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This study aims to determine the moderating role of trust on the influence of export incentives over importer role performance. The mediating role of importer role performance and the impact of export incentives on exporter performance have also been investigated.

This study used survey as the main data collection method to obtain data from 105 executives of exporting firms. An official database of export firms was provided to this study by the Department of Export Promotion, Ministry of Commerce of Thailand.

Significant partial moderation effect of trust on the impact of export incentives over importer role performance has been seen. Also, this study found a partial mediating role of the importer role performance in mediating the association of export incentives and exporter performance. In addition, export incentives in the form of credible channel policies and price and financial incentives have been found to have a significant positive effect on importer role performance.

This study will be of practical value for practitioners or managers of export firms because it is essential to enhance trust with importers and select the appropriate export incentives for importers. This could enhance competitiveness of the export firms.

This is an original attempt to investigate the role of trust as moderator in influencing the impact of export incentives on importer role performance. Also, this study initially ascertains the mediating effect of importer role performance in mediating the effectiveness of both monetary and non-monetary incentives on exporter performance.

The relationship between export marketing strategies and export performance is examined in Korea under the strategy‐environmental co‐alignment theoretical perspective put forth previously. A sample of managing directors of electronics exporters in Korea is used to test the hypotheses. Results indicate that the adaptation of products to foreign customers’ tastes, adjustment of export prices to foreign market conditions, direct exporting, and trade promotions toward overseas distributors positively influence the performance of Korea exporters. Expenditure on overseas advertising was not found to influence export performance. Implications for marketing practitioners and academics are addressed.

This study seeks to investigate the benefits that trigger exporters' attitudinal commitment and examines their effects by taking into account the temporal dynamics of cross‐border interfirm relationships.

A qualitative field study led to the generation of hypotheses that were subsequently tested with structural equations modeling using data collected during two consecutive surveys of exporters.

The economic benefits that foster exporter's commitment include importer's specific investments, importer role performance, and exporter economic performance.

Importers can secure their foreign suppliers' commitment by investing in their business relationships and improving their distributive performance. They also need to monitor exporters' economic performance. The study highlights the importance of exporters' perceptions in building their commitment. Thus, importers need to communicate intensively about their actions to promote exporters' brands.

Unlike previous research, which has focused mostly on behavioral antecedents of commitment, this study depicts the exporting context using the exporter perspective and highlights the importance of economic benefits in shaping their attitudes. A mixed design involving both qualitative and quantitative methodologies facilitates this approach. Relational exchange theory's temporal assumptions about business relationships are reflected by the use of longitudinal data.

Drawing on institutional theory, this study seeks to advance the understanding of how the indirect effect of exporters' adoption of an international adaptation strategy on export performance via enhanced legitimacy is differently moderated by formal and informal institutional distances from the host country market.

Survey data were collected from a sample of 251 exporters in China and analyzed with a multiple regression model to test the hypotheses.

Exporters' use of an international adaptation strategy affects their perceived legitimacy, which in turn influences their export performance. Moreover, formal institutional distance strengthens the indirect effect of an international adaptation strategy on export performance via legitimacy, whereas informal institutional distance weakens this indirect effect.

The study contributes to the knowledge of how and when adoption of an international adaptation strategy by exporters benefits export performance from an institutional perspective.

For many exporting firms, success in foreign markets hinges to a large extent on the performance of their foreign intermediaries (Albaum, Strandskov, & Duerr, 2002; Ellis, 2000; Root, 1987). In spite of the key role played by intermediaries in foreign markets – i.e. sales agents and independent distributors (Solberg & Nes, 2002) – exporters often regard them as temporary arrangements and second-best alternatives to conducting foreign marketing, sales, and service activities in-house. The typical assumption is that foreign intermediaries are low-control entry modes (Hill, 2003; Root, 1987) that do not have the potential of exploiting the full sales potential of export markets. In other words, foreign intermediary arrangements could have inherent limitations that foster mediocre rather than excellent market performance. Several studies report that exporters generally distrust foreign intermediaries and suspect them of shirking at any given occasion (Beeth, 1990; Nicholas, 1986; Petersen, Benito, & Pedersen, 2000). Poor performance is sometimes expected. On the other hand, foreign intermediaries often find that exporters put in place incentive structures that do not induce them to achieve excellent performance. Hence, it is asserted that foreign intermediaries may deliberately seek mediocrity rather than very poor or outstanding performance.

Relationship marketing has been playing an important role in the development of marketing theory and practice. Though the concept has been extensively applied in international marketing in understanding the dynamics of exporter-importer relationships, few studies have looked at dyadic data to investigate the impact of mutuality of relational variables on the exporter-importer relationships. The objective of this study is to understand the impact of mutuality of key relational variables on exporter-importer relationship performance. A dyadic model of mutuality is proposed. The model highlights the impact of balance, level and quality of perceptual bi-directionality of relational variables.

The model was tested using dyadic data collected from exporter-importer relationships involving Australian exporters and their Southeast Asian import partners through a cross-sectional, quantitative survey. Mutuality of relationship constructs was measured using the perceptual bi-directionality (PBD) method.

The results support the central hypothesis that mutuality of relational constructs has an impact on relationship performance.

The study is the first to apply the perceptual bi-directionality method to measure mutuality of relational constructs in an exporter-importer setting. The study contributes to the general understanding of international business and exporter-importer relationship performance in particular.

The purpose of this paper was to empirically examine the effects of relationship quality between exporter and importer on export performance in Turkish firms, and further, how small and medium‐sized exporting firms are segmented based on quality of their relationship with importers.

The paper includes Structural Equation Modeling and Cluster Analysis.

The findings demonstrate that there is the positive impact of: information sharing on financial export performance and satisfaction with the export venture; long‐term orientation on financial export performance, strategic export performance and satisfaction with the export venture; and satisfaction with the relationship on financial performance, strategic performance and satisfaction with export venture. Three segments of firm are profiled such as “long‐term thinkers”, “dissatisfactioners” and “information keepers”.

The data incorporate only the view of one player (the exporter) around the exporter‐importer relationship and do not take into account views from the other side of the dyad. However, since this study focused on first, the measuring relationship quality from the exporter's perspective and, second, the formation of exporter relationships as perceived by the exporter, ideal participants to be examined in this study are exporters. Future researches should be encouraged to test similar hypotheses in other international settings and compare their findings.

Information exchange between exporter and importer fosters the export performance of small and medium sized firms. If exporters openly enter into contact with importers and share confidential information and strategic issues, satisfaction with export venture will be increased. The long run relationships will probably involve cooperation, goal sharing and risk sharing. Export managers should work by cooperative manner, avoid the short‐term alternatives instead of long‐term benefits and not act opportunistically. Relational satisfaction impacts to the financial and strategic export performances, and satisfaction with the export venture. When an exporter meets the expectations of importer based on evaluations of the tangible product or non‐product related attributes such as delivery, service, or relational investments, his/her export performance will improve.

This study can increase exporting firms' awareness and understanding about relationship quality in handling international operations. Additionally, this study differs from similar studies, which are related to relationships quality, by suggesting a classification of firms based on relational quality dimensions. Therefore, it provides more specific knowledge.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which exporter difficulties in evaluating foreign sales agent performance affect export performance, either directly or as mediated by opportunism.

In developing the hypotheses, the study integrates transaction cost theory and principal-agent theory. The proposed relationships between the constructs (performance ambiguity, opportunism, and export performance) are examined for a multi-industry sample of Norwegian exporters in their dealings with foreign sales agents. A survey of 410 qualified key informants yielded 101 usable questionnaires – a response rate of 24.6%. Structural equation modeling is used for data analysis and hypothesis testing.

The analysis finds support for the hypothesis that sales agent performance ambiguity relates negatively to export performance. While performance ambiguity is positively related to sales agent opportunistic behavior, opportunism does not significantly influence export performance. It seems that the adaptation costs created by the evaluation problem are of greater importance in reducing export performance than the costs created by opportunistic behavior.

In focusing on the core dimensions of sales agent performance in foreign markets, other factors influencing export performance are not included. The fact that small Norwegian firms dominate the sample, further limits application and generalization of the findings. Hence, results should be interpreted with caution and the study considered as investigative. Nevertheless, the results indicate to export managers and theory potentially deteriorating dimensions in the relationship between exporter and foreign independent sales agent.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine how performance ambiguity and opportunistic behavior among foreign sales agents affect export performance. By concentrating on basic deteriorating dimensions, the study adds to the few that focus on inhibiting drivers of exporter – foreign–sales–agent relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the process of enhancing logistics performances in Korean exporters’ utilizing “third-party logistics” (3PL) in area of delivery service to overseas buyers.

A research model was designed on the mechanism of Korean exporters’ utilizing 3PL and the collaborative relationships (CR) between exporters and “logistics service providers” (LSPs) in supply chain management context. The mechanism means what triggers the Korean exporters to choose LSPs in overseas trade. Conclusions were drawn from survey data gathered from 146 exporters in Korea. Structural equation model with partial least square was employed to measure the statistical significance of the hypothesized model paths.

This study provides evidence that exporters’ evaluation on the customization of LSPs’ service capacities, the reasonability of LSPs’ service fees and the information sharing are three important prerequisites to CR between exporters and LSPs. This study is focussed on exporters’ performance such as consistency of secure delivery (SD), exporters’ logistics cost savings (CS) and exporters’ satisfaction. The results show a strong support for this study, with positive and significant effects of CR on the consistency of SD, exporters’ logistics CS and exporters’ satisfaction.

This study proves that exporters’ performance derived from the CR results in exporters’ loyalty to LSPs, which means LSPs’ performance.

There are very few studies on utilization of 3PL related to delivery of export goods to overseas buyers and relevant exporters’ performance. However, this study has particularly explored the mechanism in the relation of exporters’ using 3PL and its performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the significance of the direct and indirect effects (through country and firm’s specific advantages) of government policies for export promotion (GPEP) on the export performance of small and medium-size enterprise (SME) Cocoa exporters in Cameroon.

To test the proposed model, data were obtained through self-administered questionnaires using snowball sampling technique to 101 SME Cocoa exporters. This was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques to examine both the direct and indirect effects of GPEP on the export performance of SME Cocoa exporters in the South and Centre Regions of Cameroon.

The findings suggest that GPEP had both direct and indirect effects on the export performance of SME Cocoa exporters. Direct effect was on the usage of GPEP which reduces operating cost and increase performance. The indirect effects were through the provision of country and firms specific advantages. However, the only significant path was through the provision of export marketing information.

The research is limited to one country, one sector, and two regions and does not take into consideration other factors that may influence the effect of GPEP, country, and firms specific advantages on export performance. Moreover, the non-significant paths should be interpreted with caution and further testing required in a different context.

Empirical findings are relevant for the government and SME Cocoa exporters. It informs the government about the effectiveness of GPEP and the need to disseminate marketing information using every possible medium best understood by the SMEs. It suggests an opportunity for engagement of both SMEs and government authorities in accessing the outcome of GPEP which will increase transparency, awareness, usage, and export performance.

The research has successfully developed and tested a model for analyzing the direct and indirect effects of GPEP on export performance based on the resource-based view and SEM in a context where there is a call for more empirical and theoretical work on export performance due to limited studies. The framework reveals positive effects of GPEP, country, and firms’ specific advantages as determinants of export performance.