TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES OF THE LARGEST FOREIGN COMPANIES IN RUSSIA

Abstract

The research of companies’ territorial strategies allows to specify the entrepreneurs logic of territories choice for the investment by eliminating from the analysis the offshore capital, to reveal the differences in regional strategies of companies in various branches of the economy, to identify the company preferences in territories for different activities, to assess the attractiveness for foreign investors not only regions, but also different types of settlements (all of these tasks cannot be solved on the basis of statistical data). The paper analyzes the location of regional divisions of different types (production, logistics, sales, research, management) of 50 largest foreign companies operating in Russia (Forbes rating). The author confirms the compliance of this location with the existing theoretical ideas about the companies’ territorial strategies, including the importance of key economic centers, hierarchical and wave diffusion, neighborhood effect. The paper shows the differences in investments’ attracting in different types of cities (including the role of million-plus cities in the location of companies distribution centers and research units, small towns in attracting industrial enterprises, the second-third cities of regions in the development of the retail trade), in the wideness of the geography of companies activities in different industries (including the presence of minimum territorial barriers in the food industry and mono-brand retail trade, especially cars), the importance of proximity to Moscow. The article highlights Russian Federation subjects with the maximum degree of allocation of foreign companies.