What Drives Home Market Advantage?

Abstract: In the automobile industry, as in many tradable goods markets, firms usually earn their highest market share within their domestic market. The goal of this paper is to disentangle the supply- and demand-driven sources of the home market advantage. While trade costs, foreign production costs, and taste heterogeneity all matter for market outcomes, we find that a preference for home brands is the single most important driver of home market advantage – even after controlling for brand histories and dealer networks. Furthermore, we also find that consumers favor domestically producing brands even if these brands originated from a foreign country. Therefore, our results suggest a novel demand effect of FDI: Establishing local production increases demand for the brand even in the absence of any cost savings.