Marketing Resources Of Small And Medium Export Enterprises And Export Performance Research

The study aimed to proposing and testing a conceptual framework for categorizing marketing resources of export firms and explaining their impact on export performance. In addition the study took a look at the effect of marketing support resources on marketing resources. We firstly summarized the related former researches on marketing resources and export performance in marketing management and strategy management domains, on the basis of which we put forward the scales for measuring marketing resources and proposed the relationship between marketing resources and export performance. And then we dwelled on the marketing support resources, namely the inside-out functions, manager characteristics and organization system, the purpose of which is to find methods for export firms to leverage their marketing resources.In our research work, we used questionnaire survey to investigated one hundred and fourteen small and medium-sized export firms mainly located in Shandong province. Our hypothesis was largely supported by the statistics. The main results were showed as follows:1. The marketing resources of export firms include customer-linking capabilities, market innovation capabilities, human resource assets, reputational assets and marketing planning capabilities.2. An export firm's superior marketing resources are positively related to export performance.3. An export firm's level of marketing support resources is positively related to the degree to which the firm has competitively superior marketing resources.4. The socio-cultural and political factors in exporting environment have a negative effect on export performance.5. The firm which wants to strengthen its export performance should consider the following suggestions:1) Enforcing the capabilities-building of firm managers;2) Enhancing the building of export market-orientation firm;3) Strengthening the inside-out functions of export firms.