In today's business environment, characterized by the increasing globalization of markets and interrelation of economies, internationalization strategies are becoming particularly important. Even those firms choosing to operate exclusively in their own domestic market face the challenges of international competitiveness. In this context, exporting is a fundamental strategy for ensuring firms’ survival and growth.
From this perspective, both the size and the rapid growth of global exporting call for an effective commitment of resources and the design of successful international marketing strategies that allow companies to create, communicate, deliver, and exchange market offerings that have a superior value for customers, clients, marketers, etc. (Morgan, Kaleka, & Katsikeas, 2004). This way, competitive advantages in foreign markets may be achieved, with a positive influence on current and future export performance (Morgan, Vorhies, & Schlegelmilch, 2006). However, in the international marketing field, the extant knowledge about the determinants of firm's competitive position on foreign markets and their influence on export performance is very scarce (Leonidou et al., 2002 and Morgan et al., 2004). The majority of studies about export performance have focused on a set of very diverse variables (Aaby and Slater, 1989, Cavusgil and Zou, 1994, Katsikeas et al., 2000 and Sousa et al., 2008). One of the main purposes of this study is to overcome this gap by developing a conceptual model to analyze the influence of managers’ perceived competitive advantages reached in foreign markets on export performance. Moreover, strategic decisions directed at adapting marketing tactics to the requirements of the different country-markets will have an effect on the achievement of these competitive advantages (Griffith et al., 2006, Shoham, 1999 and Shoham, 2002). Finally, the international orientation of the firm will influence the level of adaptation of marketing tactics and export performance (O’Cass & Julian, 2003).
To achieve these objectives, the work is organized as follows. The next section presents a theoretical review of the variables included in the study: export performance, perceived competitive advantages, adaptation of marketing tactics, and export commitment. This review provides the basis for the formulation of various research hypotheses, which are tested using a sample of 150 Spanish export firms. The paper then presents the theoretical model, with the various relations proposed between the constructs analyzed, defines the measurement scales used, describes the methodological aspects of the empirical study, and presents the results obtained. The final section discusses the most important conclusions that can be drawn from the results obtained, analyses the implications for management, and offers a series of recommendations. The work ends with limitations and future lines of research.
This work offers important contributions to the international marketing literature, drawn from the comprehensive analysis of relationships between export commitment, adaptation of marketing strategy, perceived competitive advantages and export performance.
Export performance is directly influenced by perceived (by the firm's management) competitive advantages (path coefficient = 0.322) and by export commitment (path coefficient = 0.364) and indirectly by adaptation of marketing tactics (0.1761) and by export commitment (0.0426). This is consistent with Albaum and Tse (2001) and Albaum et al. (2003), who point out that the relationship between adaptation of marketing tactics and export performance is better explained by including the competitive advantages that the firm possesses in international markets as a mediating variable. The explanation power of export performance by means of these variables is 37.89% (R2 = 0.3789). In the building of an export performance scale, what plays an essential role is the management satisfaction with the growth of export sales (weight = 0.575), as well as international expansion of the firm (weight = 0.5506) and achieved market share (weight = 0.5469).
The competitive position plays an important role in determining export performance, and, from a strategic viewpoint, the company must develop operations oriented to attaining those advantages over competitors in foreign markets (Morgan et al., 2004). These actions can be developed from a threefold view. First, by means of the adaptation of marketing program elements to international market requirements, this will make it easy to differentiate the product and to develop loyal customers with a higher value than the competitors’ (Aulakh et al., 2000 and Kaleka, 2002). This way, it is necessary to underline the important weight that strategic operations have over marketing program elements in the building of a formative scale of perceived competitive advantages, with those derived from promotion (weight = 0.2886) standing out. However, a higher contribution to the scale of perceived competitive advantages is derived from human resources (weight = 0.5028). This fact shows us that staff and managers’ profile and training (Axinn et al., 1994, Gray, 1997 and Patterson et al., 1997), regarding international experience, language skills and so on, is essential to the management and planning of exporting activity (Axinn et al., 1996, Beamish et al., 1999 and Evangelista, 1994), as well as to the development of effective strategies of international marketing (Griffith et al., 2006, Shoham, 1996 and Shoham, 1999). In this way it is a key factor in the building of competitive advantages and, thus, in export performance improvement (O’Cass & Julian, 2003). Finally, the third main component in the building of the scale of perceived competitive advantages is costs (weight = 0.5028). Considering that the adaptation of marketing tactics does not have a direct influence on export performance, it would be convenient for a company to progressively adopt a global approach, standardizing its marketing strategy in those markets with similar features (Kustin, 2004 and Özsomer and Simonin, 2004). This way, the company could reach economies of scale in manufacturing and marketing and, therefore, cost advantages (Levitt, 1983, Samiee and Roth, 1992 and Schuh, 2000).
On the other hand, although the marketing literature increasingly recommends adapting the marketing tactics to the wants and needs of foreign markets rather than relying on standardization (Lages and Montgomery, 2004, Shoham, 1996 and Shoham, 1999), the current research is not able to confirm the superiority of one strategy over the other (standardization versus adaptation), since this variable does not exert a direct effect on export performance. This may be due, as Leonidou et al. (2002) indicate, to the moderating effect that other factors may exert on the international marketing strategy, such as size, international experience, managers’ perceptions about internationalization, the organization's objectives in foreign markets, as well as the competitive intensity (Morgan et al., 2004) and the other variables of the environment (Cavusgil and Zou, 1994 and O’Cass and Julian, 2003). But coinciding with various studies (Albaum and Tse, 2001 and Albaum et al., 2003), the current research has found that firms that adapt their marketing tactics perceive that they obtain greater competitive advantages than their rivals in foreign markets. This means that an indirect relation does exist between adaptation of the marketing program elements and the managers’ satisfaction with the achievement of their objectives in foreign markets via perceived competitive advantages.
Regarding the weight of the elements of the marketing program in the building of the scale adaptation, what must be underlined is the important role played by strategic decisions about promotion (weight = 0.566) as well as about price (weight = 0.4433). Via them, besides product adaptation (weight = 0.2409), a company is able to adjust its offer to the particular characteristics of each market, which reduces foreign consumers’ uncertainty, or psychological distance (Madsen, 1989), improves relationships with local intermediaries (Shoham, 1999), and can lead the firm to greater profitability, as a better product–market match can result in greater customer satisfaction, which can give greater pricing freedom vis-à-vis competitors (Leonidou et al., 2002). This will translate into the perception of achievement of competitive advantages, positively and indirectly affecting export performance.
In the context of firm-specific characteristics, the study's findings indicate that a firm's resources influence its choice of marketing strategy. The results confirm that organizations’ international behavior in terms of their foreign trade operations depends to a large extent on the resources (financial, managerial and human resources) they dedicate to this activity (Donthu and Kim, 1993 and Evangelista, 1994). These extra-human, managerial and financial resources enable companies to improve the depth of planning procedures (e.g., in terms of market research and market analysis) and uncertainty is reduced. This will allow managers to implement marketing strategies that are more adapted to the needs of different markets (Aaby and Slater, 1989 and Cavusgil and Zou, 1994). Thus, the current research has found that export commitment is an essential determinant of the organization's strategic actions in foreign markets, conditioning the development of a marketing adapted to the needs and expectations of foreign consumers. The results confirm that those firms that commit resources to export activity are the most proactive in adapting their international marketing strategy to the preferences of the foreign markets, supporting the conclusions of previous studies (Atuahene-Gima, 1995, Beamish et al., 1993, Cavusgil and Kirpalani, 1993 and Lages and Montgomery, 2004). However, although the link of this relation is acceptable (path coefficient = 0.242), its contribution to explaining adaptation of the marketing tactics is very low (variance explained = 6.09%). This indicates the existence of other factors not considered in this study that may condition the level of adaptation of the marketing program tools to the international markets (Calantone et al., 2006, Jain, 1989, Lages and Montgomery, 2004, Özsomer and Simonin, 2004, Schuh, 2000, Theodosiou and Leonidou, 2003, Vrontis, 2003, Zou and Cavusgil, 1996 and Zou et al., 1997).
Finally, the results also confirm the important effect of export commitment on export performance. The variable acts directly as a determinant of the managers’ satisfaction with the achievement of their objectives in foreign markets. This conclusion confirms the importance that other research has attributed to export commitment as a determinant of the international success of export firms (Aaby and Slater, 1989, Cavusgil and Zou, 1994, Evangelista, 1994, Donthu and Kim, 1993, Louter et al., 1991 and O’Cass and Julian, 2003).
On the other hand, from the methodological perspective the current research is characterized by the following main feature: the adequacy of the proposed measurement scales, which provides support for the theoretical framework considered to build the model. Second, the current work overcomes one of the weaknesses pointed out by Diamantopoulos (1999). This author notes that research work in the international marketing area is basically characterized by the implicit or explicit use of reflective indicators, with very few studies using formative indicators, despite their adequacy for measuring certain variables. The current work has considered perceived competitive advantages, adaptation of marketing tactics, and export performance as formative constructs, and export commitment as a reflective construct. In this respect, this work is one of the few that analyses the determinants of the firm's export performance and includes both reflective and formative variables.
