Export market exploitation and exploration and performance

Abstract

Purpose – Drawing on the resource advantage and organisational learning literatures, this paper aims to investigate the linear, moderated, complementary and non-linear effects of export market exploitation and exploration on export performance. Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative study was performed using an online survey. The final sample consisted of 267 Portuguese export manufacturing firms. Data were analysed using structural equation modelling. Findings – Export market exploitation and exploration is positively and negatively related to export performance in a linear way, respectively. Export market exploration improves export performance under high levels of export market turbulence. Balancing export market exploitation with export market exploration enhances export performance. High levels of export market exploitation provide an additional boost to performance. Practical implications – This study contributes to a better understanding of how market exploitation and exploration relate to performance in the export context. To enhance export performance, managers should deploy high levels of export market exploitation, pursue export market exploration in dynamic export markets, and maintain a balance between export market exploitation and exploration. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the export marketing field by shedding light on the complex nature of the relationships among export market exploitation, exploration and performance. Overall, the results provide novel evidence concerning the internal and external contingencies that affect the success of export market exploitation and exploration.

An Integrative Model of Market Orientation on Innovation Performance

“…al., 2015;Raju, Lonial, & Crum, 2011;Roach, Ryman, & White, 2014). Market orientation representing company resources has become an important agenda in a dynamic marketing environment to identify market opportunities and pursue innovation (Lisboa, Skarmeas, & Lages, 2013;Jiménez-Jimenez, Sanz, & Hernandez-Espallardo, 2008;Al-Ansari, Pervan, & Xu, 2013). Market orientation studies have presented valid measures of constructs (Jiménez-Jimenez, Sanz, & Hernandez-Espallardo, 2008;Wang & Chung, 2013), and studied the consequences of market orientation (Sandvik & Sandvik 2003;Nasution et.…”

Sustaining Small Exporters’ Performance: Capturing Heterogeneous Effects of Government Export Assistance Programs on Global Value Chain Informedness

“…When the value chain is international in scope, the value chain will act as a channel to research global markets and customers. In fact, several researchers have highlighted the importance of information acquisition in international networks [24,[37][38][39], but the concept of the value chain has been implicitly discussed. For instance, Chetty and Agndal [37] conceptualised the social capital, which refers to the ability to acquire resources within a business network.…”

“…It should be noted that, theoretically, a firm competitive advantage within the RBV is not an end in itself but a means to gain a sustainable, superior long-term performance [17]. However, even though the majority of export performance research takes a RBV, much of the existing literature conceptualises the export performance with a short-term financial perspective such as the total company sales and export intensity [10], or the export profit, export return on investment, and return on export sales [39], as argued by Fu and Wu [51]. To be integrative regarding the impact of public support on export performance, and to address the role of EPPs on sustainable export performance, we adopted an export performance concept which is developed by Diamantopoulos and Kakkos [11] and Durmusoglu's et al [7].…”

Exploitative learning by exporting

“…Market knowledge is necessary to engage in successful export market exploitation, as it serves to reduce knowledge gaps related to business environments in the foreign markets (Petersen et al, 2008). By acquiring knowledge about local competitors, technical standards of the local markets, product requirements, local customer needs and expectations, firms may be able to decrease the perceived market uncertainty and effectively exploit the export market opportunities (Lisboa, Skarmeas & Lages, 2013). Similarly, international marketing literature emphasizes the need for firms to invest in adapted or new versions of existing products, matching the requirements and tastes of foreign consumers for becoming successful exporters (Cavusgil, Zou & Naidu, 1993).…”

“…Exporting involves substantial start-up sunk costs (Campa, 2004) which firms have to bear to start the export operations, and which also determine the expectations from the export entry. Export profits are often considered as the exporting firm's ultimate goal (Lisboa et al, 2013), thus making the need for exploitation of the firms' strengths even higher. Recent empirical evidence is in line with the exploitative view of exporting, showing that firms need to prepare for the entry into exports by e.g.…”