The 16th Annual McGill International Entrepreneurship Conference: Researching New Frontiers

Crick - The first export order: A marketing Innovation revisited

Dave Crick, Victoria University of Wellington
Introduction

The objective of this study is to revisit the question posed in a classic study, namely Simmonds and Smith (1968, p.93); specifically, “what lies behind a firm’s first export order?” In contributing to the international entrepreneurship literature, ten as opposed to nine firms reported by Simmonds and Smith (1968) are investigated via personal interviews and like the original study these are from diversified principal product groups. The current study also differs since the interviewees are all owner/managers of smaller firms, businesses are independently owned, plus new to exporting i.e. within the last year (in the case of Simmonds and Smith’s study, managers were recalling after a period of exporting up to 4 years).

In the classic study, Simmonds and Smith (1968, p.93) noted the importance of understanding “who tends to be the moving force in commencing exporting”; also, “what motivates him (her)”, plus “under what conditions is exporting likely to be adopted”? Since the time of publication 45 years ago, much has been written from an academic perspective that develops the themes put forward by the authors (see, reviews of the literature such as Anderson, 1993; Coviello and McAuley, 1999). Indeed, a good deal of the existing knowledge has come from the discipline of international entrepreneurship since the first McGill Conference in 1998 (Dana et al, 1999; Jones, 1999; McDougall and Oviatt, 2000; Jones and Coviello, 2005; Jones et al, 2011).
Debates have taken placed as to whether firms start exporting via a psychologically close country and move through a staged process (Johanson and Vahlne, 1977) through to those that internationalise quickly and may be born global in nature in terms of the speed, scale and scope of activities (Oviatt and McDougall, 1994). Furthermore, this growing body of knowledge has recognised the changing circumstances management teams face from a practical perspective e.g. (and not restricted to): the introduction of the Internet and whether some strategies are more planned than others (Crick and Spence, 2005); new export assistance initiatives (Chaudhry and Crick, 2002); plus changing economic conditions such as the strength of particular countries and trading blocs (Crick, 2009). A holistic perspective has been suggested when trying to explain management teams’ internationalisation strategies that encompass perceptions of stimuli and barriers (Crick and Jones, 2000; Bell et al, 2004).
Discussion

The findings from this investigation suggest that no single theory could fully explain management teams' initial export strategies. The findings also suggest that the respective firms’ first export order was more of a planned market innovation for some than for others whose were unplanned and serendipitous (Crick and Spence, 2005). While Different management teams utilised resources and networks in various ways, strategies were also contingent on perceptions towards market conditions. This supports a holistic perspective (Bell et al, 2004; Crick and Jones, 2000) and decisions were contingent on management teams' reactions to a whole variety of internal and external factors.

References

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