Determinant of the Export Performance of Small and Medium Sized Companies: Case of the Turkish SMEs

Abstract

Small and medium-sized companies have gained more popularity and attention in the international business market. Thus, exporting activity becomes one of the main aims for SMEs in order to attain more benefit from international business. In this perspective, influencing factors of the export performance has gained attention in business literature. The aim of this study is to explain the determinant of export performance of small and medium sized companies, focusing on internal influencing factors; managerial level factors, firm level factors and external influencing factors. The previous studies have attempted to investigate the relations between internal and external factor of companies and export performance. This research based on literature review and case study which is two Turkish small and medium sized companies. Data of this research has been collected through semi-structured interview. According to companies’ data export performance of the companies strongly related with internal and external factors. In addition, this research showed that some factors directly affects the export performance, some other factors have indirectly affects the export performance although a few factor have no influence on export performance of the companies. Due to the companies which are run in different business sectors and exporting to the different countries, different factors have different influence on export performance of the companies.