UNCTAD Insights: An innovative measure for digital firms’ internationalization

In this research note, we propose a novel and innovative measure for the internationalization of digital firms. Our measure overcomes some of the weaknesses that inhibit traditional measures of internationalization in their application to digital firms. The measure uses Google Trends data and captures the volume and distribution of a digital firm’s recognition in the digital universe. In addition to developing the measure, we conduct empirical tests to apply our internationalization measure to traditional and digital firms and compare our results to data from UNCTAD’s Transnationality Index. Our empirical comparison offers insights into the internationalization of digital firms. We discuss these insights and offer an impetus to developing a theory of digital internationalization.