IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijbglo/v14y2015i2p208-225.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The role of competitive strategies on export market selection by SMEs in an emerging economy

Author

Listed:
  • Abu H. Ayob
  • Zizah Che Senik

Abstract

The study examines the relationship between competitive strategies and export market selection by small and medium-sized exporters in an emerging economy. Drawing from the literature on comparative advantages of exporters from developing countries and demand characteristics in export markets, hypotheses are constructed on how cost leadership, differentiation and focus strategies are associated with exports to developed and developing countries. Survey data from 214 manufacturing SME exporters in Malaysia is used to empirically examine the relationships using ordinary least squares regression. The results suggest that cost strategies are positively associated with exports to developed countries but not developing countries. Differentiation strategies show the opposite effect, cost strategies and focus strategies are negatively associated with exports to both types of markets. This study contributes by demonstrating that competitive strategies act as a firm-level factor influencing export market selection. Implications and limitations of the study are presented.

Suggested Citation

  • Abu H. Ayob & Zizah Che Senik, 2015. "The role of competitive strategies on export market selection by SMEs in an emerging economy," International Journal of Business and Globalisation, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 14(2), pages 208-225.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijbglo:v:14:y:2015:i:2:p:208-225
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=67436
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bastos, Paulo & Silva, Joana, 2010. "The quality of a firm's exports: Where you export to matters," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 99-111, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijbglo:v:14:y:2015:i:2:p:208-225. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=245 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.