Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contingent relationship between government marketing assistance for export and the performance of early internationalizing firms in a developing country’s low-tech industry. Design/methodology/approach – The authors employ hierarchical multiple regression based on the data obtained from Bangladesh, a south Asian developing country and a leading exporter of apparel products worldwide. The authors used a sample of 224 early internationalizing apparel firms to test the hypotheses. Findings – Research describes the relationship between export assistance and performance as direct. Recently, some researchers have suggested moderators between them. The authors argue that the relationship between the two is contingent on the level of export commitment. The authors find that neither informational nor experiential marketing assistance is directly related to export performance. The relationship between informational assistance and export performance is significantly, but (unexpectedly) negatively, moderated by export commitment. The effect of experiential assistance is positively, but only marginally, moderated by export commitment. Originality/value – Contrary to researchers’ overarching focus on a direct relationship, the authors investigate the moderation on the relationship between export informational and experiential marketing assistance, and early internationalizing firms’ performance in a developing country’s low-tech industry setting. The authors use export commitment as the moderator; it is one of the most important internal determinants of export performance and extremely relevant in early internationalizing firms. The differential impact of informational and experiential assistance provides additional insights.
Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of business process innovativeness in the networking-export performance relationship in a developing country low-tech industry setting. Most innovation research in international business and entrepreneurship is conducted on high-tech industries in developed countries. Less research has focused on the low-tech industry context. This study bridges this research gap by testing whether international new ventures’ (INVs) networking resources impact their export performance through business process innovativeness. Design/methodology/approach The study tests the link between low-tech INVs’ networking, business process innovativeness and export performance using a sample of 647 export start-up apparel firms in Bangladesh, the second largest apparel exporter in the world. Findings The results recognize that an INV entrepreneur’s personal and inter-firm networking are directly and positively related to business process innovativeness and export performance. The findings also indicate that business process innovativeness acts as a mediator only between an INV’s inter-firm networking and its export performance. Research limitations/implications The study was undertaken in a Bangladeshi low-tech industry setting-the apparel sector; thus, future research may include data collection from a range of industries across countries. Data collected for the purpose of this study used a cross-sectional research design, and this may only have confirmed the relationships in the model and not causality between the constructs. Practical implications The findings highlight that low-tech INVs should focus more on leveraging their personal and inter-firm networking resources, as this should result in improved export performance. The results also provide directives for INVs in regard to improving their business process innovativeness to achieve increased performance. Originality/value The study is not only carried out in the context of low-tech early internationalizing firms (i.e. INVs), but also contributes to theory and practice by testing whether INVs’ networking resources (personal and inter-firm) have an impact on business process innovativeness, which in turn leads to improved performance.
PurposeThe study aims to bridge entrepreneurial capability, export market orientation and the international performance of international new ventures (INVs). Thus, multi-scale entrepreneurial capabilities have been adopted to provide more profound insights into the literature on early internationalisation. Since little is known about the antecedents of export market orientation, the performance outcome of this is ambiguous. This study aims to enhance knowledge in this pressing research area.Design/methodology/approachThe sample of this study consists of data (354 firms) from INVs operating in the apparel industry of an emerging economy, namely, Bangladesh. Structural equation modelling has been used to investigate the hypothesised relationships.FindingsFor the Deshpandé and Farley (1999) scale, the effect of general entrepreneurial capability on intelligence dissemination and responsiveness is positively significant. Similarly, the effects of international entrepreneurial capability on customer orientation, intelligence generation, dissemination and responsiveness are positively significant. However, general entrepreneurial capability has non-significant effects on customer orientation and intelligence generation. The results also showed that export market orientation positively mediates the relationship between international entrepreneurial capability and firm performance. For the Morris and Paul (1987) scale, the hypothesised relationships between capabilities and market orientation are positively significant and, therefore, support the mediating relationships for both general entrepreneurial capability and international entrepreneurial capability.Originality/valueMerely having capabilities without acknowledging the firm's strategic orientations is not sufficient to secure superior performance. The authors urge entrepreneurs to capitalise on their entrepreneurial capabilities to leverage organisation-wide export-market-oriented behaviour to achieve superior international performance in emerging economies.
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