of the franchisor which is another
company. Under this agreement the franchisee pays a fee to buy the right of using the
trademarks, operating system, product reputation and continuous support system like
advertising, employee training …etc from the franchisor.
Contract manufacturing
Contract manufacturing enables the firm to develop and control R&D, marketing,
distribution, sales and servicing of its products on international markets, while giving
the responsibility of production to local partners.
Joint ventures
Two or more companies create a new business entity together which is legally
separated and distinct from its parents. Ownership is separated between its parent
companies in various portions. The purpose of this model is that it can combine all the
strength from its parent companies such as required capital, latest technology,
required human talent …etc. and enable the companies to share the risk in the foreign
markets.
16
Hierarchical entry mode
An entry mode where the home company owns the complete control over the local
market. This mode is also known as investment mode. The new which is setup in the
host country is fully owned by the parent firm. This subsidiary or individual body is
responsible of its own operation but policies and trademark will be implemented from
the parent company. There are two ways of entering a market with hierarchical mode:
Merger or acquisition
The home company selects a foreign company and merger itself with foreign
company in order to enter local market. In another way, the home company may
purchase the foreign company and acquires it ownership and control. It provides
immediate access to local manufacturing facilities and marketing network.
Green field
Greenfield is the approach of starting everything in the foreign market from nothing.
Everything has to be done by the company including purchasing local property and
recruiting local man power.
17
Chapter 3 Methodology
As we mentioned in the very beginning of Chapter 2, this research will be presented
in the format of a project proposal, which will be proposed to the owner of Formosa
Syrayan Sporting Goods Company and hopefully this project proposal will help him
expend his business territory to North America and the rest of the world. In the
following of this chapter, three main sections will be included in order to provide a
better understanding of the company background and the framework of the study. For
the first section, company profile will be introduced to give the reader a clear picture
of what role does Formosa Syrayan Sporting Goods Company play in the Taiwan
baseball/softball equipment industry. For the second section, the role that Taiwan
plays and the challenges that Taiwanese baseball/softball glove makers face in the
global scale of the industry will be examined. Furthermore, we will provide some
experience from other industries which are facing similar situations and challenges. In
the third section, we are going to provide the North American Market analysis which
would give us a better understanding of our target market. With our comprehensive
analysis of the company, the position of Taiwan and our target market, we are looking
forward to implement this project to real life practice, and join the competition in
North American territory.
18
3.1 Company Profile
Company Name: Formosa Syrayan Sporting Goods Company
Employees: 3
Capital: NTD5 million
Turnover in 2012: NTD10 million
Brand name: Dragonfly
Company Introduction:
Formosa Syrayan Sporting Goods Company is a local Taiwanese company providing
all range of baseball/softball equipments with high quality and competitive price. Its
product is well known in the domestic market under the brand name “Dragonfly”. In
addition to the domestic market, it also exports high quality Taiwan made
baseball/softball equipments to foreign countries such as Korea, Thailand, Malaysia,
New Zealand, Germany…etc. After the disclosure of the professional baseball
gambling scandal in 2009, baseball/softball market in Taiwan had reached its
historical low and forced Dragonfly to change its focus to foreign markets. Today,
Korea and Southeast Asian market are contributing a great portion of revenue for
Dragonfly.
19
3.2 Baseball/Softball industry in Taiwan
3.2.1 The role Taiwan plays in the worldwide supply chain
After the introduction of the company, we are going to take a closer look at the role
that Taiwanese manufacturers play in the worldwide supply chain. As we mentioned
earlier, Taiwan used to be the major OEM country of all the brand companies. The
factory owners had good time earning money by producing as much gloves as
possible and didn’t have to worry about all the other issues in the supply chain such as
material, production management, marketing, sales...etc. The role of Taiwanese The
strength of our glove making industry used to be the cheap and high quality labor
force. Unfortunately, when we look at the industry now, there is not much changed.
The only thing changed is that there are more and more high quality labor force in the
surrounding countries with much lower cost and globalization had placed Taiwan in a
very difficult position of competition.
China had become “World’s Factory” in the past decade, now the other emerging
Asian countries are about to take its place. A huge pool of cheap labor was the major
reason for China’s success. However, as the economy of China sky-rocketed, the
growth of wage also causes the shift of manufacturing to the other Asian countries
20
with even cheaper labor force. It is the same in baseball/softball equipment industry.
Factories shifted to China, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippine, Indonesia and Turkey.
Baseball/Softball equipments which are sold in the major consuming countries
(except Taiwan) are no longer made in Taiwan. Local factories which are not knocked
out by globalization are fighting fiercely for the limited domestic market.
What role does Taiwan baseball/softball glove industry exactly play in the worldwide
supply chain? What value does it provide to the whole value chain? Let’s take a closer
look at following 5 dimensions.
1.
Material
The key material of a baseball/softball glove is leather. All the leather used to
make baseball/softball gloves are imported from America, Europe or Japan.
Since we do not have local supplies, we have to fully count on foreign suppliers.
2.
R&D
Almost no R&D activity is done by local makers. There are mainly 2 reasons
which lead to this phenomenon. First, Taiwan is used to the OEM business and is
used to just follow the design of the major brand companies. None R&D person
was trained during our glorious age in this industry. Second, sports are generally
considered to be a jump board to a better life for the poor and those with lower
21
education. People with higher education would rather go to high-tech companies
instead of sport related industry. Therefore, Taiwan did not have a chance to own
the R&D ability and is not having it because of social norm.
3.
Production
Taiwan used to have very competitive labor force with high quality and low cost.
However, we no longer have this dominant position anymore. When Taiwanese
people are still persuading ourselves that the quality of “MIT” is still much better
than “MIC”, we can find that more and more brand products are made in China
and the quality is not bad at all. Quality improvement is only the matter of time
and management. Furthermore, bigger and more modern factories in China and
other Asian countries are taking advantage of scale economy except Taiwan.
The only reason Taiwan still keep our baseball/softball gloves competitive on
quality and price is because the factories are still relying on the elder experienced
employees who had worked in the same place for decades and never asked for
higher salary.
4.
Marketing
Marketing has never been the strength for Taiwanese companies in traditional
industries. Lacking of specialists of language and marketing also stopped these
22
companies to expend their business territory to oversea market. Some local small
brands are starting to put more focus on marketing but due to the constraint of
capital and specialty progress is slow. The difference between local small brands
and international brand companies is obvious. When you look at professional
baseball games in either America or Japan, you can hardly find gloves that are
not sponsored by those big brands. Even in Taiwanese professional baseball
games, gloves player uses are dominated by Japanese and American brands.
5.
Strategy
Since there is not much space for domestic market to grow, competition between
local companies become more and more brutal. Long term strategy is hardly seen
in this industry. Factories are built in the rural area counting on the elder ladies
living in the neighborhood who don’t ask for higher wages. We can hardly see
any young people in the factory. We don’t see any passion in the eye of the
factory owner either. Low profit, limited market, and uncertainty of the future
had stopped young people from joining this business. We started to worry about
the next generation and future of this local traditional industry. Overall speaking,
we can hardly see any strategic arrangement for the sustainability for this
industry.
23
After examining all the five dimensions, we found out that Taiwanese
baseball/softball glove industry is basically supported by local market. It is isolated by
the rest of the world. Big brand companies only place OEM orders to fulfill local
market and none R&D work is done here in Taiwan. No long term strategic plan is
made in the industry, not to mention investment in R&D and marketing. If we don’t
show the future of this industry to the young talent, no one would be willing to devote
themselves in it. If no young talent joining this industry, none of the R&D and
marketing job will be done. This creates the vicious circle and if it is not adjusted
quickly, we will not be able to see “MIT” gloves in the next 20 years.
3.2.2 Challenge of Globalization
Globalization has become the most popular topic in the business world. It provides
tones of opportunity along with tones of threat. Are we ready for the challenge
brought by globalization? Let us take a look how globalization impacts our
baseball/softball glove makers.
1.
Manufacturing shifted to countries with cheaper labor.
As we mentioned earlier, China and all the other developing countries around us
are taking our place and become the OEM factory of brand companies.
24
2.
Demand increase in the emerging market causes cost up for raw materials.
Key material of the baseball/softball glove, leather, had cost increased for more
than 50% in the past 20 years. The demand growth for leather products in China
had triggered the dramatic growth on price of American leather export. Margin
for Taiwanese glove makers have been squeezed by both side-low-cost
competitors and high-price suppliers.
3.
FTA accelerates the international business activities.
Signing FTA (Free Trade Agreement) is definitely offering more incentives of
international business. However, because of the special political background,
Taiwan faces more difficulties signing FTA with other countries. Taiwan is an
island, neither do we have enough natural resources, nor do we have enough
domestic market to support all economic activities on this island. International
trading is the only way to support our economy. Unfortunately, when the rest of
the world are benefited by signing FTAs, Taiwanese glove makers still have to
suffer from the tariff twice from importing the material and exporting the
product.
Actually baseball/softball glove industry is not the only one who is facing this tough
situation. Many other Taiwanese SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) especially
25
those in traditional industries, are facing similar crisis. According to ”中小企業經營
現代化之研究” (郭崑謨/梁定澎, 1995), we could categorize the issues into
following 5 parts:
1. Market and production issues
Indicating the extrinsic factors which cause the increase of production cost and the
decrease of international competitiveness. Ex. Threats from emerging countries
which owns cheap labor force and natural resources, trade protectionism, upsurge
in labor and land cost, production cost increase due to environmental and
consumer consciousness.
2. Management issues
The arrangement of the overall management system and human resource has a
direct influence on the organization morale and efficiency. How the concept of the
company management reacts to the extrinsic change will be the key of this issue.
3. Financial structure issues
Weaker financial structure has long been a serious problem for Taiwanese SMEs.
High capital cost and short term financing had put them into deep trouble when it
came to the economic downturns.
26
4. Production management issues
Taiwanese SMEs have always been production oriented and are more focused on
production issues. However, small-batch production and lack of the sense of cost
control leads to lower margin. Also, R&D capability and technology improvement
are the common weakness of Taiwanese SMEs.
5. Marketing capability issues
Due to shortage of capital, SMEs usually focus on OEM instead of creating their
own brand and placing efforts on marketing. That is the reason why we are facing
difficulties making the industry upgrade.
Although the challenge for Taiwanese SMEs in traditional industry is harsh, there are
still many companies made good examples how they figure their way out. Not only
did they survive from the fierce competition but also did they found the niche position
in the value chain and become irreplaceable.
3.2.3 Learning from other industries
For the past decade, facing the threat from globalization and the pressure from
mainland china, many Taiwanese traditional SMEs are trying hard to upgrade
themselves from pure OEM to ODM, even OBM. However, is branding really the
27
rescue for all businesses? According to the CEO of Whirlpower (manufacturer of
hand tool), Mr. Liu says “Branding is just switching battlefield, switching to the field
where you will face competitors who are even stronger.” “Taiwan is not a marketing
based country” said Mr. Ho (CMO of HTC) and lacking the experience of branding
compare to developed countries in America and Europe. Taiwanese SMEs are also
struggling on the way of “upgrading”. However, there are a few good examples which
we could take for reference, and they will be shown in the following paragraphs.
1.
Moneyball Theory
I would like to start the examples by quoting a sentence said by Billy Beane, the
General Manager of Oakland Athletics, in the movie “Moneyball”. “If we try to
play like the Yankees in here, we will lose to the Yankees out there.” (Both
Oakland Athletics and New York Yankees are Major league Baseball teams. In
2002 Athletics had approximately US$41 million in salary while Yankees spent
over US$125 million in payroll that same season.) This story is an excellent
example of a company with limited resource, in a very traditional industry, trying
to beat the larger market teams by brings in new concepts with a lot of courage
and full entrepreneurship. SMEs in Taiwan do not have the same amount of
capital and resource comparing to world famous big brands, and that’s why we
28
have to find ways to find our niche and try to change the game.
2.
Differentiation + Excellence
Facing the strong competition around the world, many SMEs in Taiwan are
trying to find a way out, and most of them are finding their market segmentations
and trying to differentiate themselves from their competitors. However,
according to the chairman of the most well-known restaurant chain operator
Wowprime Corp (王品集團) in Taiwan, Steve Dai, differentiation is not enough.
Only being excellent in the field you have differentiated yourself will make you
competitive.
When having a meal in any outlet of the Wowprime group, what you will notice
right away is the superior service and the standardization of every single step. To
achieve the standardization, Wowprime has to break down the whole working
flow into steps. From the cooking area to the serving area, everyone follows the
SOP and being specialized in certain steps in order to provide the constant
quality on the food and service. You can also easily recognize the standardization
on its menu and price. The meal is always served in a course with the same price,
so at the moment you choose the restaurant you know exactly how much you are
going to pay. Although the course and price are fixed, there are plenty of variety
29
of dishes that you can choose under the catalog of appetizer, salad, soup, main
course, desert and drink. In other restaurants, you can hardly see this. That is
how Wowprime differentiated themselves and being excellent about what they
have chosen. It is a great example for SMEs who are struggling to find their
position in the global competition.
3.
National Industry Alliance
With the tradition of OEM, most of the Taiwanese SMEs have very good
experience in manufacturing and confidence with their products. On the other
hand, they are usually lacking modern knowledge of management, marketing and
new product development. This is the major problem most of the SMEs are
facing when coming to the step of upgrading. Knowledge costs. Most of the
SMEs don’t have time, money and labor to invest in it individually. However, if
several companies in the same industry are willing to share their resources with
each other, the investment suddenly becomes possible and affordable.
GIANT, the world biggest bicycle manufacturer, faced the challenge in the
beginning of 2000’s when the export amount of Taiwan bicycle dropped to 4
million units, less than 50% compare to the peak in 1998. Low-end bicycle OEM
order was taken by China’s cheap labor force. Refusing to see Taiwan being
30
kicked out from the world map of bicycle industry, the CEO of GIANT searched
for possibility of alliance from their competitor, Merida. With the two leading
enterprise GIANT and Merida being the backbone, they reached out to their
suppliers and formed the “A-team” in 2003. With the goal of “Taiwan, to become
the global innovation and supply hub of best quality cycling products and service
with total best value”, they implemented the idea of “co-management”,
“co-development” and “co-marketing”. By integrating the whole industry power
A-team was able to gain enough resources to upgrade their capability and had
enough energy to aim at higher-end products with higher profit. Competing on
the global scale as a team instead of fighting individually, A-team received a
positive feedback. In the first year of implementation, all the members had an
average 20% production increase, 40% inventory decrease and created 30%
more space in the factory. For GIANT and Merida, they enjoyed 18% of sales
growth and 21% of average unit price growth for the very first year.
(劉玉珍,
2004) After 7 years of the implementation, the average export unit price for the
A-team members had grown 2.6 times. (徐增明, 2009)
With this successful experience, more and more Taiwanese SMEs tried the same
approach. There are “M-team” for Machine Tool Industry, “T-team” for Hand
Tool Industry and “S-team” for Fitness Equipment Industry. (劉朱松，2012)
31
Although they have different goals in different industries, all the “teams” have
the same strategy, integrating the power of Taiwan and show the world high
quality and strong competitiveness under the brand name “MIT”.
3.3 North American Market research
When baseball is mentioned, the first nation comes into people’s mind would
probably be America. Being the pastime of America, baseball is definitely one of the
most popular sports that bring millions of people together throughout the whole nation.
It is a unique sport that players trained for tens of thousands of hours for a play on the
field which only last for less than 5 seconds. Besides, all the outstanding records are
basically formed by the cumulative judgment and movement made by the players in
less than 1 second. However, personal performance is just not enough for winning a
game. Without perfect teamwork, exquisite tactics and correct strategy, a team would
not be able to win the game, not to mention winning the championship of a
tournament or the whole season. MLB (Major League Baseball) is the highest
achievement and honor for all professional baseball players in the world. From the
business perspective, the audience and revenue it created are at all time high, not to
mention the effect it brings to the whole baseball industry.
Being a baseball/softball glove exporter, the market size of America is undoubtedly
32
attractive for Dragonfly. First of all, let us take a look from the geographic perspective
why North America is such an attractive market for all the glove makers. In the
following graph, we can see that the dark blue area is where the major baseball games
are held in the world. North America (including USA, Canada and Mexico) is
undoubtedly the biggest area on the map. In which, USA is the leading market
because of the Major League and all levels of organized baseball games. In Canada,
there is only 1 Major League team and the weather does not allow it to be a year
round sport. (There is a high percentage of population turned into Ice Hokey fans in
the winter time) In Mexico, they do not have any Major League teams but they have
their own professional baseball league which has certain connection with MLB.
However the purchasing power of Mexico is still low (GDP-Per Capita ranked #89 in
2012, according to THE WORLD FACTBOOK by CIA) and the market size will be
way smaller than the U.S. market. For baseball equipment business, USA definitely is
the most attractive market with the fiercest competition. “The company who rules the
U.S. market can rule world markets”, says Hideki Tsuruoka, director of Mizuno’s
baseball division. As a baseball glove maker, that is the next battle field Dragonfly is
aiming for.
33
Figure 3-1 World Baseball Map
3.3.1 Participants of Baseball and Softball
According to wiki.answers.com, “In the USA more than 40 million people play some
form of baseball. This takes into account all ages and gender “. Among all theses 40
thousand baseball participants, there are around 14.6 million baseball participants and
14.1 softball participants and the rest in the other forms of baseball. For example,
there are 2.2 million T-ball players, age from 4 to 7. (Data from 2006) The percentage
of total U.S. population for baseball participants was 4.9% and for softball was 4.7%.
Of all the baseball and softball players, 10.6 millions are on the field more than 50
days per year, which we define them as frequent participants. These participants are
representing a higher possibility of purchasing high-end baseball/softball equipments.
34
(Active Marketing Group, 2007)
Figure 3-2 Baseball & Softball Participation in the U.S. (Active Marketing Group,
2007)
“Frequent baseball participants play an average of 39 games and travel with their teams eight
times per year” “This enthusiasm and dedication for the sport is reflected in the increase of
baseball academies, travel and select teams, organizations and tournaments that have become
a year-round business.” “Families of high school participants have been known to spend $10K
to $30K annually on travel, team fees, equipment and private instructions” (Active Marketing
Group, 2007)
With all these enthusiastic participants in the diamond-sport, we can see a great
chance of business in front of us. Before we move on to the sales numbers, we also
found some graphs that shows the number of participants by region and states,
which will allow us to see clearly which are the places we should pay more
35
attention when we are entering the market.
Figure 3-3 Baseball Participants by Region (Active Marketing Group, 2007)
Figure 3-4 Top 10 States by # of Participants (Active Marketing Group, 2007)
3.3.2 Sales number of baseball/softball gloves
After looking at the number of participants of baseball and softball in the U.S., you
36
might be curious how big actually the market is? According to our findings, the
diamond-sport retail market in the U.S. was US$1.8 billion in 2010. (Go
Onomitsu & Shunichi Ozasa, 2010) This number includes not only ball gloves but
also all the other equipments used in the sport, including bats, balls, spikes, protection
gears…etc. So how about the ball glove market?
“In 2010, there were 5.1 million baseball and softball gloves sold in the U.S. that brought in
approximately US$208.7 million, according to the National Sporting Goods Association’s most
recent Sporting Goods Market report. So the baseball glove industry is steady and still growing.”
(Chris Silva, 2011)
From the information above we can get two more extend information: First, the ball
glove sales is about 11.6% of total diamond –sport retail market. Second, the average
retail price for a ball glove in the U.S. will be $41. Now we have collected all the
numbers we need to understand the size of the U.S. baseball/softball glove market.
What do these numbers actually stand for? Not until we do the vertical and horizontal
comparison will we know what these numbers stand for, and how big the U.S. market
actually is. So what is the Vertical Comparison and what is Horizontal Comparison?
In this research, the Vertical Comparison is defined as different sports played in the
same nation. On the other hand, the Horizontal Comparison is defined as same sport
37
played in different nations.
3.3.3 Vertical & Horizontal Comparison
3.3.3.1 Vertical Comparison
In this section we are going to do the Vertical Comparison, which is comparing the
baseball/softball with the other sports in the U.S. market. To be more specific, the
comparison is only between “Team Sports” in order to avoid losing focus on the other
types of sports such as individual sports, water sports…etc. As most people would
know, there are “Big Three” in American Professional Sports, MLB (Baseball), NBA
(Basketball) and NFL (American Football), but when it comes to the question of
participation, are they still the top three? According to “2012 Sports, Fitness and
Leisure Activities Topline Participation Report” by SGMA (Sporting Goods
Manufacturers Association), the team sport with most participants in the U.S. was
Basketball (24.8 million). The second was Soccer (Outdoor) (13.7 million). Baseball
comes in the third (13.6 million) in year 2011. (SGMA, 2012) Although the number of
participants only ranked in the third place, baseball is a game which needs way more
equipments than basketball and soccer. The following illustration is going to give you
a clear idea how different they are in terms of equipments.
38
Basketball
Figure 3-5 Basketball Player (Merriam-Webster, n.d.)
Soccer
39
Figure 3-6 Soccer Player (Merriam-Webster, n.d.)
Baseball
40
Figure 3-7 Batter (Merriam-Webster, n.d.)
Figure 3-8 Catcher (Merriam-Webster, n.d.)
For a basketball player, except for uniform and ball, the personal equipment he/she
needs is only a pair of basketball shoes. That also explains why it is the most popular
team sport in the U.S. except cultural influences. For a soccer player, extra protection
on the players’ shin and Goal Keeper’s hand is needed. Players of all positions
basically share the same equipment through the whole game except the goal keeper in
a soccer game. In a baseball game, every player will need different ball gloves for
each position, and different gears when they are at bat or on the field. Especially the
protection gears for the catcher are just far more complicated than the gears used in
41
the other two leading sports. This is the beauty of baseball equipment business, there
are much more equipments needed to play the game.
As a result, according to NPD's "Global Sports Market Estimate, U.S soccer market
was US$900 million (NYSports Journalism, 2010) and basketball shoe market was
USD$2.4 billion in year 2010. (Darren Rovell, 2010) However, it is much more
difficult to define basketball equipment market because of casual usage of basketball
foot wears. People would not wear football or baseball cleats for their daily life, but a
pair of basketball shoes could be multi functioned for verified activities.
Now we have a clear idea that baseball equipments market size was ranked either first
or second (depending on the definition) in the U.S. market. Next, we are going to look
at the Horizontal comparison.
3.3.3.2 Horizontal Comparison
After comparing with other sports in the U.S., let us look at the comparison with the
other major baseball playing countries. According to the Numbers Book by IBAF
(International Baseball Federation), there are 119 member federations and estimated
35 million participants in organized baseball competitions worldwide. We would like
to compare the 2 biggest countries in terms of baseball the U.S. and Japan. According
42
to the research of SportsOneSource, the baseball participant in the U.S. was 13.8
million in 2009, and Japan was 11.2 million according to “レジャー白書２０１０”
in the same year. (Shunichi Ozasa, 2010) From the number of participants of two
leading countries, we could get the participation rate for the U.S. was 4.6% and for
Japan 8.8%. When we look at Taiwan, according to E-ICP research, the participation
rate of baseball was only 1.3% which equals 0.3 million of participants. (紡織產業發
展推動辦公室，2006)
With the very limited market in the domestic Taiwan market, there are already too
many baseball glove makers competing with each other. Quality of the products,
design and business strategy are all similar between these local brands, some even get
their supply from the same factories. Therefore, Dragon fly is searching for a chance
in foreign countries. Japan and the U.S. first came into our mind because of their
leading position in terms of market size. Both of the markets are very big and
saturated, however, Japanese are tend to be more conservative and are more
comfortable purchasing the brand they are used to. While American users are more
willing to try something new, if the product has good quality and attractive price.
3.3.4 Users’ preference on baseball/softball gloves in the U.S.
Having an overall understanding and having a correct business strategy are essential
43
for any enterprise to enter a new market. However ignoring details like consumers’
preference toward the product would cause early loss in the new market. To prevent
that situation from happening and to put our business in the correct direction from the
very beginning, we are going to take a closer look at the habit and preferences of U.S.
glove users.
We will do the analysis through comparing the existing products in the U.S. market
with the current products in the domestic market. The comparison will be done in the
following four categories: Color, Shape, Weight and Material.
3.3.4.1 Color
U.S. baseball/softball players are tend to be more conservative in terms of the color of
the gloves. It is easy to tell from two pictures bellow.
Figure 3-9 Color preferences of Baseball Gloves in Taiwan and the U.S.
The photo on the left hand side was taken in a Taiwanese baseball equipment store,
and the one on the right was taken in an American store. It is not difficult to see that in
44
the U.S. gloves are basically composed with three colors: Black, Brown and Cream.
Meanwhile, gloves in Taiwan are presented in brighter color and more color choices.
To support our observation on the glove color in the U.S., you will find more
examples on Dick’s Sporting Goods (A Fortune 500 American corporation in
the sporting goods and retail industries) official website. (Dick’s Sporting Goods,
2013)
When it comes to the custom gloves, the color and design just get even more
complicated for Taiwanese. Although the color choice for custom gloves depends on
individual preferences, flashy colors and complicated designs are more acceptable for
Taiwanese baseball players. While most U.S. baseball players are more comfortable
with the classic colors (Black, Brown and Cream) and design on their gloves.
3.3.4.2 Shape
There are slight different in the shape design in glove shapes between Asian style and
American style. The following illustration will show you the shape difference
between two areas in both infielders’ glove and outfielders’ glove.
Infielders’ Glove
Japan
45
United States
Figure 3-10 Examples of Infielders’ Glove
Outfielders’ Glove
Japan
United States
Figure 3-11 Examples of Outfielders’ Glove
46
From the illustration above we can easily identify the difference of the shape between
Japanese gloves and American gloves. Japanese gloves usually have a “V” shape with
the sweet spot closer to the palm, while American gloves are more likely to have a “D”
shape with the sweet spot right at the “pocket”. This difference shown in the glove
shape design reflects the catching habit of the players from two different cultures.
This finding is incredibly important. If we had the wrong design for our new market,
even if we have best quality gloves, consumers will still find our gloves hard to use.
3.3.4.3 Weight
Generally speaking, the U.S. frequent/core participants prefer stiffer gloves with
longer durability and firm feel of the glove. This kind of glove is usually made of
steer hide, which would lead to extra weight and longer “break-in” periods. For most
of Asian players American gloves are a little bit too heavy to use, and would prefer
gloves made of cow hide or gloves with some kind of “lightening technology”. For
both Asian and American top level gloves, kip leather is usually used, which tend to
be softer and lighter and provides the need of quick hand in a high-end ball game.
3.3.4.4 Material
“Mesh is used on the back of leather gloves for a number of reasons. It adds flexibility and
47
breathability to your glove, which is nice if you're playing in consistently warm climates. Using
mesh for a portion of a glove also removes some weight from the overall product. For these
reasons, we're seeing mesh begin to grow in popularity among top players”
(T. Scharfenberg , 2012)
Gloves with this new material on the back are getting more and more popular among
both Asian and American players. However, mesh is not suitable for infielders who
play on a clay or dirt field because it is more difficult to clean and lack of durability.
The most well-known example of glove with mesh material is probably the one Roger
Clemens (nicknamed “The Rocket”) uses.
Chapter 4 Project Proposal
4.2 Michael Porter’s 5 forces analysis of North American market
In this project proposal we would like to use Michael Porter’s 5 Forces model to
analyze the competition in the U.S. baseball/softball glove market. Michael Porter’s 5
forces model includes: Rivalry among Existing Competitors, Bargaining Power of
Suppliers, Bargaining Power of Buyers, Threats of New Entrants, Threat of Substitute
Products or Services. In the following paragraphs we are going to use this model to
48
evaluate the competition in order to develop our business strategy and find the
suitable entry mode.
4.2.1 Rivalry among Existing Competition
The intensity of the rivalry in a market could be evaluated through following factors:
1. Size and Number of firms
We have mentioned a few times earlier in this report that the U.S. baseball/softball
glove market is already saturated and are dominated by a few big companies such
as Rawlings, Wilson, TPX/Louisville Slugger, Nike and Mizuno. These
companies have full range of products and services which could fulfill almost all
kinds of need from their customers. Besides these huge companies, there are also
smaller companies who focus on particular products or service with their special
strength. Usually they are more focused on single products. For example, Marucci
is famous for its Bat, Nokona is famous for the gloves made of kangaroo hides,
Franklin is famous for their batting gloves and there are a few makers like
Akadema, Glovesmith, Rico, Novak…are known for their American made or
customized gloves.
Rivalry intensity is very high according to the number and size of firms.
2. Market size and trend
49
Market size is growing slowly or even shrinking due to the decrease of baseball
participants in the U.S. market. According to the numbers we have mentioned in
our market research, the number of total participants had dropped from 14.6
million to 13.6 million. 6.8% decrease from 2006 to 2011.
Slow growth causes higher intensity of rivalry.
3. Fixed vs. variable cost
For the big brand companies in this industry the portion of the fixed cost would be
higher since they are setting up factories in foreign countries with cheaper labor to
achieve economy of scale. Marketing cost is also huge in this industry.
Advertisement, endorsement and sponsorship would take a big portion of the total
cost. On the other hand, for those small sized glove makers, smaller portion spent
on fixed cost is common. Production line for baseball/softball gloves are not
complicated and does not require high technology involved. The most common
machine in a glove factory will be the sewing machine, plus a few die cut machine,
finger molds and hammers. According to a local owner of a glove factory, the cost
structure of a baseball/softball glove, raw material (variable cost) costs up to 55%
of total cost. However, the market is still mainly dominated by major players and
small glove makers are only having a tinny share of the market.
50
Rivalry intensity is considered to be high from cost structure perspective.
4. Switching cost
Switching cost is extremely low for customers in this industry. However this is
depending on what level of users we are looking at. For casual participants in
baseball/softball, there is nothing to stop them from switching from one brand to
the other. For core participants, they are usually more conservative and have a
strong preference toward the brand and model which he/she is already used to.
Even so, there is actually nothing to stop consumers from switching products
except personal preference.
Rivalry Intensity is extremely high in terms of switching cost.
5. Product differentiation
A glove is a glove; most of the consumers do not have the ability to tell if it is a
good glove or bad glove other than the price tag. There are no obvious differences
from glove to glove, or even from brand to brand. They all have the same shape,
the same function, the same design, the same texture and even the same colors.
Although some would claim some new technology in their design, it is not easily
understand by consumers.
51
Rivalry differentiation is also extremely high for this one.
Overall speaking, rivalry among existing firms is very high in this market. In order to
get our position in the market, we need to find different focus on our products and
services to differentiate ourselves from other existing players.
4.2.2 Bargaining Power of Suppliers
Bargaining power of glove making factories are strong than local brand companies
because they are very concentrated. Take Dragonfly’s 2 suppliers for example, both of
the factories are located in Tainan County and have a combined market share around
80% of domestic market. Local brand companies are dispersed and none of them
could provide a consistent and adequate order. However, the baseball glove market is
pretty stable in Taiwan and the price does not fluctuate. There are mainly two reasons
which would change the price of the gloves: new design of gloves and raw material
price changes. No matter which is the reason of price change, brand companies will
not have any choice but accept.
The bargaining power of supplier is strong. The only way to increase Dragonfly’s
bargaining power is to find a bigger market which could provide bigger and consistent
demands.
52
4.2.3 Bargaining Power of Buyers
Our customers will be the frequent/core baseball/softball players in North America.
For these people, they are usually less price sensitive and are more focused on the
product quality and users’ experience. However, it is also difficult to get them switch
from the brand and model, which they are already used to, to our products.
The bargaining power of Buyers is strong. Value added product design and unique
service will be the key of gaining bargaining power from our buyers.
4.2.4 Threats of New Entrants
Threats of new entrants are considered to be low because the market is saturated and
not attractive for ambitious entrepreneurs. For foreign brand companies, it is not easy
to have close connection to glove manufacturers in Taiwan and even more difficult to
find qualified glove manufacturers in Mainland China or South-east Asia. For other
Taiwanese brand companies, lacking of the ability of language and foreign market
developing is common. The entry barrier for this industry is not very high, but finding
the customer is the critical problem for new entrants.
Threat of new entrants is low by our estimation.
53
4.2.5 Threat of Substitute Products or Services
There was very limited changes in design, material or function for baseball gloves.
This product is made to assist performance and protect the hands of players in a
particular sport. The possibility of a substitute product to be introduced into the game
is nearly “0”. New technology might be implemented into current product but there
will be no fundamental change of gloves. Otherwise the game will be totally changed
and not called baseball/softball anymore.
Threat of substitute product is extremely low.
From the analysis above using Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model we can find that
the competition in the current market place is very intense. On the other hand,
potential threats from new entrants and substitute products are low. This is a stable
and mature market which we cannot expect it to grow dramatically and brings a huge
profit to the company. What we are trying to do is to find a niche position in the
market which will provide a steady growth of our sales. To achieve that goal in the
saturated and already crowded market, we need to find our target market and
penetrate with the suitable entry mode and business strategy.
54
4.3 Market segmentation and choosing target market
From the market research and market competition analysis we did in the above, the
U.S. baseball/softball glove market is huge compare with Taiwanese domestic market
and any other market in the world. However, as expected, the competition is fierce.
The good news is, the market is so big that we can easily double or triple the sales of
Dragonfly by having less than 0.05% of the market share. The preparation for the
market entry would not be easy, even we are confident with the quality of our
products. We just need to have clear market segmentation and the right target
customers.
Before we move on to the market segmentation, I would like to go through the
strength and weakness of Dragonfly in the standard of world level, in order to find the
most suitable breaking point to the big pie.
Strength:

High quality product

Competitive price

Able to provide whole range of baseball/softball equipment

Well experienced in international business
55

Close relationship with glove factory
Weakness:

No sales channel in the North American market

Low brand awareness

Lack of Capital

Lack of Human Resource

Low design and develop capability

Limited capacity
From the list above we can soon understand that Dragonfly is basically a very small
Taiwanese company with very limited capital and human resource. However it has
pretty much experience in international business and has very close relationship with
the factories. The products Dragonfly provides are of good quality but with very low
brand awareness. The biggest challenge of entering the North American market is that
it doesn’t have any sales channel in the North American market. The current design of
the product is also not very popular among consumers.
After examine the strength and weakness of the company, we are going to look at the
market segmentation. According to research in the U.S. by SGMA (Sporting Goods
56
Manufacturers Association), players of the sport could be segmented by the frequency
of participation. There are Casual participants (1- 12 times/year), Regular participants
(13 – 24 times/year) and Frequent participants (25+ times/year). In the following
graph, we are going to show you the structure of overall structure of baseball and
softball participants in 2011.
10.7 million
Frequent Participants
4.3 million
Regular Participants
8.7 million
Casual Participants
Figure 4-1 Participant Structure of baseball & softball in the U.S.
Since Dragonfly is a small company with very limited capital it is impossible to
compete with the main players in the U.S. such as Rawlings, Wilson… on all product
lines and all level of customers. The supplier of Dragonfly has the capability of
making high-end baseball/softball gloves but with limited capacity. Therefore, it is
better for dragonfly to focus on high-end glove market which provides better margin
instead of competing in low-end market on quantities. Frequent participants will be
57
the group that we should focus on, but when we look at the pyramid graph above the
first thing we noticed is that frequent participants are actually outnumbered the other
two groups. The good news is, we can exclude 13 million participants and zoom in to
the rest 10.7 million people. And the bad news is 10.7 million is still too big.
According to the observation during our research process, all the glove makers focus
on baseball much more than softball. It looks like that softball is only the appending
of baseball. Softball players usually choose just bigger baseball gloves to fit in their
games. Even if softball gloves are available in certain big brands, it is not always
available in retail stores. Even if it is in the category of the product line, it is usually
on a secondary level which might weigh more or have less durability. There is
basically no top-quality softball oriented glove available on the market. The kin
players of softball can only choose from a softball glove with secondary quality or a
top quality glove which is designed for baseball. Furthermore, when we look at the
number of participants of both sports, we found the number of frequent players in
baseball is much bigger than the one in softball. However, we all know that baseball is
actually more complicated and more difficult to play than softball (slow-pitch). The
major connection and trend between these two sports is like the following. A lot of
people play little league baseball when they were kids, and turned into softball players
when they realize they are not going to make a living by being a professional player
58
and neither do they have enough time to devote enough time into training to keep up
to the intensity of a baseball game. The interesting fact is, these are the people who
have money and decision making ability of what glove are they going to buy. A great
amount of frequent players in baseball are actually kids, who cannot afford or do not
have the decision making right to buy a high-end glove.
Again, big brand companies have their marketing strategy to do commercials and
endorsement by Major League players, but we do not have the budget to put into
marketing activities like that. Therefore we need to focus on our target customers
directly. Softball, both fast-pitch and slow-pitch, participants’ structure are showed in
the following two pyramid graphs.
2.9 million
Frequent Participants
0.7 million
1.6 million
Regular Participants
0.5 million
3.3 million
Casual Participants
1.2 million
Softball (Slow-pitch)
Softball (Fast-pitch)
Figure 4-2 Participant Structure of softball in the U.S.
Now we are having a much smaller target group of potential customers around 3.6
million people. Next step we are going to dig deeper into the frequent softball players’
59
market. According to the data provided by ASA (Amateur Softball Association of
America) we are able to see how many teams and players in each region of the U.S.
and have a basic idea of the market size. The actual target region will be decided after
the a few tests we are going to do through the internet. The adult players in ASA are
around 1.6 million and they will be our target market in our early stage of penetration.
More supportive reasons and detailed ideas will be explained in the next section.
Figure 4-3 ASA Softball Teams by Region (ASA, 2010)
4.4 Entry mode selecting and marketing strategy
It is essential for an enterprise to choose the suitable entry mode when going into a
60
new foreign market, otherwise an entity may put itself either in an extremely risky
situation or spending a lot of money and efforts but ends up with very limited return.
To choose the “correct” entry mode, the constraints of the environment or company
condition and the goal of the business plan have to be taken in consideration. It is
even better to have goals and strategy for short-term, mid-term and long-term in order
to build sustainability in the new market.
In the former section we have already decided our target market and now we are
going to develop our business strategy and the entry mode depending on our goal and
constraints. In order to find the most suitable entry mode for Dragonfly to penetrate
the North American market, we are going to take a look at the options of entry modes
in table 1.
4.4.1 Goals and Constraints
First, let us go through the constraint of Dragonfly: Very limited capital, not enough
human resource, no sales channel or partner in the new market, no brand recognition
and no production facility. Second, what is the goal of penetrating the North American
market for Dragonfly? AS we mentioned in the company introduction, the annual
sales number for Dragonfly is only NTD10 million and the short term goal is to
expand the business territory to North America and increase the sales by 50% in 3
61
years. From the perspective of the constraints, Dragonfly doesn’t actually have much
choice. Due to small capital, Dragonfly cannot afford to choose any risky or high cost
entry mode. Exporting and Joint Ventures will be the only two options Dragonfly has.
Since the brand name of Dragonfly does not have any recognition in the U.S. market,
it is almost impossible to find any company to cooperate with. Therefore, in the
starting stage, export seems to be the only choice Dragonfly has.
Once we have decided the entry mode for the new market, we are going to the details
of the business plan and explain how it works in the new market. In the following
paragraphs we would like to go through the details including our marketing strategy,
logistics and the cost structure.
4.4.2 Marketing Strategy
To develop our marketing strategy, we would like to use the most common and basic
tool, “The Marketing Theory of 4Ps”. We are going to explain the details under the
items of Product, Price, Promotion and Place.
Product

Brand name/logo: Miracle will be the brand we are going to use for our products
in the new market. We would like to start with a whole new brand and build the
62
brand image from very beginning. Dragonfly is not a popular brand in the
existing market and it will not provide any positive effect to our product in the
new market.

Function: As we see the potential of the softball market, we would like to focus
on softball oriented gloves with supreme quality. All the design will be done
especially for softball use.

Design: Dragonfly does not have R&D talents and design specialties. It is
difficult for it to hire one in the near future. Therefore, we decided to create two
product lines: The Classic Series and the Signature Series.
The Classic Series
For most of the North American baseball/softball players, classic design and
colors are still much preferred on their gloves. But how do we make the
differentiation with other brands? Chinese characters are getting more and more
popular in the western society and it is also considered to be cool to have tattoos
in Chinese characters. So why not give a Chinese character tattoo on the glove?
There is always a stamp on the palm of the gloves, usually with the brand name
or logo, and we can provide some choices of the most popular Chinese character
stamps on the palm of the gloves.
63
The Signature Series
The Signature Series is very similar to custom order gloves. However, this is the
strategy we created to find the way out of the two difficulties we are facing. First,
we do not really understand the color and design preference of the market. So
that it will be too risky to launch new products in a bigger quantity. Second, the
custom order gloves are so unique and personalized that the design is only used
once. The cost of manufacturing and shipping will be too high that we would not
be able to get enough profit. As a result, we would like to have our customers to
design the product for us. The master piece designed by our customer would be
exhibited on the website and open for order. Once the order quantity exceeds a
certain amount, the design will be adopted and the designer will not only get a
free glove of the prototype, every single glove with that design will have his/her
signature on it. In this way, we will insure the minimum order quantity of each
design and get a market preferred design in a much cheaper and safer way. In
addition, we will be able to ship our products in a cheaper rate to our hub in the
U.S.

Quality
We are aiming the high-end market and every single product has to be best
64
quality in the same level. We are going to serve softball players with 5 star
products that they have never experienced before with a reasonable price.
Price
According to our investigation the price for top graded baseball gloves or custom
gloves are priced between USD250 to USD350. Our pricing strategy will be
providing our customer with reasonable price but not losing the superior feeling of the
top quality gloves. Therefore, we would like to price our top graded softball
specialized gloves between USD200 to USD250 depending on the design and
materials it uses. According to our understanding, frequent players in an organized
league will be willing to pay more for a high-end glove to make sure their equipment
meets up their need for longer durability and better performance. This price should be
very attractive for the heavy users with higher skill level and willing to invest in their
equipments which would ensure their performance on the field. Due to business secret,
the cost of the gloves is not allowed to be shown in this report but we are aiming at
the net profit rate at 25%.
Promotion
As we mentioned earlier, Dragonfly does not have enough resource to pay for the
sponsorship or endorsement. Every single penny our customer pays will be used on
65
the products to our customers. The promotion activities will mainly be divided into
two categories by customer type: The Individual customers and the Group Customers.
For the individual customers, all the promotion will be done on the internet through
social media. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and other popular social media will be our
promotion channel. Promotion activities such as glove design competition, season-end
sales…etc will also be held on the internet. For the group customers, more promotion
activities could be done. Since our target customers are frequent participants who are
playing in a softball team of softball club in the league of ASA, it is also a good way
to penetrate from team to team or club to club. We could customize the glove for the
team by putting team logos on the palm stamp and provide the design of team colors.
In the beginning of the promotion, we would start by providing some special price or
give away some free samples for a certain players or teams that would become our
brand ambassadors. By building up our reputation from person to person and team to
team through both physical and cyber channels, we hope that more and more
consumers will be aware of our brand and enjoy the best quality with more variety of
choice and reasonable price.
Place
Obviously it is too risky and not necessary in the starting stage for Dragonfly to have
66
a physical store in North America. All the ideas and tests could be done through the
internet. However, considering the logistic problem, we would need to rent a place to
be our hub in the U.S. in order to reduce the shipping cost. A person who takes care
the shipping and stock will also be needed. However, this person could be a friend for
part time, due to the limited task in the startup stage. Of course, when the business
starts to grow in the future, we would have to consider having a proper warehouse and
a glove specialist for our after service including glove maintenance, glove repairing,
and reverse logistic…etc. Before having this functional talent at the hub site, all the
after service will be done by our headquarter located in Taiwan. Our customers will be
able to apply for alternative gloves during the absence of their original gloves. This
would be also a good chance for our customers to try out other models of our products
and stimulate the purchasing in the near future.
The overall idea of entry mode selection and marketing strategy are actually quite
simple, because we do not have much choice but to try some ideas through the
internet in the startup stage and try our best to keep all the other costs under control.
Hopefully with our correct focus and efficient strategy, our idea could work and help
us reach the short term goal. The business will be carry on and move to the next step
if we proved the idea is working and earned enough capital for the next step. The
sales forecast and financial plan will be shown in the next section.
67
4.5 Sales Forecast and Financial Plan
Finally, in the last part of this project proposal, we are going to come down to the
earth and look at the numbers. All the projects need a financial plan to evaluate the
feasibility and value of the project; otherwise it is just a sketching of a dream. In this
section we are going to set up our sales goal of this project and compare the revenue
with the costs we are going to put into this project and see what is the profitability of
this project.
For the sales goal we are aiming at reaching 2% market share of the softball glove
market in the third year. The numbers will be calculated according to the market
research we did earlier and the result will be shown in the following table:
U.S. Market
ASA Adult Player
Target Market
(including baseball &
Share
softball)
# of Participants
23.7 million
1.6 million
2%
# of Gloves
5.1 million
344,300
6,900
Table 4-1 Target Sales Amount for 2% Market Share
68
The overall U.S. baseball and softball participants are 23.7 million according to the
data provided by SGMA research in 2011 (SGMA, 2012) and according to the
National Sporting Goods Association’s Sporting Goods Market report the number of
gloves sold in2010 was 5.1 million. (Chris Silva, 2011) With this rate between
participants and gloves sold, we can get the approximate number of the gloves sold to
adult softball players in the ASA (Amateur Softball Association of America) annually
is 344,300. (Adult players in ASA is calculated according to the Figure 4-3) The goal
of 2% market share equals approximately 6,900 softball gloves. The sales number will
be USD1,380,000 to 1,725,000 depending on the unit price from USD200 to USD250
per glove. According to the margin of 25% we will be able to have USD345,000 to
USD431,250 of profit. For the first year and second year the sales target will be 1,000
and 3,000 gloves. To reach the goal in the third year, there are several investments to
be done. The items which we need to invest in are shown in the following list:
1. Official website and on-line glove design & order system
The system is the backbone of this project, almost all the sales activities is going
to be held on the internet and it is the major channel for us to connect ourselves
with our customers. We will have specialist to design the website and the system
for us and the quoted price is around NTD120,000.
69
2. New Logo design
New logo will be designed for our new brand name which we are going to use for
our new market. The design of the logo should be somehow easy to recognize and
easy to remember. None of the current company member has the specialty in
designing and we consider it to be necessary to invest in the very first step in our
brand logo. Besides the logo of our brand name, there are a few stamps on the
palm of the glove also need some design and even some new idea from the expert.
The overall designing budget will be around NTD20,000.
3. Rental of the hub and logistic manager in the U.S.
We do not really have enough capital to find a former place and provide a former
position for this place and person. We will more likely ask for help from our
personal connections for this person and the space. There are actually no big space
needed in the startup stage, neither does the person have a big loading of work to
do. We are looking for friend’s help at the monthly payment at USD1,000.
4. Project manager
Obviously the company needs someone to run this project. The salary could be
very limited due to the scale of current business. However the bonus should be
based on the sales number, otherwise it will be difficult to get the talent who is
70
qualified to run this project. Salary for the project manager would be 700,000/year
in the first year.
5. Others
There will be other expenses such as making videos, promotion activities,
providing samples to the organizational customers…etc. The total budget for other
activities will be 500,000/year
From the assumption we made above, the initial investment will be NTD1,700,000
and for the following years the expense will be NTD1,560,000/year. In the following
calculation, we are going to assume the average net profit of a glove is NTD1,687.5
(200+250)/2
↑
Average Price
*
25%
*
↑
30
=
NTD1,687.5
↑
Profit Rate
Exchange Rate
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Fixed Cost
NTD1,700,000
NTD1,560,000
NTD1,560,000
# of glove sold
1,000
3,000
6,900
(2% market share)
71
Sales
NTD6,750,000
NTD20,250,000
NTD46,575,000
Net Profit
NTD1,687,500
NTD5,062,500
NTD11,643,750
Balance
(-NTD12,500)
NTD3,490,000
NTD13,573,750
Table 4-2 Financial Plan of the Project
From table 3, we could clear see that the investment in this project will break even in
the second year and brought in profit of NTD13,5 million in the end of third year. An
investment like this would be a project worth investing in. After the first three years,
as the sales number grows, there will be more investment put into the project. For
example, better logistic solution, more talent in the business, salary growth for the
employees, and increase in marketing expenses…etc. However, this project is only for
the startup for the new market entry and the only task we need to focus on is to make
sure this idea is going to work. In the next chapter, we will provide the conclusion of
this project and also the suggestion of further plan.
72
Chapter 5 Conclusion and Suggestion
Being the national pastime, baseball is the most popular sport in Taiwan. We have 4
professional baseball teams and the national baseball team had performed well in all
level of international tournaments. The international ranking of Taiwan according to
IBAF (International baseball Federation) calculation had climbed to No. 4 in the
world. Baseball is not only a sport in Taiwan, it becomes a part of the Taiwanese
culture which people talk about, care about and crazy about. Every time when the
national baseball team participates in international tournaments, people will stay in
front of the television and cheer for our national team. On the other hand, there are
people who do not only watch games but enjoy the game by playing it. There are all
levels of baseball and softball games held in Taiwan. For university students, there are
softball teams for almost every department, there are also amateur softball leagues in
every city for those who love baseball but do not have enough strength and skill to
participate in a baseball game to enjoy the fun of the game.
Since baseball and softball are so popular in Taiwan, the baseball glove industry are
also benefitting from it. The industry had a glorious history when all the world
famous companies placed their OEM order to Taiwanese manufacturers. However,
due to the competition from China and Southeast Asian countries become stronger,
73
Taiwan no longer has the low cost manufacturing advantage. All the big brand makers
had shifted their manufacturing to either China or other Southeast countries where
cheap labor forces are. Additionally, the gambling scandal of Taiwanese professional
baseball league had also destroyed baseball fans’ faith toward the game. As a result,
the passion of Taiwanese people toward baseball had cooled down and at the same
time baseball/softball glove sales had also harmed badly. The domestic market is too
small and was dominated by Japanese brands. Recently, more and more local brands
are trying to find their market place in it. Some did well but some don’t. Nothing to
doubt for is that the market is getting more and more crowded and the profit had been
squeezed. Although Taiwan made gloves are of very good quality and had its
reputation in the world, the development and growth had been stopped in this industry
for a long time.
Without a predictable bright future in the industry, no young talent would be attracted
into this industry and it just makes the future of the industry even worse. Taiwanese
manufacturers are very experienced and capable of making top-quality gloves from
the past OEM period. Just like all the other traditional industries, lacking of marketing
and R&D capability, the factories are going to be replaced by the other countries with
cheaper cost. The vicious circle is going on and on. If no changes are made in it, we
can predict that the industry will disappear in Taiwan in the near future.
74
What we are trying to do here is to find a new market, trying to find some new
element in to our business and the industry. Hoping the new ideas will stimulate this
industry to speed up again and finds its competitive position in the global market.
However, a tiny success could be a trigger but there are a lot more to plan and carried
out. There are a lot of SMEs in Taiwan facing exactly the same situation as baseball
glove makers. Some of them already made some changes and some of the even found
their position in the global competition. It is actually s good opportunity to learn from
the others experiences. After looking up the successful examples in the traditional
industries we have findings as follow, and it will be the direction that we are trying to
do in the future.
1.
Value added product and service
Taiwan used to have the advantage of cheap labor, but the situation have changed
along with the living standard increases and the whole society is getting more
developed. More and more innovative ideas should be implemented in the
companies and the industry needs a structural improvement to bring more value
into our products and services. There is no more chance for Taiwanese firms to
compete on quantities and low costs with evolving countries in a global scale.
We need to find the differentiation from others and become excellent in what we
75
do.
2.
Branding
Branding seems to be the only way out for the current situation Taiwanese SMES,
even if we are not sure if it is the right solution. But there is one thing we are
sure about, if we don’t make this movement, sooner or later we will lose our
competitiveness. To make the chance of success higher, we better understand
what branding is before we do so. Basically, to build up a brand we need four
elements: R&D, Manufacturing, Marketing and Service. Taiwanese firms are
good at manufacturing and service in general, and lack of the capability and
experience in marketing and R&D.

Marketing
Most of the SMEs in traditional industry in Taiwan are manufacturing based
instead of marketing based. We will face strong challenges when we go
international and compete in a global scale. However, there are young
talents who are specialized in this field in the other industries such as
service industry or retail industry. The question for the company owners is
how to make the industry more interesting and more attractive for these
young talents.
76

R&D
This is pretty much the same as the situation above. There are tons of R&D
talents in Taiwan, but most of them choose to devote themselves in the
high-tech industry for higher salary. However, when people start to care
about the quality of their personal life and life-work-balance, it might be a
chance for the traditional industries to find their incentives for these talents.
3.
Team up
When we come to the issue of putting more effort in the R&D and marketing
activities, the difficulty that most of the SMEs will have to face is not enough
capital and lack of experience. The investment seems to be too risky for them
and not knowing if they are in the right direction. Therefore, in some industries
in Taiwan there are already some “teams” being built to lower the risk and to
strengthen the competitiveness of Taiwanese brands. They share their knowledge
and experience with their competitors to look for better synergy for the whole
industry. Co-development, co-managing and co-marketing have been
implemented in many industries already and they all share the same goal:
Co-Branding under the name of TAIWAN.
The ideas we mentioned above are the long term goal for our plan. This project is
77
only the trigger of the overall plan which will hopefully bring the Taiwan
baseball/softball glove industry back in to the game of global business. Wish us good
luck and we really need your support to accomplish this plan. After all, “How can you
not get romantic about baseball?” ~ by Michael Lewis in the book “Moneyball”(2003)
78
References
English
Lawrence H. Berlow (n.d.), How baseball glove is made? Retrieved July 1, 2013,
from the World Wide Web:
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-1/Baseball-Glove.html
Michael E. Porter(2008). The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy. Harvard
Business Review, Retrieved July 5, 2013, from the World Wide Web:
http://hbr.org/2008/01/the-five-competitive-forces-that-shape-strategy/ar/1
Root F. (1994). Entry Strategies for International Markets. 2nd ed. Lexington, MA:
Lexington Books.
Senthil Mukundakumar (2012). Entry Mode Strategies. Retrieved July 5, 2013 from
the World Wide Web: http://www.slideshare.net/febi85/entry-mode-strategies
Shaker A. Zahra, R. Duane Ireland, and Michael A. Hitt. (2000). “International
Expansion by New Venture Firms: International Diversity, Mode of Market Entry,
Technological Learning, and Performance,” Academy of Management Journal 43,
no. 5
79
Active Marketing Group. (2007). The Baseball Market. Retrieved July 15, 2013 from
the World Wide Web:
http://www.activenetworkrewards.com/Assets/AMG+2009/Baseball.pdf
Go Onomitsu & Shunichi Ozasa. (2010). Baseball Caravan to U.S. Diamonds Helps
Mizuno Hit Against Nike. Bloomberg.com. Retrieved July 15, 2013 from the
World Wide Web:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-17/baseball-caravan-to-u-s-diamondshelps-mizuno-hit-against-nike-spalding.html
Chris Silva. (2011). The Fascinating History Of The Baseball Glove. The Post Game.
Retrieved July 17, 2013 from the World Wide Web:
http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/throwback/archives/201107
SGMA. (2012). 2012 Sports, Fitness and Leisure Activities ToplineParticipation
Report. Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association. Retrieved July 17, 2013
from the World Wide Web:
http://assets.usta.com/assets/1/15/SGMA_Research_2012_Participation_Topline
_Report.pdf
80
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Basketball Player. Visual Dictionary Online. Retrieved July
17, 2013 from the World Wide Web:
http://visual.merriam-webster.com/sports-games/ball-sports/basketball/basketball
-player.php
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Soccer Player. Visual Dictionary Online. Retrieved July 17,
2013 from the World Wide Web:
http://visual.merriam-webster.com/sports-games/ball-sports/soccer/soccer-player.
php
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Batter. Visual Dictionary Online. Retrieved July 17, 2013
from the World Wide Web:
http://visual.merriam-webster.com/sports-games/ball-sports/baseball/batter.php
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Catcher. Visual Dictionary Online. Retrieved July 17, 2013
from the World Wide Web:
http://visual.merriam-webster.com/sports-games/ball-sports/baseball/catcher.php
NYSports Journalism. (2010). While Soccer Fans Count World Cup Goals, Marketers
And Financiers Are Counting $$$. Retrieved July 17, 2013 from the World Wide
Web: http://www.nysportsjournalism.com/money-talks-at-world-cup-61110/
81
Darren Rovell. (2010). Plenty Riding On Under Armour’s Basketball Shoe. CNBC.
Retrieved July 19, 2013 from the World Wide Web:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/38787000
Shunichi Ozasa. (2010). イチロー上陸から 10 年、米シェア２割を狙うミズノ－
激戦の野球用品. Bloomberg. Retrieved July 20, 2013 from the World Wide
Web: http://www.bloomberg.co.jp/news/123-L787TB07SXKX01.html
Dick’s Sporting Goods. (2013). Retrieved July 20, 2013 from the World Wide Web:
http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=4414205&pg=
1
T. Scharfenberg. (2012). Baseball: Gloves by Material. Eastbay. Retrieved July 21,
2013 from the World Wide Web:
http://www.eastbay.com/knowledgebase/default.cfm?&article=knowledgebase_B
aseball_Equipment_fieldersgloves
ASA. (2010). ASA SoftballTeams by Region. Retrieved July 23, 2013 from the World
Wide Web:
http://downloads.asasoftball.com/about/pdf/ASAUSMapGraphicHR.PDF
Michael Lewis. (2003). Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. W.W.
Norton & Company Inc.
82
Chinese
梁定澎, 郭崑謨。(1995)。中小企業經營現代化之研究。 高雄復文圖書出版社
鍾武堯。(2007)。傳統產業在危機下之生存策略-以台灣棒壘球手套產業為例。
國立清華大學工業工程與工程管理學系碩士論文
劉玉珍。(2004)。產業創新模式-自行車業 A-Team 解決方案。中華民國全國工業
總會。2013 年 7 月 14 日，取自：
http://www.cnfi.org.tw/kmportal/front/bin/ptdetail.phtml?Category
=100164&Part=mgz9305-4
徐增明。(2009)。A-Team 逆轉勝創造台灣自行車「騎」蹟。工業局。2013 年 7
月 14 日，取自：
http://iknow.stpi.narl.org.tw/Post/Read.aspx?PostID=1929
劉朱松。(2012)。傳產業組 Team，目標各異其趣。正聲廣播公司。2013 年 7 月
14 日，取自：
http://www.csbc.com.tw/?rid=/MoneyCol/CTEECol.php?F_CTEEID=101010
2&F_CTEEMonth=101.01
紡織產業發展推動辦公室。(2006)。台灣之光支棒球運動。經濟部工業局 2013
年 7 月 20 日，取自：
http://www.tipo.org.tw/docs/Fup/TSMA%E6%A3%92%E7%90%83%E9%81%8B%E
5%8B%95%E5%A0%B1%E5%91%8A%E4%B8%AD%E8%8B%B1%E6%96%87.pdf
83