Identifying successful marketing strategies by export regional destination

Abstract

This study develops a model that explains export sales volume by destination based on a company's export marketing strategy. A seemingly unrelated regression model (SURE) simultaneously estimates the explanatory value of the different elements of the marketing strategy, as well as company characteristics, such as experience, size and motivation to export, on entry decisions to six different regional markets made by exporting companies in a southern European country. The data were collected from a sample size of 2,264 exporting companies. Findings confirm the importance of exporting experience and proactiveness in determining high export sales volumes in every regional market except for those psychologically close. Nevertheless, different marketing strategies depending on the region lead to high export sales volumes. For example, low price strategies in the case of Latin America or differentiation strategies based on the augmented product in the case of the USA generate high export sales. Promotional expenditures are of higher importance for distant markets, but for closer markets channel development is the key. IntroductionExporting represents one of the most common entry modes to international markets. As a consequence, exporting and export behavior have been a primary area of interest in the international marketing field and the focus of extensive marketing literature (Aaby and Slater, 1989;Bilkey, 1978;Cavusgil and Nevin, 1981;Douglas and Craig, 1992;Leonidou, 1995Leonidou, , 1998Leonidou and Katsikeas, 1996). However, the majority of empirical studies in this area give little attention to the effect of export destination on export behavior and performance (Katsikeas, 1994). This study analyses export performance determinants in different regions using data from exporting companies in a Southern European country. Conducting this kind of research will help refine our understanding about how the strategy-performance relationship depends on the environmental context (Katsikeas et al., 2000). It will also allow us to assess the reliability and generalizability of past findings.

Relationship Between Inflation and Real Economic Growth in Rwanda

“…The positive influence of the adaptation of product strategy confirms Lado et al (2004), Lee and Griffith (2004), and Shoham et al's (2002) results. For the regions they researched, they found a positive influence of this factor.…”

“…The influence of price has been highlighted by various scholars such as Lado et al (2004), Morgan et al (2004), and . However, Sousa and Novello's study (2014) found that there was no influence of the price strategy.…”

“…Besides others, Kahiya and Dean (2014) and Lado et al (2004) describe it as fundamental and Lee, and Griffith (2004) mention that a certain size is necessary to export successfully. For example, one participant mentioned that his firm as a medium-sized company concentrated on smaller projects.…”

“…Exports represent the preferred method for entry into foreign markets (Lado et al 2004;Zhao and Zou 2002) since they offer firms a comparatively high level of flexibility with relatively small necessary investments thus permitting a fast entry into new markets (Katsikea et al 2007;Leonidou 1995;Sousa and Novello 2014). Research on export modalities is of high interest to three major stakeholders: public policymakers, managers, and researchers (Katsikea et al 2000;Sousa 2004).…”

Export market effectiveness: the role of export commitment, innovativeness and marketing capabilities

“…The more committed the firm, the greater is its engagement in planning and the allocation of managerial, financial and human resources to the export venture, which in turn results in a better export venture performance (e.g., Lado, Martínez-Ros, & Valenzuela, 2004;. Thus, we propose the following hypothesis:…”