本研究以網際網路做為企業行銷溝通之互動性媒介為觀點，以內容分析法進行兩部分之研究。第一部份以分析跨國運動商品企業網站首頁為題；第二部分則測度傳播策略呈現在跨文化運動商品網頁中的標準化程度，以期對跨國運動商品企業建置各國家地區網站與網頁之現況有一概括性的瞭解。 第一部份將運動商品企業網站首頁劃分為「內容」與「設計」兩項架構，分析12家跨國運動商品企業在美國、中國與台灣共計33個首頁樣本，發現中國與台灣併計為大中華地區所列載之內容項目與功能設計，與美國運動商品網站首頁之差異不大；但在線上購物機制上則仍未有成熟的環境與建置，此結果可呼應於其他跨文化行銷傳播研究的相關論述。 第二部分研究植基於傳統廣告內容的分析技術，變項涵括：「資訊內容」、「文化價值」與「創意策略」等三面向，檢測跨國運動商品企業設置於美國、中國與台灣地區共計211個網頁樣本。結果發現運動商品網頁確實是涉入度高、資訊承載量大的互動性媒體，偏向使用「獨立性文化價值」以傳達個體性而非集體性的文化概念。然而大中華區在廣告運用與網路媒體的開放性，複雜紛呈的文化價值表現，亦造成運動商品網頁的跨文化差異化。創意策略則使用商品的論點與細節，結合象徵性聯想與品牌熟悉度的方式，同時傳達品牌名稱、商標符號與名人代言的情境，以行銷每一季推陳出新的運動商品。 / This study regards the Internet as an interactive medium of corporate marketing communication, engages in two parts of studies by content analysis method. The first part analyzes sports-commodity multinational corporations’ home pages; the second part evaluates the degree of standardizations’ online communication strategies across differing cultures. And to comprehend summarized about how the sports-commodity MNCs set up regional websites. Divides into two frames of “content” and “design” categories, the first part analyzes 33 home-page samples in 12 sports-commodity MNCs among USA, China, and Taiwan. So that sports-commodity home pages’ content items and design functions have no remarkable difference. But the systems of online shopping environment are not mature in China and Taiwan. The result is coherent with past cross-cultural studies that compared marketing communications. On the basis of traditional advertising content study techniques, three explanatory variables are conducted, i.e. “information content”, “culture value” and “creative strategies”. Examining the 211 web-page samples in sports-commodity MNCs among USA, China, and Taiwan, the finding suggests that the high involvement nature of interactive medium is closely related to the informative web pages. And the predominant usage of “independent culture value” conveys individualism but collectivism cultural concepts. However, the liberalization of the Internet media and advertising usage; representation of complicated culture values, are the reasons to cause the cross-cultural diversity between localized sports-commodity MNCs’ web pages. To weed through the old to bring forth the new sports commodity every season, the MNCs have adapted their web creative strategies by products’ arguments and specifics, and integrating symbolic association and brand familiarization, with context of brand name, trademark and celebrity endorsers.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and multinational companies (MNCs) landed in Chinaalmost at the same time. However, the Chinese market where the governmental role is alwaysinfluential provides a specific setting for the CSR development in China. The purpose of thisthesis is to analyze the governmental role in the CSR engagement of SvenskaKullagerfabriken (SKF) in China based on a literature review, qualitative case study, semistructuredinterview and three mini-cases study. By adopting these methods, it is found thatthe Chinese government is trying to provide a more CSR-friendly policy and stricterlegislation in order to guide the Chinese business towards a sustainable direction. Besides, inrecent years, the Chinese government is also re-orienting the social values that are claimingthe return of the traditional business ethics and promoting the level of CSR in the Chinesesociety. A triangulated model is developed in this thesis to analyze the case company. Theexperience of SKF indicates that the company’s CSR strategy is universal, whereas its CSRengagement has changed along with the Chinese development. It is found that there are fourphases of SKF’s CSR development in China, and each phase is associated with andstimulated by the specific scheme during the Chinese social and economic development.Among the variables in Chinese changing society, the macro-policy is deemed by SKF as thekey factor that has the largest impact on the CSR engagement of the company. After thisresearch, the research gap will be filled in with an empirical case. Yet, the future efforts inempirically investigating more companies are suggested to enrich the research on thecorrelation between the Chinese government, CSR development and MNCs in China.

<p>This dissertation consists of three major chapters. The first chapter is dedicated to testing a novel gravity model of international trade, while the last two chapters explore cross-country commitment and implementation behavior within the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement. </p> <p><strong>Chapter 1:</strong> I test a novel theoretical gravity model of international trade on firm-level export data from Colombia in 2018. The model assumes a power law relationship between trade flows and distance, with the distance elasticity resulting from two dynamic processes: firm-export growth captured in a Pareto distribution; and the growth of the distance over which those exports are sold. Although the model has been shown to work well in French data, its usefulness for interpreting data from other countries remains unexplored. I find evidence that the model fails in Colombia because some large firms contradict its assumptions by exhibiting shorter export distances compared to smaller firms in the sample. I hypothesize that these large firms are branches of foreign multinational corporations (MNCs). MNCs’ headquarters constraint the export growth of its affiliates as well as the markets they reach. While I cannot prove firms’ MNC affiliation, I use export sophistication as an imperfect metric to reflect MNC presence. When MNC affiliates are excluded from the sample, firm export distance rises faster with firm size, leading to improved predictions of the distance elasticity of trade in Colombia by the model. These findings have implications not only for the tested model but also for other theories that explain gravity in international trade through firm-level behavior.</p> <p><strong>Chapter 2:</strong> We use a new database of commitments made during the process of ratifying the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) to study variation in countries’ commitment behavior. The TFA is a novel World Trade Organization agreement because it allows developing countries to select commitments from a menu of best practices in trade facilitation, rather than to consent, or not, to a comprehensive package of negotiated commitments. The operation of this <em>à la carte</em> approach to concluding trade agreements is worthy of study in its own right, but the commitment data also offer a high-level description of progress in an international effort to improve border management procedures around the globe. Our study uses data on TFA commitments to describe progress across subcomponents of the agreement. A regression model shows that the number of Type A trade facilitation commitments that a country made in the TFA ratification process depends on its level of development, population size, ability to control corruption, and foreign aid received to support trade facilitation. We use multidimensional scaling techniques to study differences in the content of national commitment bundles. This approach demonstrates that variation in the content of countries’ commitments is closely tied to the number of commitments made.</p> <p><strong>Chapter 3:</strong> This chapter examines the implementation progress of the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) from 2019 to 2023. The TFA, which is the latest World Trade Organization agreement, came into force in 2017. In its novelty, it allows developing countries to set their own implementation schedule and adjust it if needed. This flexibility aligns implementation requirements with the capabilities of signatory countries, but introduces uncertainties in achieving complete global implementation and fully realizing the potential benefits of the agreement. Using data on the notified implementation dates for each measure of the TFA, this study describes the progress made in implementing different subcomponents of the agreement over a period of five years. A regression analysis suggests that the annual rate of progress towards achieving full TFA implementation does not vary based on country characteristics such as GDP per capita, population size, or landlocked status. Assuming that the tendency at which countries implement measures remains unchanged, I project that 95% of developing countries will achieve 95% TFA implementation between the years 2036 and 2047.</p>