The Importance of Local Knowledge in Strategic Learning

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The case alludes to eBay going into Japan and having a rough go of it in Japan. How important is local knowledge to this case? So in other words, Taobao, obviously they're from China. They understand the buying habits of Chinese people. And so there is a particular amount of local knowledge that you need in order to be successful.

In an era driven by network effects, smaller players struggle to compete against bigger platforms. The trick to gaining ground on a much larger rival, says Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, is choosing a strategy that can’t easily be imitated. A good example is TaoBao’s strategy for displacing eBay in China, back in 2007.