Significance of Studying Product Diversification, Geographic Diversification, and Their Interaction Impacts for Malaysian Companies: A Literature Review

Abstract

The objective of this study was to comprehensively and critically review research literature on impacts of product diversification strategy and geographic diversification strategy, conducted particularly in Asian context, and set forth guidelines for future studies. The study concludes that past research into impacts of product diversification and geographic diversification produced indecisive results. There has also been absence of any consensus on the interaction impacts of the two strategies on corporate performance. Although past research studied the topic using variety of methodologies but there has been limited research on the topic for Asian economies compared to Western ones. This is especially true about Malaysian public listed companies (PLCs) for which, particularly, studies regarding interaction impacts of the two strategies are extremely limited. For Malaysia, the challenging business scenario in future coupled with quite significant number of diversified companies warrant research into these areas. Future research could take up the objective of analysing and understanding individual and interaction impacts of product diversification and geographic diversification on corporate performance of Malaysian companies and contribute significantly to this research field. It could adopt new and advanced methodologies for measuring diversification strategies as well as employ several measures of corporate performance to produce comprehensive and robust results. Findings of such research would certainly be useful for practicing managers, particularly Malaysian strategists, and guide them in their decisions concerning diversification strategies and help them better manage their companies’ performance.