Internationalization of domestic product life cycles: An exploration of causality

Presents the results of research designed to measure the effects of the internal organizational source of change, the external environmental source of change, overseas production and sourcing, and R&D investment in new products on the rate of change in international product life cycles. Offers a model of the effects based on a review of both international and domestic literature and tests this model by confirmatory factor analysis. The results show that the internal organizational source of change and the external environmental source of change have a positive effect on the speed of change of international life cycles. Overseas production and sourcing as well as R&D investment in new products have a slight negative effect on the speed of change of international life cycles.